Farmers can now load their farms faster by allowing FarmVille to store certain clips and graphics on their computers. That way, you don’t have to load the whole game every time you login.  FarmVille Community Manager TerriHelper has announced the feature on the forum with a helpful guide that you can check below.

While loading FarmVille, look closely at the bottom right of the loading screen. There should a small icon with a little boy, “Want to load faster? Click here.” Click on this icon.

After clicking the icon on the loading screen, you’ll get a pop up that asks you if you want to improve loading your farm. If you decide to opt out, that is totally fine. If you change your mind, refresh your game and click on the icon again on the loading screen.

If you click “Sure”, you’ll get another pop up from Adobe Flash Player Settings asking for permission to load some files onto your computer. When you click “Allow,” images and sounds from your farm/Farmville will be loaded onto your computer. After allowing the permissions, Adobe pop up will disappear and you’ll be able to resume farming.

The assets on the farm (plots, buildings, etc) should all appear much, much faster, instead of being gray circles. And this will also apply to loading neighbor’s farms and England vs. Home.

Opting Out
If you decide you want to opt out of this feature after allowing the permissions, please go to http://www.macromedia.com/support/do…manager07.html, select the entry for “zcache.zgncdn.com” and click “Delete Website”. That will turn it off and delete anything farm related stored on the user’s computer.

Source: FarmVille Forum

Now that you’ve got one or more Duck Ponds teeming with ducks, what else can you do with them? Well, it’s time to start breeding some brand new ones!
Every time you harvest the Duck Pond (once every 24 hours), you have a chance of getting a Yellow or Brown Duckling out of it in addition to the general coin reward for harvesting. The color of the Duckling is determined by what kind of ducks are in your Duck Pond, and the color also determines what kind of ducks can be bred from it. If you just use previous ducks, like the Ugly Duckling or White Swan, you’ll almost always get a Yellow Duckling. If you use a mix of duck types, you may get a Brown Duckling.

You have the option to share this Duckling on your feed:

After this your Duckling will be placed in the Gift Box. You can then choose to place the Duckling on your farm or straight into your Duck Pond at any time from the Gift Box:

Placing the Duckling on your farm will start the breeding process. If you put the Duckling in your Duck Pond, it will stay a Duckling only and the breeding process will be on hold. Once you place the Duckling, a new window will appear (in this case, let’s assume it’s a Yellow Duckling):

Breeding ducks is a factor of both time and friendship. You can see a line of seven (7) Ducks here: the rarity of the Ducks increases as you go from left to right. However, the time you have to breed that kind of duck decreases while the number of friends you need to breed that duck increases (as you go from left to right). Over time you lose the ability to breed certain ducks for that particular Duckling.

Sounds complex? First, here’s a chart to map it all out:

For a Yellow Duckling, in order to get the valuable Indian Runner Duck I need seven (7) neighbors to help me over the next twenty-four (24) hours (the timer starts as soon as I put the Duckling on the farm).

If I only manage to get the help of five (5) neighbors, the best duck I can breed with the Yellow Duckling is the Goldeneye Duck for the next seventy-two (72) hours. However, if I don’t breed the duck within that period, I lose the ability to get the Goldeneye Duck and then the best duck I can get is the Red Billed Duck. A day later if I still don’t breed a duck, the best duck I can get is the Scoter Duck.

Alternatively, let’s say I get a Brown Duckling but can only get two (2) neighbors to help me out. I can only breed the Red Billed Duck or the Goldeneye Duck for the next six (6) days. But if a day passes and four (4) more neighbors help me out, I can still breed the Wood Duck.

To grow the Duck, just find the one you want and click on “Choose” beneath its picture. You’ll get the new duck in your Gift Box:

You can get help from your neighbors by just clicking on the “Ask For Help” button and choosing which neighbors you want to ask. This sends a standard request through the Zynga Message Center (ZMC) which the recipient can easily respond to. You can also choose to speed up the growth process by paying Farm Cash, which will let you breed whatever duck you want that hasn’t already been expired (if pay Farm Cash after two days, you can only breed five of the seven duck types).

After seven days the duck will just grow into the last available duck (the Ugly Duckling for the Yellow Duckling for example); if you’d rather keep the duckling as is you can close the window and you’ll be asked if you just want to keep the Duckling the way it is permanently.

Since October 2009 you have helped raise nearly $3 million for Haiti—money that proved to be especially needed in the weeks and months following the tragic earthquake in January 2010.

Now you can help even more by helping building a new school for Haitian children, the L’Ecole De Choix (“The School of Choice”), in Mirebalais. Intended to meet the most pressing needs of those living in extreme poverty, the school will focus on quality education for the children of Central Plateau. How can you help?

You actually have two ways of helping out. You can help fill the Haiti Backpack with School Supplies, or you can give a direct donation and receive a permit to grow a special crop, Sweet Beets.

The Haiti Backpack

You’ll receive the Haiti Backpack the first time you come back into FarmVille; you can choose to place it immediately on your farm or store it away from later (if you sell it, you can buy another in the Market for 1 coin). The Backpack needs to be filled with School Supplies, which can be acquired a number of ways: through the Free Gifts page, by asking for School Supplies via Facebook feed, by direct purchase of a pack of “5 Supplies” through the Market (for 5 Farm Cash), or by sharing extras:

Our immediate goal is to reach 400 Million total School Supplies accumulated. If that goal is reached, Zynga will donate $100,000 towards the construction of L’Ecole de Choix in Haiti. You’ll be able to see how far along we are by this progress bar at the top of the screen below the FarmVille logo:

Click on the Backpack, and then click on Look Inside. This will bring up the Backpack Window, which shows your progress in accumulating School Supplies and has buttons for the Rewards section, a Comparison window with your neighbors, information about the School, and an option to Ask or Buy School Supplies.

The more School Supplies you accumulate, the higher the book stack gets in the Backpack. As you gather more School Supplies you’ll also “graduate” to higher school levels and earn a new title. For instance, starting out with 0 School Supplies you’ll be in the “Pre-School” group.

You can see that you have the option of redeeming School Supplies for some new items (note that this doesn’t take away from the Total amount of School Supplies you’ve acquired). For 10 Supplies you can get this Haiti Flag, for example.

The Comparison screen will let you see how your School Supply acquisition skills compare against your other neighbors:

Clicking on “About the School” will let you know more about the school in Haiti you are helping build:

Sweet Beets for Haiti

The second way you can donate is a little more direct. You can spend Farm Cash to buy a permit to plant a special crop, Sweet Beets, in the Market under Seeds. How much you want to donate is entirely up to you—25, 55 or 240 Farm Cash—you’ll get access to the exact same crop:

As you can see that’s a pretty good crop that doesn’t Wither (and yes it can be Mastered)! You’ll also receive a Sweet Seeds Reward Flag in your Gift Box. 100% of the proceeds donated in this way will go directly towards construction of the school and will be reflected in the Sweet Seeds logo located near the top of the screen. After a week if the Permit expires and if you want to plant more Sweet Seeds you’ll need to buy another Permit.

Please Donate Today!

Rainbow themed items are now available from the new rainbow mystery game in the market. Collect all 6 items including the rainbow chicken.

Here is the list of the prizes. You can find pictures after the jump!

• Rainbow Bridge
• Rainbow Chicken
• Rainbow Fountain
• Rainbow Jungle Gym
• Rainbow Lorikeet

norcalmom

Need more space to store baby animals? The nursery barn expansion is finally here! Community Manager Lexi prepared a helpful guide to help us all with this new feature. Check it after the link.

You can store more baby animals than ever with the new Nursery Barn Expansion! Please find a quick guide on how this feature works below.

Nursery Barn Expansion:

You can now increase the capacity of your Nursery Barn. Remember, the more baby animals you have in your Nursery Barn, the higher your chances are of producing adults!

Your Nursery Barn can be upgraded twice. The first upgrade will provide you with 10 extra storage and the second upgrade will provide an additional 10 extra storage. The two upgrades will give you 20 extra storage spaces in total.

There are two ways to expand your Nursery Barn. The first way to expand storage is to pay Farm Cash. If you wish to purchase the expansion with FarmVille cash (50 FC), you can do so by clicking the “Complete Now” button or you can purchase individual components by clicking the “buy” button under each required material.

Alternatively, you can expand your Nursery by collecting building components from your Neighbors. Selecting ‘Look Inside’ from your Nursery’s menu will show you what you need to complete your expansion.

In order to expand, you’ll need 10 of each item. You can get these items one of two ways:

1. From neighbors via the Free Gifts menu.

Neighbors can send you the components you need to expand your Nursery. Your Neighbors will be able to send you three types of building components to help you complete your expansion.

When neighbors send you a building component, it works exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box.

After clicking the “use” button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Nursery.

2. Ask For More

When viewing the interior of your Nursery, each component that you have not yet received 10 of has an “Ask for More” button, that when clicked will take you to the Friend Selector page where you can select friends to send Gift Requests to for your chosen component.

Community Manager Lexilicious:

You now have the ability to Master your crafting recipes! For more information on recipe mastery, please review this new guide.

Becoming a Recipe Master

You don’t need to do anything extra to start gaining levels of crafting Mastery—you just need to continue making goods at your crafting building. As your recipe level increases, you unlock greater levels of mastery (and get an XP and coin bonus for doing so).

Getting your first star in a particular recipe depends on when you unlocked that recipe with the Crafting Building. The higher the tier of the crafting recipe unlocked, the higher the recipe level is to unlock the first Mastery star. There are five Mastery stars available for each crafting recipe.
Here’s a chart that shows what recipe level you will need before you can unlock a particular Mastery star:

This may look a little complex but we’ll explain it more with this example:

Example: If you have a 1-star Bakery on your farm, the first recipes available to you were Pumpkin Bread, Strawberry Shortcake and Spicy Muffin. You can earn your first Mastery star in those three recipes once that you reach recipe level 20. If you upgrade your Bakery to 2-star, you unlock a new slew of recipes: Patty Pan Tart, Triple Berry Pie and Peanut Butter Cookie. For these recipes you need to reach recipe level 23 to get your first Mastery star.

In order to get a second Mastery star for Pumpkin Vinegar (which requires a 4-star Winery) you will need to raise your recipe level to 39.

As you can see the reward notice above tells you when you can reach the next level of Mastery. Hovering over the Mastery sign (see below) on your farm will with your mouse cursor will also reveal the same information.

Crafting Mastery Rewards

When you earn your first star with a crafting recipe you will receive a recipe-specific 1-star Mastery sign in your Gift Box that you can place on your farm.
As you earn more Mastery stars for that recipe the sign will automatically update to reflect that change in status, all the way up to 5 stars. You can also place the sign back in storage whenever you wish.

You will also receive XP and coin rewards depending on the level of recipe mastery achieved:

Sharing the Reward

You can choose to share in your good fortune once you attain a Mastery star. Just click on the “Share” button once you get a new star and five of your neighbors can enjoy one of the crafted goods over the next twenty-four hours.

Retroactive Rewards

Of course many of you have already achieved fairly high levels with some of your recipes. The appropriate Mastery stars will be automatically awarded to you for each recipe, as well as the XP and Coin rewards that accompany those Mastery stars. Mastery signs will all be placed in your gift box. You’ll also get a pop-up notice of this the first time you open your Market Stall or Crafting Building.

Below is a cool guide about this new feature by community manager Lexi:

After clicking the ‘OK’ button, you will be able to place the Pigpen foundation on your farm. Alternatively, you can also purchase the Pig Pen foundation from the Market for 5,000 Coins.

Once you’ve placed the Foundation on your farm, you will be prompted with a message letting you know that you can post a feed to ask your friends for help building your Pigpen.

Any neighbor who clicks on this feed will be directed to the Free Gifts Page where they can send you the materials required to construct your building.

In order to use your Pigpen, you’ll need to finish building it. Selecting ‘Look Inside’ from your foundation’s menu will show you what you need to complete your Pigpen.

When you first place the foundation, you’ll have one Brick already. In order to build a complete Pigpen you’ll need 8 of each item. You can get these items one of three ways:

1. From neighbors via the Free Gifts menu.

Neighbors can send you the components you need to build your Pigpen. Your Neighbors will be able to send you two of the three types of building components to help you complete your Pigpen.

Please note that the two components displayed on the Free Gifts Page are randomized. As such, the components displayed on the Free Gifts Page may be different for each user.

When neighbors send you a building component, it works exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box.

After clicking the “use” button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Pigpen.

2. Ask For More

When viewing the interior of your Pigpen, each component that you have not yet received 8 of has an “Ask for More” button, that when clicked will take you to the Friend Selector page where you can select friends to send Gift Requests to for your chosen component.

3. Completing with Farm Cash.

If at any time during your construction process you decide that you’d rather simply purchase the materials required for the Pigpen, you can do so by clicking the “Buy” button from the Pigpen menu. Alternatively, pressing the Complete Now button in the construction menu will give you the option to complete the construction instantly for a discounted price. The discount is determined by how many parts you already have toward a completed Pigpen. Each component deducts 1 Farm Cash from the base price of 24 Farm Cash.

When you reach 12 items, you’ll receive pop-up that will allow you to post a feed to your wall. The first ten neighbors to click this feed within 24 hours will receive a random building component for their own Pigpen construction.

When you complete your Pigpen, you will receive a pop-up asking you if you’d like to share the news with your friends. Clicking the Share button on this pop-up will give you the option to post a feed to your wall that will give up to 10 neighbors who click on it 1 random building component for their own Pigpen construction.

Every 24 hours, you’ll be able to collect from the pigs stored in your Pigpen. Please note: You may only have one pigpen on your farm at a time.

The pig pens feature that

Please note:

• This update is currently only available to a certain percentage of players. We will be rolling this feature out slowly to ensure the health and stability of the application.
• This feature will be released in multiple stages, so this guide will have information added to it as the feature changes.

Please find more information about the new Pigpen in the guide below.

Pigpens!

Pigpens are FarmVille’s newest constructable Animal Building that will allow you to store up to 20 of your Pigs.

If you are level 16 or above, you will receive the following pop-up upon logging into FarmVille:

After clicking the ‘OK’ button, you will be able to place the Pigpen foundation on your farm. Alternatively, you can also purchase the Pig Pen foundation from the Market for 5,000 Coins.

Once you’ve placed the Foundation on your farm, you will be prompted with a message letting you know that you can post a feed to ask your friends for help building your Pigpen.

Any neighbor who clicks on this feed will be directed to the Free Gifts Page where they can send you the materials required to construct your building.

In order to use your Pigpen, you’ll need to finish building it. Selecting ‘Look Inside’ from your foundation’s menu will show you what you need to complete your Pigpen.

When you first place the foundation, you’ll have one Brick already. In order to build a complete Pigpen you’ll need 8 of each item. You can get these items one of three ways:

1. From neighbors via the Free Gifts menu.

Neighbors can send you the components you need to build your Pigpen. Your Neighbors will be able to send you two of the three types of building components to help you complete your Pigpen.

Please note that the two components displayed on the Free Gifts Page are randomized. As such, the components displayed on the Free Gifts Page may be different for each user.

When neighbors send you a building component, it works exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box.

After clicking the “use” button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Pigpen.

2. Ask For More

When viewing the interior of your Pigpen, each component that you have not yet received 8 of has an “Ask for More” button, that when clicked will take you to the Friend Selector page where you can select friends to send Gift Requests to for your chosen component.

3. Completing with Farm Cash.

If at any time during your construction process you decide that you’d rather simply purchase the materials required for the Pigpen, you can do so by clicking the “Buy” button from the Pigpen menu. Alternatively, pressing the Complete Now button in the construction menu will give you the option to complete the construction instantly for a discounted price. The discount is determined by how many parts you already have toward a completed Pigpen. Each component deducts 1 Farm Cash from the base price of 24 Farm Cash.

When you reach 12 items, you’ll receive pop-up that will allow you to post a feed to your wall. The first ten neighbors to click this feed within 24 hours will receive a random building component for their own Pigpen construction.

When you complete your Pigpen, you will receive a pop-up asking you if you’d like to share the news with your friends. Clicking the Share button on this pop-up will give you the option to post a feed to your wall that will give up to 10 neighbors who click on it 1 random building component for their own Pigpen construction.

Every 24 hours, you’ll be able to collect from the pigs stored in your Pigpen. Please note: You may only have one pigpen on your farm at a time.

Lexilicious:

Need more space? Now you can store up to 500 items with the new Storage Cellar! For more information on how this feature works, please review the guide below:

Storage Cellar:

The new storage cellar will allow you to store up to 500 items on your Farm once it is fully expanded. If you are level 16 or above, you will receive the following pop-up upon logging into FarmVille:

The Storage Cellar can be found in your Gift Box, or it can be purchased from the Market for 10,000 coins. To get started with this feature, open your gift box and place the Cellar on your farm.

Once you have placed your Storage Cellar, click on “look inside” from the Cellar’s menu. From here, you can see your progress, how you compare to your friends and your overall storage inventory.

To expand your Storage Cellar, you will need to collect shovels from your friends. Each Shovel that you collect will count as 1 storage space in your new Cellar.

You can collect materials for your Cellar in three different ways:

1. From neighbors via the Free Gifts Menu

Neighbors can send you the Shovels you need to expand your storage from the Free Gifts Page. Each gift sent from the Free Gifts Page will grant you two Shovels. When neighbors send you Shovels, it works exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box. After clicking the “use” button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Storage Cellar.

2. Ask For More

When viewing the interior of your Storage Cellar you will see an “Ask for Shovels” button, that when clicked will take you to the Friend Selector page where you can select friends to send Gift Requests to for Shovels. Each gift sent from your Neighbors will grant you two Shovels.

3. Completing with Farm Cash.

If at any time during your construction process you decide that you’d rather simply purchase the Shovels required for the Cellar, you can do so by clicking the “Buy Shovels” button from the Garage’s menu. You can purchase Shovels in packs of 10 for 5 Farm Cash.

Using your Storage Cellar:

With the release of the Storage Cellar, we have increased the total storage capacity to 500.

As all storage on your Farm is part of one shared inventory, if you already have items stored in other buildings, they will count towards the new 500 limit. (For example, if you already have 100 items stored on your Farm in existing Storage Buildings, you will only be able to store 400 additional items in the Cellar once it is fully expanded.)

If you choose to not use the Storage Cellar, your Storage limit will still have increased to the new limit of 500. However, using the Storage Cellar will take up less room and provide more storage than using existing Storage Buildings.

If you wish to transfer your items from your other Storage Buildings into the Cellar, you will first have to increase the capacity of the cellar to make room for the items. If you have enough room in your Cellar, you can simply delete your other Storage Buildings and the items will automatically be placed in your Cellar. However, you will not be able to delete a Storage Building if the number of items stored within is greater than the number of spaces you have available in your Storage Cellar.

Redeeming Shovels for Items:

Shovels can be used for more than just increasing the capacity of your Cellar! As you collect Shovels, you will also gain “points”. As you gain points for trading in Shovels, you will be able to unlock new items. Clicking the “progress” tab in your Cellar’s information page will show you what items you can redeem with your points. As you collect points, each item you can unlock will be revealed as you collect the proper amount, and the “redeem” button will become available for each item. Clicking “Redeem” will award you the gift in return for the proper amount of points.

Additional Information:

• Once placed on your Farm, the Storage Cellar cannot be sold or deleted.
• The “Comparison” Button in the Cellar’s menu will show how many shovels you have collected in comparison to your friends.
• You may only have one Storage Cellar on your farm at a time.
• You cannot store Storage Buildings in your Storage Cellar.

The daily good deeds is a new FarmVille feature that allows you to help more friends faster. The good deeds list shows 5 of your friends who need help in FarmVille.

Every time you help a friend, a green tick appears next to their name and the friends helped so far counter increases.

Go help your friends now!

Earn more ribbons when you use the new Crafting Building feature in FarmVille. Here are the new achievements: