Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 4 (Facebook) – Best Income / XP Crop
Best income / XP for your money
I logged in the other day to find a few new seeds for sale in the store. Grapes, Watermelon, Cabbage, Peas, Onions, and Pumpkin. The problem here was the new addition of Grapes. My spreadsheet is laid out to accommodate daily harvest times, not hourly. This took a little finesse to rework my spreadsheet, but it is complete. The numbers are now calculated by their hourly harvest time (20 hours for 1 day crops, 40 hours for 2 day crops). This allowed me to plug in the values for Grapes with some expected and unexpected results. As mentioned in my Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 1 (Facebook), 1 day crops are naturally better XP earners as they allow you to replant each day. This made strawberries and potatoes the early front runners. Not any more, grapes allow you to replant every 4 hours. This means, if you were able to plant every 4 hours as opposed to every 20 hours, as is the case with a 1 day crop, you can earn 5 TIMES THE XP! This was clear from the start, I didn’t need the spreadsheet to tell me that their was a definite XP advantage to planting grapes. However, the spreadsheet did highlight something that was quite unexpected… planting grapes also brings in the best profit over the other crops. As before, I had mentioned that the Sunflower crop was the highest earner over it’s 60 hour (3 day) harvest time. That has now been eclipsed… I’ll outline for clarity.
If you plant one of each crop, Sunflower and Grapes, you will:
- be able to replant Grapes 15 times during the harvest time of the Sunflower
- earn 45 XP from the Grapes, while only earning 3 XP from the Sunflower
- earn a profit of 405 from Grapes, while earning 197 from Sunflower
Profits are based on hired harvest rates of 67 for grapes and 332 for sunflowers.
That’s right, Grapes more than double the profit of the Sunflower crop over the Sunflowers harvest time. There, of course, is a distinct trade off. Harvesting, plowing, and replanting every 4 hours is noticeably more difficult than every 3 days (60 hours).
View Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 5 (Facebook) – Crop / Tree Profits Calculated for updated information. NOTE: my information is incomplete. I do not have non-self harvest income numbers for both Onions and Pumpkins. While it is clear with the way Farm Town currently awards XP neither of these crops will be better than Grapes, they may offer a better profit margin. Keep this in mind and check back for updates. Also, if you know the income from non-self harvesting these crops (having a buddy harvest and then you selling them at market) let me know by leaving a comment on this post. I will rerun my numbers and present any further findings.
The XP Trick
If you aren’t aware, I’ve discovered and outlined a technique for earning XP directly in exchange for money. As it stands, the technique is still valid and working and can be found here Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 2 (Facebook).
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More Farm Town Tips and Tricks
This post is in regard to the Facebook application game Farm Town. I, nor this site, has any affiliation with Facebook or the Farm Town application game. I’m merely an overly analytical fan. 
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April 27th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
[...] Strawberries Best crop for gaining Money: Sunflower THIS INFORMATION IS NO LONGER CORRECT. Visit: Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 4 (Facebook) – Best Income / XP Crop for up to date [...]
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
how long can u leave your crops till until they die?
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
@emily: I have heard that a crop will expire after double the normal harvest time has elapsed. So, although Strawberries are listed as taking 1 day to harvest, they actually take 20 hours. If what I have heard is correct, the crop would expire and die 40 hours after it had been planted. This would mean a 3 day crop which takes 60 hours to be ready for harvest would then take 120 hours before it would become dead and useless.
If anyone has any information to add to this, please chime in!
Thanks.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I was reading your profits for the grapes versus other crops and it doesn’t appear to me that you are calculating in the cost of plowing the field of harvesting. Am I missing something in your calculations? And if not would you add that into the mix and give us an update?
May 5th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Do I have it wrong…based on a 240 hour cycle Sunflowers Net a profit of 145%, while grapes only net a profit of 67.5%. This is factoring in the cost of plowing (20 coins). I used 240 hours for a common denominator since pumpkins are an 80 hour veg.
My next project is to determine if trees are worth keeping, or if the space is better used for planting veg. My $$ is on the veg winning, but I haven’t done the math yet.
May 5th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Oh, I see my error…while the profit margin may be greater for the sunflowers, the grapes have a higher coin return. In 240 hours one plot of grapes will yield a net of 1620 coin, while the sunflowers only net 788. Both figures are for a hired harvest.
May 7th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Based on what you have said you did not include the cost to plant crops (20 coins per crop). I did the same thing when I first built my spreadsheet and Grapes were the way to go. But then I plugged in the 20 coin cost to plow each crop and also had to consider I do have to sleep so the figures changed.
If you plant Grapes you will spend the following:
Seed Cost: 20 x 4 = 80
Cost to plow the land: 20 x 4 = 80
Sell Price: 56 x 4 = 224
Profit is 64 coins per crop per day when it is all said and done.
When you factor in the cost to plow the crop each time the profit for a crop of Grapes is only 16 coins.
Now let’s look at Onions:
Seed Cost: 170
Cost to plow the land: 20
Sell Price: 338
Profit is 148 coins when it is all said and done.
Please note this is a 3 day crop.
If you plant Grapes religiously (get up in the middle of the night to replant) and do manage to plant 4 crops per day here is what you would have in comparison:
Grapes 64 x 3 days = 192
Onions 148
Grapes wins out in XP and Coins but oh the work you have had to do.
Now factor in sleep and work and let’s say you manage to plant/harvest 2 crops of Grapes each day. Now your totals are:
Grapes 96 (16 x 2= 32 per day x 3 days)
Onions 148
On earning XP there is also another way to do so quickly. If you are willing to spend cash to get XP then I recommend buying hay bales. Lots of em.
50 coin per hay bale gets you 5 XP so you are basically buying 1 XP for 10 coin. You can sell the hay bale back for 2 coin but 2 coins is not worth changing the math for here IMHO.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:53 am
@lance:
My spreadsheet does in fact calculate in plowing costs. I believe the confusion might stem from the profit. My calculations are based off of the hired harvest sell price rather than the self-harvest sell price. This means the numbers would appear a bit skewed if you were running the same calculations for grapes using 56 (self-harvest) as the sell price as opposed to 67 (hired harvest). If there is still a problem please post back and I will look into this issue further. I also must apologize as I do not recall indicating that I was using the hired harvest sell price anywhere in this post. I will review the post and update it with this information.
Thank you,
Rick
May 7th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
@Rosary Soldier:
Yes, by breaking the costs and profits down hourly it is easy to see that grapes over 240 hours offer 1620 profit while sunflowers only 788. Also, as a side note, Pumpkins offer 765 over 240 hours.
I have to say, I was looking at your previous post for about 10 minutes running numbers and I wasn’t understanding your results.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I just started playing this game today and picked up that grapes seemed a good deal if I had time to hang out and get them harvested. Took me alittle longer to learn that hired harvesters are the way to go. Farmer Dan was a big help.
Your info and explainations here are fab. Make sense to me at 52. I love spread sheets and your’s is over the top!
Will keep checking back to learn more.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
@connie:
Awesome. Thank you for the compliment. I like that I have been able to conjure up some conversation between Farm Town players. You never know when I may over look something and it’s good to know we have some other players here helping us all stay in the loop.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Regarding crop waste – I don’t think the “double” time is accurate for grapes. I missed the “4-hour” window by only a couple hours and they were wasted… just FYi.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:12 am
@Wendy:
Excellent. Thank you for sharing. I think I’ll plant a crop of them and check back each hour to see when they go to waste.
If someone has already done this, please let me know.
May 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more articles from you in the future.
- Jack
May 12th, 2009 at 10:48 am
hi just found this randomly lol and as a great fan of farm town felt i needed to add to it lol.
firstly the farm day is 20 hours so although it says a crop takes 1 day there days are 20hours hence if your potatoes are ready to harvest at 8am then you need to harvest them by 4am the next day,
As for grapes they are great! i can get 5 crops aday if im near the pc every 4 hours and then a crop planted b4 bed no one needs more then 8 hours sleep anyway lmao not if your as addicted to farming as i am
May 15th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I figured that when i started FT. addicted to farm town!
, And i love grapes! i just started four days ago, now im already in level 22. yup, and i filled my farm with garpes, planted 4x a day.
. no more begging to be hired to harvest other’s farm..
For starter, i earned 9k per harvest on original farm land, upgarded and started earning 14k, then 20k. On my fourth land upgarde though, i got tired of plowing and planting so i did strawberries on the additional land, but my original land’s still on grapes
May 15th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Just wanted to share:
24 hours = 20 hours in farm town, that’s around 83%. So if you plant garpes, it wouldn’t actually take 4 hours our time in farm towm, that’s only 3 hours and 20 mins. It should take 6 hours and 40 mins for your grapes to
go to waste from the time u planted them.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
When you figured out the value for the different items, did put into consideration that you will be paying for plowing 6 times per day for grapes? I’m just very curious as I have been wondering about this.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
@Wendy Webb
Hello,
Short answer: Yes I do take plowing costs into account.
Long answer: My calculations start by determining the exact cost to plant one plot of grapes. I take the cost of the grapes and add the cost to plow the field. I then use that number as the base cost to do all of my calculations. This is the same for each of the other crops as well. So, the base cost for grapes is 20 coins, the plow fee is 20 also. The cost to plant a plot of grapes is now 40 coins. The income you receive from having someone harvest the grapes is 67 coins, this shows a profit per harvested plot of 27 coins. If you performed this for each of the other crops (which I have done in my spreadsheet) you could then take this number (27) and divide it by 4 (harvest time) to receive the hourly profit. Dividing each of the other crops’ hourly profits by their harvest length will allow you to determine which crop offers the best profit per hour.
Thank you for your question and I hope this helps
Rick
May 29th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Isn’t it also true that a good way to get XP is to tend neighbors’ farms (water/rake/weed)? I think you get 6 XP each time you tend, plus you get like 15 coins each time (keeping in mind that you have to buy the rake/gloves/etc. for like 20 coins but then get 5 uses out of the item – those numbers might not be exact).
So, if you have lots of neighbors this adds up fast with very little outlay of coinage. I make it part of my routine to visit each neighbor briefly at least once a day to “tend” to their farm.
Love your posts! They are very informative!
May 30th, 2009 at 12:17 am
@ Green Acres
Absolutely! I don’t believe I have mentioned this in any of my posts thus far. You are 100% correct, a good way to earn experience and extra coins is to use the tend/visit option to visit a neighbors farm. Commonly, if you have not already tended this neighbors farm recently, visiting a neighbors farm in this manner will allow you the option to tend their farm.
Thank you for your comment!
June 4th, 2009 at 8:35 am
My question is… If you don’t have the time or inclination to get online every 4 hours, what is the next best seed to plant? I know this will brand me as an undedicated Farm Town fan, but I work and sleep alot.
Thanks
June 6th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
@JimBob Bocifu
I discuss this in my 5th post regarding Farm Town: Farm Town: Tips and Tricks part 5 (Facebook) – Crop / Tree Profits Calculated. Unfortunately, if I reference the answer here, at the bottom of post 4, my visitors would be less likely to read post 5. I’ll give you a hint though, it’s a 3 day crop. This should make it perfect for those of you who don’t want to/cannot be online every 4 hours!
Thank you for your question, and good luck!
June 7th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Thanks for the info. I too figured out that grapes was the best XP crop. (Wish I’d found your site before I went through all that). I couldn’t figure out why it seems that some farmers poo poo on grapes as a harvest. Glad to know that I am in fact smart to have a gigantic field of grapes! Thanks!
July 7th, 2009 at 3:24 am
Some excellent tips here – thank you kindly!
December 17th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I’ll submit this little trick I discovered as I
havenot seen it here yet? When ever you go to your neighbors sites always check their flowers
as having only 13 neighbors its not uncommon for
me to make way over one hundred coins extra! This
is in addition to the scheduled 15 coins and 6 ex
points – adds up fast!! good farming to all – al
May 15th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
I just think this is a very informative site. Nobody should be with it bookmarked if they are a true fan. I love the interaction of the players in this game. That’s why it’s important to get GOOD neighbors. That raised me in the XP levels VERY quickly working together with someone and taking shifts lol.. we did I mean 24 hr. shifts. But it paid off! Keep in mind, I also sought out good folks like you guys to grow plants and knowledge.. Thanks so much & Keep it coming!