Free farmcash is rare in farmville. But there are a few free ways to get it. The first one is the one most players notice first. For every level up to 100 that you gain you get 1 free farmcash. It is added to your balance directly.
Another way to get free farmcash is by opening lots of mystery gifts or golden, Cornish, Scots grey or Rhode Island red mystery eggs. Sometimes they will contain 1 farmcash. You can find the bill in your gift-box and you can click on “use” to add it to your balance.
In the spring of 2010 two care packages were sent out to players who hadn’t checked their account for more than a week. These contained 3 free farmcash each and you can try to get them if you haven’t accepted them on your account so far. You can find the links to the care package on fan pages like gamers unite or farmville fanatic, for example: http://farmvillefanatic.com/farmville-care-package-details
When farmville started promoting it’s own game bar they gave you 25 farmcash if you installed it. Now the reward has been reduced to 10 farmcash. To install the gamebar and get your reward, just click on farmville gamebar under your farmville game window and follow the instructions. Even if you have installed the gamebar already without receiving a reward, reinstalling it while you are in your farmville account should get you the reward.
You can also keep watching the announcements under your game window, sometimes you will get offers of free farmcash for watching movie trailers or adds.
There are also some promotions that give you farmcash, although it is usually connected to purchasing something else, so you have to spend real money to get it. If you wanted to buy the product anyway, it might be a nice way to get extra farmcash, though. The 7-Eleven promotion in the summer of 2010 for example gave you different decorations for codes from different products. If you bought 9 different ones, entered the codes and mastered level 3 of goji berries, this unlocked an Über gift of 200 farmcash.
You can also check “Add coins and cash”, some users have been able to get 4 farmcash for facebook credits, some even several times. If you have facebook credits and don’t need them for anything else, this is another a way to get more farmcash. You can also check the section under the payment window for more offers. Most of the time these offers will give you farmcash if you spend money on something else. This makes only sense if you wanted to get the product or service anyway.
Sometimes there are competitions by Zynga that offer farmcash prizes. So it’s worth watching the official farmville fan page on facebook.
Now that you have your farmcash, you can decide what to spend it on. I have already explained in the sections on vehicles and fuel that you should not have to spend farmcash on those. Theoretically you could use farmcash to finish buildings or expansions, but since you can also get the building materials for free from your neighbors there isn’t much sense in that, either. That leaves expansions, animals and decorations.
The cheapest largest expansion you can buy with farmcash is the Plantation that will give you 20*20 plots but still only costs 20 farmcash like the smaller expansions before, the ones after that cost more farmcash the larger the size.
Rare animals usually cost farmcash. They might not make economic sense, but sometimes it can be fun to treat yourself to something. I have bought the white stallion from a mystery crate. It makes sense to get a stallion to be able to produce XP, farmhands, arborists and foals for the horse power achievement for example. Of course you can always try to get a wandering stallion from your neighbors on the feed, but I don’t like hunting the feed too much and the stallion has helped me to stop worrying about finding one.
Just check the market to see what you might like.
There are also decorations for farmcash and the themes change all the time. I got a sari clothesline from the Far East Event, for example. It only cost 1 farmcash and looks bright and colourful.
The last thing you can spend your farmcash on and the one that makes most sense in my opinion are the events that let you donate your farmcash for a good cause. There have been several events in the past when you were able to purchase a permit to plant sweet seeds, the last one was sweet beets, and up to 100% of the dollar value of your farmcash went straight to a project for people in Haiti. I also took part in the event that let you donate 25 or more farmcash to the charity save the children to help people in Japan. The sweet seeds and the daikon gave you great XP and coins too, so it was win-win.
© Conny Streit, 2011.
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