New Release -- February 11th, 2014

[Raul]

See Known Issues, More Information and Post Release Changes at the end of this post. Last changes released at Feb 20th, 1:05PM EST.

Hi There,

We just released a new version of the game, this time around we dedicated a significant amount of time improving the experience for new users joining the game. Facebook featured Farmtown for a few days on the Game Center so we decided to take this opportunity to re-check the initial flow and polish anything that may have broken over the years. However, we think many of the fixes and improvements will benefit experienced users as well.

1. 10 new Valentine Items (released a few days ago): 4 as Gifts and 6 in the Store (top and bottom).

2. More Clouds and Natural Events: Rain, Snow, Lightning, Tornado and Cloudy are in Coins. Rainbows are in FC.

3. 38 x 38 Farm Expansions for farms 1 - 10: 30 FarmCash OR 20,000,000,000 coins

4. Production Adjustments:

a) 25% more production of Cotton Textile Roll, Sheep Textile Roll and LLama Textile Roll
b) 66% more production of Silk Textile Roll
c) 100% more production of Polyester Textile Roll
d) 50% less Polyester Fiber required to produce the Polyester Webbing Roll
e) Same increases have been applied to the Long Sliding-Door Train Car

5. Hiring Adjustments:

a) Chest Bonus double product rewards when working on fertilized farms
b) Increased rewards for harvesting and chopping trees, harvesting flowers and fishing. Coins earned by the employee depends on the sell price of the item being harvested, however crops are usually more expensive than tree produce, flowers and fish so to balance this you will get 100% of the sell price instead of the 25% you get from crops. Also, the extra product bonus you get in your storage will be increased to 50% for tree harvest/logs and flowers (same as fish) compared to 10% for crops. This increase will apply to the Chest Bonus as well.

6. Dimming non-relevant items is the default behavior when working your own farms (for users at level > 10):

a) The Eye Icon will be shown in the bottom right corner to control the visibility of the non-relevant items
b) Current 'Dim Preference' replaced by 'Eye icon only toggles between: *Dimmed and ON Or *Hidden and ON'. This option will reduce the Eye stages from 3 to 2.
c) Eye state remains the same when working solo or when hired
d) Dimming behavior for plow is now enabled for employees only

7. Excavator Tool (FC): This tool will allow you to sell in bulk all items present in a farm that match a particular item name or category. For protection, this tool will never work with any FarmCash items and also any Buildings, Trains, Tools or Facilities.

If you decide to sell, say, all your Water Items, it will never sell any FarmCash water items either.

You can use it on any field, plowed fields, growing crop fields, etc but it will always delete and not sell the fields.

8. Toolbox Changes: The Extended Toolbox was getting too complicated with too many modes of operation, we changed a few things:

a) There is no more one single Toolbox and one extended Toolbox, there is only one Toolbox now. All the tools are now either on the main panel interface or in the Toolbox.
b) No more Harvest or Plow vertical tool bars either
c) The Toolbox will modify the tools visibility based on context. For example, if you are on your farm, all the tools that you do not own or can't use will appear in gray, this is to make it easier for newbies to focus on only the tools available and not get too confused with so many tools on the early stages. If you are on another farm then only the tools available for you to use will be available, the rest will be dimmed down and disabled.
d) Some tools were re-arranged so all single tools are on the lower row making it easier for new users. The Manure Spreader is on the Farming Tools section, above the watering related tools. The tools that modify the farm status somehow (search, edit, etc) are now grouped on the same column. The passive tools like Your Belts, Farm Stats are also on their own column. And lastly the active tools like managers are on the last column.
e) One significant change also related to the tools is that when you are hired the most effective tool will be already pre-selected for you for the job at hand. Same thing happens when you try to navigate to another farm and there is still work missing, we automatically select the best tool for the work that is missing.
d) If the Toolbox shows up unintentionally when you hover your mouse over the Toolbox icon, you can quickly close it by clicking on the white X. Based on the feedback on this thread we may decide to add a 'Preference Option' that will require you to click on the Toolbox icon to show the Toolbox. It will be an extra click every time but it will never show up by mistake.

9. More Fuel when refueling at the gas station: This helps everybody but newbies may get the most benefit now that they can use their employers big tools when available.

a) The 'Neighbours' counter now grants 20 fuels instead of 10 for each neighbour
b) The 'Active Neighbours' counter now grants 20 fuels instead of 10 for each active neighbour
c) The 'Friends Helped' counter was replaced by the 'Help Given' counter. This is the change that will give you the opportunity to collect the most fuel, before we only considered the simple quests when visiting others as 'help', now we consider pretty much everything, from working for other friends to boosting their trains, in fact, it is calculated the same way as the 'Help Given' counter in the main neighbour bar and in the neighbour page, the only difference is that this counter is reset everyday.

10. General Improvements and bug fixes:

a) Chest Bonus will not reset anymore when you are working for others and you also have workers working at your farm
b) When using Hire Multiple for crops and tree chop (and nothing else), the trees went back to grown after a refresh, not anymore
c) If you hired back your employer for trees or flowers there was a chance that your employer will not get any Chest Bonus
d) For some users, going to the Invite tab redirects to main page or got stuck loading the page, this is now fixed
e) If you are not hired, we removed the "Would you like to go home" confirmation message when clicking the Home icon
f) Less spooky Eye Icons

11. Improvements and bug fixes impacting mainly New Users:

a) Better Organizing Trees, Buildings and Facilities Store categories
b) More XP and Coins when performing simple quests when visiting other farms (from 6 XP and 50 coins to 30 XP and 300 coins)
c) When farming we are not showing anymore warning messages when you click on grass or on items that are pending (with progress bar)
d) Progress Bar completes much faster for smaller tools
e) When using single (1x1) tools, sometimes the Chest Bonus message referred to missing crops when really there were no crops, it now refers to plant as a more general term to avoid confusion
f) The arrows in the tutorials for fish, chop, watering, etc now points to the correct icon and is accurate in full screen as well
g) More than 20 additional corrections and clarifications for new users

12. Optical Supplies Factory (FC): Produces Optical Supplies.

Eyeglasses
Eyeglasses Case
Lens Saline Solution
Lens Cleaning Cloth
Eye Chart
Trial Lens Frame
Pupil Distance Ruler
Optical Toolkit

13. Winter Supplies Factory (Coins): Produces Winter Clothing and Accessories.

Winter Hat
Trapper Hat
Winter Earmuffs
Winter Gloves
Sweater
Coat
Winter Socks
Winter Underwear

14. Winter Store (Coins): Provides Winter Clothing Retail Services and can be stocked with products from the Winter Supplies Factory.

15. Eye Clinic (FC): Provides Eye Health Services and can be stocked with products from the Optical Supplies Factory.

Some Quest updates coming on the next release, it should allow you to earn 1-2 farm cash a week.

Enjoy!

--Raul

Post Release Updates - Feb 14th, 1:00AM EST

- When hired to harvest trees or flowers, chop trees or fish you will now get 100% of the selling price of the item you are working on, also, the extra product bonus that goes into your storage have increased to 50% for trees (fruits and logs) and flowers (fish were already at 50%), it means that if you harvest 100 apple trees, chop another 100 bamboo trees and harvest another 100 roses, you will receive approximately 50 apples, 50 bamboo logs and 50 roses in your storage as well.

*All the benefits above also apply to the Chest Bonus as well*

This make the work on trees, flowers and fish more rewarding than working on crops.

- We reduced the sensitivity of the Toolbox icon to show the Toolbox, now it waits about half a second to
show the Toolbox, this will minimize the Toolbox showing unintentionally. Notice you can always click on the Toolbox icon to show it immediately if you want.

Post Release Updates - Feb 18th, 5:10AM EST

- Excavator Tool to Sell items in Bulk is now live, see details on the main post above

Post Release Updates - Feb 20th, 1:00AM EST

- Second fix for the missing Gift Box in the main panel
- The Eye in the bottom right and the Eye preference option now applies the same when in your farm and when hired
- The X over the Toolbox icon never goes away unless the Toolbox is closed, less flickering

Post Release Updates - Feb 20th, 1:05PM EST

- For some reason an old version of the game was released minutes ago, it's now fixed
- Fixed bug of flash player crashing

Known Issues:

- None