Hallowe’en Items Review 2

So it's been over a week since my last review (sorry about that).

Anyway I'm back now with another review for Hallowe'en (and there's a lot to go over!)

OK Firstly this past week and a half saw the release of a new set of quests, which have great prizes but sometimes require a few too many harvests (300 pumpkins being a bit excessive!) but the prizes are all super spooky and worth the work!

Favourite Tree: "Halloween Tree" this is the one that looks like the fruit is a ghost and pumpkin basket. It looks freaky and I have bought a load of them 'cause they really add to the spookiness of your farm!
Favourite Building: Haunted Mansion, it wins this weeks favourite building award and is well worth the 35 farmcash price tag!
Favourite Animal: There were many contenders this week but my favourite came out as the black ponytail, super awesome!

Also released this week is the super cool Count Duckula's Castle and once complete is huge and really adds to a Hallowe'en themed farm, even better you can harvest it for treats and even harvest your neighbour's castles for up to six treats as a reward! You can also build multiples which means more treats and more spookiness. The only annoying thing is it requires 306 building materials to complete, which is a bit much for small time players but we do get plenty of time to complete it!

Another "free" release this week is the huge Jack-O'Lantern which, other than looking cool, also is where you put your treats and trade these in for a number of really awesome items! You need 400 treats though to buy one of each item, but it could be worse!
All the items available are really cool, especially the Nightmare Stallion for 170 treats and the Big Candy Pumpkin [a tree] for 75.

Rewards in the Huge Jack-O'Lantern

OK onto the other releases! There were numerous animals released this week, including a few for coins such as the Kermode Bear and Cat-O'Lantern. The Nightmare Chicken (20 farmcash) looks really cool and fiery! The Pumpkin Tree House (25 farmcash) and the Eyeball Lake (18 farmcash) are both really awesome, looking although not the best.

Overall I feel the release has lots of cool items and this years Hallowe'en is easily the best yet!

Count Duckula's Castle (complete)

Hallowe’en Items Review

This is my first review of items that I hope will become a regular feature.

My favourite building currently available is the Black Pumpkin, available for a modest 15 farmcash. It isn’t the most complex building released but I feel it looks really great on a Hallowe’en themed farm.

The best tree is the spider tree, the spider and spiders’ webs making the tree look super spooky and just perfect for a creepy looking farm!

The Batwing horse makes it as my top animal! It looks like something straight out of a scary Hollywood movie and it’s worth its 26 farmcash price tag!

Let’s review some of the other items out with the Hallowe’en theme; OK firstly the Kraken Lake, I think it does look quite cool but I’m disappointed with how un-scary it is so I won’t be buying it, especially at 20 farmcash. The haunted house is currently the most expensive Hallowe’en item available (35 farmcash) and I do think it looks really well but not quite fantastic. One of my favourite animals is the Nightmare Unicorn but I would say its 30 farmcash price tag is pushing at the upper limit of its value.

There are also some pretty neat coin items available, the dreadful fence returning for the third time, a couple of cool looking pumpkins (or Jack O Lanterns if you prefer) and even a coined animal, the blue oxen. These items won’t make a spooky looking farm on its own, you really need to spend some farmcash if you’re planning on a really awesome Hallowe’en farm but they do add to the overall effect!

My three favourites lined up together (both trees are included for size comparison)

Oh and in case you’re wondering, Hallowe’en is actually spelt with an apostrophe it’s just that most people don’t know and therefore leave it out!

Hallowe’en is huge this year

Zynga is really going all out on Hallowe’en this year, I’ve counted and so far there are 17 animals, 16 trees, 21 deocrations, 8 buildings, 13 costumes and two crops, this is a huge amount, especially when you consider that it’s only the 10^th of October and there is going to be much more to come!

But all these pretty items do come at a very high price, I’ve counted and all these items together cost a staggering 1,003 farmcash (and that’s if you buy only one of each)! I’ve excluded mystery game items and level two trees from this! The vast majority of players, even high spenders, aren’t going to be buying everything as the cost is huge! But I must say with this load of cash items there are a few reprieves, there are a number of coins items with the Hallowe’en theme, and they’re not just fences and other small decorations, there’s a number of coined animals. I suspect this 1003 total will increase dramatically by the time Hallowe’en actually occurs but hopefully not too much.

Trees are one of my own personal favourites in the game. So far there are eight level one trees released and they all (unfortunately) cost eight cash, and there’s more to come and I will buy them all. This is going to be a costly theme but I must say, most of the items are awesome looking enough in my books to warrant the high price tag!

I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the month if the 1003 price tag were to double!

MASSIVE Giftbox Increase

Well I am absolutely flabbergasted (yes that is a word) by Zynga. Previously your giftbox could hold 500 items, if you went over this limit the game would enter "the eviction process" and some more common items would be deleted to try to keep the giftbox under 500. Now you need to reach 5000 before the game will do this. The reason for having such a limit is for a couple of reasons:

1. Having huge amounts of items slows the game down.
2. Zynga needs to save all the into

This forum post by TerriHelper explains everything you need to know: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?p=10354702#post10354702

And I remember when the limit was only 50.

Lighthouse Cove Review 4 (Quests)

I know the Lighthouse Cove is now a few weeks old but because the quests aren’t all released together that’s why this is late.

With the third set of quests for the Lighthouse Cove almost over it is pretty obvious that it’s going to become impossible not to have spent at least some cash to actually complete them all. Some of the requirements are to plant 90 of a specific crop, this is more than the 18x18 expansion can provide (it gives you 75 plots) and upgrading to 18x18 costs you 120 cash! This is a lot just to complete a few quests, with the current theme you seem to get three normal and three “bonus” quests to complete and each give you a few nice prizes.

Although the quests require a lot of cash to complete at least the prizes are significantly better than what they used to be when quests first hit farmville. Trees are one of the most common prizes, and being someone who collects all the trees they are really great rewards! Personally I haven’t bought one expansion yet, I’ve gotten the first three expansions for free as Customer Service has given them to me when I contacted them about grievances (I am a paying customer so they are usually co-operative). Otherwise there is no way I’d be able to complete the quests and get the prizes.

Zynga deliberately gives us barely any time because they know that people are much more likely to spend money on farmcash than if they gave more time. 

A place for Mastery Signs

When animal mastery was released a month ago it drastically increased the amount of available mastery signs, and with calf and foal mastery coming soon it’s going to increase hugely again. I would say that the day when there are more than 1,000 mastery signs available isn’t in the too distant future!

The issue is that the people who have the most mastery signs also have the most items in general on their farms because they’re the ones prepared to pay lots of money for farmcash items. So these people will likely get to the stage where they have over 1,000 signs that they don’t want to sell. In reality they won’t be able to fit them all on their farms and because they have so many farmcash items in storage they can’t afford to put all the signs in storage. Releasing the Lighthouse Cove provides an extra 1,000 storage has significantly delayed the need for a place for mastery signs. But I feel that it’s going to have to happen eventually.

Placing mastery signs in the place would be optional of course as some people use mastery signs for decorations. The place could be a field where you have lots of different options for how you display the stored signs. You could have one whereby they were organised alphabetically, you could have the option of displaying an example of what you mastered in front or behind the sign, you could have the option of displaying unmastered items where they are greyed out.

The following are ideas for headings:

·         Crops

·         Trees

·         Animals

·         Crafts

·         English Countryside

·         English Countryside crops

·         English Countryside trees

·         English Countryside animals

·         English Countryside crafts

·         Home farm

·         Home farm crops

·         Home farm trees

·         Home farm animals

·         Home farm crafts

·         Lighthouse Cove

·         Lighthouse Cove crops

·         Lighthouse Cove trees

·         Lighthouse Cove animals.

·         Lighthouse Cove crafts.

Lighthouse Cove Review 3 (crops)

Along with the long list of trees released in the wake of the Lighthouse Cove, Zynga has also released a lot of crops that are exclusive to the Lighthouse Cove. There is 12 in total and here’s a quick rundown of their times.

Two day: Cauliflower

One day: Red Clover

               Kennebec Potato

               Hay

               Cove Cranberry

16 hour: Daylily

12 hour: Butter & Sugar corn

              Dill

10 hour: Tarragon

8 hour: Chandler Blueberry

            Lady slipper

4 hour: Darrow blackberry

This is all fine until you remember that your plot amount is limited depending on your farm size, 35 on a basic farm. This means you’ll have to pay a lot, 990 farmcash, to fully expand your farm to a significant plot amount. I don’t know what it is as I don’t pay for expansions so the Lighthouse Cove crop mastery is going to take a long time for me! But I know that Zynga is planning on releasing the first three expansions for coins "soon".