Gifting in Farmville
Everyone loves to get gifts – both in the real world and in the cyber world. It’s no wonder that a game as social as Farmville would offer gift sharing. There are many different types of gifts you can send. Gifts can be free through the ‘free gifts’ section of Farmville. Some free gifts are only exclusive through farmville.com. You can also send a friend a gift from the market using farm cash. To do this, click ‘send’ instead of ‘buy’.
Gift-sharing is fun, but it’s even more fun when you get more gifts. Here, you’ll learn which gifts are available in the market, how to get the most out of your gifting limit, and a little bit of gifting etiquette. You’ll also learn how to get more gifts and we will answer the question “why don’t I get a lot of gifts in Farmville?”
Let’s continue, shall we?
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Gifting 101 – The basics of gifting in Farmville
About Gifting and Gifts
Gifting is an important part of Farmville. In the game, the verb ‘to gift’ means to send a gift to a Farmville neighbor or friend, either through ‘free gifts’, exclusive gifts (farmville.com, iPhone app) or through the sendable farm cash items in the market. You can also send a free gift by visiting your friends farms and clicking on the gift in the top left hand side.
Many items in free gifts are essential to the game and not available elsewhere. Some items available as free gifts (ex. puppy kibble, nails, etc.) are also available in the Market, but cost farm cash. Why spend cash when you can get the same item for free? That’s where your neighbors come in. You can either ‘wish’ for an item or you can send them a message, chat, or comment asking them if they can send you what you need. You can also send them the gift that you want and hope they send back the same one to you.
Sending Gifts
Sending gifts does not cost anything to the sender or the recipient. When you advance in levels, you will be able to unlock more gifts to send. You can send gifts to any facebook friend, but choosing a neighbor or farmville friend is the wisest choice. When you send a gift to a person that does not play Farmville, you are wasting a request. And you only get a certain amount of requests per day – 40 to 50 is the limit depending upon your account.
Why should I send gifts to my friends and neighbors?
Sending gifts builds trust between neighbors. It is a way to consider someone reliable. For example, some players consider their neighbors reliable when they send out a free gift and receive one in return.
Your friends will feel that you care about them when you ask them what they need for their farm. By sending the free gifts that they need (such as boards, bees, vehicle parts, etc), your friends will know that you are making an effort to help them. They will feel you are a good neighbor and, in return, will help you more often.
Claiming Your Gifts
When you log onto Farmville through Facebook, if you have any gifts, you will be directed to the gift page. Here, you will have the option to ‘accept’, ‘accept all’ (multiple gifts of the same type), or ‘ignore’ the gifts from your friends. If you choose to ‘accept’ or ‘accept all’ gifts, you will then have the option to ‘send a gift back’. This is considered a ‘Thank you’ gift. It will return the same gift that you accepted.
If you want to send a gift back that is different than the one you accepted, click ‘free gifts’ on the bar above your farm. Choose the gift you would like to send. Choose the people you would like to send it to and send! Very simple.
You can also collect your gifts from ‘game requests’ on the left side of your facebook homepage. If you choose this method, you will have to click them one by one. But, there is a positive to doing it this way. You will be able to view all of your friends’ Farmville requests here, because they don’t always show up on the gift page when you go onto your farm. The other benefit of the ‘game requests’ page is that you will be able to find all of your neighbor requests here. Many times they don’t show up on the gift page either. Do you want to get double the amount of gifts as normal? Click here to learn how.
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Getting the most out of the daily gift sending limit
If you’re like one of the farmers I know, you want to send gifts to all of your neighbors. But, the problem is that there is a daily limit. The limit is 185 gifts/requests per day. You can only send out gifts every 4 hours. For some people, it is 40 gifts. For others, it is 50. And this doesn’t just apply to how many gifts you can send. It is a total number of how many REQUESTS you can send. Take into consideration that things like asking for help, as well as sending out gifts, contributes to this number.
So, how do we maximize our gift-sending limit? We use our brains. We do not waste requests. I’ll give you an example:
Growing a duckling into a duck
Let’s say you want to make that adorable little duckling all grown up. You need to have seven people help you. So, instead of sending out 20 requests to help grow your duck, you’ll send out a select few. You probably have at least 10 good neighbors that help you on your farm (more than that if you are an experienced player). You’ll search through your friend list to find those 10 people to send them the duck request. Done! Simple as that. But what if you don’t mind not having the top level duck? Then you can send out 7 requests, the amount that is needed. If someone doesn’t help your request, you can send more requests out the next day. So, if your limit was only 50 requests per day, you still have 43 left! And…if you really don’t care what duck you get as long as it is a special duck, you can send out 3 or 4 duck requests to the people you know will help you. Then you can send out whatever else is needed the next day. So out of 50 requests, you’ll still have 46 to 47 requests left. This kind of reasoning can work for a lot of things in Farmville.
But, what about sending out gifts?
Well, the first thing to remember is that if you send one of your requests to a friend that does not play Farmville, you are most probably wasting a request. Why? Because that person most likely will not accept your request, let alone reciprocate by helping or sending a gift.
You can sift through your neighbors to keep the active ones and remove the inactive ones. Some of your neighbors might not even play Farmville anymore.
Your neighbors should be active players. Having people as neighbors that don’t even play Farmville anymore is just a waste. You can see which ones play and which ones don’t play Farmville by visiting their farms. Start at the lowest level neighbor you have and work up the list to see which players have outdated farms and withered crops. Your lower-level neighbors with old, unkempt farms most likely do not play Farmville anymore. You might want to send them a message asking if they still play. If they say they don’t, it would be wise to remove them from your neighbor list to free up more room for neighbors that do play. And, if they don’t play, you don’t want to send them any requests either.
Start to gather the names of the players that send you gifts. Then, go to your gift page or game requests. Look through the gifts you have received and mark down the names of the players that have sent them to you. You may start to see a pattern. Maybe a few friends are sending you gifts everyday – maybe multiple times per day! You may want to look for a couple of days to see if any of those people change. Remember, not everyone can play every day.
Send out gifts to your loyal neighbors
Once you know who is sending you gifts, you can start to determine which neighbors are loyal to you. If you would like to build good relationships with your neighbors, you’ll want to send out gifts to the friends or neighbors that send them to you. After you send out this batch of gifts, you can come back in 4 hours to send out more. If you still have requests left at this time, you can send out other types of requests or send out gifts to friends that play Farmville but don’t send you gifts (trying to build a relationship with them). And you can find more loyal neighbors to exchange gifts with. You don’t have to do any of these either. These are just some options.
What if you have you made a list of the friends and neighbors that send gifts to you but there are just way too many to send gifts to? Does this number go above the 185 request limit? Well, there are a few things you can do about this…
First, you can take the neighbors that send you the most gifts and send gifts back to them. See which ones are left on your list after you know who you are sending your first batch to and set up another time to send gifts to these other players. You can even let your friends know in a message about your predicament of having too many people to send gifts to but not enough requests. Maybe you can send a gift to them every other day. This part you will have to figure out by yourself or with your neighbors. When you are honest, your friends will know you are a trustworthy neighbor.
Another thing that you can do is send out the requests to the people you have selected. Save the others for tomorrow and, like above, alternate between them daily or on your own schedule. Then, after your request limit has been reached, go through your neighbors bar. Look for some players that you have not sent a gift to that day and ‘help’ their farm. Fertilize their crops, feed their chickens, and help their buildings. Sometimes, the rewards and bonuses you can post on their walls from visiting their farm will be more valuable than a free gift (ex. fuel, “fertilize all’s”, etc.)
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“Why don’t I get a lot of gifts?”
This question can have many answers, but here are a few reasons that may fit your situation. Ask yourself:
• “Do I regularly send out gifts to the same people?”
• “Am I sending gifts to people that don’t play Farmville or that don’t play anymore?”
• “How many neighbors and friends do the people I am sending gifts to have?”
• “How busy are the people I am sending gifts to?”
• “Is something changing in Farmville that would cause gifts to become lost?”
• “Is it happening to anyone else?”
• “Are my friends very active or somewhat active?”
Once we figure out why you are not getting as many gifts as you would like, we will be able to solve the problem.
BEveryone loves to get gifts – both in the real world and in the cyber world. It’s no wonder that a game as social as Farmville would offer gift sharing. There are many different types of gifts you can send. Gifts can be free through the ‘free gifts’ section of Farmville. Some free gifts are only exclusive through farmville.com. You can also send a friend a gift from the market using farm cash. To do this, click ‘send’ instead of ‘buy’.
Gift-sharing is fun, but it’s even more fun when you get more gifts. Here, you’ll learn which gifts are available in the market, how to get the most out of your gifting limit, and a little bit of gifting etiquette. You’ll also learn how to get more gifts and we will answer the question “why don’t I get a lot of gifts in Farmville?”
Let’s continue, shall we?
——————————————————————————–
Gifting 101 – The basics of gifting in Farmville
About Gifting and Gifts
Gifting is an important part of Farmville. In the game, the verb ‘to gift’ means to send a gift to a Farmville neighbor or friend, either through ‘free gifts’, exclusive gifts (farmville.com, iPhone app) or through the sendable farm cash items in the market. You can also send a free gift by visiting your friends farms and clicking on the gift in the top left hand side.
Many items in free gifts are essential to the game and not available elsewhere. Some items available as free gifts (ex. puppy kibble, nails, etc.) are also available in the Market, but cost farm cash. Why spend cash when you can get the same item for free? That’s where your neighbors come in. You can either ‘wish’ for an item or you can send them a message, chat, or comment asking them if they can send you what you need. You can also send them the gift that you want and hope they send back the same one to you.
Sending Gifts
Sending gifts does not cost anything to the sender or the recipient. When you advance in levels, you will be able to unlock more gifts to send. You can send gifts to any facebook friend, but choosing a neighbor or farmville friend is the wisest choice. When you send a gift to a person that does not play Farmville, you are wasting a request. And you only get a certain amount of requests per day – 40 to 50 is the limit depending upon your account.
Why should I send gifts to my friends and neighbors?
Sending gifts builds trust between neighbors. It is a way to consider someone reliable. For example, some players consider their neighbors reliable when they send out a free gift and receive one in return.
Your friends will feel that you care about them when you ask them what they need for their farm. By sending the free gifts that they need (such as boards, bees, vehicle parts, etc), your friends will know that you are making an effort to help them. They will feel you are a good neighbor and, in return, will help you more often.
Claiming Your Gifts
When you log onto Farmville through Facebook, if you have any gifts, you will be directed to the gift page. Here, you will have the option to ‘accept’, ‘accept all’ (multiple gifts of the same type), or ‘ignore’ the gifts from your friends. If you choose to ‘accept’ or ‘accept all’ gifts, you will then have the option to ‘send a gift back’. This is considered a ‘Thank you’ gift. It will return the same gift that you accepted.
If you want to send a gift back that is different than the one you accepted, click ‘free gifts’ on the bar above your farm. Choose the gift you would like to send. Choose the people you would like to send it to and send! Very simple.
You can also collect your gifts from ‘game requests’ on the left side of your facebook homepage. If you choose this method, you will have to click them one by one. But, there is a positive to doing it this way. You will be able to view all of your friends’ Farmville requests here, because they don’t always show up on the gift page when you go onto your farm. The other benefit of the ‘game requests’ page is that you will be able to find all of your neighbor requests here. Many times they don’t show up on the gift page either. Do you want to get double the amount of gifts as normal? Click here to learn how.
——————————————————————————–
Getting the most out of the daily gift sending limit
If you’re like one of the farmers I know, you want to send gifts to all of your neighbors. But, the problem is that there is a daily limit. The limit is 185 gifts/requests per day. You can only send out gifts every 4 hours. For some people, it is 40 gifts. For others, it is 50. And this doesn’t just apply to how many gifts you can send. It is a total number of how many REQUESTS you can send. Take into consideration that things like asking for help, as well as sending out gifts, contributes to this number.
So, how do we maximize our gift-sending limit? We use our brains. We do not waste requests. I’ll give you an example:
Growing a duckling into a duck
Let’s say you want to make that adorable little duckling all grown up. You need to have seven people help you. So, instead of sending out 20 requests to help grow your duck, you’ll send out a select few. You probably have at least 10 good neighbors that help you on your farm (more than that if you are an experienced player). You’ll search through your friend list to find those 10 people to send them the duck request. Done! Simple as that. But what if you don’t mind not having the top level duck? Then you can send out 7 requests, the amount that is needed. If someone doesn’t help your request, you can send more requests out the next day. So, if your limit was only 50 requests per day, you still have 43 left! And…if you really don’t care what duck you get as long as it is a special duck, you can send out 3 or 4 duck requests to the people you know will help you. Then you can send out whatever else is needed the next day. So out of 50 requests, you’ll still have 46 to 47 requests left. This kind of reasoning can work for a lot of things in Farmville.
But, what about sending out gifts?
Well, the first thing to remember is that if you send one of your requests to a friend that does not play Farmville, you are most probably wasting a request. Why? Because that person most likely will not accept your request, let alone reciprocate by helping or sending a gift.
You can sift through your neighbors to keep the active ones and remove the inactive ones. Some of your neighbors might not even play Farmville anymore.
Your neighbors should be active players. Having people as neighbors that don’t even play Farmville anymore is just a waste. You can see which ones play and which ones don’t play Farmville by visiting their farms. Start at the lowest level neighbor you have and work up the list to see which players have outdated farms and withered crops. Your lower-level neighbors with old, unkempt farms most likely do not play Farmville anymore. You might want to send them a message asking if they still play. If they say they don’t, it would be wise to remove them from your neighbor list to free up more room for neighbors that do play. And, if they don’t play, you don’t want to send them any requests either.
Start to gather the names of the players that send you gifts. Then, go to your gift page or game requests. Look through the gifts you have received and mark down the names of the players that have sent them to you. You may start to see a pattern. Maybe a few friends are sending you gifts everyday – maybe multiple times per day! You may want to look for a couple of days to see if any of those people change. Remember, not everyone can play every day.
Send out gifts to your loyal neighbors
Once you know who is sending you gifts, you can start to determine which neighbors are loyal to you. If you would like to build good relationships with your neighbors, you’ll want to send out gifts to the friends or neighbors that send them to you. After you send out this batch of gifts, you can come back in 4 hours to send out more. If you still have requests left at this time, you can send out other types of requests or send out gifts to friends that play Farmville but don’t send you gifts (trying to build a relationship with them). And you can find more loyal neighbors to exchange gifts with. You don’t have to do any of these either. These are just some options.
What if you have you made a list of the friends and neighbors that send gifts to you but there are just way too many to send gifts to? Does this number go above the 185 request limit? Well, there are a few things you can do about this…
First, you can take the neighbors that send you the most gifts and send gifts back to them. See which ones are left on your list after you know who you are sending your first batch to and set up another time to send gifts to these other players. You can even let your friends know in a message about your predicament of having too many people to send gifts to but not enough requests. Maybe you can send a gift to them every other day. This part you will have to figure out by yourself or with your neighbors. When you are honest, your friends will know you are a trustworthy neighbor.
Another thing that you can do is send out the requests to the people you have selected. Save the others for tomorrow and, like above, alternate between them daily or on your own schedule. Then, after your request limit has been reached, go through your neighbors bar. Look for some players that you have not sent a gift to that day and ‘help’ their farm. Fertilize their crops, feed their chickens, and help their buildings. Sometimes, the rewards and bonuses you can post on their walls from visiting their farm will be more valuable than a free gift (ex. fuel, “fertilize all’s”, etc.)
——————————————————————————–
“Why don’t I get a lot of gifts?”
This question can have many answers, but here are a few reasons that may fit your situation. Ask yourself:
• “Do I regularly send out gifts to the same people?”
• “Am I sending gifts to people that don’t play Farmville or that don’t play anymore?”
• “How many neighbors and friends do the people I am sending gifts to have?”
• “How busy are the people I am sending gifts to?”
• “Is something changing in Farmville that would cause gifts to become lost?”
• “Is it happening to anyone else?”
• “Are my friends very active or somewhat active?”
Once we figure out why you are not getting as many gifts as you would like, we will be able to solve the problem.
Let’s look at these questions we just asked:
Do I regularly send out gifts to the same people?
If you do, you are helping to build a reliable relationship. If you don’t, your neighbors might become preoccupied with other players that send them gifts regularly. For example, when you send gifts to the same person everyday, then every other day, and then twice a week, with all the gifts being exchanged, you might get lost in the sea of gifts.
You might want to communicate with them a little more. Let them know about the job or school or other thing that doesn’t let you play and send gifts as often as you’d like. Perhaps let them know that you want to be long-term neighbors with them and still want to exchange gifts, even if you cannot do it everyday. Or, let them know that you send gifts every other day because you have many neighbors and want to be fair. This part is up to you. Only say what you want and if you want to.
Am I sending out gifts to people that don’t play farmville anymore?
If you are, you won’t get any gifts back. A lot of people who don’t play Farmville anymore ignore the requests, delete them, or block them. So, your gifts might not even get seen by them and in return you won’t receive anything either. Send gifts and requests to people that you know play Farmville.
How many friends and neighbors do the people that I am sending gifts to have?
If you are sending gifts to people that aren’t sending you gifts, find out why. Go to your friends’ profiles and see how many friends they have. If they have a lot, especially if a lot of them play Farmville, your chances of receiving a gift may be lower than a person who hasless friends. This is not always true, though. Maybe a person has 700 friends, but only 60 of them play farmville and the rest are just Facebook friends. Sometimes a person may have 200 friends, but they only use Facebook to play farmville and all 200 are neighbors. Remember, a person may be sending gifts to friends and neighbors who play Farmville.
You can check to see how many neighbors a person has by going to the Farmville app on Facebook and clicking ‘add neighbors’ in the game bar above your farm. You can scroll through the list to see how many neighbors each player has. Then you can see if there is a clear reason why you are not receiving a certain amount of gifts.
How busy are the people I am sending gifts to?
Maybe you noticed that some of your friends have a full time job or school, children to take care of, or something else that keeps them busy. Because of their time schedules, they may have less time to play than other people.
Is something changing in Farmville?
Did something new come out in Farmville, like a greenhouse or the new English expansion? Is everybody sending you requests to build things or obtain a goal, but not sending you gifts? Don’t worry. The new thrill will settle in a few days and your friends will soon go back to sending out gifts. Remember, new things are exciting and a lot of players wants to start the new thing right when it comes out.
Is it happening to anyone else?
When Farmville gets updated with new things, sometimes glitches occur and things get lost. Usually, if many of your neighbors also report not getting many gifts or gifts disapearing from their giftbox, there is probably some kind of glitch or bug in the game. Zynga usually knows about these and is working to fix them as soon as possible.
Are my friends very active or somewhat active?
You can tell if your friends use Facebook mostly for Farmville or if they use it as a mix between Farmville and keeping in touch with their friends by visiting their profiles. Do you see them post a lot of Farmville bonuses throughout the day? Don’t see too many Farmville posts but a lot of messages and comments? You have to decide how active you believe a player is.
Also, look for how many other Farmville players post bonuses and rewards to their walls. If you see a lot, your friend may be using more of their Farmville requests on these people. If you see fewer posts, your friend may not be using as many requests and you will have a better chance of becoming a person that they regularly send gifts to… if you frequently send gifts to them.
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Items that can be sent as ‘Free Gifts’
The Free Gifts in Farmville contain limited edition items, construction items, and standard items. New gift items can be added or taken away depending on what is going on in the game. For example, there were no watering cans before orchards and mystery seedlings, but now that it is a part of the game it has become a standard item in the free gifts.
Limited edition itemswill be available for a short time. They will come and then go. They may become available again at a later date or they may never come back. These items include:
• Holiday and special occasion collection items
(ex. Christmas gifts, Valentines, Gold)
• Special occasion decorations
(ex. black cat from Halloween)
• Items only available through Farmville.com
(ex. Gold Nutcracker, Yellow Mums)
• Items only available through iPhone
(ex. White Apple Tree, Rainbow Barrel)
• Collectibles
(ex. Dragonfly, Check Button)
• Other items
(ex. limited edition trees, limited-time crop seeds, limited-time animals like belted duck and gray horse)
Construction items are any materials related to building vehicles, animal storage buildings, storage cellars, and other items that need to be built. These include:
• Nails, Bricks, and Boards
• Beehive materials, such as Beeswax and Smokers
• Horse Shoes and Harnesses
• Vehicle Parts
• Bottles and Blankets
• Shovels
• Watering Cans
• Special Delivery Boxes*
*Note: When you ‘use’ Special Delivery Boxes, you will receive construction items that you need for building in Farmville. If you don’t have anything that needs any materials, you may receive something that you don’t need, such as an owl statue, brown cow, lawn chair, or something else. You can also receive consumables such as fuel, arborists, and farmhands. You might get a tree or a collectible, too.
Standard items include everything that is a permanent or very long-term gift. These gifts may have been the original free gifts or added later in the game but have never left since. These items include:
• Puppy Kibble and Dog Treats
• Mystery Gift
• Select Animals (ex. Cow, Pig, Goose)
• Select Trees (ex. Banana Tree, Mango Tree)
• Other standard items
Some notes for using gifts from your giftbox:
• You can use most items that are in your giftbox for either your home farm or your English farm. But, once you place an item in a certain farm, you can not move it to the other.
• Certain items are locked to a specific farm, meaning you can only use certain items on certain farms.
• You cannot open mystery eggs if you have over 500 gifts in your giftbox. Bring this number down to 499 or less. Then you can open your eggs.
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