We have been giving ample attention on the site to Farm Together. The game is made by Alejandro González Fiela and his development team at Milkstone Studios, an independent game studio. This farming simulation game went from Steam to Switch in a matter of months, and is quickly becoming a favourite of fans of simulation games.

If you, like me, are used to playing Harvest Moon/ Story of Seasons games, you might see some significant differences in gameplay. Like I wrote in my review (Review Farm Together (Switch), the game reminds me a bit of HayDay (on mobile). It’s more a management game with creative elements, not hands on farming like in Harvest Moon. Still, the game is a very welcome addition the the Nintendo Switch.

To help you along in the game, we decided to make a list of tips and tricks.

Lots of customization

Get started by making your first farm. The game offers a lot of customisation options: you can choose the sort of landscape. Your farmer character is sort of a blank canvas, you can change your entire appearance. As you progress in the game more options in clothing are unlocked.

The customisation doesn’t stop there. Pretty soon you can choose your cat or dog that will follow you everywhere, see what design you want for your tractor and how the farm hands you can hire later on will look like.

As your farm grows, it’s easier to warp to the part you want to be. Using medals you can make these warp points. The map of your farm will be outlined in colours which have the following meaning:

Pink: gas stations

Yellow: houses

Red: buildings

Dark green/dark brown: crops/trees/flowers/animals dotted rectangles mean they are ready to harvest

Orange: quest related items

items Blue: fish.

The fun of Farm Together is in making the farm just the way you want it. Not just the productive farm, but also decorating it as you want it to be. And it’s worth noting you can easily move things around. Push the right joy stick, and you can keep adding up to 50 items and move them all at once.

The ultimate customisation: the option in the title screen to Recycle your Farm. If you decide to recycle your farm and start again, you receive back the full price you paid for all items/ decorations etc. In coins, diamonds, ribbons! So a clean slate, while not everything is lost.

Working the land

At first you start out tilling your land by hand, sowing each plot and maybe watering it. Be aware that you work the square that is outlined in yellow in front of your feet. Might be annoying at first, but you will get used to it. You don’t have to take a hoe or a watering can out of your pockets, and when the tile of land is before you, it’s automatically ready for the next step in your farming process.

As you get your tractor you will find out soon that planting in a grid of 3×3 works best. The tractor can handle 9 plots in a square at a time. Makes for easier work!

Your tractor needs fuel and a gasoline pump costs medals to build. They are however well worth it, the tractor saves you a lot of time. Refuel your tractor fuel tank completely before turning the game off, when you start the game up your tractor has a full fuel tank so you can get to work.

There is no need to water your crops. Your veggies will grow anyway. But, watering nonetheless will speed up growing times.

Growing times give first time players cause to wonder: here it’s not about the passing of in-game days, but crops grow in real time. It ads to the management aspect of the game: know when you can check back into the game to choose what crops you will plant. Planting lettuce as it grows quickly is perfect when you’re spending some time in the game and can harvest them when ready. But if you think you won’t be able to harvest them till after you come back from your real job, you might be better planting something that needs a long time.

The game has four seasons, which each take 17 minutes in real life. That might seem short, but the crops you can sow are tied to the season. Plus, most trees have a designated season in which they yield their crops.

Crops level up by harvesting them, and higher levels mean increased income from the crop. Also, make sure to plant lots of apple trees as they grow in every season which is good for money making. The same goes for Tamarind trees when they become available to you. They also produce a crop every season.

Aside from crops you can sow flowers. The seeds are more costly, but once sown, they keep giving flowers. Flowers have a fixed growing time, watering them means you will get more money and experience when you harvest them. Using sprinklers is advisable if you have the option.

The farm isn’t complete without livestock

Aside from crops, flowers and trees, the farm wouldn’t be complete without animals. You can have all sorts, cows, pigs, ducks, chickens etc.

The animals stay in the vicinity of the tile they came to life on. So technically you don’t need to build fences. But it’s a good idea to keep all your animals in one place so you remember to feed them all. Plus, it looks so much cuter when you surround them by fences.

If you wish you can only buy animals that are needed for quests as they are expensive to feed when just starting your farm.

You can also have fish, which you can mix in a large pond. When they are ready to ‘harvest’ you just have to fish once to get them all. Using sign posts to remind you what fish are in each area is a good idea.

Farm Together makes you look at profit!

All items can be bought using three types of currency: coins, diamonds and medals. Let’s look at coins first. You earn coins by harvesting resources from crops, trees, livestock, fish and flowers.

When you harvest anything, you get +1 of that type of resource. So, when you harvest a plot of potatoes you earn coins from the harvest +1 vegetable.

It’s a good idea to look at profit margins. Look at the cost of sowing a crop, take the time to harvest into account and the coins you get when you harvest. For instance, pumpkin costs 100 gold, rewards you with 400 gold and but it needs 48 hour to be ready for harvest. The profit comes down to only 6 gold per hour. However, there’s XP points to take into account as well. You get 0 XP when sowing, 65XP when harvesting. Which makes for 1,4 XP per hour. It’s different again for fruit trees and flowers, which are more of a long term investment.

If you like to take these profit margins into account, you might want to take a look at the spreadsheet corettrobane posted on Reddit. Spreadsheet profits Farm Together

You earn diamonds by selling the resources you harvested through a stand. You can deposit resources to be sold, 10 or 20 at a time. It depends on the stand really, like a vegetable stand, fruit stand, egg stand, etc.

You earn medals by completing quests. Most quests aren’t timed so you can take your time. Some special quest having to do with Valentine’s Day, Saint Patricks day etc are timed however.

Some crops or items can be bought with coins, some with diamonds and some with medals. The medals are often the most precious ones, like the petrol stations. Think before you spend, it might take you some good planning.

I mentioned the XP: that’s what makes your farm level up. And levelling up means more items to add to your farm. Apart from your farms level, all crops, fruits, animals and such have levels too, making for more coins, shorter growing times and such.

Farmhouses, tickets and farmhands

Pretty soon you get to build your first house, a Treehouse. Building a house takes 4 days to complete, and requires 4x the amount of coins set. You can have one of each of the four types of houses.

Once built you can earn tickets by doing jobs in the house. Jobs are done on the furniture shown in the first category of the Shop. Initially you’ll only have access to the Cooker, since the Easel and the Piano require tickets themselves.

Farmhands are essentially bought labor that will work a 13×13 square area of your farm. You can only access them after you’ve reached level 20. Once you have set them up in an area, they will tend to whatever crops are planted in their vicinity. They cost two tickets per hour, and you’ll only be able to hire them for four hours at a time. Fortunately the timer only ticks down when you’re in the game.

Online multiplayer on Switch

Playing the game on the Switch is awesome in having your farm portable. Plus, you can play online with other people around the world. Put up a guestbook at your farm, and get connecting!

The online mode is available when you are in the title screen, using the Find Farms option. Press Y to filter the search for either friends or all/anyone. X refreshes the find farms list. You can make someone else farm a favourite by pressing the L joy stick in and it puts a little heart on that persons farm name.

People will have permissions set up, determining whether you will be able to do things on friends farms. Options are None. Harvest only, Quests (take part in planting and harvesting of quest crops), Plant (allows you to plant and plow), Build (visitors can spend money and resources on building new items). Finally, Full permission….can do all of the above. You can set permissions for friends and guests separately,

Sign up in the guestbook when you visit a farm. The things you can put in are pre-formatted, so no custom messages. A pity, that.

When you harvest in another farm your boost meter increases the higher the player level the higher the boost increase. When you return to your own farm you earn double exp and resources and additional money on everything you harvest in your own farm.

You can put up 4 welcome messages that the visitors to your farm see when they arrive. Pick welcome messages from a list already supplied.

Wow, the list of tips and tricks got longer then I thought! I hope it was helpful, and that you enjoy the game. Feel free to chip in on the site or on our Facebook Page if you want to chat with us about it.

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