Traders and bartering
As you play you'll come across several different traders - the permanent trade center with Gold and Dollars on the main farm, temporary traders tied to seasonal farms, the flea market with neighborly offers, and the separate reward center that runs on apples. Each one works with a different currency and different rules, and above all, not every currency lasts forever. Anyone who doesn't keep an eye on the temporary traders can easily lose the coins, pearls or lollipops they grinded out on a temporary farm.
Traders are basically the only way to turn the side currencies from events and temporary farms into something you can actually use on your main farm, so it's worth looking in on them every time you visit one of those farms. Ignoring them means letting everything you earned go to waste with nothing in return.
The trade center brings several traders under one roof
You'll find the trade center on the main farm, and it works like a signpost - every trader has his own tab and his own currency there. One of them handles exchanging Gold for Dollars and every now and then announces on his own that the exchange rate is very favorable right now and that an opportunity like this may not come around again any time soon - if you need Dollars, it pays to jump on a moment like that straight away.
Another tab belongs to the gift trader - for gifts handed out on other players' farms you earn karma points, which you then spend on lucky charms for others. So it's a shop tied to helping your neighbors, not just to your own farm. You'll also run into an ordinary market trader here, who offers his goods simply because business is going well and he's looking for buyers.
Temporary farms have their own trader and a currency with a shelf life
Most of the tabs in the trade center belong to traders from temporary and seasonal farms - and each one comes with a currency you can only earn for as long as that event runs.
- Northern lights farm - northern lights coins
- Viking farm - Viking coins
- Candy farm - lollipops
- Festive farm - festive coins
- Island farm - pearls
- The Great Fun Park Challenge - Fun Park tickets
- World Championship - championship coins
- Goldfish - goldfish coins
Collection events come with their own traders too, dealing in runestones, seashells or vouchers - they work on the same principle, just with a different currency and their own story around it.
The same rule applies to all of these traders - once the shop closes along with the end of the temporary farm, you lose every bit of unspent currency. The trader himself doesn't disappear forever though, he just steps away for a while and comes back with the next wave of the same farm - in his own words he's waiting for the fog over the swamp islands to lift, for the right weather for the trip to the island, for the road to the island to freeze over, or for the next season of the championship to start.
Goods for the temporary farm and goods for the main farm must not be mixed up
The shops on temporary farms also make a distinction about where your purchase actually goes. The tab for temporary farm goods sends the purchase only there and you use it exclusively on that farm. The tab for main farm goods, on the other hand, sends the purchase straight to the main farm and has nothing to do with the temporary one.
There's also a difference in what happens once the event ends. Unspent currency is gone with nothing in return, but unused items bought for the temporary farm can still be exchanged after the event wraps up. So it pays to turn any currency you don't want to lose into goods even at the very last minute, even if you're not sure you'll manage to use it all up before the event is over.
The flea market offers a direct swap with your neighbors
The flea market works differently from the traders on temporary farms - there's no special currency involved, just a direct swap of products with your neighbors. The offers are gathered up for you by a character from the neighborhood, and you then trade the requested products for the reward on offer.
The offers don't all unlock at once. You unlock the next swap once you finish the previous one, and the game confirms with a check mark that you've met the requirements of the current offer.
The reward center is a separate shop that runs on apples, not on game currencies
The reward center is easy to mix up with the trade center itself, but it's a completely different shop. You pay with apples there, and there are several kinds depending on the season - spring, summer, autumn, winter, festive, golden and silver - and you earn them through your own effort for your results, not by trading products from a temporary farm.
You then spend the apples however you like on a wide selection split into categories - buildings and cosmetic items, consumables, joker tokens, special seeds, decorations, mining permits, catalysts and mystery crates.
