Missions and reputation points
Missions are short contests against other players where you have a limited amount of time to do as well as you can at harvesting, producing or selling. A good finish earns you reputation points and certificates, which come in handy elsewhere in the game. I've written up how missions work, what to watch out for and how to squeeze the most out of them.
Missions are one of the fastest ways to pile up reputation points for farming machines and for the cooperative competition, and if you play actively and chain missions one after another it pays off nicely - the only time it turns sour is when you start a mission and then don't get round to playing it properly.
A mission is a short head-to-head against other players for the best result
In a mission you play against other players and try to reach the best possible result within a limited time. A mission lasts 30 minutes and up to 6 players take part. You can jump into a mission at any time, but finding other players can take up to 5 minutes - you can carry on playing as usual during that wait and you don't lose anything by it. If there still aren't enough players after 5 minutes, the mission starts with fewer participants.
Once the mission begins you'll see the remaining time and the task you've been given, and in the bottom right corner of the screen there's a panel with the running results and your current position in the ranking. Even if you end up in a mission completely alone with no rivals, you still get the reward, and a good performance pushes it up even further.
Reputation points come from successfully completed missions and have a specific use
For completing a mission successfully you get reputation points and certificates. You'll need them to build and upgrade your farming machines and also for the cooperative competition - so they aren't just numbers in a ranking, they're a currency you reinvest into developing your farm.
Entering a mission costs an up-front investment of reputation points. If you cancel a mission that's already running, those invested points are gone, so it doesn't pay to start missions blindly and then walk away halfway through.
The size of the reward depends on your performance and final placing
The higher the yields you reach during the mission, the bigger your reward, and the better you place in the ranking when the time runs out, the higher it goes again. Several things affect the result, and you can influence them before the mission even starts.
- Upgraded buildings give you a decisive edge in missions.
- Buying handbooks from the library can raise your yields considerably.
- Humus helps you get better yields from your fields.
- The Reputation Point Booster adds extra reputation in percent if you win the mission - its price goes up with every use and resets to the original value once a day.
Rankings get cleaned up every week and being inactive doesn't pay
Players who don't record a certain minimum number of yields during the contest count as inactive - they won't be ranked and won't get a reward, even if they joined the mission. On top of that, every week all players lose 10% of their reputation points, which drops inactive players several places and keeps the rankings up to date.
For me that leads to one clear rule - only go into a mission when I'll have time to actively harvest, not just start one and leave it running in the background.
Mission tasks revolve around harvesting, producing and selling
The exact task is always picked at random and changes from mission to mission. Typically it's one of these types of job.
- Harvest as much of a particular product as you can in the given time (corn, wheat, apples, meadow flowers or almonds, for example).
- Collect as many resources as possible, such as manure, feed, wool or jam.
- Start production of as many goods as you can.
- Sell as much of the chosen products as possible.
- Use as much humus as you can within the time limit.
A finished mission can be set aside and another one started straight away
If you start a new mission shortly after finishing the previous one, you get bonus reputation points added to your next reward - that's the streak bonus. So it pays to chain missions one after another instead of leaving long gaps between them.
A finished mission can also be set aside so you collect its reputation points later, and you can start a new one right away. You do have to meet certain requirements to set it aside - and once a mission has been set aside, you can't take part in it again.
