News: What, Again?

                     Fads, Fiascoes and Good Stuff in FrontierVille This Week

The second in a series of weekly columns.

Fads first

It's still St. Patrick's Day in FrontierVille, but it looks as though its days are numbered. I give it 'til the end of the month. Trees are in full summer leaf and doing anything at all tends to yield Spring Collection prizes.

The jackdaws among my neighbors are in full pursuit of Detective Agency trinkets.

Injured critters -- small white buffaloes or black deer – are going strong and sales of "critter milk" for too many horseshoes must still be up. I found out how to refuse another critter showing up on your homestead; you have to choose to "abandon" it. Ah, Zynga, crude manipulation in pursuit of money. And concerning horseshoes, they aren't being sold at a reduced rate of 70% of their nominal price at night nowadays; it seems to be 80% pretty much all the time, though I did notice some at 70% early on Saturday morning.

Fiascoes

I'm moving coyotes to the fiasco category. I did a blog post about them and you can read it farther down the page but, in sum, I figure that if Coyotes stick around permanently and eat around 5% of all chickens not protected in a coop every time you harvest them it will put an end to factory chicken farming in FrontierVille. It will also discourage ordinary chicken raising.

Other Stuff

Dogs are here. I don't have one yet, and I'm not sure what they're good for, but you eventually get a handsome dog house. Which gives me a chance to repeat a Groucho Marx joke:

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.

Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

Good Stuff

The 37 by 37 homestead is here, and you no longer have to pay 185 horseshoes to get an

early start at it. Here are the missions, from the Zynga FrontierVille Forum:

37×37Expansion, Part I
- Collect 35 Telescopes (Ask Friends)
- Harvest 100 Peanuts
- Sell 40 Adult Pigs
Reward: 200 XP & 100 Coins

37×37 Expansion, Part II
- Have/Craft 25 Fire
- Clobber 20 Groundhogs (Trapping may work)
- Clear 10 Cacti
Reward: 225 XP and 125 Coins

37×37 Expansion, Part III
- Hire an Expansion Crew (Fill positions with Neighbors)
- Collect 5 Feather Beds
- Collect 3 Daily Bonuses from the Inn
Reward: 250 XP and 100 Coins

37×37 Expansion, Part IV
-Collect 3 Daily Bonuses from the Foundry
- Clear 30 Grass
- Use the Fox Cannon on 20 Foxes
Reward: 275 XP & 175 Coins

37×37 Expansion, Part V
- Tend 20 Horses
- Harvest 400 Wheat
- Collect 30 Land Grants
Reward: 300 XP, 200 Coins, 37×37 Homestead Unlocked

The telescopes in Part I are actually magnifying classes, so we'll see how many other errors will show up.  I can forsee one; if only coyotes attack chickens these days, how do you attract foxes so that you can blast them in Part IV?  Harvest geese and turkeys?

What's Worth Having

It's really not necessary to complete every collection that exists in FrontierVille, and I've been thinking of what buildings and such are worth having.

Worthwhile: cabin, wagon, barn, school, jackalope lodge, sawmill, inn, land office, general store, blacksmith shop. These all produce things that are useful in the game.

Stuffed bears produce Bear Collection bonuses.

Chicken coops were useful, though they may now be joining the next category.

Distracting, if diverting: chapel, detective agency, kissing tree, graveyard, horseshoe pit, flower stall, doctor's office, barber shop, tailor shop, trading post. These are all ends in themselves.

I sent a query to Zynga about coyotes and it was forwarded to their Development Team, so I don't expect to hear back from them soon.

And so to bed.

No. 2

Saturday 26 March 2011

John Hill