Farmhands

[Crystal Rose]

Farmhands, who needs them?! I placed 3 of them around my farm to help out. I placed them so they would tend to the animals (Feed: 1 chicken pen. Feed: 1 cow pen. Feed: 1 pig pen for each Farmhand). And have them pick a few surrounding crops. (3 apple trees. 2 pear trees. 1 almond tree for each Farmhand in different spots on my farm). When I came back in-game a little later to see how the Farmhands were fairing. (I was not gone long. 5 to 10 minutes for a 'P' break. The seasons hadn't even changed). Not good. All my animals were NOT fed and were starving. 3 maybe 4 crops had been picked. There they all were. Just standing under that blasted umbrella, playing Tiddlywinks! On top of this BS, they got 50 of my pink metals for practically NO work. I FIRED all 3 on the spot!
Just curious. What flipping good are Farmhands?! 'Cause I'll ya, I'm missing it.
The same thing happens when visiting farms. All the Farmhands seem to do is just stand there. Occasionally they may pick one maybe two crops. Feed one animal's pen. (God forbid they EVER fill the animals feeding dish...pan or whatever that round red dish is)! Then they SIT the Happy Hell down or just stand there!
In the meantime, Not happy being 50 flipping pink medals out for 3 USELESS Farmhands!

[Followlon]

The problem is that the game doesn't explain exactly what Farmhands actually do and how. Accordingly, it is easier to decide where to use farmhands and where not.

Farmhands are only active when you are on the farm yourself. You can easily find out if you pay the farm hands before leaving the farm and then re-enter the farm the next day.

Animals are only fed by the farm hands when the feed falls below a certain level. The same goes for the flowers. They are only poured when the water indicator is at a low level. Otherwise the farm hands just stand around doing nothing.

I only used the farm hands on the trees. That saves me having to go through the trees at any time of the year. They are also very useful with fish. Possibly also for the crops, but not always.

Otherwise I do everything myself. I turn my round and feed the animals, I don't water the flowers at all. Even sprinklers do not guarantee 100% irrigation if there is frost in winter.

My conclusion: Farmhands can be useful, but in most cases they aren't.

[Darkness Vortex]

Here's what I know about Farm hands: Farmhands only work while the farm is open. They wait until animals are out of food to feed them (and only if there is enough coins to do so). They do not fill extra feed feeders. They wait until flowers or crops are almost out of water to water them. They will harvest things closest to them first. There can be up to 15 Farmhands per farm. They each get paid 2 Tickets per hour, up to 4 hours at a time without a Union, up to 8? hours with a Union at a higher rate. The cost in Ribbons to place them increases with each purchase. Farmhands can harvest and water crops, replough planting tiles, harvest and water flowers, harvest trees, harvest fish, harvest and feed animals, and harvest beehives. They cannot plant anything or use markets or use most buildings. I seem to remember seeing some settings somewhere, possibly in Farm Settings?, that allow a farm owner to enable and disable certain things that Farmhands can do... But that's been a long while since I think I saw it... Farmhands walk and don't run and can teleport around/passed things that may be in their way. Farmhands can work on tiles within 6 tiles radius around them. They will harvest Event harvestables and water/feed them if they need food or water, but not while that Event item's Event is active. During an Event, that Event's items will be ignored.

I think maybe the Farmhands get the most use later game when the farm gets so big that the farm owner can't get to everything in the time they have and don't regularly have friends helping them out... Just a little bit of help... And only while the farm is open.

I mostly use my Farmhands for auto repeat things that I don't have to check on very often like trees, but I think only a few of my farms have Farmhands... xD

[Crystal Rose]

They don't do anything that I can see. I kept seeing that pink little box over their umbrella stand. No explanation given about the farmhands. So I put pink metals in thinking like all the other buildings, the box would disappear. I'm out 50 pink metals just feeding those idiots that never did that much.

[[DE]Topperharly]

best use of farmhands i would say is, use them to feed animals or fish. the best thing for fishing is you can make really really really big areas and only one field goes into the farmhands area and the fish untill its over. that way i was able to have 18k clownfishs being farmed by a few farmhands.

[Crystal Rose]

.

Originally posted by DETopperharly:

best use of farmhands i would say is, use them to feed animals or fish. the best thing for fishing is you can make really really really big areas and only one field goes into the farmhands area and the fish untill its over. that way i was able to have 18k clownfishs being farmed by a few farmhands.

Fish don't need to be fed. That's why no matter what size their pond is, they are HUGE money makers. In the beginning you can go broke feeding livestock, (that eat WAY too much in the 1st place).
On my farm, each Farmhand had 1 chicken pen with 3 chickens. 1 cow pen with 2 cows and 1 pig pen with 1 pig to tend to. This along with 3 apple trees, 2 pear trees and 1 almond tree for each Farmhand to tend in their designated areas on different locations on my farm. There wasn't that many animals in each pen. I had this scenario set up to test Farmhands...They failed miserably!

[[DE]Topperharly]

i let my clownfish farm run for quite some time and made alot of money so at this point its more or less ok having them feed alot of animals....if you want to see how they work at my farm you can join and look...but as i said kinda only works when money isnt important anymore....

[Darkness Vortex]

(They were saying action: [ to feed animals] or action: [to fish] ) ...How were you giving them pink medals for their floaty boxes? :o Farmhands' pink boxes mean that they can be paid (Tickets) to work, up to 4 hours if manually paid individually, but you can do just 1 hour at a time, which will leave the pink box if they can be paid for more time. But, if they have only like 12 things to tend to, half animals, half trees, they would be spending most of their time standing around since they only feed animals once their food is out (maybe very low) and trees once per season. So, during the course of 5-10 minutes, especially if the season hadn't changed, there would not be much for them to do. I think maybe chickens may be a 5 minute or so feed cycle... But if the Farmhand has active contracted time (has been paid to work for at least 1 hour), there is plenty of Coins on the farm to keep up with feeding all of the animals, and there are feed symbols (beets) on the animal pens, and the Farmhand is just standing there for more than a few seconds, then something is not working correctly. In that situation, I would recommend checking the settings both in-farm and in the main menu to see if the Farmhands are disallowed to do some activities, such as feeding animals. If the settings are all good to go and the Farmhands are still not working, it may be a bug and should be reported to the devs. Although maybe try restarting the game and Steam first because sometimes Steam desyncs or something and causes weird shenanigans... ^D^;

Even if everything is working fine, Farmhands just aren't for some people; some people just have no use for them, and that's okay too. ^_^

[[DE]Topperharly]

i have 1 farmhand who is doing all the fishing, all fishes are connected to him. 13 farmhands have 4 different animals connected to them. and one is connected to beehives, a large pond of clown fish and the last two animals....if you want to know i uploaded a screenshot yesterday of my farm.

[Crystal Rose]

@Darkness Vortex! I know absolutely nothing about Farmhands. Sadly, no manuals came with the game. When pink metals were offered to the Farmhands to try and clear the 'Floaty' boxes, they took the metals happily. I was testing them out, and definitely NOT a fan! Yes they work. But VERY little. For their shorty work, they will never darken my farm again. :)

[[DE]Topperharly]

Originally posted by Crystal Rose:

@Darkness Vortex! I know absolutely nothing about Farmhands. Sadly, no manuals came with the game. When pink metals were offered to the Farmhands to try and clear the 'Floaty' boxes, they took the metals happily. I was testing them out, and definitely NOT a fan! Yes they work. But VERY little. For their shorty work, they will never darken my farm again. :)

as somebody with 600+ hours. farmhands work really well if you have lots of money. like a few hundred millions. if i had to give a guide to make money i would say....rush fishing to clown fish. at this point reset farm and build as many as you can. place 1 farmhand. he will catch them. clownfish have 80% to be big. and a cooldown of 30 min. build as many as you can and for diamonds use oregano. i made a screenshot with 18k fish. and i think i made like.....hundreds of millions easily every few hours.

edit: woops meant 30 min not 20 min.

edit2: did a calc. with my 250 clown fish if i would place like 35000 i would make almost 67 million every hour. since my latest farm is only lvl 152 i think i will rebuild the fishfarm ......

[Crystal Rose]

Originally posted by DETopperharly:

Originally posted by Crystal Rose:

@Darkness Vortex! I know absolutely nothing about Farmhands. Sadly, no manuals came with the game. When pink metals were offered to the Farmhands to try and clear the 'Floaty' boxes, they took the metals happily. I was testing them out, and definitely NOT a fan! Yes they work. But VERY little. For their shorty work, they will never darken my farm again. :)

as somebody with 600+ hours. farmhands work really well if you have lots of money. like a few hundred millions. if i had to give a guide to make money i would say....rush fishing to clown fish. at this point reset farm and build as many as you can. place 1 farmhand. he will catch them. clownfish have 80% to be big. and a cooldown of 30 min. build as many as you can and for diamonds use oregano. i made a screenshot with 18k fish. and i think i made like.....hundreds of millions easily every few hours.

edit: woops meant 30 min not 20 min.

edit2: did a calc. with my 250 clown fish if i would place like 35000 i would make almost 67 million every hour. since my latest farm is only lvl 152 i think i will rebuild the fishfarm ......

That's another problem. A lot of people don't have that kind of money. I've seen Farmhands 'work' on visiting farms as well as my own. Plain and simple...They suck! My trusty dog in-game works better, or at least he's funny and keeps me company.
If you think Farmhand are so great and work for you, go for it.

[Darkness Vortex]

Yes, their use is kind of limited and not good for everyone... ^_^; There's no pressure to have them if you don't want them. ^_^