ACRES – Strategy Guide

Hello! I am writing here to just provide some of my thoughts on strategies and how to make good money in Challenge mode. I’m sure many of you like to just chill and play, but I am a strategic thinker and always trying new methods. I’ve played over 20 hours and feel like I have a good grasp for the game and want to share my thoughts.

Guide to Strategy

My Strategy

1. Minimalist farming is key. If you grow too expand too fast (buying new fields, buying new tractors, buying new seeds) you will quickly run out of money. Only expand as much as necessary on as few field tiles as possible to fulfill your contracts.
   • Only plant what is required. I like to look at what a contract needs, then upgrade the seed bins to the threshold required, then plant all the seeds. Then in 1 harvest I have fulfilled that (or more) contracts at the same time.
   • Don’t be afraid to sell unused veggies. You can make a ton of money selling left over supplies and its better to sell the leftovers and plant when a new contract needs that specific plant.
   • Asparagus is brokenly expensive to sell. You can make over $120,000 each harvest with only selling field full of Asparagus. At the bottom of this post I’ll go into detail about the most broken way to make money on Asparagus, my new favorite strategy.
2. Keep your fields topped off in nutrients. I heavily neglected the nutrients and only tended the soil when it was blinking red when I first started playing this game. Its best to stay on top of it in between harvests, but be prepared to spend $30-50,000 or more on fertilizing your entire field, but its totally worth it! I use the general 30-30-30-10, because those are the fastest draining nutrients, whenever acres begin dropping below 70% I fertilize the entire field.
   • Don’t forget to use Peat Moss when soil compaction is below 100%. You can also use cover crops and Chickens, but I haven’t figured out how to use them effectively for your main large field, so I just stick to Peat Moss when needed.
3. Tractors are fun, but money suckers and you don’t need to buy them until your farm is getting quite large. The best strategy I have found is to hold off on purchasing anything until I can buy the best upgrade possible (7x Plow, 5x Seeder (3x ok too), 5x Cultivater (3x ok too), 3x Harvester (very last upgrade, least useful and most expensive). NEVER buy 1x tractor accessories. They cost too much and are so much slower than you manually doing everything. Don’t forget that the soil gets compact when you use tractors (applying also to all worked acres, not just the one line the tractor is visibly on).
4. Use your reputation to buy more contracts to be available at the same time. 3 is a great number, up to five contracts is when I start struggling late game getting them fulfilled but needing cash to keep my fields healthy and the contract plants requiring too many acres as well. Be careful not to upgrade too fast and get more than you can bite off. After day 100 you start getting insane contracts like 500 watermelons or 800 tomatoes, which take up an insane amount of space.
5. Seed Bins double the amount you get each upgrade. So do your math to find out how many acres you need when upgrading. lvl 1-4 acres, lvl 2-8 acres, lvl 3-16 acres, etc., but the number of veggies harvested is determined by seed count per acre, so it can get a little confusing.

Asparagus Only Strategy Details

Asparagus can be sold very expensive, around $90 per veggie, with each acre growing 9 veggies, that is around $810 from ONE ACRE. You max Out at 512 Acres for each plant type. That mean theoretically you can bring in over $400,000 if you have max Asparagus. You end up spending $200,000 on field maintenance, but you still net a crazy amount late game.

1. Stay on 1 contract and fulfill their requirements as minimalistically as possible.
2. On first harvest contract, buy Asparagus seed bin and upgrade it once. This gives you 8 acres of Asparagus, bringing in you over $6,000 after your first harvest. As you gain more money after each harvest, SLOWLY begin upgrading your asparagus seed bin and buying just enough land to hold it (plus the plants for your 1 required contract). You will be bringing in so much money so fast.
3. BUT, be careful because asparagus requires a lot of nutrients, specifically Potassium (K), it consumes 90% of it from the soil. Therefore, after each harvest you can use Sylvite and General 30-30-30-10 to get back that 90 K, plus help top off the other nutrients to keep the soil as productive as possible. This is a big expense and you cannot run out of money for this step, it is essential to keep the GOLD ASPARAGUS money river flowing, always have cash reserves for this step.
4. Harvest and repeat!

Once you can afford Tractor attachments go in this order:

Best Tractor –> 5x Cultivator (2-3x per growing season) –> 7x Plow –> 5x Fertilizer (2x per season after harvest) –> 5x Seeder –> 3x Harvester. If you want you can begin with the 3x instead of the 5x, but its less efficient and takes more money in the long run. But I understand wanting to get to tractors faster.

5 Easy Steps

1. Plant Asparagus
2. Cultivate 2-3 times throughout the season (between 90-85% weed growth)
3. Harvest when ready
4. Fertilize field with Sylvite (+60 K) and General 30-30-30 (+ 30 K)-10.
   • Late game also use Peat Moss when Soil Compaction (caused by using tractors) is less than 100 (150 highest).
5. Plow
6. Repeat step 1.
7. Maintain minimal field usage for your required contracts, but don’t forsake fertilizing those too! I like to keep my main asparagus field in front of the barn and devote a separate section to the right of the barn for the plants needed to fulfill the contract.

Also, keep track of the Market and see what veggies are selling the most. Asparagus will fall in price over time but starts out strong, when that happens you can switch to one of the 9 or 6 seed veggies such as Beans, Lettuce or Beats, which also can give good sell prices depending on the market, and they require much less soil maintenance than asparagus. Over 250 days in and $600k in the bank with this current strategy. Have fun Farming friends!