Big Farm Homestead Fansite

Reflecting back on the Level 1 Guide, by design, you can't do everything in this game. The developer's hope is that you purchase solutions to be able to do everything.

At this point in the game, you are now given 4 different materials in contracts that you need to manage, with 2 more coming at level 14.

Materials are the foundation of growing your farm. They can be broken down into 3 categories:

• Upgrading - Glass and Bricks
• Expansion - Saws and Rakes
• Research - Books and Ink sets (coming level 14).

You can generally do 2 categories well, but not 3, so I would suggest you pick a first, second, and third priority. For me, having studied the game and played its predecessor, I recomment upgrading as your first priority, followed by expansion. This is fluid and changes as your farm grows. Sometimes, you will focus on expansion or research. You will 'passively' collect your lowest priority items if you follow the strategy below.

A very simple and easy strategy for the market is the Rule of Three. (My personal application is in brackets - yours will be different)

Divide all your materials into 3 categories:

• High focus (glass and bricks)
• Medium focus (saws and rakes)
• Low focus (books and ink sets )

Then divide all your products into 3 categories:

• Hard-to-get (eg. flour, sugar)
• Medium-to-get (eg. tomatoes, cornbread, canned beans, barley)
• Easy-to-get (corn, milk, soybeans, canned corn)

Now the magic:

• use Hard-to-get to ONLY send high focus contracts
• use Medium-to-get to send high and medium focus contracts
• use Easy-to-get to send all contracts

• Your categories are easy to define and self adjusting. If you just sent 5 contracts with tomatoes and are low on stock, they become 'Hard-to-get' and you will only send contracts that give your highest focus materials. As you play, you will get a natural feel for what is easy and hard to get. If you are close to upgrading your fertilizer book, you can shift to Books and Ink sets as your highest priority.
• It removes the guess work: Remember, coin size has no impact on contracts. It's fixed, so you don't even need to look at how much the contract is for. I can pop onto my market and send all glass contracts without looking at the products asked for. Then I can trash all my contracts requesting flour and sugar. Then I can look at what is left, confident I will get the most value for my hard to produce products.
• You will naturally build up a buffer of items so that you can always fill high priority material contracts and trains (Level 20) when you get them.
• It matches how you play: if you have 4 fields and 1 cow - it works. If you have 2 fields and 3 cows - it still works. It works if you play 15 mins per day or 12 hours per day.
• It manages the choke points: wheat flour is hard to get. You won't have a lot to sell, but that is ok. You don't have a lot of fertilizer, so it's smarter to have 1 tomato grove. This system manages the 'lower' production.

You will often have to dump a contract that you are fully able to complete. This is necessary! Trashing contracts that ask for Hard-to-get products for Low Focus materials (like Books) ensures you conserve your product stock to immediately fill future contracts that offer High Focus materials (like Glass). Embrace this short-term sacrifice for guaranteed long-term resource optimization.

And just to repeat myself, the barge 'looks' like it gives more materials, but that is because you are sending way more products at a time. Per product, the barge gives half of the materials.

One of the things I have noticed with this Studio is that products will be in higher demand after they are introduced (1-2 levels), or when a new stage of the product line is opened up. You may find that when sunflowers are needed to make seeds, suddenly their interest in the market goes up. I really wonder if it is just to cause panic expansion and spending. They do tend to level out after a few levels.