To the delight of Zynga games people have been playing Frontierville in near record numbers, but for those who have been finding them self getting more and more addicted the question isn’t so much how do I play Frontierville as it is how do I play Frontierville better? How do I get the most out of my time playing so I can accomplish challenges faster, finish off more collections, and get my frontier looking the way I want it to. For anyone in that category, these are some slightly advanced tips on how to play Frontierville better.
You’ve been playing awhile, you’ve been leveling up at a fairly good pace, but you know levels are going to be harder attain and the challenges are going to get harder. You need more energy, more drop items, and everyone needs more land. There is nothing that can be done about getting more land right now, but you can better manage your energy and get more of it as well as more drop items. Why these are two of the biggest issues, there are advanced strategies for tending animals, trees, and crops that can get you ahead much faster without taking away from the game experience. These tips are not cheats, they are just proved strategies to get you the biggest bang for your buck.
The first thing is to make sure you keep a balanced frontier. Have a little bit of everything on your plot - even those annoying thorns, rocks, skulls, oak/pine trees, animals, fruit trees, and cacti. Even if you know you do not need them for a challenge any longer because you have checked the challenge guide, the reason for this are twofold. The first reason is that it helps your neighbors. You will often have neighbors that are at varying stages of play that may need to hit a neighbors plot to tend some of those things. It never hurts to be a good neighbor people can count on.
The second reason is that those things are full of experience points and gold. If you need a quick infusion of points and have several mature oak/pine trees (sized 7 or 8) you can almost always know you can hit one and get a bear care. Bears return a nice quick bump in everything across board. You pick up food, coins, and a good sized XP bump - and your neighbors get to share that XP bump as well when you post the 50 points to claim. Snakes are the same way hiding under those skulls, rocks, and in that tall grass. When you need a few XP fast to level up and have a limited amount of energy making it less than sensible to buy any, or need a quick XP bump before ending a gaming session, hit those items to make the most of your remaining energy.
In the case of everything the odds are it will re-spawn before you come back. Trees will not come back mature, but the odds are you will get a sapling back - maybe two. Once they re-spawn you have a nice supply to keep on killing. The second half of this is to be a good neighbor when it comes to killing critters - be cool and post for your neighbors to get the XP points, food, or baby chick.
Here is the real tip to take advantage of and especially pass to your neighbors when it comes to killing critters and scaring bears. You may have noticed when you scare your second bear in a single session (or kill any other critter) that you find yourself unable to post that kill for your neighbors to claim. Do them a favor and leave the game before killing the second of any specific animal. It will still be there when you come back a few seconds, minutes, or even hours later waiting for you. By leaving the game and then returning your neighbors get a shot at claiming that extra XP.
If you get your neighbors on that program you can claim more XP as well. It may not sound worth it, but if you have ten neighbors and normally collect 50 XP from each per day (A total of 500 bonus XP daily) and can just double that claim to 1000 XP per day that increase is huge when it comes to leveling up and getting your max energy up as well. Once you start needing 5000 or more XP to level up, that is a really big deal.
Take full advantage of the schoolhouse lessons, but realize that early on some are more valuable than others. The first three lessons you are going to want to complete Are “Show and Tell”, “Yard Work”, and “Rithmatic.” Show and Tell will increase your odds of getting collectible drops which helps you fill up collections quicker. Yard work will get you some energy drops when you clear land on your plot or your neighbors which is always a good thing. Rithmatic lowers the prices you have to pay at the market which most significantly means that getting energy is cheaper.
Make sure that if you haven’t completed the “Child Does Homework” challenge that you have enough ribbon to take on one more lesson to complete that challenge along with plenty of all five of the lesson items needed to complete each. Recess is a pricey lesson but will bump up your max energy, and while harvesting is a monster lesson costing 100,000 coins and 20 ribbons in addition to all the items to complete it, having it completed before you undertake the peanut challenge will make it all worthwhile as you XP will flat out go bonkers every time you harvest. It is actually almost worth burning off horseshoes to complete.
When it comes to using horseshoes, assuming you don’t want to spend real money to buy any, be judicious about them. Don’t waste them on things like the buffet, the beef jerky meal, or pretty little items to put on your land too early in the game. You only get one horseshoe for leveling up, and very few challenges will net you any others. If you are going to use horseshoes, the best use for them is usually on buildings or one of the big schoolhouse lessons.
You want to get the best return on your investment of horseshoes, so the little pretty things are great and you should get them at some point, but first you should angle towards taking care of the necessities. Monitor the progress of your building (like the sawmill) or school lesson, and see when the complete it now discount looks the most advantageous to you. Usually when you reach about 50% completion it is worthwhile to think about spending those horseshoes. Of course if you have neighbors sending items regularly and you are completing 10% of the total needed per day you may want to hold off no matter how tempting it is.
When dealing with crops, aside from when you will likely go nuts planting nothing but peanuts for that challenge, keep a balance of everything. Time your planting so harvesting is staggered and you don’t need to use unwither boosts to revive a lost harvest because you ran out of energy. This also keeps you adding to your collections on a regular basis so that you don’t get caught too far behind the curve when you need items for challenges. Keep in mind that when other scenes begin opening up there is no telling what you may need that carries over from one scene to the next.
When it comes to trees, cherry trees are nice for what they are but you only need a couple and you do not want to burn energy harvesting them every 8 minutes. They just are not worth it. They are something to spend a left over energy or two on before closing out a session. Apricot trees are great and the long harvest period makes them easy to stay on top off. Pears and peaches are your go to trees. Peaches are great for the collection as you get 7 energy for each you turn in and the pear collection is a quick 50 XP at redemption. Each drops quite a few items, pies being the rare items, but pear trees seem to drop energy at a higher rate. They are safe quick harvests with a good upside giving food, coins, and decent XP.
When it comes to animals, geese and chickens cannot be underestimated. Geese take up decent piece of acreage, but the 4 XP per mature goose is nice as is the goose collection. Chicken are often dismissed, but you can pile them up for free when neighbors kill foxes, and assuming you have the chicken coop you can harvest them all for free once each day. A mature chicken is 3 XP, they can be harvested every 30 minutes, and the chicken collection isn’t great, but it can be redeemed for a few energy points. Even if you only harvest with the chicken coop once per day and collect free chicks, over time they will mature and getting the XP, coins, and drop items for free does not hurt at all. Raising chickens is one of the most overlooked best deals in the game.
While it may seem annoying, be quick on clicking those coins, pie slices, and everything else dropped when tending the land. If you perform 100 tasks per day which is very ultra conservative for most, and each action grabs you just another 30 coins on average from the bonus meter, that is an extra 90,000 coins per month! Action to action it may not seem like much, but 90,000 coins is nothing to sneeze at. That buys a boatload of little pretties for your land as well as animals, trees, and all sorts of things you can turn into more XP.
The final tip is to hoard your food. As challenges are continually being added there is no telling what you will need. More and more side challenges like the schoolhouse lessons call for food, and food is energy. When you are a few hundred points from leveling up and could make that jump if you just had some more energy, it is really nice to check your food bar and see 10,000 to 15,000 food sitting there allowing you to buy a couple feasts to make a run at leveling up right away. Always aim to have 5,000 food stockpiled at a minimum because you just never know.
Not every tip will fit every player as people have different goals when they play. For most people that have advanced to level twenty or higher at the least, these are simple tips to jump you to level 40 or higher quickly and painlessly. These tips have been employed to grab 5,000 XP in under 24 hours consistently by a player with max energy of only 60 and only 7 neighbors. It can be done and you don’t have to nag your neighbors non-stop to do it. You just need to play smart and make the most of what you have.