Quests and the story of the farm
Quests on the farm are not just a checklist to tick off, they are also the conversations with neighbors and characters that give the farm its character. I work through them every day and I have learned to take two things from them at once, a concrete guide to what to build or produce, and a piece of the story explaining why I am doing it at all.
Following the quests always pays off, they give you a clear direction for what to do next and at the same time the characters tell the story of the farm, so the game has a momentum of its own beyond resources and construction.
The quest list on the left edge of the screen has guided me around the farm from the start
Your current quests appear on the left edge of the screen and they are practically my main navigation around the farm. As soon as I complete a quest, its row in the list turns green and one click is enough for the reward to be credited.
I have got into the habit of checking the list after every bigger action, a harvest, a finished production run or a completed building, because a completed quest does not announce itself in any obvious way. Anyone who lets quests just hang there is losing resources and goods they could already have in their pocket.
The question mark and the Show button save me searching the whole farm
Next to the description of every quest there is a question mark that opens help for the task and explains exactly what is expected of me. Right beside it is the Show button, which takes me straight to the relevant window or to the building the quest refers to.
I use this combination mostly for quests involving buildings I have never used before, I would rather be taken there than spend ages clicking my way around the whole map.
Quests tell the story of the farm through neighbors and visitors
Behind the quest text stand characters with stories of their own, and that is what I enjoy most about them. Oleg from the dockyard is sorting out supplies for the annual fishing feast, Daniel recommends investing in organic products the way his dad taught him, Lester talks about his cat Bessie while asking for chicken feed in the same breath, Tessa remembers how she had to manage on her own when she set up her cattle farm, George recalls his childhood while building a citrus orchard or a goat stable, and Rita is planning to open a little cafe where you could sit down with friends.
These stories crop up across the themed farms, winter, tropical, candy, festive and Viking alike, and they give otherwise plain build-and-produce quests a meaning within the bigger story.
More farms mean more separate quest lists
If you own more than one farm, a menu appears above the quest list where you pick a specific farm and see only the quests belonging to it.
What used to happen to me was that I focused only on the main farm and never looked at the others at all, while quests and rewards sat there waiting for days on end. These days I make going through all my farms part of my routine.
Some quests taught me to keep an eye on storage and on buildings under construction
One of the quests pointed me to the Farm management window, where under the picture of every product there are two numbers, how much of it I have in the barn and how much more still fits in there. Once the barn is full, no more goods go into it, so production has to be sold off regularly.
Another quest points out that a building used for raising animals cannot be used until the construction work after an upgrade is finished, and that an upgraded animal building needs more workers on top of that. I take both as a warning, before I start upgrading several buildings at once I would rather work out whether I have enough workers and whether my storage will overflow in the meantime.
