hi! i'm really enjoying this game. if you're just getting started and feeling overwhelmed, i wanted to share some things i've learned so far. the game is very random, so try to stay flexible about what strategy you try. i'd love to hear your builds, too!

WET BUILD
you can make a farm that will basically water itself, if you activate the bonuses for wet, dry, and root crops, and crops like aloe and peanut that are unlocked.

HYBRID BUILD
some crops in the unlock sets have two main categories, like vegetable AND fruit, or seed AND flower, or even aloe which is wet AND dry. choosing these will activate more major set bonuses with fewer crops. that will also let you use a leveled up pig, requiring 8 set bonuses or more but giving a lot of points.

BEE BUILD
you can combine a four star bee with a build of flowers. adding another bee will make even MORE multiples. i especially like this with the flowers that gain value after a certain number of cards. flowers have a third quality that is activated if you have three. there are also crops and mutation options that gain value if they're adjacent to flowers.

EDGE BUILD
the spacious permit, which gives a bonus if there are two adjacent empty plots, is hugely valuable. if you build your farm out diagonally, you can maximize how many plots have two adjacent empty plots. the third tier permit gives 25g per tile, so even with just four of these near the end of a game, that's 100g every time. my current game looks like a paper snowflake to maximize the edges.

SEED BUILD
doing a seed build will benefit you with a lot of additional card draws, and you can combine it with a chicken that you level up as much as possible. with a four star chicken and eight seed crops in the field, you get a 100g chicken every other harvest. (save the animal swap permit and you can use these extra chickens to help level up your other animals, too.)

NARROW BUILD
if you have the support and climber cardset unlocked, think about a horizontal or vertical build to maximize the support or climber bonus. if you build out to 2x6 or 6x2 instead of something more square, you can get the bonus 6 per crop along the whole row or column. the support permit is also so valuable and doesn't have any minimum or maximum that will change and make it less good. the climber permit is good but increases the requirement as you level up.

if you have suggestions to share, please comment and i'll add them! i'm not an expert, not claiming to be, but i thought some ideas might help people get started or even just start to form their own strategies. thank you for reading!