Thursday, January 21, 2010

Making Money in Country Life, Part 2

Part 2 Intro to Chains - You've started planting crops and the money is slowly building up. So far Country Life is simpler than other farming games like Farmville but now is when things start to get interesting. Instead of the old routine of plant, grow, harvest, repeat, Country Life adds a twist with chains.

Grow Clover, Sell Clover, 5 coins profit
Planting and harvesting is what you are used to. Buy the Clover Seeds for 15 coins, harvest, and sell the grown Clover for 20 coins. You made a profit of 5 coins, not bad but you can do better.

Grow Clover, Sell Milk, 10 coins profit
You can add a link in the chain by feeding your grown clover to your cow. Your cow will change the clover into milk and you can sell the milk for even more. This chain looks like this. Buy the Clover Seeds for 15, harvest, feed grown Clover to Cow, your Cow eats the Clover and makes Milk, sell Milk for 25. Now your profit is 10 coins, you just doubled your profits!

Grow Clover, Sell Milk and Honey, 15 coins profit
It doesn't end there, once you've saved up some money you can add to this chain by buying a Beehive. The Bees will wait until your Clover is fully grown and than slowly pollenate them. Remember that for the Bees to work you have to have some fully grown Clover. Your chain will now look like this. Buy the Clover Seeds for 15, Bees Pollinate Clover, harvest, feed grown Clover to Cow, your Cow eats the Clover and makes Milk, your Bees eat the pollen and make Honey, sell Milk for 25 and Honey for 5. That means a profit of 15 coins! Triple your original profit by just adding a cow and a beehive into the mix.

Grow Corn, Sell Eggs, 42 coins profit
But thats not all folks, there is another chain thats useful to newbie players and it uses an entirely different set of crops and animals. Instead of Clover, Bees, and Cows this chain uses Corn and Chickens. Plant Corn seeds (keep in mind they take 20 hours to grow), harvest the corn and feed it to your chickens. Your chickens will lay eggs which you can sell for 102 each! The corn seed cost 60 coins in the end you get eggs worth 102, pretty darn good. The disadvantage is that it takes so long for the corn to grow. 

Some big pluses are that the eggs are worth so much and the Chicken Coop only costs 900 coins compared to a Beehive for 2000 coins, or another Holstein Cow for 2500 coins. You only have to sell 9 eggs to break even, compared to 100 jars of Milk, or 400 bottles of Honey. The disadvantage to selling Eggs is that it takes so long for the corn to grow. On the chart below you'll see the chains available to you as a beginner to Country Life and the time it takes to grow the crop it starts with.

HOT TIP - If you're a beginning player who checks Facebook a few times a day you'll make more money and experience using the Clover, Milk, and Honey chain.  However if you check Facebook once a day or less, using the Corn and Egg chain will make you more money.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Making Money in Country Life, Part 1

Part 1 The Basics - A new Facebook game that is a great take on the farming genre. You start with familiar options, plant, grow, and harvest. There are less options for planting which make the initial game simpler. The depth comes in later, instead of selling your crops you can use them to make products which sell for more money but require more time and more items on your farm. You start the game with two crops, clover and wheat. Clover can be used to make milk, honey, and cheese. Wheat can be used for flour, wool, and sweaters. As the items you make get more complicated the money you make increases.

Here is a chart with the buy and sell prices for crops. Remember to sell your crops you have to click on your barn (bottom right) and sell them from there. You can increase your profits by chaining, which I will cover in the next article.

*Updated March 18, Country Life added strawberries

Monday, January 4, 2010

Top DS Games of 2009

Looking for a great game to play, maybe even one to pick up on sale or used? All of these games are great and the best of 2009. Grand Theft Auto and Mario & Luigi are this authors favs from last year too.

Another plus? Now that Nintendo is has the DSi, DSi XL (and a rumored new system) older systems like the original DS and DS Lite are on sale and easier to find. Now might be the time to pick one up if you haven't already or give one as a gift to your spouse or kids!