Hay bale art is very popular and I've been amazed at what farmers can come up with, and they often win FarmVille's Farm of the Week contest. But as amazing as they are, I'd rather not waste the coins on the hay bales, particularly because there's usually not much room left over for farming. It's a lot of creativity and hard work and there is no payoff for me in doing that.
FarmVille is my own personal Fantasy Land. I grew up in an area lush with trees and flowers, and now live in the desert. FarmVille is my escape from the drab wasteland that stretches as far as they eye can see in every direction when I step outside of my house. I keep a lot of trees on my farm, and have an alarming number of small hills (available as free gifts), small mushrooms, almost every kind of water body that's been available in the last year, assorted other little decorations, and of course buildings. The buildings in my town all look the same so I buy up lots of buildings in FarmVille and create villages all over my farm. Many of the buildings I have and that you'll see in the next few posts are Limited Edition (LE) items that cost FarmVille Cash (FV$), but it is possible to design a beautiful and intricate farm without spending FV$. The variety of buildings may not be as great, but there are still plenty you can purchase for coins or find in mystery eggs.
Since the introduction of the English Countryside (EC) to FarmVille, my home farm has gotten a little messy. Actually, it was headed that way before and just kept getting worse and worse as I filled it with things I didn't have room to store and didn't have time or the ability to properly integrate into the existing design.
This redesign will probably take several days and I'm going to share each step with you and show you how I achieve some of the effects I've been asked about. I should warn you that most of these effects are at a cost to plot space; the more intricate the designs and the more numerous themed areas I have, the less room I have for farm plots. On the largest size home farm, I expect to have about 200 active* farm plots at the end of this redesign.
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| Home Farm |
The above image is a close representation to what my farm looked like when I began redesigning it. I later filled up my stable with as many horses as I could fit (40) to give myself that extra bit of working room and to make it easier to move them when the time comes. I have since cluttered my farm further with LE items that were about to go out of the market. I didn't have room to store them, but knew I wanted them as part of the redesign, so I have fences and other decorations just set down wherever I could find room. The smaller area of farm plots is the result of me beginning to take down one themed area and not having the time to build a new one. Since I knew it was going to take a week or two before I could begin the redesign, I just fit in some plots to boost my coin intake in the interim.
One reason this redesign will take so long is because I have a tendency to hide things on my farm, particularly amongst the trees. The following images are just a small portion of the hidden items; I will share pictures of the animals hidden amongst the trees as my redesign progresses.
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| Composite image showing some of the hidden items on my farm |
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| More hidden items |
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| Here you can see my Chrome Monoplane used to apply Instant Grow. Can't you see it? |
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| Now that I've moved some trees out of the way, you can see the head of the pig pilot peeking out of the trees |
To begin, I first deleted all of my farm plots (after harvesting the grown crops, of course. No sense wasting coins on crops I don't let grow!). I didn't have many, but I chose to select the "Don't warn me about selling or deleting plots again until I switch tools" option available in the pop-up when I clicked the delete tool over the first plot I wanted to delete.
Then I started going through my storage and taking out the larger items I thought I would want on my farm. Because I'd reached my storage capacity of 500 items and there is no option to sort stored items, this took a long time. Items may move around between trips into the barn/cellar, so patience is a must with this process.
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| Items out of storage |
I have long wanted to create as many European villages as possible and it's pained me to keep the Eiffel Tower in storage for so long, but I probably won't incorporate it into my latest design. I just can't think of a good way of doing it without creating some sort of French village nearby (I won't hold my breath on ever being able to design a FarmVille Paris, so I'm just hoping for the opportunity to create a French village).
I returned to FarmVille after a year and a half-long break the day after the Swiss themed LE items went out of the market. That meant snapping up the German theme items was easy, but I've always regretted missing out on the Swiss theme. They had a variety of mountains I would love to have, and several buildings. I'm lucky that the Swiss Chalet was offered in a Mystery Game around Christmas, and the Matterhorn is available for 90 zCoins in RewardVille to players level 30 and above. I played several games each day to level up in order to buy the Matterhorn mountains, and now that I have them, I stopped playing the other games because I didn't enjoy them.
The Matterhorn mountains cannot be rotated, which creates a design obstacle for me. In reality, there is only one Matterhorn mountain (located in Zermat, Switzerland), but I want to use all four to create a mountain range. I will have to place them carefully in relation to each other and I want to weave my evergreen trees through and around them. On a hill. With the German town below on the broad side. And the Swiss Chalet below on the short side.
When I was taking things out of storage, I discovered that the garden waterfall from the EC theme LE items is the perfect size to plant at the base of one of the Matterhorn mountains and make it look much bigger. I've travelled to Zermat and know that the surrounding area has a great many waterfalls, so placing it there isn't entirely out of context. Thanks to an avalanche, I never actually got to go up the Matterhorn, so I don't know if there are any waterfalls quite so close, but I'm OK with stretching reality in a game.
The biggest problem I'm facing with this redesign is the German castle, or more precisely, the fences I have stacked around it to give the illusion of height. I can't recall the exact number of fences, but there are around 200 and I don't have room to store them, nor am I willing to sell them because I love them and they're irreplaceable. So I will have to move them, but I'm not sure just yet where to move them and don't want to put them in an interim place because there are so many and it will take a long time.
For now, the work I have to do is purely mental. I need to make some decisions before I do anything else. The next step after that is experimenting: moving things a bit to see how they fit in relation to this or that, can I fit farm plots here if I have that there, do I want to sell off some trees or animals, where are they going to go if I keep them, what am I to do with my mastery signs since I refuse to sell them, etc. Some items will go back into storage only to be taken right back out again, and others will go in to stay until a future redesign.
I will share more when I reach the experimenting stage. It is in that step that I can best show you how to create a rolling hills effect with your farm plots and create a stacked hill effect like that I used to hide my plane. For now, you can find me on my EC farm planting and plowing and growing trees.
*I have several plots of fully grown crops that I never harvest and they do not wither because I have an Unwither Ring on my farm that I keep active at all times. Most of these plots are Limited Edition crops that I cannot replace, so I try to keep them away from my active plots so I don't accidentally run them over with my Combine vehicle.
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