Farmhouse
The farmhouse has been standing on your farm from the very beginning, and without it no other building goes up. It decides how fast you build and upgrade on the farm, how many workers it can house, and on the main farm it also sets how much you can store. The higher you push it, the more you get of all three, but the last levels demand a pretty high player level and a seriously long wait.
Upgrading the farmhouse pays off for practically the whole game, because build speed, housing and storage help across the entire farm, not just the building itself. I treat it as one of the few buildings that are never really “finished” and are worth pushing further as soon as your level allows.
What the farmhouse does on your farm
The farmhouse affects three things at once, which is why I treat it as one of the first priorities on every farm. It sets the speed at which you build and upgrade on the farm, it houses part of your workers, and on the main farm it also provides a chunk of storage space.
All three values grow together as you upgrade the building, so there is no need to handle them separately - just keep an eye on the farmhouse level.
How building, upgrading and demolishing work
You put up a new building by picking it in the Build menu and placing it on a free spot. Once the construction is done you either use it straight away, or you still have to assign workers to it.
Only one construction site can be running on a farm at a time - so while you are building, upgrading or demolishing one object, anything else has to wait. You start an upgrade by clicking the building and choosing Upgrade in the ring menu; it is paid in dollars and takes some time.
When you demolish a building with the Demolish option, you get back part of the dollars you put into it, and demolishing takes a while just like building does.
- Only one construction site per farm at any moment
- Upgrades cost dollars and time
- Demolishing returns part of the invested dollars
What upgrades cost and how long they take on the main farm
The small farmhouse on the main farm takes up a 10×8 area and has eleven upgrade levels. In game, the first and the highest level compare like this.
| Stat | Level 1 | Max. level (11) |
| Upgrade cost | — | 45000 Diamonds |
| Build time | 0 m | 10 d 23 h |
| Workers housed | 22 | 44 |
| Storage capacity | 200 | 850 |
| Required player level | 0 | 114 |
What strikes me most is how long the whole journey takes - you only reach the top level around player level 114, so this building is with you for practically the entire game, while both housing and storage more than double between the first and the last level.
What the farmhouse is called at each upgrade level
As you upgrade the farmhouse on the main farm, the game changes its look and its name as well.
- Small farmhouse
- Cozy farmhouse
- Spacious farmhouse
- Majestic farmhouse
- Grand farmhouse
- Spectacular farmhouse
- Deluxe farmhouse
- Glorious farmhouse
- Grand farmhouse (the name repeats at the highest levels)
I see the renaming mostly as a visual confirmation of progress, there is no special mechanic hiding behind it.
On special farms the farmhouse has a different name and look
The same role, meaning build speed and housing, is filled by a similar building on the other farm types, it just goes by a different name and, judging by the in-game texts, has slightly different properties.
- Small farm - Cabin: controls build speed and houses workers.
- Candy farm - Candy caravan: controls build speed on the candy farm and houses workers.
- Tropical, winter and nighttime winter farm - Farmhouse: controls build speed and houses workers.
- Obsidian farm - Adventurer's homestead: controls build speed, provides storage and workers, and on top of that gives access to research.
The adventurer's homestead is the only one of them whose in-game text also mentions unlocking research - on the other special farms the farmhouse sticks purely to building, housing and possibly storage.
Extra building slots cut the wait for the farmhouse
Besides the regular construction site, the main farm also has an extra building slot that can be used for construction and upgrades. On top of that you can collect tokens and unlock a one-time building slot - it is used once for any building process that would otherwise take up the universal building slot, and once you have used it you start collecting tokens for the next one.
I use this myself mainly when I am upgrading something else and do not want to put off upgrading the farmhouse itself because of it.
