Flat Terrain Discussion

[AlexciaLynne]

I enjoy the flat terrain. Why is the flat terrain only in hard mode? It feels like a penalty not a compensation. I do the same work on other farms but it takes longer to progress and level up. I would like to understand more why the flat is in hard mode only and if there will be a consideration to change this?

[Tarak_Selic]

I may be wrong here, But I believe the concept of "flat land" is you have more room to work with in total, So you can place more things and make more money /exp simply by using the space. So to balance that out with the other farms, you get less per action.

[Frieren]

Yeah but hard mode? i mean its not like we're competing against other farmers .. i mean its supposed to be relaxing not scratch your head and work hard!! ... we do that enough in real life as it is LOL ...

[YuffieG]

Flat Terrain has hard mode because the devs want to dissuade people to use the flat terrain so they made it with the penalty. There has been a discussion elsewhere that they might introduce a kids mode which would be easier, though nothing has been confirmed yet.

[Nathiri]

To be honest, you only really feel the penalty in the very beginning.

[YuffieG]

True and when you reach level 20 and can get farm hands you can create a huge clownfish lake which will help you with money, diamonds and leveling so that you barely notice the penalty anymore.

[Daxidol]

Flat Maps give you a lot more land to work with, even with the 20% reduction from "hard mode" they still work out much easier.

For example, my lazy farming guide on a regular farm makes around 10.5m-11m/hr, on a flat farm it makes over 20m/hr. The hard mode reduction is just an attempt the balance the gamemodes.

[indy-anna]

My flat farm level is 31. I still feel the penalty when harvesting level 27 money trees and only getting 2 gems, or harvesting level106 apple trees and only getting 16 gold.
But sure if you use the exploits, you won't feel a penalty. If you try using your ribbons for 2 large gas stations, sprinklers, and shops and not spending them on farmhands, and don't have huge clown fish ponds. You will feel a penalty as you open new areas, build the houses, plant crops, flowers, and place trees etc.

[Nathiri]

Originally posted by indy-anna:

But sure if you use the exploits, you won't feel a penalty. If you try using your ribbons for 2 large gas stations, sprinklers, and shops and not spending them on farmhands, and don't have huge clown fish ponds. You will feel a penalty as you open new areas, build the houses, plant crops, flowers, and place trees etc.

I got to level 30 on a flat farm in a week or so without using clownfish, or apple orchards, though I did eventually build larger ponds with clownfish.

It was easier with certain unlocks, things like farmhands (lvl 20) and crops like broccoli (30).

I did use farmhands from level 20 for animals primarily and a few orchards, mixed, tamarind and eventually rice. The animals quests get quite cumbersome, and I don't enjoy the feeding timer mechanic so I like having farmhands for those. I also used ribbons for 4 gas stations, and many sprinklers. I use nuggets for ribbons. I planted a lot (and I mean a lot) of annabelle hydrangeas with sprinklers.

At ~100lvl money trees getting 4 diamonds per tree is not a lot, I don't even see the point of keeping them, but by the time you can plant and sell huge fields of crops/flowers for diamonds it's hardly a big problem. Ditto apples, they're the starter tree, they aren't going to be money spinners even at high levels.

I'm not sure what it is that you're referring to as "exploits" but I don't cheat, so I stand by my earlier point that it gets easier with time.

Edit: In the morning, I go and build up my boost meter, and then I harvest everything on my farm that grew overnight. I mostly grow long crops because of the sheer time to harvest and replant, so that works very well with the boost mechanic.

Edit 2: I also used nuggets for gold in the beginning, which probably wasn't the most efficient use but allowed me to plant more.

[kikki]

they shuod have easy,normal and hard mode in thos game so we can chose witch mode we want to play on .

[indy-anna]

My money crops have been sunflowers. I have 10, 32 tiles for crops, finally got sprinklers for all of them. My quests are asking for yellow peppers, blue berries and other crops that take awhile to grow with 60 or more of each crop. I have 90 money trees, 27 mango trees, 27 tamarind trees, and 200 apple trees, along with 9 each of all other trees available to a level 31 farm, almost went broke planting them all. I have 12 clown fish and the rest are quests fish. I have high number animal quests. I have the stone house, tree house and the DLC house, only one fully built is the tree house. I have a lot of the farm areas opened.

last night I had 5 minutes left on one of my crops before they were harvestable in game and 15 minutes left on my real life chicken I was cooking in the oven. the crops in game were done 3 minutes before my chicken was done. I thought this game was real time not extra real time.

I think large ponds of one fish is like an exploit. Because even with all my trees I still struggle for ribbons. And they're a lot more work than fish are.

ETA. I can't play online because the lag I get from having a slow ISP provider is an absolute nightmare.

[Thryden]

There have been discussions about this before. The devs added flat maps due to the high demand from the players, but still want to discourage players from using them, hence the increased difficulty. What I find really odd is that though flat map is supposed to be harder, the quests are easier.

[Nathiri]

Originally posted by indy-anna:

My money crops have been sunflowers. I have 10, 32 tiles for crops, finally got sprinklers for all of them. My quests are asking for yellow peppers, blue berries and other crops that take awhile to grow with 60 or more of each crop. I have 90 money trees, 27 mango trees, 27 tamarind trees, and 200 apple trees, along with 9 each of all other trees available to a level 31 farm, almost went broke planting them all. I have 12 clown fish and the rest are quests fish. I have high number animal quests. I have the stone house, tree house and the DLC house, only one fully built is the tree house. I have a lot of the farm areas opened.

I did the same as you, 9 of each kind of tree (as affordable) and flowers.

I did all my quest crops, as annoying as they were... but during my online time I focused on the good turnover crops- yellow zucchini in winter, cheddar cauliflower in spring, broccoli in summer. And then I planted beets or something else overnight.

The trees are great for getting quests done, but the return on your investment is rather slow so that can exacerbate the feeling of the flat map penalty. Plant more caulis!

Edit: The apple trees are cheap, but if you're not using farmhands (as I inferred from your first post) then the sheer time you're spending harvesting 200 apples trees per season is absolutely hurting your progress. Yes, you can make tons of jam for ribbons, but you don't get enough gold to expand.

(FWIW, I also ignored all but one house until my money was under control. And I'm still... neglecting them ;) )

[indy-anna]

Originally posted by Liguar:

Originally posted by indy-anna:

My money crops have been sunflowers. I have 10, 32 tiles for crops, finally got sprinklers for all of them. My quests are asking for yellow peppers, blue berries and other crops that take awhile to grow with 60 or more of each crop. I have 90 money trees, 27 mango trees, 27 tamarind trees, and 200 apple trees, along with 9 each of all other trees available to a level 31 farm, almost went broke planting them all. I have 12 clown fish and the rest are quests fish. I have high number animal quests. I have the stone house, tree house and the DLC house, only one fully built is the tree house. I have a lot of the farm areas opened.

I did the same as you, 9 of each kind of tree (as affordable) and flowers.

I did all my quest crops, as annoying as they were... but during my online time I focused on the good turnover crops- yellow zucchini in winter, cheddar cauliflower in spring, broccoli in summer. And then I planted beets or something else overnight.

The trees are great for getting quests done, but the return on your investment is rather slow so that can exacerbate the feeling of the flat map penalty. Plant more caulis!

One of my quests was 280 egg plants, that was a pain to complete. The RNG in games does not like me because I had to use all my crops to plant that quest. One quest I'm doing now has 50 of the level 2 chickens and 20 trout fish. Another one is 90 trees, can't remember which tree but I only have 9 of it. I'll try to plant more caulis. I had to take a break because the quests are not being nice to me.

ETA to reply to your edit. I have enough money from planting sunflowers after placing all the trees. I don't have any more ribbons, I put them all on sprinklers for the crops. I struggle for ribbons, I can get enough money from sunflowers. I don't have ribbons for farm hands or any farm hands or sprinklers for flowers. That is my next project to get some more sprinklers so I can plant flowers, don't have any flowers yet.

[Nathiri]

Originally posted by indy-anna:

One of my quests was 280 egg plants, that was a pain to complete. The RNG in games does not like me because I had to use all my crops to plant that quest. One quest I'm doing now has 50 of the level 2 chickens and 20 trout fish. Another one is 90 trees, can't remember which tree but I only have 9 of it. I'll try to plant more caulis. I had to take a break because the quests are not being nice to me.

Good luck Indy-Anna and may your cauliflowers be plentiful :)

P.S. red gogi berries are also worth growing, their followup variety is very good. And they are pretty!

[indy-anna]

Originally posted by Liguar:

Originally posted by indy-anna:

One of my quests was 280 egg plants, that was a pain to complete. The RNG in games does not like me because I had to use all my crops to plant that quest. One quest I'm doing now has 50 of the level 2 chickens and 20 trout fish. Another one is 90 trees, can't remember which tree but I only have 9 of it. I'll try to plant more caulis. I had to take a break because the quests are not being nice to me.

Good luck Indy-Anna and may your cauliflowers be plentiful :)

P.S. red gogi berries are also worth growing, their followup variety is very good. And they are pretty!

Thank you :)