A beginners guide to Farming Simulator 19

[humbe]

Without knowledge of previous installations of the game, nor much knowledge of
farming in general, it took a bit of time to get into the game. I failed to
find good official nor unofficial documentation of the game. When searching
I find forums and youtube videos, but no good beginner guides one with dense
information, so I thought I'd summarize a bit to possibly help other newcomers.
(And more experienced players, feel free to comment on bits that I've missed)
I've only tested this a couple of week, so the info is likely severely lacking,
but should hopefully help people wondering what to do early on in this fairly
open game.

Goal / Game types:

Farming Manager 19 is a very open game with no defined victory goals. I've seen
no ranking, high score or even an in game score of any kind. Leaving it up to
you to define your own goals to achieve. Personally, I'm into trying to
calculate optimal paths and my personal goal is to try and get as much income
per game time unit as possible, without the gameplay getting too tedious in
real time. But as it turns out, there are poor game mechanics that can be
abused for easy cash, so I'm in the process of trying to figure out what self
proposed rules I'll add to try and avoid the worst abuses. Would be good to fix
the easily exploitable mechanics, and be able to set difficulty at start time
so one could make some sort of scoring.

The game can also be altered in many ways by using some of the hundreds of mods
available. Some will alter game play pretty drastically. Most are variations of
vehicles, equipment and maps. The ones I've found with the largest impact on
gameplay is Courseplay and Seasons.

Courseplay allows extensive automization of driving. Almost all driving can
be automized. If you go all in here, the game is suddenly about defining how
various tasks are done as optimal as possible, and then decide where to invest
your capital and manage workers to do the work for you. Then the question comes
if you'd rather play that game, or if you want to actually do farming work
yourself. I'm testing it out currently, but not sure yet what type of game is
most fun to play. Having the option of automizing tasks that gets too repetative
is nice though.

Seasons on the other hand tries to add more realism to the game. The main game
makes many fairly big simplifications, and it doesn't document very well what
they are. Seasons fixes some of them and documents the new behavior, making the
game both better and more intuitive. Even though it adds complexity, I found
it easier to get into the game with seasons enabled.

Many players try to add personal rules limiting their game play to create
various challenges and come up with many different ways to play the game. Some
seems to concentrate on logging, while others seems more into animal husbandry.
Personally I've been starting the game trying to get good at farming cereals,
but have plans to extend into other bits at a later time.

Time:

There's an in-game clock looking like a real world clock, and you can adjust
how fast it will run, and a day in the game seems to look like a day in real
life. However, while you might assume a year has 12 months and 365ish days and
the day of the year matters as to what a farmer should do, in the base game
there doesn't seem to be any notion of a time unit larger than a day. I can't
even find a measure of how many days have past since the game started. Every
day is the same, you can do whatever each day, and winter is not coming. I was
expecting the crop to use weeks to grow, but sleeing through the first night, I
missed all growth stages of my crop as it went from nothing to ready for
harvest with no fertilization and lots of weed. Normal crop growth is one
growth stage per 6.6 hours. Fast is 5.3 hours (-20%) and slow is 13.3 hours
(x2). As there are 4 growth stages, on fast you'll get through them all in 21.2
hours, so you can sow and harvest every day on the same field if you work
nights. You can control crop growth in the settings. You can also turn it
complete off, which is useful to be able to sleep through the dark night.
Turning crop growth off while working fields also ensures fields stay at the
same level, so the start of the field isn't ready for harvest once you've
finished seeding the last part.

If you install the Seasons mod, you get a year with 12 months and 4 seasons with
3 months in each, and you can use settings to control the number of days per
month from 1-8. (But in settings they are x3 as they record length of season).
You get a calendar of when to sow and harvest various crops. As the year then
becomes at least 12 days instead of 1-2 days, boosting time x120 may feel a
bit lackluster with a much longer season, so a mod to speed up time even more
may be useful. I use a mod called Farm Forward, giving me a keyboard shortcut
to run tim x600 or x6000 so I can just keep the game in real time mode and use
the shortcut to forward to next morning when wanted.

I'm assuming you can play as long as you want to without dying of age in game,
but I've found no information on whether there's any reason to be efficient
with in game time or not. (Apart from some costs being a static amount per
in game time day)

How to start:

As a new player it should make sense to start in "New farmer" mode. If you pick
Ravenport you get a small tutorial. For both Felsbrunn and Ravenport you get a
starting farm, including some land, vehicles, gear and buildings. Enough to be
able to do the most basic cultivating, seeding and harvesting, but no
fertilizing, lime or weed handling.

The land you start on is very expensive per acre, and the equipment you start
with is not very good. While not optimal for working fields, the starting
positions has some free space for animals and some trees to work too, so they
offer you a chance to try everything out.

Initially I felt the starting equipment wasn't very good, and I didn't feel I
needed to prioritize having 3 tractors to begin with as I was planning to driving
them myself. Thus I ended up using farm-manager mode where you get a million
dollars to buy whatever you want to begin with. (You actually start with 1.25 mill
but the last 0.25 mill is a loan)

However, you can also sell equipment, vehicles and land that you start with.
If you use the seasons mod, you can sell vehicles and equipment back to the shop
for full price within the first 30 minutes after buying (all starting equipment
seems to count as being bought at the game start). When selling gear or
equipment you get 20% more if you bother moving it to a sellpoint. If you sell
quick in the main game at the sellpoint, you get close to the full price back.
Lands always buy and sell for the same price regardless of state, making it
easy to take advantage by buying fields ready for harvest and selling them after
the harvest. Buildings give half the value when selling, and selling the silo
you get some money for the crops already stored in it (though I guess you can
probably get more for it if you sell it at sellpoitns).

In new farmer mode in base game Ravenport, I sold everything as fast as I
managed, and I ended up with 1.435.072 dollars afterwards, which is
considerably more than the million you get to start with in farm-manager mode.
Thus, independent of whether you want the starting gear, some of it, or none of
it, the new farmer mode is the easiest start nevertheless.

As said, the starting farm area allows you to do a little of everything.
Forestry, animal husbandry and crops, but if you're to start doing everything,
you can only afford the worst tools in all categories. Personally, I'd rather
prioritize early on and limit what I go for and get half decent tools to do
them.

As I prioritize field work to begin with I'd:
- Sell Fiat and one Case IH tractor, upgrade the other Case to strongest
engine and getting a fendt 500 favorite as utility. Or sell all tractors
and get a Massey Ferguson 7726 that can do just about anything.
- Sell all the decorative buildings that only takes up space on farm.
- Sell cultivator and seeder and get a seeder with a bit more working width
that also cultivates and maybe even fertilize.
- Maybe selling the combine to get another one.
- Emptying the silo is a good source for some extra cash early on.

How to earn money:

You can earn money on your own assets (fields, animal pens, trees...), but
assets cost money and you don't start off with a lot. Typically you'll need
years to earn back your investment working them. (At least on harder economic
settings) If you are trying to earn the most money in the least amount of game
time possible, you will likely be heavily dependent on contracts to begin with.
That way you can skim profits of others assets too. To me it looks like I can
earn much more on contracts the first year, than I can earn from working my own
assets.

To be able to do contracts with less work and maximize income from them, it
might be good to prioritize getting good vehicles and equipment for contracts
rather than buying as much assets as you can for yourself. That way you less
often need to pay for leasing gear, and if you use workers, they complete
faster with bigger working width, leaving them with less wages.

There are also ways to take advantage of some weak game mechanics. For instance,
you can take advantage of static land prices, so you can get only harvesting
gear and just buy land ready for harvest and then sell it again. A good rule
might be to never sell property, possibly with the exception of selling to buy
a property worth more. Or to always buy property in winter time if you're using
seasons. Another way to take advantage in seasons is to buy awesome gear that
makes you able to finish work quickly, so you can sell it back for full price
after you're done. A good rule could be to only sell for full price if you
bought something that didn't work as you'd expect it to, so basically to
counter for lacking information pre-purchase.

Theres no score board, and it's also easy to cheat with editing save games or
using mods, so it's up to you to define your own limitations that leave the
game still fun and interesting. Would be good if the biggest exploits were
fixed though.

Many of the products can be sold in multiple locations on the map, with prices
varying over time. I think +/- about 30% from a base price. The Economic
Difficulty setting doesnt change buy prices, but changes sell prices a lot.
You can switch it around to see how large the differences are. The products
that sell for more typically have lower yields, and the products that produce
straw require you to make straw bales and sell or use them to make comparable
profits. Some special products like root crops, corn, cotton and corn silage
have bigger profits but require more labor to grow. (Though if you play at
Real Time, typically more real time work but not more in game time as you'd
typically have downtime to skip anyhow)

Driving:

First a note on damage. It seems now matter how hard you hit something, your
vehicle or gear wont take damage. If you're driving a trailer and the train
hits you making you do a triple somersault and land on the roof, you will take
no damage, and the trailer will not empty, even if it's open at the top. If you
crash badly though, you may end up in a position where you can't drive off, in
which case you may need to reset the vehicle and gear to make it return to shop
location. If you do so, it may lose fuel/stored content or the like. As crashing
don't damage your vehicles you may also try to roll it over again using another
vehicle. Thus, try to not hit something too hard, but there's no need to be
overly careful to not hit something.

Also note that some bits of the map you can drive straight through as it wasn't
there, some bits (often traffic signs) will fall over if hit, and some bits are
unbreakable and will cause you to stop dead no matter what. This also differs
for different types of equipment. On Greenwich map I had issues with harvester
header that refused to go through any sort of bush or hedge.

If you're not using addons or workers, the game will mostly be about you
driving something. Even if you use workers as much as you can you will likely
still be driving something most of the time as workers can't do everything and
for what the workers can do, the AI isn't always good enough to handle the job
correctly.

Steering a wheel with 2 digital keys as the only input doesn't work very well.
All you can decide is if you want to turn the wheel in one direction, so rather
than turning the wheel to the wanted amount of degrees, you will have to wait
until the wheel gets there, and once you get there it will not stay there, so
you have to try pressing and let go fast in order to keep it close. While
trying to drive straight going back and forwards on a field, it is ok, as the
wheel easily adjust to straight forward position, but when turning, and
especially when backing up, it is a pain. For a game primarily about driving
this seems lackluster.

I've tried with a wheel and pedal setup and that works a lot better when
manually driving around, but I'm using my desk for other stuff than playing
FS19 too, and even while playing I still want to use keyboard and mouse which
gets clumsy with a big wheel attached to the desk. Using pedals while on an
office chair on wheels isn't a great combo either. Not surprised if I end up
ditching the wheel and rather use more Coarseplay.

I've tested the Guidance Steering mod, which gives you the option to buy GPS
unit for each vehicle for $15.000 each, and if you have it on the vehicle you
can set up waypoints, and make your vehicle automatically drive a dead straight
line, and defining lanes matching exactly to your working width. It does not
turn for you though, so while it's a great help in a long field, it has limited
value on small fields. On the good side though, it doesn't feel like cheating.
Tractors drive with GPS in the real world and you still need to manage it.

Courseplay enables you to set up routes for just about anything, and have
workers drive the routes for you (by default they are not configured to get any
wages either. You can fix that in config). This allows you to automatize a
whole lot, but also redefines what you do in the game. An option is to use it
limited to automize the bits you find most repetative or boring, or to allow
you to "multiplay" solo by having a helper to cooperate with on the same field.

How does vehicles/equipment work?

The shop states quite a few technical details about equipment, but is
lackluster on quite a few details. Tracking down which gear works with what
other gear is tedious. Personally I found it useful to work contracts whenever
I can lease equipment I haven't tested before. Many crucial details you only
learn by trying the gear out, and if you do it in a contract you can test the
gear free of charge. For instance:

- Trailers like HKD 302 with a lose axel in front is very hard to drive
backwards.
- The Mega 2200 sprayer in crop protection category can be front mounted, so
you may use it while you do another job in same field with rear mounted
gear. (What can be mounted in front is not shown. I typically assume gear
without wheels/tracks can be mounted in front too, given a tractor with
3pnt-PTO connection of course.
- The LSB 1290D baler allows you to keep on driving all the time, while the
others require you to stop and manually empty the bales.
- The Schmetterling is very hard to use and bales keep falling of.
- The Merge MAXX 902 windrower has only a 9.1m working width compared to
Hibiscus 1515 CD Profi with 14.8m, but it drops of the grass on the side
rather than in the middle, so driving in opposite direction you get 18.2m
working width with your baler.
- The cr10.90 harvester's header refuses to go through any bushes and
makes it hellish to move your harvester around in tight maps. Not sure
if this goes for all harvesters or not.
- Square bales are a ton easier to work with. Not only can you keep driving
the baler as it ejects completed bales automatically, but you can easily
pick them up with an auto-loading trailer. Without mods, round bales
is more tedious to create, and way tedious to transport. (For a round
autoload bale trailer I eventually found the Ursus T127 mod, which seems
realistic and have animation for bale pickup so it doesn't like magic
like many of the autoloading gear mods)

Contracts:

Contracts is a great way to earn money with little to no risk. Especially
early in the game when you have limited properties to work, you are likely
to have spare time on your hands you can use to earn money on contracts.
(Especially if you want to max income per game day. If you have a good way
of skipping time forwards and prioritize income per real time playing hour
instead, then you might manage just as well without)

There are several types of contracts, which differ in the amount of work
for you, whether you can hire a worker to do some of it, how much expenses
you will have, and how much money you'll earn.

There are many different types of contracts, and they offer very different
income potential. Some have a lot of manual work, while some you can mostly
hand of to a hired helper, while still keeping most of the profit. Square
fields without obstacles close makes it ideal for a helper. Also note that
contracts to do field work typically complete before you have covered
everything. For baling and harvesting missions, that means that you can get
some extra products for yourself, while for other missions it means you don't
need to get to every corner perfectly to finish the mission. If the hired help
doesn't manage to cover everything fine you might not need to do it manually
afterwards.

Transportation: Typically requires fork-lift/front-loader and a flat-bed
trailer. My skills of using one makes this mission lots of pain for the value.
I see there exist autoloading trailer mods that autoloads just about everything
but think I'd rather just skip these for now.

Fertilizing: Not a lot of income, but a quick and simple mission where you can
use hired help, and where you likely can use tool with wide working width. If
you don't produce manure/slurry, the best option in the base game is the K105
fertilizer with 6m spreading unit, narrow tires and a big extension, giving you
a large working width, ability to avoid destroying crops and a massive 14000l
capacity for fertilizer limiting refill needs. While price of fertilizer per
liter seems to be the same for liquid and solid, the usage of the product per
acre favors using a spreader. Also, while working width says 18m, which is
correct when you spread lime, the actual working width when you spread
fertilizer in this setup is a massive 30m. Having the setup above you can
take a drive around the map and do a handful of these missions before needing
to refill, and use little time per field.

Cultivating: A simple task with no other costs than operating costs for the
tractor you use. A worker can do the task for you. The income is low as you
have no expenses. Using a worker and renting equipment cuts deep into the
little profit that exist, and not renting equipment you need a strong tractor
to pull a cultivator with good working width. Probably better later in the game
once you have a strong tractor. Good working width also makes using a worker
much cheaper per acre, so with a worker on a big field without renting
equipment the income compared to real time invested probably gets decent.

Sowing: You will have to pay for the seed, which will deduct from the income
(especially if you want to make potatoes that use a lot of seed per acre),
making these missions seem more lucrative than they are. They can still be
lucrative though, even then using worker to seed. The seeders only use seed
when you drive over unseeded territory, so driving with overlap or touching
outside of the field doesn't cost you extra seeds. To really simplify it you
can also use config to make worker buy seed themselves. Then, instead of seed
being used from seeder, seed is just bought directly from the shop and
teleported into your seeder as you go. However, you then pay like 40% extra for
the seed, so it may cut into your profit margin considerably. Another
alternative is to buy an auger wagon you can fit tons of seed in, and stay
close to refill your seeder quickly and save you a lot of shop visits to get
seed bags.

Baling: Baling missions requires quite a bit of work. Typically they want you
to create silage bales, so you need quite a bit of gear. And even if you have
great gear, it's still considerable manual work, as you can't use hired help to
create bales, put them in plastic, nor pick them up. (Coarseplay or other mods
like Follow Me may help you though) Additionally you may need five trips to get
all the gear you need to the site. On the plus side, you may end up with quite
some bales extra that you can use or sell for yourself, so try to get most of
the grass. With seasons, silage needs time to ferment. Selling them before
fermenting gives you no cash. If you dump 16 bales on the farm and only 10 was
needed to finish the contract, the remaining 6 will give you no credits at all.
Thus, try to dump of less bales than you need the first time and calculate how
many bales you need more to fulfill contract. The remaining bales you can store
until they ferment, and then use or sell them. (You get 20% completion for
mowing the grass and 80% for selling bales, so if you have finished mowing, and
you sell X bales and Y is the current completion percentage below 100%, you
will need to sell X * (100 - Y) / (Y - 20) more bales to finish the contract,
and the rest you can keep).

Harvesting: Much simpler than baling, but more work than cultivating/fertilizing
as you need to keep emptying the harvester and drive it somewhere. Potatoes
create a huge yield so you likely need many trips, but on the plus side, you may
end up with quite a bit extra potatoes you can sell yourself if you harvest
everything. Just make sure you don't end the contract before you're done taking
the last bit for yourself. When selling result of harvesting, you get money for
everything you sell after you have fulfilled the required amount for contractor,
so if you dump a full load but only need half to fulfill contract, you get
money for the other half (and further loads you can sell to whomever pays the
most, or keep it). Potato harvesting missions is a bit of a pain with low
working width, but I've ended up about matching the income from the contract
by selling the last bit of potatoes myself, so while time consuming, they can
bring quite a bit of income. (I'd say great if you optimize in game time,
horrible if you optimize real time investment)

Workers:

I see people complain about the in game worker AIs, but they seem to be very
useful if you manage to avoid the issues. The typical issue is that the field
is close to objects that block driving there, and that the worker doesn't
always realize it and turn on the field, but just drives up to whatever will
block it and ends there. They do understand it and turn on the field many times
too though. A big plus with the workers is that they see what parts of the
fields are already covered, so if you manually do the headland around the field
yourself, so the workers have enough space to turn without getting blocked they
can typically handle the remaining part of the field well. They seem to start
of in the direction the tractor is heading, and when reaching the other side,
turn back left or right depending on where more work is needed. Try to drive a
bit off the field rather than a bit into the field, to ensure it automatically
turns towards the field rather than turning the wrong way and finish a tiny
triangle and declares completion. Try to follow the workers around and inspect
how the AI works, and you can likely avoid many of the issues. They also seem
surprisingly cheap to use, especially if you use tools with good working width
so you don't need them for that long.

Resources:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Sb/pubhtml#
https://www.reddit.com/r/farmingsimulat ... _analysis/

[Alcarin75]

Congratulations, this helps a lot

[SimpleFarmer]

I would suggest a new player of FS should start with seasons enabled, as the game makes more sense. Also, equipment can be sold back at the purchase price if used under .5 hours. This is great because newer players aren't sure what is compatible with other equipment and can really save a lot of money as you work through the learning curve. Soon you will have favorite setups and know what works the best for your farm. Another option might be to start a test savegame, cheat in money and buy all kinds of stuff and just try everything, but I think this would take a lot of the fun away from buying and upgrading equipment as you farm.
The settings for seasons can be adjusted so that it is not as challenging. First, disable weeds, I still don't play with weeds and I've been playing forever, I just can't stand them. Second, disable crop moisture, I currently use it because I think it's fun, but a new player has enough to think about. Lastly, depending on how up to the certain tasks you are, enable and disable things like plowing, lime, fuel usage, etc from the normal game settings. These things make the game more fun imo but for new farmers maybe they are all too much to do at first. It's important to get your settings right from the get go as the map will show all kinds of "needs weeded/needs plowed" colors if you let it on and then turn it off later.
I agree about not starting everything at once. Start with something you enjoy, and get nice equipment as the starting equipment is annoying to use unless you've been playing for awhile and are looking for a change-up or something. (Which is what I'm currently doing)
I wouldn't say always start on Farm Manager, it is how I usually play, but sometimes I start with New Farmer and just sell the stuff I won't use and buy what I do want. This all revolves around whether you want to start with the starting farm or not, which all the pros and cons are pretty well laid out above.
I would watch a few YouTube streams and see what the possibilities are before starting a map. MrSealyP does really good map walkthroughs so you can see what the map/starting farm have to offer if you want to buy them, and SimFarmer does timelapses where you can see how to farm at a pretty fast pace (its a timelapse ) He also lists all the mods he uses so you can copy whatever he does.
A quick word on logging: as a new farmer, be prepared to get frustrated with the whole logging process, especially on a console. It takes awhile to get the hang of operating the equipment. After about 6-10 hours of logging, I think you'll start to get it and it won't be so annoying. (Memories of logs going all directions getting worse and worse the more I tried to put them straight )
Lastly, about mods. If you're playing on PC I think it would be easy to become overwhelmed with how many options there are. I would stick to modhub for awhile to avoid causing game quality issues. On a console, you can only use modhub and there is no way to use PC mods on a console. Certain mods like Courseplay and Assisted Steering are unavailable. This was confusing to me at first.
This is a good thread, as i know a lot of friends I convinced to start playing this game but who quit because it was too confusing and they couldn't figure it out/got frustrated.
Welcome to the farming life

[Edit] there is a manual on the Farming Simulator website under support everyone new to the game should read that goes into better detail than the one in the menu. But it doesn't have a lot of info that they wouldn't want to put in there that new players should also know, like vehicle damage, time management or mods.

[CowsGoMoo]

Seasons is not a good starting point for someone completely green to game. Base game isn't made to be realistic, rather emulate real life. Not meant to make someone a farmer but give them a taste of farming.

There are player guides on line just have to search them. And while I do agree games need to back old school and include physical booklets how to play the game, there are tutorials in the main menu and a how to play when you start on ravenport. In the in game menu there are also help sections.

[GothicKing13]

Seasons, on your very 1st game. I wouldn't recommend that. The seasons mod is aimed more towards realism and better suited for those whom have a little practice with stuff. Sure you can sale things back at full price within the 1st couple hours. But, with seasons you wouldn't get the field time with "everything" to fully test and see how it works for you. Once you have the knowledge of the vehicles and equipment, then go to a real save file and work for everything and earn it. Then, when you're truly ready... take that knowledge to seasons. After that, earning the big stuff will be more of a self achievement. Personally, I play with seasons and have the eco set to hard. So for me, the money doesn't come quick and really has to be worked for.

Weeds: Once you fully figure the weeds out, they are one of the easiest things to deal with. I don't turn them off anymore, it's so easy once you learn the trick of them. You can turn them off, but visually they still grow... I leave them on, and fight them from the start. They never have a chance to grow in my fields, if it wasn't for the AI fields I'd probably forget what they even look like. Quick and easy trick with dealing with the weeds.

PLANT: Preferably with a seeder that runs fertilization
HERBICIDE: Sprayed directly after seeding... if you seeder puts fertilizer down. If your seeder doesn't have fertilizer, fertilize 1st. This way, you can see where you have been in the field with the herbicide.
FERTILIZE: Right after running the herbicide, run the 2nd pass of fertilizer.

Now, this way... 100% Fertilizer and 0% Weeds. The weeds will never grow and ALL of this even before the 1st growth stage. Though, if you are running seasons you will need 3 fertilizer passes. Also easy.

MANURE/SLURRY
PLANT w/ FERTILIZER
HERBICIDE
FERTILIZER

Once again, 100% Fertilizer and 0% Weeds before the 1st growth stage.

[JTerk438]

I will add this tip to compliment the other posts.

If you're playing on PC, and want to do the most realistic farming you can with this game, I would avoid, at all costs (in the beginning at least), any mod that that has very high working speeds and working widths. Sure, they make the farming faster, and sometimes more enjoyable, but they are not realistic at all. This coming from a player that doesn't do much realistic farming at all.

If you must start with using the high capacity/high working width mods, use a test farm to use them. They are fun to use for sure, but the satisfaction from doing the "right/realistic way" is way better, in my opinion. I use my Xbox One version for the realism, while I have the PC version for the ridiculous stuff (thanks DJGoHam Gaming).

So, I would recommend using only realistic mods if you're going for realism. Because a harvester harvesting crops at 65MPH is not realistic. Nor is harvesting at that 65 MPH while using a 100 meter wide header. It's fun for sure. but not realistic.

Figure out how you want to play before diving head first into the unrealistic mods. That's all I'm saying. Get a taste for how the game is meant to be played before doing it your way, like I do. Both ways are fun. But are very different ways to do the farming.

[SJ_Sathanas]

Contracts are a good way to learn how to do jobs too, especially something like bailing which requires a fair bit of equipment and a few different processes.
I'm sure I read running the very high speed mods breaks seasons, too.

[humbe]

I totally agree that many mods look like cheats.. Makes stuff available that is strictly better and cheaper to boot.. My point is just that if you prioritize one thing, then you might be able to use a plow with 4.9 meter working width instead of 2.5 meter, or use a seeder with 6 or even 9 meters working width instead of 3. The game is repetitive enough as it is.

Up to now I've only used vehicles and equipment from the base game, with the exception of trying to get a mod with an autoloading bale trailer for round bales. I accepted a contract where I borrowed equipment for round bales, and after I was sufficiently tired of trying to get the schmetterling to work I went searching for alternatives. My flatbed trailer could only fit a couple of bales anyhow, and I'm having a hard time getting used to controlling a front loader It was on Greenwich Valley map though and getting a bale trailer with a loose axel in front into the barn selling point was total hell. I think I'll stay clear of round bales for a while. Base game has so much better gear for square bales

What feels most lacking currently is a way to buy seeds in larger quantities. I did a contract mission to sow potatoes in largest field in Ravenport, and I had to buy 60-80 seed bags in the shop. Would have been great to have sellpoints that sold seed and fertilizer the same way as they sell lime from a silo. I've seen there exist some mod that can set up a silo sellpoint for anything on your farm, but I've tried to stay away up to now as it seems a bit like cheating.

I didn't know of seasons mod, and did intend to run the game without mods to begin with, but I failed to understand how time works without it, so using seasons seemed easier to me, as the seasons mod documented the bits of the base game I failed to find information about.

What I didn't figure out about the base game was:
- When should I expect next growth stage to appear? Is it a specific time since last stage or since I sowed, or is it at specific times of day?
- How can I avoid having to work nights? Do I need to sow so early in the morning that I can harvest before the night?
- When can I seed or harvest? When does winter come?
I guess the base game might have a really simplistic view where it's always summer and you can sow and harvest at any time, but that is not obvious nor what I'd expect, so I was expecting to find some information about it.

It's easy to find Youtube videos of people playing, but I don't want to sit around watching 2 hours of Youtube to pick up hints that I could have read in 2 minutes, and very likely doesn't cover the bits I'm searching for. Voice in youtube isn't easily searchable on the internet, so can't search for anything specific. So my idea for this thread was trying put down beginner tips in writing in a compact way as I would have preferred to find them myself.

I tried to use herbicide on front of tractor while seeding by the way, but I still got weed in the field, though not lots of it. I guess I will try using herbicide a bit after seeding instead to see if that works better.

[GothicKing13]

The growth stages are at specific times of the day, yes. When everything grows, it starts top right of the map and works it's way to the bottom left.

Playing without the seasons mod, if I want growth to be quick so I don't have much down time. Starting 1st thing in the morning... in game of course. I turn off the crop growth. Mow the grass, make my hay or silage. Plant, Herbicide and run 2nd Fertilizer on the crops. Turn crop growth back on. Then, I go and tend to my animals, after that collect my Hay/Silage Bales and get them into storage. Once the bales are off my grass fields, I run a fertilizer over my grass to keep my grass at maximum. Then I move onto my next task. If I have a silage clamp that I am using for corn silage, I will finish compacting that and get it covered, or tend to my tree's if any are in need to being felled. Once I'm done, I fast forward time by x120 to about 8 or 9pm. Sleep to about 8am... After this, your fields should be ready to harvest, or... getting ready to become ready to harvest.

Yes... herbicide can go on directly AFTER seeding. It has no effect if run before the seeds go in. So, in trying this... you want this order.

PLANT > FERTILIZE > HERBICIDE > FERTILIZE

If your seeder has fertilizer in it, then... PLANT > HERBICIDE > FERTILIZE.

Best of luck and happy farming.

[humbe]

Testing out a bit without seasons too to see the differences.. Updated article on top to provide better base game info.

[Papocle]

A Q&D version of the Guide in French? https://www.didiermorandi.fr/lpdm/doc/F ... butant.pdf