What Did We Play Yesterday?

I've held off picking up Farm Together 2 while it's in Early Access, but the devs recently announced there would be a price increase soon so I went ahead and snagged my copy. In EA the game is $20 though it has dipped down to $18 a few times.

Farm Together 2 is definitely a More Of That Sequel, which is exactly what everyone wanted, but one significant change is that instead of building stalls to convert your crops you visit the in-game town. Once you've built a storefront, you can trade goods in a limited capacity (shops can run out of diamonds, for instance) and you can upgrade the shops to increase your good capacity, the diamonds they have, and so on.

I do like how this takes the first game's end-game Factory and combines it with the trade mechanism, and aesthetically it is nice to not have to build a bunch of stalls all over the farm. They have used the opportunity to create an artificial bottleneck so you can't just powergame your way into diamonds early game. The limited shop budgets force natural breaks.

The town also contains citizens who sometimes have quests. This part is a bit half-baked, and maybe a little buggy. There were a few quests the villagers would not let me fill, even though I had the items they wanted. I think there's an opportunity to really do something here in terms of an emergency story or even giving these characters some life, if the devs truly want to, but part of what makes this series great is the laser-focus on having the core farming mechanics be as satisfying as possible. So doing something with these NPCs beyond having them offer random quests might honestly be a bit outside the scope of what this game does.

The starting farm plot has a lot more STUFF on it, and the additional plots seem to have more diversity in terms of existing crops and animals.

Right off the bat, I planted a bunch of corn and then realized I had no way to offload grain (this happens in the first game, too). Down the road, I unlocked the bakery, but just a shout-out don't fuck around with corn until you have something to do with it (unless you just like the way it looks, large cornfields are definitely satisfying).

Another change is they've added some tractor automation. If you press shift (which I accidentally keep pressing, because on-foot it's the run button) the tractor will automatically process whatever it's doing forward in a straight line. This may be the dev's response to people utilizing tools like Cheat Engine late-game. I got into the habit of using a CE script whenever there was a holiday crop because the unlock numbers were extremely high and way beyond what I could or frankly wanted to invest. The auto tractor is technically faster than the player because it does not run the planting animations. I haven't tested it it much, but I will be thrilled if this ends up being a replacement for rigging up some nonsense with CE and auto-mouse.

Anyway, I played a few minutes and was like, oh, cool. More Farm Together. I already put like 100 hours into the first game, so I'm sure I won't get too weird about it this time.

A few hours later... as you can see from the screens, I definitely started getting weird about it. I'm here for it, though.

Progress is swift and satisfying at the farm. Just chillin out with my wheat. Built a house.

Not so sure about these NPCs, though. Their dialogue sounds like it was written by a robot. The good news is they offer little quests, and these reward you with green thumbs up things that you can trade for other resources.

Also, it turns out there IS a warehouse! The warehouse offers additional resource space on top of whatever you get from upgrading various stores.

Big things are happening. I unlocked the ability to make jam. This time around, you dump a bunch of pears and apples into a pot and jam comes out. What's neat is you can dump in enough for multiple batches. This is a way to convert crops to ribbons. Speaking of ribbons, I've unlocked a terraforming store but at 20 ribbons its a bit rich for my blood right now. I'll build it soon, now that I have an easier way to get ribbons besides doing random quests.

I'm increasingly fascinated by the secret lives of the villagers. Patrick is current my favorite. I also got around to decorating my house. Decorations will be pretty limited until DLC comes out but you can still make it nice and cozy. I was a late adopter of the previous game and ended up getting most of the DLC in a big bundle, and had a very good time with it.

Finally, I realized I could make waterfalls and lost my mind. Amazing. Beautiful. I have my fish in a non-ideal place, but I've been working on making it cute so now, that's just how it's gonna be. Aesthetic over efficiency, at least for now.

Keeping tabs on Patrick. Also continuing to do the thing. I've put aside my organized crop rows in favor of rotating crops based on whichever ones will unlock additional crops at higher levels. I also connected all my fish ponds, which is less aesthetically pleasing but it means you can harvest once instead of having to do each individually.

The terraforming feature is neat once you unlock it. It costs a few diamonds for each plot, and I used it to even out an uneven slope to make a nice flower garden. I've also taken to adding fences to my crop fields to help stop the auto-tractor if I'm not paying strict attention.

I continue to dislike livestock in this game, just because of the sheer volume required for quests, but this time they reduce the number of actual animal sprites per cluster which helps a lot. So instead of having 20 cows on 20 cow plots, you have like 10 cows on 20 plots. This game also has feeders but again, I'm not using them.

I did figure out sprinklers actually cover 9 tiles this time, which is AMAZING. So I've begun implementing those in my flower beds. At some point, I'm going to set up a large rotating crop bed and fill it with sprinklers for the random quest crops I don't already have fields for.

NNeed diamond

Decided to take a leetle break from Farm Together 2 after hitting level 36. There's still loads to do, I've only unlocked a fraction of the farmland and the town has tons of empty shops to fill, but I'd like to pace this one.

I'm supposed to be taking a break from Farm Together 2 but whenever I'm tired or don't have much time I'll jump in and grind out a few medals.

I recently learned many of the tiles and objects have color variants, which is very exciting and unlocks many decorating possibilities.

I'm currently in the process of reworking my flower gardens. I keep flowers with unlockables close to my house, but when they stop unlocking things I move them farther out to be harvested whenever there's a quest.

It's special event time! Yay! They look cool when you harvest them!

At first I was annoyed because I hit a 16,000 solo harvesting tier which is obviously prohibitive, but I then realized the daily goals reset. It's set up this way to prevent people (not mentioning any names, aka me) from setting up autoclicker unlocking everything in a day. So if you check in each day and harvest a bit, you should be able to unlock a decent amount of stuff over the next two weeks, maybe even all of it.

I opened my farm so other people can visit, but I think I'll see how long I can ride solo. There's a probably outdated cheat engine table floating around (and there's a malware pretending to be cheats on github so don't download that). I don't think it's a coincidence the malware popped up shortly after the event started.

FT2 is all I have the bandwidth for right now. I've been playing a few minutes every day but I keep forgetting to take screenshots.

The littlest discovers make me disproportionately happy. Yesterday, I unlocked garden boxes and discovered you could put tiny trees in them.

Progress on the special event continues. It looks like I'll be able to unlock everything doing a little bit each day, which is awesome and a welcome improvement over the grind of the previous game.

I'm continuing to putter around in FT2 and play around with landscaping. I finished the holiday questline with days to spare by achieving several of the lower-quantity milestones every day after they reset. This really worked for me, as it was non-grindy and I had a little thing to look forward to each day. I'm really glad they reworked the system this way.

One of the new items is a security booth. This allows you to set custom permissions for a plot of land. It is AWESOME. In FT, I was always wary of giving full access to the farm because I had seasonal crops I didn't want anyone to harvest. Now, you can remove permissions for a section as needed.

I also unlocked a second house. I wasn't sure how many houses they'd offer in the base game. At this stage, there's not a lot of decorations so it's more about being able to run multiple art/sculpting/cooking stations.

After a long day of chores I decompressed by spending time arranging my crops by color, as one does. I also set up a color grid for flowers so I can decide what order I want my final flower garden to look like. I've waffled between organizing them by color, because pretteh, versus organizing them by type so it will be convenient to harvest the type I need.

I decided to allow full permissions on my farm, since the only thing I don't want people to grief is holiday crops and those are protected now. One big complaint people had in FT was guests harvesting crops and not re-plowing after, but FT2's auto tractor automatically does that, so I don't think I have to worry too much about finding a bunch of empty, unplanted fields but we'll see. The game has signs that can dictate what crops are planted where, and other things, so you can get pretty granular with permissions if needed. I doubt I'll get any visitors, but if anyone gets on my nerves I can just lock it down again.

Previously, I organized trees by season, so I could harvest an entire section at once, and I had reeeeeaally long rows of each type. I think this time, I'm going to organize by season again, but have them in continuous sections of 27 or 36. I've only unlocked about half of them and they are still adding trees so I'm not to the point where I can really plan it out too well.

I realized I forgot to share Trout Park, which will become Koi Park whenever I unlock koi. Just a fun scenic area that takes advantage of the game's neat waterfall mechanics. The only part I don't like is the different tiers must be harvested independently. I'd like to experiment with higher waterfalls, and see if I can come up with a way to connect tiers though I'm sure I can't..

Last game, I set up a pretty complicated orchard where the seasons flowed into each other, so all the winters were together, etc. But it wasn't perfect because there were a few outlier trees that were hard to fit into the pattern. This time I decided I'd simplify my life and set up 4 seasonal treelines that have an assortment of trees that produce that particular season. This is exclusively so any given season, I can auto tractor down the line and fully harvest everything, and not have to devote so much land to rows and rows of trees.1

Finally organized my mess of animals. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a fan of the sheer volume of animals there are, and I'm still thinking of ways to maintain a decent stock of animals without it completely overwhelming everything. I've started planting feed supply crops just for them in their little areas. I tend to run short of grains, and corn is the cheapest and fastest grain crop, so I've got some nice long fields of corn contained with white fences.

My tree unlocks lag behind everything else, and those are the ones I want to work on. I think I'm gonna set up something similar to my flowers, and have clusters based on what I want to unlock most quickly, but idk. I also started making "type" forests, so for example, near Trout Park there's a pear forest filled with different trees that all produce pear-type resources. It's not as efficient as long ass rows of trees, but I like the way it looks a lot better.

I wish the game had seasonal signs.

I've had a few visitors and everyone has been very nice. I put up a "do whatever you want and have fun" welcome message, but I think having a meticulously organized color coded farm naturally encourages people to keep things tidy, and the guests have maintained my planting patterns.

I built a second house. It's HUGE and the game doesn't have enough furniture to furnish it, so I'll stick to the cosy starter house for now.

The mechanical draw of having multiple houses is you can have additional crafting stations going: 2 stoves, an easel, and a piano. I doubt I'll ever get grindy about that but it's good to have options.

A busy day left me with low bandwidth, so I piddled around on my farm. Since I was playing later at night, I got a few visitors, including a lovely visitor who left a very nice guestbook message but decided to replant some of my fields with the wrong crops. I have a carefully terraced grape area and alas, they did not plant grapes there. They also messed with my tomato color coded rows.

Witness the horrors (chickpeas in my tomato beds).

Now I know how this makes me feel: itchy. Lol. You can buy crop instruction signs that only allow a certain crop to be planted in an area, so if it keeps happening I can either do that or change my farm permissions, but I'm gonna TRY to be a little more flexible here. It's probably good for me.

I finally unlocked the first type of water lantern, so I began refining my hatchery and you know, I REALLY don't like those seasonal tree rows I planted, but I think I might like them better after I fully pave and decorate the area. IDK. Most of my crop unlocks are to the grindy phase (level 50 cosmic carrots, level 80 peanuts) but what really needs work is my orchard.

Popped back into Farm Together just in time for a new pet-themed holiday. I want the stuff! Buut I don't want the grind so I'll see how far the 100 crops a day goal gets me.

I sorta forgot there was an event going on, so now I'm making it Muh Business to get in there and get those unlocks. I hit level 80 which unlocks the mines. I appreciate they wanted to do something different. I'm not sure how I feel about it, though. I also unlocked a horn decoration? I'm not really sure what that's about.

On the plus side, I unlocked water lily pathway yesss.

I also realized I wasn't utilizing my second house at all so I filled the entryway with all the crafting furniture.

Well I completely forgot to check in on Farm Together's latest seasonal event, leaving me with 2 days to get the goods. It was done in a day, thanks to the generosity of a few megafarmers who have massive seasonal crop fields set up for the purpose of grinding. Bless.

Coming back to this game, I realize I have a bit of a diamond bottleneck. I want to unlock more land, and it looks like leveling the mines might be the best way to get diamonds. I'll have to poke around a bit.

Under the weather which makes it the perfect time to fiddle faddle in FT2. Put together a little seasonal pumpkin patch area. I also decided to get a bit more serious about leveling up my fruit trees and thinking ahead about how to set up a useful orchard.

Decided to expand my Halloween section to be a full pumpkin patch. I figured out I'll unlock the Town Hall at level 100 (I think I'm at 86) and I look forward to having a utility place so I can focus on landscaping my main farm with less efficiency in mind.

Also playing the chill puzzle game Inbento, in which foods are neatly arranged in a child's lunchbox. For me, this one falls in the "Eh, it's fine," category, but I will continue to work on it.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this gaming session. I didn't want to fuss with grinding diamonds for decorating the house I never use so I set up a Cheat Engine script to give myself 50,000 diamonds which, in retrospect, was massively overkill. But that's okay because I used to do a bunch of landscaping. Expanded my pond bit (I'll have to rework it completely when I finally unlock koi) and set up a nice little relaxation area next to the house.

I decided I'd like to organize my farm with themed areas, so I'm gonna set up a bamboo grove, an apple orchard, and so on. When I get to level 100 I can unlock side farms and use those to set up boring grindy rows of things and get my crop levels up.

Continuing to enjoy landscaping, and finally built the rainbow flower garden I've been meaning to do. Also discovered some decoration variants I hadn't noticed before (wagon filled with pumpkins... aaaaa) so I've been tidying and stashing things wherever.

Had the day off and spent a silly amount of time landscaping. Finally added the first stage of the massive flower garden (which blew through much of my millions of coins), expanded the bamboo forest, added a beach tropical resource thing that still needs work to replace the pond stuff with beach stuff and added a train and trout pond that definitely needs work because the water looks like it's flowing backwards on one section.

The train just sorta chugs along at its own pace, so it's less about getting from one place to another and more about chilling out and observing the farm. I'll set up an outside loop at some point.

Now that I'm getting into it I don't think I'll set up a grinding farm. Having unique resource-specific areas is working out well and having a couple of big grinding plots for quest crops will probably be enough.

I unlocked a ticket booth that allows exchanging random drop tickets for rewards. I may have farmed 6 tickets yesterday idk. No opinion on it at this time, I did prefer that they did away with tickets this game (until now anyway) and focused on diamonds and medals to pay for non crop/animal stuff.

Living my best life.

I've reached the point where the bottleneck on unlocking new crops isn't the crops themselves, it's the farm level, so I decided to start focusing on making resource-specific areas. The flower garden/dolphin park is a work in progress as I experiment with tiles and see what they look like when mixed together in different ways. Digging the cobblestone ponds.

I unlocked koi! Very exciting. Unfortunately I won't unlock the other varieties for a while. Once I relocate all the salmon I can put koi there instead.

I keep unlocking things that make my farm look better, so I was able to redo some of the pondy areas and so on. I was gonna expand my tiered flower garden but I accidentally unlocked the wrong landscape plot (boo) so I'm focusing on the tropical crop area now.

I was thinking okay, I think I'm over FT2 for a bit. But then I started taking pictures of the things I've built lately and it really made me happy so idk I guess I'm gonna live here a bit longer.

I've been working on little livestock centric areas. I don't like having huge areas of animals. This game actually reduces the number of sprites for large animals,which I really appreciate (so 2 or 3 cows only shows as 1 cow) as it helps keep things less cluttered, but I'm gonna try just keeping small sections of animals. Livestock quests are rarer than crop quests so it's not a big deal.

I have an abundance of ribbons so I hired 2 farmhands, one to continually harvest the apple orchard and another to continuously harvest and plant a few crops that have really high unlock levels (carrots and peanuts, mostly). I'll usually toss a few flower pots at the edges of their area so those can get passive leveling as well. I've also begun fortifying most of my crop fields with sprinklers, which half the grow time.

I have plenty of diamonds for everything I wanna do BUT buying plots of land (up to 21k now), but I'm trying to do as much as I can with my existing plots before I CE more diamonds. I don't have a way to grind for diamonds that isn't boring (I kinda hate the mines and I enjoy harvesting what I feel like harvesting or completing quests but I don't like grind-planting to sell for diamonds). The first game had some crops that produce diamonds, but this game the only one so far is the halloween trees, and those cost 15 diamonds each so it takes a while to earn back the investment (2 harvests per year, so 7.5 years assuming you don't miss any fall/winter harvests which I certainly have).

I've unlocked both cinnamon trees now, so I could set up a spice farm with a farmhand. I'll have to check the conversion on ribbons to diamonds (it's funny to me I'm thinking of "downgrading" ribbons to diamonds but whatever.)

I have been having a blast in FT2, and didn't bother blogging since it's just "THIS IS FUN Weeee".

It's holiday time! Maxed out the holiday event and made a little area. Originally it took up a whole plot but I have since condensed it to half a plot since the poinsettias really don't need to take up that much space.

I picked up the Meadow and Gothic expansions to treat myself and am thrilled with both. The only "issue" is the houses, especially the gothic one, are freaking huge. The Gothic pack has more stuff generally but I really dig the flower fences and art style of Meadow.

Lots of re-arranging and expanding favorite areas (since taking these screenshots I've rearranged at least 3 of those areas), I'm experimenting with less roads we'll see how that goes.

Finally unlocked cherry trees.

I decided I kind of hated having all my chickens in one big mixed plot, so I started breaking them out into their own areas. I'm experimenting with landscape fencing and mixing in trees and flowers. I'm also spacing out my ducks. After I realized ducks will interact with water I wanted them all to have their own ponds. I'm still trying to avoid having massive livestock tracks.

Also trying to create more mixed flower arrangements and beds, using checker and stripe patterns.

I belatedly realized there's an event in Farm Together 2, and now I'm sucked back into it. The timeline is a little tight on this one, so I had to grind at a megafarm to make sure I'd get the points.

Very excited for unicorns (and peacocks, an unrelated recent update). They provide much better diamonds compared to the fruit bat trees.

I finally got around to redesigning my castle layout and I'm much happier with it. The previous one was too cramped.

Well, I am officially back on my bullshit. Today I expanded and beautified my vineyard.

Made the castle cooler. The bamboo area has always been a little cramped so I moved the house to free up some space and planted a lot more bamboo there, which was inspired partly by a quest needing way more bamboo than I actually had.

I still have a good number of lots to unlock, but the barrier is my farm level. So now I'm just filling up the space I have however I can.I experimented with having clusters of animals that would be a few of each type, because I never liked having like... a massive field of x pig or whatever... but that's really not enough livestock to level up and unlock additional species timely. I've begun to start stashing clusters of animals of one species stashed away in various nooks and crannies. I'd like to have a dedicated plot for each type of crop and animal, I just don't want to have lots of boring uniform boxes like it's some factory.

Decided to centralize the horsies and move the lower left quadrant apple farming area, which always felt cramped, next door. I'm trying to make sure food resources are close to the animals they feed.

It's event time in Farm Together 2 again, which I just happened to notice by accident, and the rainbow llamas are probably the best thing that has happened to me all week. For this one they've updated how they display the quests which is kinda overwhelming but that's ok. There's a crap ton to do so I'll probably need to hop onto a megafarm at some point. This time, they've added new favor unlocks after you unlock all the items as a nod to the mega grinders, which is nice even though I am obviously not one of them.

They recently added some floor and rug items, which are GREATLY appreciated, and I'm closing in on level 150. This is a big deal for me, because I will unlock new varieties of my favorite things: sunflowers, koi, and peafowl. I am extremely excited about this.

There's also a new DLC!! They started offering these as a bundle on steam, so you get a discount of 25%, which is honestly a great way to let people decide if they wanna do the $5 or pay a discounted rate. I actually don't care too much about the winter theme, except it helps round out the christmas decorations. It also comes with 5 crocus variations and 3 holly trees which is welcome. I'll probably grab this one after I finish up with the event stuff.

I am once again reorganizing my farm. This time, decided to stuff all the Valentine's day event into it's own tiny section, since there isn't a lot of it.

BIG DAY. Finally unlocked golden poinsettias, which matters because I was waiting patiently for all those level 150-152 unlocks and now it's a fairly long stretch before I unlock more anticipated stuff. Most of the poinsettias take 1 to 2 days to mature, but they give a lot of XP, so it's a good time to invest in boosts and grind. I have way too many marble poinsettias, which are event flowers and therefore offer middling rewards, but there's no point in ditching them until I need the space.

I finally moved the Christmas section to to upper right quadrant, which was something that was really bugging me. I'm probably gonna turn that whole upper right corner into a snowy area, assuming I have enough stuff that "belongs" to warrant that much snowy terrain.

Had to expand the rabbit area. Slowly but steadily filling in the map. Etc. Etc. Just lots of moving things around, making my happy places, with the occasional grinding when high level items are available.

Lately I've been expanding existing areas so I can up my livestock numbers, a lot were in groups of 20 or 30 and I've managed to double most of them by rearranging areas or filling up dead space. I was originally pretty resistant to having lots of square grids of animals for aesthetic reasons, and I've tried to come up with creative ways to fence or otherwise section these areas without it being a major PITA to harvest.

I got the idea to do a chicken/shrub "checkerboard", the idea is to use trees, flowers, etc., as natural fences. At the very least, it provides visual interest and helps break up the sections. With the pigs... IDK man I don't really like pigs! But I came up with a grid area that can be expanded easily when I unlock the plots on either side.

The Clover Parade event has a LOT of cool unlockables, it's basically a mini-DLC. The pot of gold generates diamonds, ribbons, and puzzle pieces every 18 hours and is by far the best passive building I have. I unlocked a bunch of frankly cool fences and a much needed extra border. The stuff is all clover/celtic-knot themed and it works well as normal decorative pieces, whereas some of the event stuff like the valentine's day path is a bit too holiday-centric to really fit in as general decorations. I would say this is the second best event I've played so far, next to the Halloween one which was so cool I devoted nearly a whole plot to event unlockables and that theme area is one of my favorites on my farm.

I've begun experimenting with the sidewalk ground texture with mixed results. I was over-engineering the little garden by my blue house and noticed a weird bug when you're layering ground textures near curved land areas. I'm sure the devs are aware of it but I might pop into the discord and share a screenshot at some point. I had to terraform the area a bit to avoid getting a weird pavement pattern diagonal to the corner. If you stand on that paved area it is identified as "grass" but shows the paved icon.

Lets see what else. Oh I finally found a reasonable aesthetic solution for my koi ponds, for now. I've fussed with that area a great deal, originally playing around with linked bridges and other things. Having a peninsula terrace works for now.

I'm primarily focused on unlocking lots so I can expand, which means grinding out my farm level. I don't care to grind in this game, so I've begun looking into which crops/animals will give the most XP when boosted. Poinsettias are the obvious choice but 1 to 2 day waits are Not It so I'll think some more about how I want to do this.

Yesterday was a lot of event silliness. One of the event rewards is a harp, which looks just like the harp statue you craft to earn points. The difference? The real harp plays music! I experimented a bit with the clover parade road pattern, trying to find ways to isolate the horseshoe and clover, and ended up using them to top-off other roads.

I also grabbed a screen of a megafarm so you can witness the absolute craziness that is possible. This farm was so loaded with llamas, money trees, crops, and special decorations my PC was whirring like crazy trying to keep up. I wasn't entirely sure I'd get all 60 points by the end of the event so I grinded out a few goals just in case.

I experimented with ramps. I wish two ramps side-by-side merged, because it would help visually even out even-space-wide plateaus and whatnot. As it is, it just places 2 ramps side by side and you can actually get stuck in that tiny gap if you aren't paying attention.

Finally met the Clover Parade unlock goals. For some reason, this one felt a bit grindier than the last, maybe because the last one had less event plants. I wanted the event area to be a little different so I made a hidden leprechaun grotto tucked away in the NE corner of the map.

Continuing to expand cramped areas as I unlock more lots. Cows are probably next, I've stuffed them all onto their own island and most types are 20ish animals. I'd like to get it up to about 60 per type, so the 120 cow goals are hit in 2 harvests rather than say 6. I think the game tries to encourage larger herds of animals like that. I ran out of diamonds which was EXTREMELY HORRIFYING but hopefully I'll replenish by the time I get my next land unlock.

If you heard delighted shrieking at any point yesterday that was me. They released decorative trees, so I got my beloved willow trees back, and promptly put them EVERYWHERE. Then I unlocked dragonfruit trees. It was truly a bounty.

I psychologically and emotionally prepared myself to move my banana and mango farms, and did so yesterday. Not only was it crazy cluttered over there, but I figured out having my coconut trees, avocado trees, and prickly pears all in that general area worked better. I need to build a different area for the other tropical fruit.

I recently discovered I like building certain fences with gates only so I can pop in and out at any point without triggering the climb animation. It is VERY fun to run in circles around these. Whee!

Relocated most of the tropical trees to their new hopefully forever home, and ended up building pineapple palace. Pleased with that!

I got the idea to organize my berry bushes in a pattern so the fruiting times go from season to season. It's kind of dumb but whatever. I had to map it out on paper first.

I realized I misjudged tickets because I didn't actually understand how they work. When they first debuted, I glanced at the resources offered, was unimpressed, and never bothered redeeming any tickets and didn't worry too much about collecting them. Well, recently I decided to spend a few and that's when I realized 1) the resources improve considerably after you level up the stall and 2) the resources rotate, so when you buy, a new set of offers is loaded up. So if you wanted to upgrade a stall and you were short a resource, you could pop over to the ticket booth and try to trade for what you need. So. The more you know. 🫱🌈 🫲

I'm experimenting with terrain patterns in Farm Together 2. Made an actual checkerboard and filled it with bushes. They're supposed to be in sort-of seasonal order, with spring-blooming facing my cherries which are also spring-blooming, and summer facing the summer tropical section. It's a little tricky because for example only black mulberries bloom in spring, but winter had I think 4/6 varieties that bloom. It's a work in progress. I like it so far.

I was thinking about how I've glommed onto this game lately. I don't consider myself stressed per se, the State of Living has changed for most of us and I've adapted to that, but I think a big part of what draws me into this game right now is order. I can construct extremely orderly, logical environments that still have a lot of creative elements and--design wise--surprises. Looking over my color-coded lettuce resource crops gives me a sense of satisfaction and calm. And a lot of the changes I'm making right now are actually making my farm MORE orderly and a little less chaotic. I guess I'm just working out some stuff here.

So on the one hand, I'm like... I'm nearing 200 hours in this silly farm game and I'm neglecting some of my creative projects, should I be concerned about that? And on the other hand, I'm like you know what, I'm blowing off a lot of steam playing a creative game that has $5 DLC packs and I have not hit the bottle once this is OBJECTIVELY FINE, THANK YOU.