FarmVille Sneak Peek: Animal Mastery coming soon, say goodbye to your free time

While FarmVille has had crop and tree mastery for some time now, animals were left entirely out of the loop. It turns out though that this won't be the case forever, as FVNation has come across new loading screens detailing - you guessed it - Animal Mastery. The loading screens themselves say "Coming Soon," so it looks like even Zynga may not have decided when the right time really is.

That being the case, all we can do now is speculate. While it's a fairly easy assumption that each animal will have a Mastery Sign to work towards, we still don't know whether all varieties of a particular animal (that is, all Horse, all Sheep, all Ducks, etc.) will be mastered collectively, or if each individual animal will have its own sign. If I were a betting woman, I'd lay my cash on the latter. After all, what better way to encourage farmers to spend more Farm Cash on animals than if each individual animal, including those that were limited edition, came with a sign you could only earn from that specific animal?

Personally, I'd hope that things don't turn out that way, as there have been so many animals released over the years that I can easily see that outcome becoming overwhelming, but I guess all that's left for us to do now is wait and see. We'll keep a close eye on all things related to Animal Mastery in FarmVille, so keep checking back with us for more.

[Image Credit: FVNation]

In the meantime, let us know what you think of the idea of Animal Mastery in FarmVille. Would you prefer all of one kind of animal be mastered together, or do you want each individual variety of Sheep, Duck, etc. to have its own sign? Would you be more likely to purchase Farm Cash animals if you could master them down the line?

FarmVille Lighthouse Cove Sneak Peek: Restaurant Crafting Cottage revealed

Another day, another Lighthouse Cove teaser image in FarmVille. But I assure you farmers, this update isn't boring - it instead offers us as look at the new Crafting Cottage we'll be able to use once Lighthouse Cove opens up in full!

To be specific, the new Crafting Cottage comes in the form of a restaurant with lovely striped awnings and even seagulls hanging out on the roof. You might recognize this building from the Loading Screen image released just days ago, although this of course shows off much more of the building's detail.

In terms of new recipes, you'll be able to craft items like Cheddar Cheese and Clam Chowder. Here's the full scoop from Zynga:

    Harvest your new crops and collect new bushels because Lighthouse Cove has all new recipes. Craft and master new recipes like Farm House Cheddar Cheese and Clam Chowder in your very own restaurant!


Of course, we'll also likely be able to upgrade the restaurant to earn more recipes and crafting tables, although it hasn't been made clear yet whether this pictured Restaurant will be the permanent appearance for the building, or if it will change in shape or size as we upgrade it. We'll make sure to bring you those details, and more, as soon as Lighthouse Cove launches "soon."

What do you think of the Restaurant Crafting Cottage? Does this announcement raise your anticipation for Lighthouse Cove? Sound off in the comments.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: Black Necked Swan and other birds ready to take flight

If you've already become a big fan of the Aviary animal habitat in FarmVille, you'll be happy to know that new birds are ready to take flight into the game sometime soon, that is, if new unreleased images spotted by FarmVille Freak are anything to go on. These images show us five new birds, but we're not entirely sure how they'll be released. Before we get into the speculation, however, let's take a look at their expected names:

Blue Sumatra Rooster
Black Necked Swan
Sebastopol Goose
Dabbler Duck
Ancona Duck

While the Sebastopol Goose might seem like one heck of a name (alright, it is), it does refer to a real breed of domestic Goose. As for how these animals will launch in the game, we have a couple of options. They could either launch as a fairly large update to the game's store, which will likely see these birds priced in the 15-25 Farm Cash range, or they could be new birds that will be found inside Eggs that we'll hatch over time by collecting from our Aviaries (or claiming them from friends' wall posts).

Either way, there are some real lookers in this update (just look at the Rooster's beautiful coloring!), so I'm personally excited to see how and when they'll launch. Experience tells us that the earliest we can expect them would be sometime this weekend, so keep checking back with us for more.

[Image Credit: FarmVille Freak]

Which of these birds is your favorite? Would you pay Farm Cash to add any to your farm / Aviary? Sound off in the comments.

FarmVille Sneak Peek: FarmVille Friends feature finally detailed

While the FarmVille Friends feature has yet to go live in FarmVille (we're told that it's still a "couple of weeks" away), Zynga has finally detailed just how it will work. Not entirely unlike the Cafe World Chef Circle (which, again, is still unavailable to the mass public), you'll be able to browse through a list of FarmVille players that aren't your Facebook friends, and can send them neighbor requests. In this way, you'll be able to access some of the social features you can take part in with actual Facebook friends with these strangers.

Unfortunately, your interaction with these new FarmVille neighbors will be limited to simply visiting their farm or sending them free gifts. It doesn't look like we'll be able to see any of their News Feed requests or bonuses, which diminishes the value of this update immensely, if you ask me. To actually add these folks, you'll simply visit the "Add Neighbors" tab at the top of the screen. From there, you'll see five players at a time, and can see their names, current profile picture, country, in-game level, and when they last played. In this way, you can pick and choose the best "crop" of neighbors to help you out. You'll have to send a neighbor request to this individual, and they'll have to accept on their end for this to work. On that same token, you may find yourself swamped with neighbor requests if you continually show up in players' results when using this new feature. Note: You can remove yourself from the pool if you don't care to be found by strangers.

To be especially clear, these new FarmVille neighbors will have no additional access to any information you have made private on your profile, and do not have to be your Facebook friends. If, however, you find that they are incredibly helpful when it comes to visiting your farm, tending your crops or Chicken Coop, and you wish to add them as a real Facebook friend to open up further interaction, you can do that as well. Again, this feature has yet to launch, but we'll make sure to let you know when it does over the next couple of weeks.

What do you think of these details about the FarmVille Friends feature? Should Zynga create a way for us to be able to activate these new neighbors' wall posts, in addition to simply visiting their farms? Sound off in the comments.