Obtaining Farm Aids in Family Farm Seaside

Once upon a time, in the early days of Seaside, it was difficult to obtain Farm Aids such as Fertiliser, Watering Cans and OP.  Later, with the advent of Cooking and Crafting and all sorts of other options, including the Mystery Shop, one needed far more, including Yellow Mystrons, Green Mystrons, Power, as well as Island items including Electric Saws.  One can purchase everything but Mystrons in the Market but there are other ways to obtain these valuable items.

First, there is the Dedicated Farm Bonus, accessed through a small treasure chest at the top of your screen.  Tap on this whenever it is full to obtain Coins and a Gift Bag.

There are the Daily Quests as well, with three different treasure Chests.  Each contains Farm Aids but the third, Gold Treasure Chest, obtained only when you complete every task but one, contains a Yellow Mystron.  A single Yellow Mystron may not have much purchasing power, but they do add up through time.

Visiting Neighbours is a very good way to earn Farm Aids.  Whenever you clean a Decoration, you will earn a Gift Box.    The Blue and Gold Gift Boxes usually contain the best items, but they all are worth the effort.  By visiting your Neighbours, you earn Coins and XP as well and the task of visiting 12 Neighbours in any given day is one of your Daily Tasks.

Keeping Cleanable Decorations on your own Farm is another way to earn Items.  Again, the Decorations that give the Blue and Gold Gift Boxes tend to be the most valuable, but any Gift Box will contain some Rewards.  Note that the actual contents of any of these Boxes or Bags is random, apart from the Special Mission Gift Box that always contains a set group of items.

One more way to earn Farm Aids is through the Cooking Stand Contest.  This is not always current, as there is a little hiatus between the end of one Contest and the beginning of the next, but you usually find a Contest in progress.  Whenever you visit a Neighbour, look for his/her Cooking Stand.  If there is the icon of a Roast Turkey above it, tap on it to obtain a special Gift Bag that will contain a random assortment of Farm Aids.  This benefits your Neighbour as well, as completion of any Contest depends on your Neighbours' participation in 'eating' at your Stand.  The final Reward of any Cooking Stand Contest is a Cleanable Decoration that yields the coveted Blue Gift Box.

Sometimes you can obtain a special item when you fish.  These are associated with specific catches.  They are not terribly significant but should be mentioned.

Farm Aids can be earned by completing Achievements.   Final Achievements give 1 or 2 RC even.

If you have access to the Island and have unlocked the Mine, you can obtain Farm Aids randomly when you ask a Neighbour to help with an explosion.  There is a special pink bomb that appears randomly and gives Farm Aids instead of the usual Ores and other Mine items when the Explosion occurs.

In this context, one should mention the Mystery Shop or Store.  You will find an icon on the top left when you access the Market that will take you to the Mystery Shop.  It now has been expanded to include four different screens.  They are: Coins, Green Mystrons, Blue Mystrons and Yellow Mystrons.

The Coin Shop can be refreshed to allow you to purchase more items once you have purchased as many as you want from the current screen.  Note that the items that appear will be different depending on the Farm you currently are visiting.  It is only when you are on your Island Farm that you will see any of the Flowers for the Flower Garden, for example,   i find it helpful to access the Coin Shop only when I am on the Island because Seaside items and Island Items then will appear in the Coin Shop.

The actual Items that appear in the Green, Blue and Yellow Mystrons screens change on a daily basis.  New players may find it most helpful to purchase Cleanable Decorations when they appear in the Yellow Mystrons Shop, although I like some of the non-cleanable Decorations so much that I purchase them instead.  Earning 100 Yellow Mystrons, the price for any item, can be a slow process.  From time to time, special Sales are offered that include a Decoration that will yield Yellow Mystrons when cleaned for a scecific number of days, after which it will yield an ordinary Cleaning Gift Box.

Completing the Weekly Activity, accessed through the Magic Bunny, will give you 10 Yellow Mystrons.  Yellow Mystrons allow you to obtain Decorations that were given as Rewards for time-restricted Quests, although Final Rewards are not included.

Another method by which to obtain Yellow Mystrons, albeit slowly, is to complete ALL of your Daily Quests but one.  There are three different treasure chests, all containing Farm Aids that can be opened when you obtain specific point totals by completing specific tasks, such as using your Machines, Fishing, completing Helicopter Orders and so on.  When you have obtained a total of 300 Points in any given day, you will be able to open the final Gold Treasure Chest.  I have noticed that it always appears to contain 1 Yellow Mystron.  As I wrote previously, it is a SLOW way to earn these, but one still does increase the total as well as obtaining other valuable aids.

It is the Blue Mystron Shop that allows one to purchase Final Reward Decorations that you missed, but you will not be able to earn these until you have obtained ALL the Rewards from your Daily Order Board.  There is a specific chain of Rewards that includes all the special Sheep... once you have completed all of these, you will begin to earn Blue Mystrons.

Green Mystrons often are the Rewards for registering a specific item in your Gallery.  Gallery Registration gives other Farm Aids, including Organic Fertiliser, Super Fertiliser, Watering Cans, Super Watering Cans, Power and OP.

Finally, if you play on certain systems, there is a floating Balloon that travels across your screen, inciting you to watch an advertisement.  if you do so, you will receive 15 Green Mystrons.

I have written other posts on being a good Neighbour.  Here, however, I will mention the value of having Neighbours visit your farm to clean your Decorations.  Three factors are important here:  you really need to visit your own farm as soon as possible after the daily Rewards from Neighbours' cleaning activities appear.  That may be a different time for every time zone.  On the East Coast of the States, for example, it occurs near 8.00 p.m. I believe.  Another factor is that you really should take advantage of the fertilising activities of your Neighbours by harvesting all ripe Crops and Trees as often as possible.  It is discouraging for a Neighbour to visit a Farm where there is NOTHING to do!    I fear that there are Irises on my own farm that I never harvest, because they were a temporary Crop that I cannot replant and they are my favourite of all the Crops, but I do try to harvest everything else as often as possible.  I also keep a number of Decorations that yield the Blue Gift Boxes always on my farm even though it reduces planting space.

As discussed in another post, there are different ways to access your Neighbour List.  One is by Recent Helpers, which probably is the most fair of all.  Another, however, is by 'Fertilisable' which shows Farms that have plots and trees that still can be fertilised.  Another one, for those who want Island Gift Boxes, is to visit only the Island on every Neighbour's Farm.  You can change the option whenever you like to reflect your current mood or needs.  Timing can be important here as well.  If you visit your Neighbours who live in the same time zone too soon after the daily cut off point, you may find that there are icons of megaphones instead of cleaning brushes on top of all their Cleanable Decorations because they have not had time to collect any of them yet!  If you visit popular Neighbours too late in the current day, you may find that there are no good Cleanable Decorations left to clean.  In any event, Neighbour Visits, whether they are yours or your Neighbours', offer a multitude of Rewards, as well as allowing armchair travel to see how other people organise their farms.  There are some gorgeous farms out there!

Island Hopping
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Recently, I became aware of a problem with the game in terms of the Cooking Stand Contests and Island visits.  It is unfortunate that, whenever you choose 'Island First' when visiting Neighbours, you will not have access to the Cooking Stand, as this is located either on the main farm or the Building Plots outside the main farm.

There are advantages to choosing 'Island First' because the Purple Island Gift Boxes appear to contain the most Farm Aids, including Fertilisers, Super Fertilisers, Watering Cans, Super Watering Cans and the tools used to cut trees on the Island.  In their own fashion, they are equal therefore to the Blue Gift Boxes on the main Farm.  They do appear to grant a fair amount of OP as well randomly.

Cooking Gift Bags, however, are very useful and your Neighbours need visits to the Cooking Stand during a Contest in order to fill their quotas.  What this means, therefore is that a Neighbour who wants both an Island Gift Box and a Cooking Gift Bag essentially has to make TWO visits to the Neighbour's land... one being to the Island Farm and the other being to the Seaside Farm.  Perhaps this will be remedied by the developers soon and they will allow a link to the Building Plots area at least from the Island.

Note that there is a limit to the number of Cleanings of Decorations as well as the number of Cooking Gift Bags that any Farmer can collect in a day.  The limit to the Gift Boxes is very high at 300 and I do not think this varies at all.  Originally, I thought that the number of Cooking Gift Bags depended on the Farmer's Experience Level but I discovered this was not the case at all.  It is your Club Membership that determines many options now in the game.  I discovered this when I purchased a sale item for my second farm and my Club Membership Level increased to Level 9.  An announcement appeared to the effect that I now would have +9 more Power, 10 additional Cooking Bags from Neighbour Visits, 14 more opportunities to use OP instantly to complete Zeppelin Transport (something I have not used much at all), 800 additional Bait and the ability to refresh Daily Orders 6 times if I wished.  Note here that you are not GIVEN 800 Bait, but simply can HAVE 800 more than previously.  This allows easier use of the Boost with the more expensive Fishing Hooks.

A final note:  The Purple Island Gift Boxes tend to be obtained from time-limited Quest Rewards.  Cleanable Island Decorations purchased in the Market or constructed do not give these valuable Gift Boxes.