Joker tokens and dairy contracts
Joker tokens are upgrades you slot into production buildings on your farm to boost their output. You get them by completing dairy contracts at the market, which means you need a working dairy on your main farm. Every token has a type, a level and a rarity, and it is assigned directly to a recipe, seed, fertilizer or feed, where there is always a risk that it breaks during production.
I see joker tokens as a nice bonus on top of regular production, not as a mechanic you have to deal with right from the start – they pay off mainly for anyone who completes dairy contracts regularly and has a dairy up and running. Ignore the contracts and you will not miss anything crucial, but run them regularly and you will gradually improve the output of your key productions practically for free.
The dairy opens the way to joker tokens
Joker tokens come from dairy contracts, which have their own tab at the market, separate from the regular contracts. The condition is having at least one dairy built on your main farm – without a working dairy you cannot even reach the contract section. Once the dairy is producing dairy goods, you can hand them in to contracts and complete them.
Every contract has a level, and that level fixes both the token selection and the chance of a rarer piece. The higher up the contract levels you get, the better the tokens on offer – some token types can only be obtained from contracts at higher levels. The level rises with the number of contracts completed in that slot, so it pays to keep running contracts and not ignore them just because they are not offering anything interesting right now.
A token's rarity determines how often it shows up as a reward – rare pieces are generally stronger than common ones, but that is exactly why they drop less often.
Every token has its own type and level and boosts the output of one specific resource
A joker token works as an upgrade for one specific production. Each token type is tied to a single product or consumable good and raises its production output as soon as you slot it into the matching building. The token range runs from common to rare.
On top of its type, a token also has its own level, which says how big a boost to output it actually delivers – the higher the token level, the bigger the increase in production.
Tokens are assigned to a recipe, seed, fertilizer or feed
You assign tokens in the token overview window of the production building in question, which you reach through the building's radial menu or through the upgrade dialog. Every recipe, seed, fertilizer and feed has up to three token slots you can fill to raise the output of that particular production.
The assigning itself is simple – you pick a token from storage and assign it to a free slot. Until you confirm the assignment, you can take the token back out. Once confirmed, you cannot just pull the token off the slot, but you can swap it for another one at any time.
Every production carries its own risk of the token breaking in the process – it is different for each recipe, seed, fertilizer and feed. A broken token is not lost, it can be repaired once the production has finished.
You can spot an active token in the radial menu and your token stock has a cap
To find out whether a token is currently active in a given production, hover over the recipe icon in the radial menu – it shows you the token's strength along with the risk of it breaking during production. You can assign, swap and repair tokens at any time, even while the production is already running.
The number of tokens you can hold at once is limited. When you reach the limit, the game tells you with a token jam message and the contract you picked will not hand you any token at all – you have to choose a different contract, or first burn through the tokens you have stockpiled by using them in production.
