How To: A Beginners Guide

I've created this guide to give you some ideas for how to progress quickly as well as some basics for how to operate FrontierVille. My tips are merely suggestions based on my experience and you are welcome to explore and play the game at your own pace. I hope you benefit from my posts and look forward to answering questions and bringing you more useful information here and on the Facebook page in the future! (All these blue links take you to more content just like this page, click them for more information on that subject).

Tips

• Do your quests in order and try not to click on other things while you're getting started. 
• Plant crops for lots of food for energy and coins for more crops. 
• Don't clear away your whole forest and grassy areas. You'll miss those areas later when you have varmint goals.
• Visit neighbors and water their crops for more food and bonuses, this also makes the crops grow faster so you can progress sooner! Longer crops give you better bonuses upon harvest.
• Collect the best bonuses from the feed. You get 30 per day, so make sure you're selective about what you need and take the best ones (ie. 50xp and 25 food or more for special quests).
• Help your neighbors by sending them gifts and clicking on their feed requests (you get 50 feed helps per day). If you help them, they're more likely to send you stuff on your wishlist!
• Plan ahead! Look at the goals that are coming up and maybe buy some animals or start asking for more building materials ahead of time.
• Keep up with the updates and tips. I'll post the most helpful posts on this page, but be sure to like our facebook page for smaller updates and ideas about the game as it evolves. You can ask to add people and get supplies in the discussion tab.
• You can also visit the official forum to see what people have asked and get help very quickly. 

Some basics about what you see on your screen

The top of your screen:

First is coins: used in the market to buy crops, animals, trees, decorations and buildings.

Wood: used to build buildings and for some decorations.

Food: collected from crops, trees, animals and animal visitors. Use food to buy energy in the market.

Energy: used to do tasks around your homestead. See below for more info.

XP: experience is gained from every aspect of the game. Level up (stars) to gain access to more features!

Horseshoes: Real world money you can use to access things sooner or buy limited edition items. Get more by leveling up or buy them with facebook credits.

Icons down the left side: Goals you can do for rewards and to enhance game play. Gifts received are also first seen here in the shiny purple package, then can be found in 'my stuff'. 

The settings in the lower right corner, as depicted by little gears, allow you to change the image quality, sound effects on/off, music on/off, zoom in, zoom out, and full screen.

The Market

Click this little icon to open the market 

Plant crops! They take energy to put down, but they give you food and instant energy when you harvest them. Yes, these crops wither just like in the other Zynga games. If your crop takes X minutes to grow, it will be ready for another X amount of time, then it will wither and look terrible so make sure you can get back in time to pick it up! (You can also use a boost to protect crops or unwither them)

Buy trees and animals! Tending them will give you coins, food, collectibles, xp, and sometimes energy.

Notice that the mule costs horseshoes! Be careful spending these as you have to pay real money to get more!

Get your buildings started early! Be sure to send your neighbors the supplies they need!

Updated 6/19

Use these supplies to finish your buildings. Links here

There are many buildings to craft in this game and you will need at least 50 of each to get through the initial goals. Ask your friends for building materials so you can finish them quickly!

Decorations listed separately because there are so many screens and they are less essential to game play. Decorations

Bonuses

Click fast! Pick up those bonuses right away for a coin boost. The stars, coins, energy, and collection items all count for the bonus. First you get bonus, then excellent, amazing, outstanding, holy smokes, extreme, omgeezers, unstoppable, insane. If you get through all levels you are given a cumulative coin bonus of 1125 gold. 

If you don't click on your bonuses right away they will start to fade and disappear. When they fade, they are automatically added to your top bars, so don't be too upset if you miss a few. 

Energy

Get energy! Eat some of your food (pie pieces) through the energy tab in the market. You can also visit neighbors and be given 5 energy per neighbor per day. You may come across energy while tending crops, animals, and trees.

Updated 6/19

You can see how many food pieces you have in the progress bar on the top of your screen.

Collect things from the feed and through gifting

These will come in as gifts which you first see under your goals on the left side of your screen. Click this purple box to see your gifts and make sure you send a gift back whenever you are able!by clicking the 'My Stuff' button in the lower right corner of your game:

You will then be able to see your gifts, photo album, inventory, and collections. The items you collect go into your inventory after you've seen them through the gifts screen or popup. To get more gifts, be sure you update your wishlist.

*Tip: Go into 'family album' to customize your spouse and children. When finished, they are selected and you can do chores with them (**This is a great way to find them if they get lost in the trees!**)

Tools

The top one is the move tool. Select it and move your animals, fruit trees and buildings around.

Rotate is the green one.

Sell can be used to delete or sell things.

Goals

Throughout the game you will need to complete certain tasks to grow your family and town. Here is a list of the goals with links to grouped tasks. I've provided many individual screen shots of the goals (some may have changed with game updates). You may wish to look through them so you can get an idea of how to prepare for what's next (ex. you will need to clear 5 thorns with your child, so don't remove those until you get the task!).

A video of my homestead 

So that's it for the very basics, to get a few more tips and ideas you can watch this video I created of my homestead 2 weeks after the game was released. I've already done most of the goals and things have slowed down a bit. In the video I talk about collecting bonuses vs. not, chicken coops, how to find your family, how to level up fast, how to get thorns to grow, tree growth, etc. Check it out and let me know what you'd like to see in a future video or How-To guide!

Visit us on our Facebook page to get more tips and updates!

Tips repeated from beginning

• Plant crops for lots of food for energy and coins for more crops. 
• Don't clear away your whole forest and grassy areas. You'll miss those areas later when you have varmint goals.
• Visit neighbors and water their crops for more food and bonuses, this also makes the crops grow faster so you can progress sooner! Longer crops give you better bonuses upon harvest.
• Collect the best bonuses from the feed. You get 30 per day, so make sure you're selective about what you need and take the best ones (ie. 50xp and 25 food or more for special quests).
• Help your neighbors by sending them gifts and clicking on their feed requests (you get 50 feed helps per day). If you help them, they're more likely to send you stuff on your wishlist!
• Plan ahead! Look at the goals that are coming up and maybe buy some animals or start asking for more building materials ahead of time.
• Keep up with the updates and tips. I'll post the most helpful posts on this page, but be sure to like our facebook page for smaller updates and ideas about the game as it evolves. You can ask to add people and get supplies in the discussion tab.
• You can also visit the official forum to see what people have asked and get help very quickly.