How-to: Village Faire Quest

With tonight’s update brings the arrival of a few new Quests to the English Countryside!

Step 1: First up on the dish tonight is a Quest introducing us to the Village Faire, a magnificent celebration of all-things fun. This will require completing the brand new English Countryside Co-Op Job involving our favorite Crop from the English Countryside, the Cornflower. You will have to grow a stunning amount of these flowers – 1200 in total – within two days in order to succeed in this Quest. You can recruit friends to help you out, as well. In addition to completing this Co-Op Job, you must harvest 100 English Roses and 100 Foxglove. Talk about a lengthy Quest!

Step 2: The prize for completing this portion of the Quest is very weak, with four topiary fences, 100 EXP and 2,500 Coins. As for the second part of the Quest, Angus is back and wants us to breed three Lambs. With the arrival of several “brand new” Sheep patterns tonight, you can once again safely make most of the patterns you knew and loved from before, so hop to it! You will gain a few goodies upon success, like a brand new Fountain, 100 EXP, and 2,500 Coins.

Step 3: Olivia is the next of our favorite residents to require some assistance regarding the Village Faire. This one is all about crafting, so folks who love to make Crafts will get a kick out of this. First and foremost, you will have to ask your neighbors for Lemons. This is one of those “six click” objectives, meaning your neighbors must click on the request six times to give you six of the items, where you used to have to “Use” them in your gift box, but now they’re automatically deposited within the Quest window. Cool! Beyond this, you must make six total Crafts: three Lionhead Ale and three Barley Crumpets.

Step 4: Your reward will be a really cool Lemonade Stand, 100 EXP, and 2,500 Coins. The Lemonade Stand is incredibly cute. The final part of the Quest is to ensure everyone is full, so you will have to harvest 200 Cara Potatoes, which really do look delicious, and visit your neighbors to fertilize 25 of their plots. Upon completion of this task, you will receive a brand new costume, the Riding Outfit, and the usual EXP and Coin bonuses.

New Items: Romantic Cottage, Wedding Fountain, and More

There are a lot of returning items in FarmVille with the arrival of the Enchanted Love theme, as well as some new ones. Let’s take a look at both the Building and Decorations tabs in one post for a change, due to the smaller amount of new stuff.

The only new item in Wednesday’s Market update under the Buildings tab is the Romantic Cottage, a cutesy, homey addition to the Market. This is a very soft Building on the eyes, with easy browns and tans to look at, which blend nicely with the pink flowers that grace the topiary surrounding the Building. We particularly enjoy the threshold that sits at the doorstep, covered in beautiful roses. This is a plain Jane type of Building, and the price is too steep at 20 FV Cash, but it’s very cute. 2,000 EXP will be awarded to those who purchase this rotatable structure.

A pairing of returning Gnomes is also on the Market, but they are of the old sort. On the new side of Decorations, we have a new Coin item that is quite bulky: the Wedding Bouquet. This is a very large rendition of what we typically think of when we hear “wedding bouquet,” right? It is due to the excess flowers, as well as the podium they rest atop. This is a cute addition to your farm if you’re recently wedded or to be wedded, as well as if you’re just nutso about flowers. It costs 100,000 Coins.

Back to the FV Cash items for the week, the Wedding Fountain is easily our favorite Decoration of the week’s update, clocking in at 7 FV Cash so it can technically, by FV Cash standards anyway, be affordable. It is a white fountain that is held up with purple-lined pillars and adorned with a pair of lovebirds at the top. White roses line the bottom of the structure, as the animated water flows down the multi-tiered decoration. If you buy this one, it will give you 1,200 EXP.

If the Wedding Bouquet is too large for your farm, you can try the lesser-expensive option, which is the Wedding Flower Pot. It is a gold flower pot containing beautiful red and white flowers springing out of greenery, sitting upon a pristine pedestal. It costs 20,000 Coins. If you’re looking for something new to fence in your items, the Wedding Fence provides a solid white surface with big pink ribbons draped along it. Each piece of fencing costs 5,000 Coins.

What is your favorite item this week?

News: “Illegal” Sheep Producing Plain Lambs

It seems that Zynga has made some serious changes to breeding “illegal” Animals in FarmVille.

This was found in their blog update tonight:

We wanted to give an update to everyone regarding certain kinds of disallowed sheep that have been available in FarmVille as well as a similar issue that appeared with pigs this past weekend. Certain types of sheep and pig colors/patterns not yet released have been improperly distributed in FarmVille; we are currently going through the process of making sure this practice stops.

The steps that we have taken are:

* The methods by which players were able to breed unreleased sheep and pig colors and patterns have been closed.
* Players who bred sheep and pigs using illicit methods have had their animals revert to their original base colors and no patterns.
* Pigs and sheep acquired from feed posts (but at some point were generated using illicit methods) will get to retain their unusual colors and patterns. However, attempts to breed with these pigs or sheep will result in default colors and no additional pattern inheritance. Should we release these additional colors or patterns legitimately then players will be able to breed that animal in the appropriate, correct manner. This is not an implication that you or your neighbors have done something wrong. This is a breeding restriction of colors and patterns that as of yet have not intended to be released.
So what’s currently allowed to breed and what’s not?

* Most current colors are allowed but the “flashing” colors are definitely not.

* Currently Allowed Sheep Patterns: Plain, Spotted, Striped
* Currently Alllowed Pig Patterns: Plain, Spotted

Again, the intention is to stop the distribution of colors and patterns that are not currently intended but not to punish our players who have acquired these animals legitimately. When we do release these colors or patterns, you’ll be able to breed with them just as intended.

What this means is that the above two Sheep would have normally bred a Ram or Ewe that looked similar to themselves, but now they create this really unusual Sheep that we have never seen before:

Yeah, that was heavy sarcasm. While we understand Zynga’s frustrations in these hackers cracking their code and releasing the data before it is due, might we recommend finding a better way to protect said data so that aforementioned hoodlums cannot access it instead of nerfing (making an item inferior — pardon the videogame terminology, all of you non-gamers) all of our cool Sheep? For many, Sheep breeding is a community effort, and breeding them for neighbors is the majority of the fun, especially considering the harsh cap on the amount of Animals we can have on our farm.

Obviously, we feel like a solution needed to be had in order to restore the integrity of the system, but this will only agitate players by further constricting breeding in FarmVille. One of the key ways to remove the fun from anything is to enforce too many rules, and these actions – along with the trouble in receiving Love Potions for four Buildings, restrictions on how many Animals you can have per farm, and lack of Bottles has drawn us, personally, away from breeding. We love a lot of what FarmVille does, but not stuff like this.

How do you feel about all of this breeding hoopla? We would love to hear your constructive opinions for better or worse.

New Items: Wedding Tree and Giant Wedding Tree

It’s a grand wedding celebration! We had to run to the store for FV Cash cards, but we are back and ready to roll out our reviews of tonight’s items.

Let’s begin with what is sure to be a top seller this week, the Wedding Tree. It comes along under the guise of the Enchanted Love theme, celebrating the wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton. This particular Tree is one of much beauty, as it is a purple-pink hybrid in color and grows glorious beads of pristine white when it is ripe. This one is a fantastic make-believe Tree in the land of FarmVille, but we dislike the 7 FV Cash it requires in order to obtain it – this seems to be a new trend, and if there is one thing we dislike, it is higher prices.

Oh boy. If there are two things we dislike, they are higher prices and Giant versions of Trees. If you want to combine those two things we dislike, it is higher prices on Giant Trees, and this one falls under that category at 12 FV Cash instead of 10 FV Cash. We always put up a fuss, even if it’s over a measly 2 FV Cash — hey, it adds up! The Giant Wedding Tree shares the same statistics as its Level 1 counterpart, as they both give you 150 coins over the course of two days and require 75 harvests to reach the first level of Mastery.

We like the smaller one best, as always. Stay tuned for more reviews throughout the night!

Mystery Game: April 24, 2011

Here are our results from this week’s Mystery Game!

Not too shabby at all! We even hit three Rare prizes out of these Darts. This is an above average week for us, and the only thing that was a bit tricky to obtain was one of the Uncommons. The Mystery Game costs 20 FV Cash per Dart this week, but is it worth it?

The only thing lamer than the Black Shire Horse being the top Rare prize of the week last week is the White Shire Horse being this week’s top get. Seriously, we have seen many excellent black and white Horses over the past six months throughout FarmVille, we desperately need something else – and no, we do not mean a pink variation of the Shire Horse as the top prize for next week. This is a disappointing top prize for a second straight week.

On the other hand, it is hard to go wrong with a secondary Rare prize that’s in the form of the White Wolf. It has the feel of an Uncommon prize more so than one of the two Rares, but it’s still adorable if you do not have a Wolf up to this point (otherwise it would be redundant). The best part about this White Wolf is, of course, the animation where it howls at the moon, as seen above. This is the usual Wolf model, so as mentioned it may seem a bit pointless if you’ve already got a Wolf on your farm.

Get ready to say “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” as loud as possible, as the returning White Kitten has arrived in FarmVille as an Uncommon Animal in this week’s Mystery Game.  We were hoping for a separate feature on Kittens, sort of like how the Ducklings and Piglets became a small factor in the game, but we suppose this will make do. The White Kitten is fairly cute is an unorthodox way, as it closely resembles a big cat’s kittens compared to a domesticated cat’s babies.

We previously spoke of the Red Fox Kit, an Uncommon Animal from the Mystery Game on March 22, 2011, and mentioned how it was an improved repaint of an older Animal named the Arctic Fox. Well, now you’re staring at it. We always thought this design was stellar, but it seems a little strange to us that Zynga is re-releasing this one so close after launching the paint job just one month ago. Certainly a curious decision, and one that will be met with mixed views, we’re guessing.

Yeah, there are even more re-releases in this week’s Mystery Game, as half of the items that comprise the Mystery Game this week. This is the White Squirrel, which will cheer up the majority of our readers despite our hatred of this goofy-looking critter. As always, we’re here to slam the beloved Squirrels. We were shocked to see how many of our readers loved the Squirrels as their favorite Animal in all of FarmVille, so we definitely recognize that we are in the minority here, but yikes… We really dislike their design. Oh well, love it or hate it, it is a Common item this week.

To wrap up this week’s Mystery Game is our favorite item of the entire shebang and one of the two Common items to fill out the Mystery Game’s roster, the White Stork. This is a brilliant design that closely resembles the previously-released Baby Alpaca and Deer Fawn from older Mystery Games. We’re guessing the same, very talented artist designed this one, as well, as it certainly visits the slender, tall, and stylistic profile. Regardless, we love it because it really stands out. It ruffles its feathers occasionally by the twitching of its wings.

All-in-all, we recommend passing this week. It costs too much at 20 FV Cash per throw, it has a weak top prize and features not one, not two, but three returning items. Overall, this one is a bummer.