Overview
FarmingSimulator2013 Startup and Tips
Overview
Welcome to Farming Simulator 2013 (Titanium)!
I recently bought the game, it is an odd combination of Simcity, Farmville and GTA.. very slow paced casual game, you’ll either love or hate – but that isn’t the reason for this guide..
Body
If just starting out… welcome!
Immediately slow down time to normal – 7 slows down, 8 speeds up time, as you have maintenance fees right away and crops are withering!
Speeding up time speeds up your crop growth or wither time, and maintenance fees or passive income (comes later). Running in normal time is suggested at first, as vehicle speed is not increased with time.
As suggested often, if playing in Hagenstedt, sell the 4 cheap Tractors plus the Argon red tractor (optional) you are given – either through “p” or if you want can drive them to the center of town to the ‘direct sell’ marker for 20% more profit. You can sell the plow for now if you want too, but may want another later to extend fields. The green tractor is all you will need til you want a 2nd one of them.
Sell your cultivator and seeder – there is a 2 in 1 that works much better and reduduces your work load – buy the HORSCH Express 3 TD 3-point Seed Drill. The Seed Drill (shown below) plows AND seeds your field, cutting an entire process out.
edit: As @RMY-Draco_Ares points out, “The Horshe Pronto 8m and 9m both cultivate and seed as they are seed drills.”
Buy a AMAZONE ZA-X 1402 fertilizer, only $9,800 and doubles your future crops. You can attach this to the back or front of your tractor. Use this on the harvest-ready field you start the game with, it is NOT fertilized by default. The larger $14,000 fertilizer has increased width and capacity if you’d rather.
Take out a loan to max – only costs $280 (easy) per day in interest at $200k – press “ins” (insert key) to open your income without driving to an ATM. Press “take out loan” for 5,000 until it stops letting you.
If/when you take out max loan or when you have the cash, purchase 1 Solar panel and at least 3 Beehouses – these give passive income, IE you do nothing for it, and they help offset maintenance and worker fees – buy more Beehouses as able.
Purchase a larger tipper when able/needed – the larger storage is very helpful once you have larger fields or higher yields. Sell your old tipper or connect it to the back of the new one.
Multiple harvesters work just as well as upgrading to the more expensive harvesters, for less cash, having two harvesters start at opposite sides allows you to collect with your tipper almost constantly.
Tips
Canola seems to be the best crop to start with, good yield when fertilizied, great sale price, and no hay or straw left over to deal with – everything works but in my exp canola has been best crop to use.
Barley and Wheat are the second best options starting out but their yield is MUCH higher so it will require either a large tipper or more trips to storage/sales. Consider growing wheat and barley on your closest field and canola on distant ones. Both these also produce byproduct you can bale.
The cheapest bale options are the Fahr APN ($9,000) and the Bale Loader ($9,000) by Lizard (both historic but cheap and work). You can sell bales at the small brown barn near your reset point, also where you sell grass cuttings. The historic IH Farmall H tractor ($8,900) will run the APN baler but I can not get it to use the bale loader FYI.
You do NOT need to plow and cultivate, either or is fine, and if you buy the 3-point Seed Dril as suggested you only need to use the Seed Drill, followed by fertilize and harvest for canola, barley or wheat. I can not stress enough how helpful this drill is and how easy it made seeding crops.
You CAN use almost any cutter on your starter Fahr harvester – it makes collecting a bit trickier but using the Deutz 5465 H cutter or Deutz 7545 RTS cutter with your Fahr M66 can double or triple your harvest time (the longest time of the game).
Same goes for larger harvesters, can use cutters not originally built for it.
Vehicles let you “tab” key to their position, use this to your advantage – I keep a lawn mower parked at my chickens and another mower at the egg buyer – doing this I can tab-key, collect eggs, tab-key, sell eggs in no time at all – AMAZONE Profihopper’s cost a whole $5 a day and provide great place-holders.
Chickens and eggs aren’t great profit but require no food or bedding, just collect eggs daily (or whenever bored).
You can also sell grass, collect it with your cheap Profihopper and dump it in your vehicle lot near the potatoes/beets for decent income. Later on you can make silage as well.
Only buy tractors with front and back connectors, the light-weight ones are useless unless you need a ride.
You can connect tippers together, increasing ability with fewer tractors
Check for the best place to sell – using your PDA (“I” then pressing “I” and “9” to go through channels) you can check on prices at the Mill, Port and Inn. I find the Inn has very good prices for the extra drive (larger tipper helps move more).
Wait for high-demand and sell your starter crops, the game gives you 16k~ of each crop to start with, when they are in demand – sell for profit as you don’t need crops!
Auctions happen occasionally and offer a great way to get discounted land. Wait til the very end of the time period to bid, as bidding only causes other people to bid. If the price isn’t right or the land is too far, don’t worry you can always buy it later (at full price).
Sales for items (“P”) are also great ways to find good prices, check daily. Sometimes entire Brands are even on sale.
Buy a Beehouse for every vehicle you get or tool, helps offset maintenance fees with passive profit.
You can connect two or more fields, or make fields larger, using a plow (not cultivator). Purchasing field 15 and connecting it to your starter 16 can work out great.
Do not speed up time while seeding or fertilizing as it throws off growth times.
F1 will close the help bar in the top-left of window.
“F” will turn on headlights/tail-lights of some vehicles.
You can slow down or speed up crop growth/wither time through the “esc” settings temporarliy, good to do while waiting for crops or if several fields are ready together to prevent wither.
Double-clicking a vehicle icon will take you directly to it – rather then tab-keying through everything.