FarmVille English Countryside Cheats and Tips: Working two farms

Sheep Breeding and rebuilding an entire farm are two of the most important and potentially complicated features in FarmVille's first expansion, the English Countryside. However, many might have forgotten one important fact: You'll now own two farms, and your old farm isn't necessarily going away. So, here are some pointers for how Zynga has resolved the issue with having two farms and how you'll have to handle it.

1. Only one farm will be "Active" at a time
We know, that's terribly confusing. How can one farm just go "inactive" while the other presses on? Would the crops I plant in FarmVille just grow and ripen as I work in EC? The answer is no. Zynga must have thought that keeping track of two farms at once would have been too much, so it forced the two games to be even further linked. The moment you log into the new expansion for the first time, your original farm will essentially freeze in time.

For instance, if you plant Strawberries in your old farm and then log right into your farm in EC, your Strawberries will not grow for as long as you're in that farm. In fact, even when you log out of your EC farm those Strawberries in your old farm will still not grow. It's not until you log into that farm again that the game's timers will start to tick again. This works to your advantage, really, as all timers will stop on the farm that's inactive including wither and pet hunger. To recap: Only the farm you most recently worked in will be active, meaning that wither timers will tick, animals will go hungry and timed Goals will run out.

Full view of English Countryside
2. Friends can only visit "Active" farms
Knowing that one farm will be essentially on pause at all times, that also means that friends will not be able to visit that farm. Don't worry, farmers can still visit both farms, but it depends on which is active at the time. Thankfully, which farm you're actively working on will be displayed to yours friends on their friend bar. When you're working on your original farm, a home symbol will appear next to your name in your friends' friend bars, while a British flag will replace that when you're over in England. This gives players fair warning of what farm they're about to visit.

While this all might sound unnecessarily complicated, it will actually be more beneficial to you in the long run. This gives you even more control of when your crops wither. Say you're going away on vacation and you don't want your crops to wither in your EC farm, but your original farm happens to be empty. Just make the old farm active and it's almost as if you have a free Unwither Ring in England.

[Source: FarmVille Freak]

[Image Credit: IGN]

Check out the rest of our English Countryside coverage right here.

How have you prepared for the English Countryside? How will you take advantage of these active and inactive farms?