CityVille Engergy Guide

What exactly you should do to go up in levels in CityVille? Is it completing goals? Visiting neighbor cities or doing things like collecting rents, harvesting, making buildings in your city or is it something else? Do you know the answer? If you know the answer I'm sure you are a very good player and you may know what to do to make your progress faster, but if you don't know please keep reading the post as I'm going to teach you the things in CityVille. 

Another question! How do you go to the next level? You might say 'mm.. yeah you go to the next level when you achieved the XP points required to complete your current level.' Okay right. My next question, How do you get XP points in CityVille? ' By doing things like harvesting, collecting rents, building shops etc etc.' Yeap! Now you understand that if you want to go higher levels you must work in your city. Okay then tell me. What do you need to work in the city? 'Energy! I need energy to do the things in my city'. So if you have more energy  then you can work more. If you work more, you will earn more XP points, When you earn more XP points you will go to next levels very quickly. That's a simple theory and I hope you got the point. 

So what about the completing goals, running businesses and other things? Aren't they going to help you? Yeah they might help you in some other ways but they have nothing to do with your leveling up process. The only thing that matters in that is energy.So let's talk about this 'Engergy' thing in CityVille.

How do you get energy?

• In every 5 minutes your energy bar is filled with one energy.
• You get energy when you visit your neighboring cities.
• Most of the time when you collect rents from community buildings you receive energy.
• Whenever you go to a higher level your energy bar will be filled to it's maximum.
• You can ask your friends for energy.
• Completing some goals may give you energy (in that case completing goals is also help in some other way to make it fast in CityVille.)
• Or you can buy energy for money.

How to manage energy?


You know that you get one energy in every 5 minutes and that's only when your energy bar has capacity to add  it. So if you can keep your energy bar always empty you will get 12 energy in an hour and it's going to be 288 in a day. Do you actually get those 288 in a day? No, most of you don't because to get all those 288, you have to keep the energy bar always empty so only then it get fills with energy. Let's say your energy bars' maximum capacity is 24 and now you leave your city with empty energy bar. How long will it take to get filled to the maximum.? It will be 2 hours. Now you visit the city in exactly in two hours, and you going to get all the 24 energy. What if you come to city after 3 hours? You still get 24 energy but you have missed one hour in which you could get 12 more. Plan your visiting to the city and try to get the maximum energy out of the day.


Add more neighbors, so you can visit more. When you visit your neighbor cities you will be rewarded with energy once a day. You get 5 energy when you visit a neighbor city for the first time.


This is important. You may have noticed that whenever you go to a new level your energy bar gets filled. If your energy bar is empty and it's max value is 24 then you are going to get 24 energy, if it's half empty you will only get 12 and if it's already full you are not going to get a single energy. So try to keep it zero when you go to the next level.


Build more community buildings, you will receive energy when you collect rents from them. If you have good set of friends you lucky, you can ask them for energy by posing a wall post on your wall or messaging them to send you energy as a gift. When ever you receive a energy or any kind of gift from a friend don't forget to send one back so he/she is more likely to send you one again.
Always get your friends' help first if they have helped you in your city so you will be able to save energy to work more. I hope you would like this post and await for more tips.


Please leave a comment. 

Barn Buddy Photography Tips

One of the thing that attracted me to BarnBuddy was it's beautiful environment. The graphics they have used in the game is just fantastic. It is always filled with beautiful animals, backgrounds, crops and various decorations.The barn buddy team is trying so hard to increase the beauty in the game's environment. One of the thing they did recently, in order give your farm more beauty, was that they organized a contest. They asked the users to design backgrounds for the game and the winners were rewarded with BarnBuddy credits. As the result of the contest some of fantastic backgrounds were added to barn buddy shops.


Now you know the game has beautiful environment which means you can create some beautiful pictures out of the game so you can share with your friends. I thought of giving you some tips of making beautiful pictures out of your farm. If you are not familiar with taking pictures in you farm, It's the camera icon  located at the top left corner of your farm which let you to take pictures. Click on the camera icon. if you do this for the first time there will be created a new album called Barn Buddy Pictures in your profile and the picture taken by you will be added to that album and published.


Taking a picture of your farm is that simple but there are lot more you can do to create beautiful, meaningful and attractive pictures. Keep reading to learn those tips.


Backgrounds
Background is the first thing you have to consider if you wish to change the look of your farm. Backgrounds as a whole might not seem so beautiful than you zoom it. Look at the following picture. Can you see those colorful clouds in the sky behind the barn? I'm sure you can, but if you haven't zoomed  the picture in you might not notice them. I think you can get the idea what I'm trying to tell you here. It's just this, before you take pictures try to identify beautiful places in the backgrounds and zoom it, place whatever the animals you want in there and take the picture. Here is how I did it. Hope you will like it. :)

Hey did you notice that I have placed my ducks near the pond? That makes sense right? ;) I want you to place right things at right places so that it would make sense and increase the beauty in your farm and the picture you going to take.


What do pandas eat? :) I have placed some bamboo trees near by pandas so it makes sense.

Here are another two pictures I took considering the things that I just taught you.

Follow the link below to see some pictures I created using the Winter Wonderland and Snowy Farm backgrounds.


Winter Wonderland and Snowy Farm Backgrounds


Crops
When you plant seeds in your farming plots try to make some kind of pattern out of  them.

Have you ever thought of a way to make grow your plants instantly and take pictures of them? Yes you can do it. Believe me! I'm going to teach you how to do that.


First plant the seeds and then change the system time of you computer and wait few seconds until they appear fully grown. Okay let's say you just planted some Daisy seeds and you want to take the pictures of them as they are fully grown. Go to the time and date settings and increase the system time by 8 hours and wait few seconds. Ahha! Here you are!! You will see all the flowers are fully grown and you are ready to take pictures of them.


 Wait a minute! Hey they are fully grown and can I harvest them? I'm question you want to ask me next. Hey I'm sorry! You just can't harvest them if you try to do so they will become seeds once again.


Animals
You know that animals in BarnBuddy farm are not just pictures. They have movements. Try to grab various movements of animals into your picture. Take pictures of a tiger while it's roaring instead of taking pictures  while it is sitting on the ground. To make tiger roar just give it a little click and take the picture before it finished roaring.


Try to make a story out of your picture.

The above two pictures are not just bored pictures. You probably can make a story out of it. Notice two tigers roaring at the ghost and in the next picture The goat ,cock and hens might have seen something fierce.


Take pictures of your farm in such a creative way, and here is the deal. If you have already taken some mind blowing pictures of your farm send them to barnbuddyguru@gmail.com along with your names.We will select best out of them and publish them in this blog. 
Feel free to add your comments in the comment box. :)

CityVille Introduction

 When I first heard about the CityVille it was few months back. I was being bit busy with my Barn Buddy farm at that time so I never wanted to play that game, but it was the time I was getting lots of invitations from my friends asking me to be their neighbor in CityVille. And also I had been seen lots of wall posts about this game on my friends walls. I really wanted to look at this game and know what was so special in that game to make that much of people to play it. So I decided to play CityVille and I started running my own city.

When I first get into the city, there were only  two homes and 4 farming plots of strawberries. The a young lady called her self 'Samantha' was appeared on the screen and started giving me instructions on how should I run my city. She  told me I was supposed to be the mayor of the city so I had to work hard to win the the mind of citizens. I was just a farmer in my barn buddy farm and this  beautiful young lady was asking me to run for the Mayer in a city. I accepted the invitation anyway and started the game. By the time pass I found some ways that anyone can use to go to higher levels of the game within a very short period of time . 


What I'm going to do now is to start my CityVille Guru session on the same blog. I would like to start it with a brief introduction to the game.


What is CityVille ?
As you already know it's game of developing a city. You starts with a small plot of land and you are supposed to make it a thriving city. Let's go through the big concepts in the game.


Goals

When you start the game as a beginner you are offered with some goals which is need to be completed to unlock things like expensive buildings, decorations and  some times you get rewarded when you complete them. Completing goals will help you to learn the things in CityVille gradually.

Energy

The most crucial fact in the game is your energy level. If you want the success you need to know how to manage your energy. As you enter your city your energy bar is full of energy and starts losing one by one as you do things in your city such as building houses, collecting money from businesses, harvesting crops etc. It takes 5 minutes for energy bar to be filled by one. If you are out of energy there are plenty of things you can do. You can visit your friends cities so you  get one energy for each visit. This is a best way of getting energy but you should know that you can visit one neighbor city only once in a day. Or you can ask your friends for energy or you even can buy energy though I don't recommend it. That's not a good idea when you have to pay 3  city cash to buy one energy. If you can not get energy in one of the above ways, leave your farm a while and come back. (You energy is increased by one energy in every five minutes)


Houses

You can increase your city population by building houses. There are different kind of houses available on the housing section but some of them will be unlocked only when you complete goals. You can collect rents from houses time to time.


Community buildings

As your city population increases you will be asked to build community buildings such as post offices, police stations, libraries etc. Building community buildings will let more people to live in your city. Like you did with houses, you can collect rents from community buildings too. Most of the time when you collect community building rents you gets one or two energy as a bonus.


Businesses

You need to build businesses to fulfill the needs of your citizens. There are different types of businesses in CityVille  so you can choose one of your choice. As you go to a higher level or when you complete goals more and more profitable businesses will be unlocked for you. You have to supply goods for businesses or they wouldn't make money for you.


Goods

To run businesses you need to supply goods to them. There are so many ways of getting goods. One way is sending the train. You can send your train for goods and it would be come back in 5 minutes, 4 hours or 8 hours which depends on how much of goods you order.  You can do the same with your boats if you have built a sea port.The boats go around the world for goods. Harvest your crops so you will get goods as the return or visit your neighbor cities and help your friends to harvest their crops, in this way you can receive 15 goods as a reward for each harvesting.


Reputations

Reputation is something which indicates how much you have helped your friends. When you help one of your friend by harvesting, collecting rents or sending a tourist bus to their city you will get one reputation point. When you complete 100 of reputation points you go to the next level of reputation and you will be rewarded with some goods. If you were rewarded with 100 goods this time, it will be 140 next time. The more reputation you earn the more goods you will get as the reward.


Franchises

You can start your business in other cities so yo can earn some extra money. Since the profitable businesses yet to be unlocked in your city, you can ask your friends to start their businesses in your city. In that way not only your friends can earn some money, you also get the business you want in your city. Whenever you start a business in other cities you will receive a business head quarter. Go to your inventory box and place the head quarter in your city. It's such a beautiful building which would help to make your city a beautiful place.


These are the basics of the game. It took some time for me to stick to these basics. I learnt lots of things in last few weeks so I'm ready to share the things I learnt when I was building my city. I hope that will make help you to make your city grow fast. 

 After playing the game for 4 weeks of time now I'am just one level before the 40th level. More tips and tricks are coming on your way.

Barn Buddy Tips & Tricks

Here is a quick review of what I have been telling you so far

• Feed and hide your dog somewhere in your farm so that your friends can not see it. If someone try to steal something from your farm they will be caught by the dog hidden in your farm. See Train your dog to bite more people
• Buy a special dog from Barn Buddy shop which guard your farm 24 hours a day without feeding it. So there will be no chance for thief to steal your crops (Hide it to get maximum results).
• Work over time in your farm by planting seeds like clover so you would earn some extra XP points. See Earn up to 1680 XP an hour
• Be friendly with people and get them to help you in your farm. Learn some tips on how to get more neighbor by clicking on How To Get More Neighbors
• Create some fake facebook accounts so you will be able to use them to fulfill your needs in your main farm. you can send gifts , steal crops from those accounts and add bugs and weeds to your main farm so you could earn some extra XP points by removing them latter. 
• Identify the seeds which gives you a higher income and higher XP points. Always give your priority for those seeds whenever you decide which to plant. For more on that see Flower Guide, Special Flower Guide, Fruits & Vegetables Guide.
• Always try to shift your farm to the next level so more profitable seeds will be unlocked for you in Barn Buddy shop.
• Flowers are always more profitable than the fruits and vegetables and also the profitability of flowers increases as the cost price of flowers increases.
• Invest your every coin on valuable seeds rather than saving them in your account. The more you invest the more you will get back as the return.
• Your main purpose should be to earn XP points rather than coins. If you earn more XP points more doors of getting  coins will be opened automatically. See What is more important ? XP or Coins ?
• Change your farm backgrounds as the season changes in order to attract more visitors to your farm. Winter Wonderland and Snowy Farm Backgrounds
• Use a fast browser like Google Chrome so the works in the farm would be easier. See Farming is faster with Google Crome
• Use fertilizers in a way which you would be able to get them maximum out of them. See Tips on using fertilizers
• All ways get the chances to receive medium fertilizers from your friends by clicking on the wall posts published by them as they wanted to share some free fertilizers with you. Before you visit your farm check for such wall posts and use one of them as a link to your farm. This way you not only visit your farm but also receive some fertilizers.
• Use fertilizers only on higher profitable plants.
• Never leave your farm plots empty.

Barn Buddy Tips on using fertilizers

Hi friends! How are you doing in your farms? After a long time I thought of sharing another bit of my barn buddy secrets with you. This time it's about using fertilizers. By reading this post you will get a clear idea about barn buddy fertilizer and some tips on using them to get the maximum out of your farm.

I have been playing the game for the last 8 months and I know exactly what burns your inside. And I know how eagely you are looking forward to take any chance to shift your farm to the next level and be the 1st among your friends. I can understand that and I wanted to do the same thing few months ago. Don't consider using fertilizers effectivly is not an big issue. If you want the success make every little thing a big and give an intense attention on them.
You know what fertilizers are. In real life they are used to increase the health of plants, reduce the growth time, and produce a good harverst, so it's same in the Barn Buddy. When you use fertilizers on plants it reduces the growth time by certain hours so it might eliminate the chances for weeds and bugs to grow on your plants which might lead your farm to produce a good harvest.

As you already there know there are few stages of a plant so you can use fertilizers once in a stage. Let's take tomato plant for an example.

Tomato has  five growing stages and each of stage consists of 5 hours (I want to tell you this once more, you can use fertilizers only once in one stage). If you use week fertilizers on tomato or any other plant, it reduces the plant's growth time by 1 hour so using weak fertilizers in each of the stages you can reduce the total growth time of tomato by 5 hours. Pay your attention on how much of time can be reduced by each type of fertilizers and how could you get those fertilizers.

Types of fertilizers

Weak Fertilizer

Medium Fertilizer

Strong Fertilizer

Super Fertilizer

Mega Fertilizer

Weak Fertilizer :You can buy week fertilizers from Barn Buddy shop with 50 coins for each packet and it will reduces the growth time by 1 hour.

Medium Fertilizer : There are three ways of getting medium fertilizers. From friends, buying with BB credits and receiving them as rewards are those ways. Medium Fertilizers can reduce the growth time by 2 and 1/2 hours.

Strong Fertilizer , Super Fertilizer and Mega Fertilizer : All these fertilizers available for BB credits and some times you receive them as rewards as well. Strong and Super fertilizers reduce the growth time by 5  1/2 and 10 hours respectively while Mega fertilizers give you instant crops.

Change the way you look at fertilizers

In order to get the maximum results out of fertilizers you have change the way you look at fertilizers. What does come to your mind when some one says 'Weak fertilizers' ? I will tell you what would come to my mind in that moment. 100 coins and 8 XP is that. That is what comes to my mind. It is because with one bag of weak fertilizer you can earn 100 coins and 8XP if you use it on Orchid and why is Orchid? Because Orchid is the only plant which gives you that much of profit with one bag. ( For more on that check my previous post Flower Guide). So whenever you think about fertilizers, think what would the maximum it gives you as the return.
This way of thinking might prevent you from using fertilizers on unprofitable seeds like vegetables and fruits.



Do not use fertilizers 

If you have no idea on when your next visit to the farm will occur.

As we already know the main purpose of using fertilizer is reducing the growth time. Why should we do that?Because, we could use the same plot to grow another plant that period of time. So whenever you use fertilizers on plants make sure that you are going to use that reduced time period to grow another plant. Let's be clear on this.
Let's think that at the 9 p.m. you plant carrots seeds of which total growth time is 15 hours. That means you can harvest carrots at 7 a.m. in the following day. So you should not use a bag of week fertilizer on them if you can't visit your farm at 6.a.m. If you visit the farm at 7 a.m. it means you just wasted the fertilizers. I think got the idea. So before you use fertilizers on plants, calculate the time you are going to harvest them. If you can't visit the farm after that calculated growth time you'd better not to use them this time.

If your plant is a low profitable plant.
Think that you use week fertilizers on Avocado with which you can earn 12.8 coins and 1 XP per hour. Since week fertilizers reduce the growth time by 1 hour, it means you can earn 12.8 coins and 1 XP with it. But the cost price of a week fertilizer is 50 coins. So why would you spend your 50 coins to get a 12.8 coins and 1 XP. That's a bad deal.
If you are in early stages of the game , specially below the 20th level, I don't recommend for you of using weak fertilizers because most of the plants you plant in those levels are low profitable. Don't waste your coins.

Always use fertilizers


Whenever you see it profitable

Don't save your fertilizers for the future if you can earn the maximum of it today. There no means of saving it for the future. Use as many as of them if you see it's profitable.

Before you leave the farm
Before you leave the farm check whether there are crops you could harvest by using some of fertilizers. If there is use fertilizers and harvest them and plant new seeds on that plots so you would use those plots in a profitable way in the times you absence.

Please do share your ideas about this post.

Barn Buddy Winter Wonderland and Snowy Farm Backgrounds

 It's winter again.. My farm is totally covered with snow. it's beautiful. I took some photographs of my farm.. 

Rein deers..

Oh! This is the worst thing happens in winter. There would no grass for my cows..

It's always good to have so many neighbors around you in any time of the year. Right now I'm thinking of stealing some crops from my neighbors in the evening..

Oh yeah.. this  is Fro Fro, my favorite! Isn't she beautiful ? :)

I wish I had polar bears too  :)

Do you know what's so special about the seeds in Barn Buddy shops?  They grow well in any time of the year.. lol

  Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire..  I'm enjoying the winter so are you?

Recent posts

• Earn up to 1680 XP an hour
• How To Get More Neighbors
• Flower Guide
• Special Flower Guide
• Train your dog to bite more people

Barn Buddy Flowers vs Fruits & Vegetables

Barn Buddy is not just a game but an art of investing. That's why it is called a strategic game. If anyone wish to succeed in the game, have got lot to do. One of the things is selecting right seeds to plant. It means that you have to consider how much of coins, XP you are going to earn and the time it takes for that.

Visit the links below and keep reading this post,  you are about to figure out what type of seed could be the best.

Flower guide
Special flower guide
Fruit & Vegetable guide

If you compare the XP rates of seeds, you will find out that flowers are the best. Let's take an example to make sure. Let's take Coconut and Daisy. Coconut seems to be the best seed in the fruit & vegetable section and Daisy , the worst in the flower section.

Coconut : coins per hour = 27.8 ; XP per hour = 1.71

Daisy:  coins per hour = 17.5 ; XP per hour = 3.1
 
Even Daisy beats Coconut in XP rate. You really don't have to worry about the coins rate, because in Barn Buddy coins are not so important than XP. See XP vs Coins.

Another disadvantage of fruits and vegetables is that most of them are multiple harvest plants. Which means once you plant seeds you can harvest 2, 3, or 4 times with that plant.The problem with the multiple harvest product is that they might take more than the calculated time to give the profit. The calculated time? It is the time which was calculated by adding regrow times of plant to it's growth time. Again let's take coconut.

Coconut is quadrapole harvest plant with 50 hours of growth time and 20 hours of regrow time. After the first harvest it has 3 more regrowing processes. So the calculated time of Coconut is going to be 50+ (3*20) =110 hours.
For one harvest you get 47 XP so the total XP is going to be 47*4 =188 XP.
Then the XP rate =  188XP/110 hours =1.71 XP/hour

Here the calculated time was calculated by assuming that there would no delays to harvest from a fully grown plant. Most of the times you wouldn't get in at the right time for harvesting for some circumstances. When it comes to me I usually harvest 2 or 3 hours after the plant is fully grown. So would add few more hours to the calculated time. If the plant is quadruple, there are 3 chances of happening this, meaning that there would be some extra hours added to the calculated time.So then the the XP rate of Coconut would be = 188 XP/122 hours = 1.54 . You see? Things going to be worse with vegetables if you really want quick success.

Flowers are always single harvest plants. So you are most likely to get the calculated XP rate.

Other crustal fact is going to be the cost price. Relatively flowers are more expensive than the fruits and vegetables. And flowers are capable of bringing more coins and XP to your farm, So they have got to be expensive. That is the nature of investing you know. If you need more profit you have to invest more money. So be sure to invest every single coin you have got. Those coins would be back soon to you along with more.

Feel free to share your comments