How-to: Spring Garden

Spring has sprung! Well, not for everybody, but if Zynga waited for the whole Nation to heat up, we’d be waiting a long, long time. Still, this crappy winter is almost behind us, and the flowers are officially in bloom for Zynga’s first event for its upcoming spring theme. Here is the How-to on the new Spring Garden!

Step 1: You will be in placement mode upon logging into FarmVille today if you happen to see the above picture on your screen. This will place some the relatively large – at least by comparison of the previous collectible item Buildings in the past several months – Spring Garden, a new Building that will begin giving you Flowers upon being built. These Flowers will be used to trade in and redeem various different goodies for the upcoming Spring theme; think of the Spring Garden like the Leprechaun’s Cottage from the St. Patrick’s Day theme, and think of the Flowers as if they are Gold pieces.

Step 2: Click “Look Inside” and you will see a brand new type of construction menu compared to previous outings, and we definitely approve. As you can see, you can freely click on the “Use” button below any of the materials to use what is in your inbox instead of sifting through them individually. The first set to initially build the Spring Garden will require the usual nucleus of Bricks, Boards, and Nails – four of each, to be precise.

Step 3: If you are having trouble receiving certain materials, try asking your friends for more through the Look Inside page. You can additionally send your friends materials or Special Delivery Boxes, which will contain several of the items you need; by sending them to your friends, you are much more likely to receive some back. A whopping 16 parts per upgrade is in place for this second installment of the Spring Garden, so expect an entirely-too-beefy amount of parts used for this one.

Step 4: The final expansion of the Spring Garden is a whopping 30 parts per slot, meaning it will require 90 total parts in the final phase of the building process. We were ticked when we found out that there was no awesome 500 Item redemption in the St. Patrick’s Day event, as there was previously with the Winter Holiday and Valentine’s Day events, mainly because we poured well over 100 parts into building the Leprechaun’s Cottage for nothing. Considering all this Building will likely do is produce Flowers (the redeemable item that you trade in for Spring goodies), might we recommend building this Spring Garden up to this point and instead asking your neighbors for Flowers from the Free Gifts page, as seen above, instead?

Are you excited to see the upcoming redemption items from the Spring Garden? We certainly hope there are some that include Horses, Cows, or something equally cool for 500 Flowers. Stay tuned to FarmVille Post!

New Items: Cricket Garden, Cricket Gnome, and More

The Decorations tab for tonight has but one FV Cash item, giving our wallets a break for until Sunday, or so we presume. There are also a few additional Coin items that are pretty snazzy, so let’s take a look!

We will get to the goods that most of us can afford first with the premium Coin item of the week, the Cricket Garden. If you were hoping for a garden full of insects, you will be sorely mistaken, as we are speaking strictly of the sport known as cricket. The Cricket Garden contains a few goodies to keep you entertained, what with all of the… uh… cricket instruments… and such… Okay, we’re not fooling anybody, we know nothing about cricket. We might pass for British with our knowledge of British television and music, but when it comes to sports, we’ve got nothin’. This item cannot be rotated, and costs 150,000 Coins, worthy of 1,500 EXP.

As for the premium item of the week in terms of FV Cash, you’ve got a little something for those of you who collect Gnomes in FarmVille. This is the Cricket Gnome, one of our garden variety friends dressed to impress on the cricket field. We guess it’s a field, right…? Apologies, our knowledge of cricket truly is terrible. And this Cricket Gnome could teach us a thing or two if he wasn’t so stiff! Tight-lipped Gnome, he is. He’ll set you back 15 FV Cash, the usually asking price for Gnomes, and will give you 1,500 EXP.

Here is the Red Phone Booth, another new Coin item that will look lovely next to our TARDIS… pardon, the “Police Box.” But c’mon, all of us Doctor Who nerds expect David Tennant to pop out of it and take us away in a mystical time machine, they’re not foolin’ us! Sorry to befuddle the majority of the non-nerdy U.S.-born players out there, British TV reference. See? We know our British media, but sports… not so much. The Red Phone Booth is a very interesting design, and takes up little space, making it a candidate to stay on our farm. Try it for yourself for only 50,000 Coins, which will give you 500 EXP.

The final item of the update tonight is the Jumping Fence, an ingenious little addition to the game’s collection of Fencing options. As you can clearly see by our picture above, the fences interlace with one another to provide you with a brand new actual Fence for your farm, or simply a nice little decorative touch around your Horse Stable to give it the look as if you are training your Horses. Ours are way too lazy to partake in such nonsense, of course; they’re fat and comfortable, kinda like us.

Stay tuned to FarmVille Post, as we will bring you more news and reviews very soon!

New Items: Garden Cascade, Garden Table Set, and More

To wrap up the Market update tonight, we shall take an in-depth look at the new Decorations, followed by an old school Mystery Game gallery!

The grand addition to the Decorations tab this Sunday evening update is the Garden Cascade, a brand new Decoration that is complete with animation – meaning no rotation is available for this particular item. Costing 20 FV Cash, the Garden Cascade is a miniature waterfall, offering a bed of flowing water that rolls over the ledge of this tall, rocky, and especially mossy structure. This is a very pretty Decoration and will certainly match the cobblestone-infused mini-theme within the English Countryside theme, but will look out of place if you’re rocking a city atmosphere on your farm. You will receive 2,000 EXP for buying this.

Another one of our favorite Decorations as of late is, thankfully, another Coin item. This is the Garden Table Set, which looks absolutely stunning on both our Italian wine country theme on our original farm, as well as our English Countryside farm. We plan on owning this one of both farms, as it is only 150,000 Coins (1,500 EXP). It cannot be rotated, but has no use for such an option, given its neutral stance that looks good no matter which direction your farm faces.  The overflowing ivy is a wonderful touch to the wine country look of the table and chairs underneath the pavilion.

Gnome lovers, you have been left out in the cold as of late, what with everybody making a fuss over the addition of the Sheep Pen and such. But fear not, as Zynga has unleashed a devilishly handsome ol’ chap to spruce up your English Countryside farm, delivering some charm along the way. This is the Gentleman Gnome, a lovely geezer wearing a bowler hat and carrying a monocle around with him in case there is some emergency reading to attend to. This guy is pretty cool, and costs 15 FV Cash, which is good for 1,500 EXP.

Lastly, there is a trio of tiny Decorations available in tonight’s update that can be scattered across your farmland in order to give the whole thing a little livelier look about it. From right to left in the above picture is the Rhododendron (try saying that three times fast), the Spring Flowerbed II, and the Spring Flowerbed III, available for 8,000 Coins, 5,000 Coins, and 2,000 Coins, respectively. The clear winner of the bunch to us is the second Spring Flowerbed, as we love the stone pottery encasing the floral bouquet.

We will have a gallery for the Mystery Game shortly!

New Items: Tea Cup Ride, Roses Garden, and More

We have one final Market update for tonight in the form of what we always save for last when it comes to Wednesday evening updates: Decorations! A few new subtle things have come along for those of us looking to make our English Countryside farms snazzy on a budget.

Before we get to the cheap stuff, however, let us take a gander at the stuff for premium dollar. This is the Tea Cup Ride, an English Countryside spin-off of the Country Fair edition of the same item. This time around, we have the usual suspects parading around in a spinny-durbish ride that spins the three FarmVille Animals in circles by clicking on the item and selecting the “Spin!” action. It was cool six months ago, and while still cool, it seems a little out of place in the English Countryside, especially alongside tonight’s other items. It will run you 20 FV Cash and gives back 2,000 EXP.

The real winner of the night is a Coin item, so fear not, beloved Posters! This is the Roses Garden, a tiny Decoration that unfortunately cannot be rotated, but what a beautiful addition to the English Countryside it is! The tiny picket fence protects the smallest and most beautiful of gardens, as yellow roses wrap around the eloquent archway, which cradles an assorted pot of hanging foliage. At the center of the piece is a vase blooming with pink roses, which is surrounded and protected by various shrubbery. This is truly a masterpiece of artistic design in FarmVille. 150,000 Coins is the asking price, and you will receive 1,500 EXP for the purchase.

One of the other hefty purchases you can make using Coins this week is the purchase of the Tea Table, a very soft and easy look on the eyes with its pink and white colors that matches very well with some of the other available Decorations this week, specifically of the floral variety – which we will tackle momentarily. This purchase costs 100,000 Coins, and while it doesn’t quite fit our version of the English Countryside, it is definitely something that will look perfect on the more casual farms out there. 1,000 EXP is yours for the taking when you buy this non-rotatable Decoration.

See what we meant about how some of the designs will perfectly match the Tea Table Decoration? Sure enough, if you love shrubbery that has been cut and twisted to resemble glorious tea time delights, you will fall madly in love with the Tea Pot Topiary, the first new addition to the Topiary line in what seems like years for the FarmVille universe. This one is only 10,000 Coins, and as you can clearly see, it is easily rotatable.

Finally, to wrap up the remaining three Decorations that you can find on the cheap in the land of virtual farming, we have the Spring Flower Pot for 5,000 Coins, the Spring Flowerbed for 2,000 Coins, and our favorite of the lot, the Garden Bench for 7,000 Coins. These three items are all lovely as placeholder Decorations or even ways to complement the English Countryside. Our only beef lies in the Garden Bench, which we absolutely love but wish it were in better proportion alignment with the Roses Garden, which we feel matches it perfectly. Unfortunately, it is huge when placed side-by-side.

We have a great new What We Want rolling out tomorrow evening, so stay tuned to FarmVille Post!

New Items: Garden Gazebo, Oast House, and More

The big surprise of the evening has to be the overabundance of brand new Buildings in FarmVille, with three new ones making their Market debut in tonight’s English Countryside Market update. We haven’t had this many new Buildings in a long time, so let’s jump right into them.

Let us begin with a Coin item, shall we? We love the Gazebos in FarmVille; there is something about how colorful they are with their foliage adapting to the architecture of the Garden Gazebo itself that is enticing to us… well, that and the fact that gazebos are pretty awesome in real life, too. So by offering a spiffy repaint of a farmer Gazebo at the cost of Coins is a no-brainer to us, sign us up. This Gazebo can actually be rotated, as well, and gives you 1,500 EXP for the 150,000 Coin purchase. It looks great on the English Countryside farm, so we highly recommend it.

In the world of FV Cash purchases, this new Oast House is the top billing of the week, checking out at a whopping 30 FV Cash – a steep number by recent FarmVille standards of pricing for Buildings. So, why does it cost so much? Is it actually better than other Buildings? Well, yeah, just look at it. Regardless of if you like it or dislike it, one thing you certainly cannot say is that it’s boring, bland, or looks similar to anything else on FarmVille’s Market. This is for the true blue brewers of the world, as the Oast House is used to dry out the hops when crafting beer. We knew drinking beer had its upsides: beer knowledge. We love this, personally, as you likely know about our love of ivy-covered structures by now. You will even receive 3,000 EXP for the purchase of the rotatable Building.

Finally, something a little more traditional and less crazy: the Tudor Cottage, a small, old-fashioned straw cottage that is comprised of ivy-clung walls and brand new window frames, which we have to admit look a little out of place on the structure itself. A slightly crooked picket fence graces the Building to give it a suburban feel. This one is nice, and can be rotated, but seems slightly overpriced at 20 FV Cash; other similar structures have sold recently for a few bucks less. If you decide to take the plunge, expect to receive 2,000 EXP in return.

Which is your favorite of these three? We gotta go with the Oast House. It is too unique to pass up.

New Items: English Carriage, Garden Picnic, and More

The Decorations are not the final item to attend to tonight, as it seems the Mystery Game has updated and we always save the best for last. Alas, for now let’s take a peek at the small spattering of Decorations that have arrived for the English Countryside theme.

It has been a while since we have seen a new carriage with Horses attached, so this seems like a logical addition to the English Countryside theme. After all, which thinks of carbon emissions from machinery when they think of the English Countryside? Certainly not us. Regardless, we are never fans of the carriages in FarmVille, and that extends to this new English Carriage for 16 FV Cash. The reasoning is the fact that they cannot be rotated due to its animation combined with its size; something as big as the English Carriage is tough to find the space for the footprint of the Decoration, let alone that specific footprint from that angle. If you take the plunge, expect to receive 1,600 EXP for the purchase.

We suspect that many of you are tired of looking at FV Cash items tonight, though, so let’s bring on the Coin goodies! Here is the Garden Picnic, for those of you with food and wine in the sunshine on the brain. This is a fully rotatable Decoration that features a variety of different chairs pulled up to an elegant enough outdoor table. This one is a fun Decoration for the farmer who’s looking to spruce up the place with a little personality on the cheap (150,000 Coins). We recommend it for homely farmers, but it’s not necessarily for us with our style.

Now here is what we’re talking about, a nice Decoration deserving on being on our new English Countryside farm AND it’s for only 100,000 Coins: the Secluded Hideaway, a glorious bench attached to rope under ivy-coated wood. Our only beef is that it does not swing whatsoever, though we suspect it A) would not have had rotation if they were the case, and B) it would have been a FV Cash item to offset the animation cost in production. Either way, we love this item, as it is both cheap and a eye-catching addition to the farm.

And finally for the regular Market update, it seems that the English Countryside has finally gotten a worthy piece of Fencing under its belt with the addition of the Rose Iron Fence, available for 7,000 Coins per slab. This is a phenomenal Fence that looks great with most non-wooden-based English Countryside farms, and uses the English Roses we know and love to adorn the metallic sectioning. Love it!

Stay tuned for the Mystery Game review, coming up next!

New Items: Stone Bridge, Garden Pond, and More

Oh my! It seems that the Decorations page has received a healthy boost of English Countryside after such a dry spell the other night during the main English Countryside expansion’s arrival. Now there is tons of goodies to mess around with, the best of which is a Coin item!

Here is the aforementioned best item in the entire update, the Stone Bridge. This new entry can be purchased on both your original and English Countryside farms, and if you are like us, it looks perfect on both! You are looking at the rotated view of the Stone Bridge, as the sun shines softly on the bridge itself from this viewpoint.

It is hard to dislike this true countryside item, with its carefully crafted suspended walkway comprised of stone and wood across a waterbed that truly gives credence to the idea that your farm is in a habitat all its own. You can purchase this for 250,000 Coins, which is a steal at that price, and also receive 2500 EXP in the process.

For the FV Cash side of things, there is another lovely Decoration that is not land-locked, thus making it freely available to both of your farms. This is the Garden Pond, a tiny Decoration with a tiny footprint for those of you out there operating on a limited amount of space on your farms. It features some animation, meaning that it cannot be rotated to better adjust to your farm. With that said, it is pretty small, rendering the lack of rotating a minor inconvenience. It costs quite a bit of money for the size, clocking in at 15 FV Cash (giving you 1500 EXP), but is worth it for size-crunching decorators.

On the English Countryside-only side of things, why not have one of the Queen’s glorious, never-sniffing guards as a Gnome? That’s right Gnome lovers, the new Gnome in FarmVille is the Queen’s Guard, standing at attention waiting on command. We’ve tried everything to make him laugh, from showing him the Silkie Chicken to tickling his nose with a Chicken’s butt. Nothing works. He costs 15 FV Cash and has all of the traits you’d expect of a Gnome, including no rotation.

Back to the Coin items that can be used across either of your farms, we have the Flower Barrow, designed for combining the luxury of glorious, beautiful flowers with the hard country work of picking them in the barrow. The styles clash, as do the culture differences, and we love it. The design is the perfect mixture of the English Countryside work ethic and the beautiful Crops the soil can produce, so it’s a good PR design as well. It costs 120,000 Coins, which is steep for a tiny Decoration, but who doesn’t have a lot of Coins by now, anyhow? You will receive 1200 EXP for the purchase.

How about those of you who want to spruce up your English Countryside farm into looking like a fresh spring meadow? What better way to do that than with the two different types of grass: Lush Grass and, obviously, Spring Meadow! The Lush Grass is tall, green growth that looks fantastic and natural on the English Countryside, while the Spring Meadow features a little bit of floral balance throughout the grass. The Lush Grass runs 1,000 Coins per plot, while the Spring Meadow will cost you 2,000 Coins per plot.

Lastly is a brand new piece of Fencing, the Drystone Wall. At first glance, we immediately fell in love with this design, but quickly learned the hard way that the Fencing does not link up with one another, thus making it look blocky and out of synch with the rest of the farm. Each link costs 5,000 Coins, and while we like the design itself quite a bit, just look at how awkward the other Fencing looks. Ick.

That does it for tonight’s Market update! What was your favorite addition to the Market tonight?