Farmer Against Potatoes Idle – Gameplay Tips and Tricks

Some easy and fast tips to get you game moving and open up new features.

Important: Don’t forget about in-game codes to get various goodies.

Tips and Hints for New Players

• You want to push for Reincarnation as your first target (and you might as well trigger it as soon as it unlocks). This will allow you to start earning reincarnation points, which can buy some very powerful bonuses. You will find reincarnation (even ignoring the points you get for spending), is the largest boost to your stats and income bare none for a long while.
• Do your Daily Quests for souls each day (they add up and you will have everything you can buy before you know it).
• Whack has a few bonuses that are critical to get ASAP (the most important one being Lower Cow Cost). It will take a bit of time to build up the points you need for this, so do not be afraid to buy a lot of page one to make later whack pushes worth more. There is also whack gear in later worlds that will increase your score a crazy amount. You will also get some cow reduction reincarnation bonuses you can buy around 750 RL (reincarnation level).
• The first few sets of gear will be replaced fast, but even so, do not be afraid to upgrade them(I would say starting with Tier 3, blue), as the early tier materials are also almost worthless once you get 2 tiers above it (which you will do lighting fast up to Tier 6). So using them on current gear is actually better for you than saving them.
• Do not worry about making super powerful gear at first. You will ascend before too long and you lose all of your gear (also another reason not to save material forever). Good is the level of gear you are looking to get unless you want to push whack very hard (as it does not reset when ascending).
• When you unlock cows, you want to buy your first cow right away (even if you do not have all of the discounts as yet). Grind for it if you have to. This is because when milk starts, it also generates residue which can give you some very powerful bonuses, and the number of cows does not affect how much residue you earn, you just need one to start the process.
• For soul purchases (if you are not buying a lot to start), I value the class/potato/skull ones first as they are all straight up power increases. Then I go for QOL auto potato/skull followed by auto material (which if you are not near your computer that much this buy is actually one of the more powerful QOL but straight up power boosts ones). This is then followed by auto whack (I normally do not start with this buy as whack is very weak until you level it a bit). Everything after that is mostly personal preference, but you will aim to get it all sooner or later.
• As for challenges, you normally want to do the first one around the time you unlock it, and it will not hurt you to do the first 4 challenges more or less as they open (and you can always cancel a challenge if it looks like it will take too long). It is challenge 7 and 8 (before you ascend the first time), that have a rule of thumb before trying. I recommend getting to calcium generation (which takes a bit of time to unlock), before trying. Once you ascend the first time you can do it with just high level brewing, and then later ascend more you can do it the moment it unlocks.
• Once you unlock unlimited challenges I would personally ignore the “easy labor begone”, as you will almost never use it. The Medium labor one is nice, but it takes a while before you can push it that far. The reason for this is the medium will turn on after you finish a challenge, but the easy will not. And you should almost always start a new run with the unlimited challenge for that class, as it would be very rare for you not to be able to push at least one more state each time you cycle back to that class for higher bonuses.
• Talents have all kinds of options and what you buy depends on what you are pushing at that moment, but with that said, unless you are pushing gear/wurm/milk/brewing, the two most important stats most of the time are class and reincarnation. Class is the base stat for reincarnation, and reincarnation speaks for itself. I personally like the 3K Hoer area as my primary target (and I try to get to it from everywhere once I get into RL 4k). The bonus to both class and con is just so powerful it is hard to justify anything else. Then I start to go for the Farm 3k (as a bit of bonus to everything is normally overall powerful, rather than focusing on one thing, unless that is the point of the entire run).
• Some people like to focus on getting multiple milk or brewing bonuses (there are all in the 3k areas), but I find once I have brewing unlocked, that one of each is all I need most of the time, until I max reincarnation bonuses.
• Do not forget your 2 15 point unique talents per class. They are all very nice, but the 3 more powerful ones are the wurm/gear/milk bonuses. If I am in those classes, those 2 talents are always bought.
• One trick to get the best gear is to do the highest level (medium or hard), in the highest world you can handle, and then wait for the gear buff to kick from whack. Then you can turn on your gear potion, for double bonus and get the best gear of that run.

FAQ

This is a set of random questions. Some of them may be spoilers!

How do I lock / unlock equipment?

• Hold left mouse button.

What does fighting efficiency do?

• It’s an additional multiplier to your attack value.

Where can I find the boss that is mentioned in the daily quest?

• They appear in every x-9 area, every 25 waves.

What is attack confection?

• Confections are the things you put poop into in the worms tab.

Does luck affect worm drop chance?

• No.

Is there auto item salvage?

• The “headscratcher” reinc upgrades kind of do that. There will be proper auto salvage thing added to the game soon

Does a challenge count as a reincarnation?

• Yes, you get all of the benefits of reincarnation when you start a challenge.

Do cows / milk / residue reset on reincarnation?

• Nothing from the cow screen gets reset on reincarnation.

Useful Info & Tips

The difficulty level you choose affects how many stages you can play in a world. Easy mode has 100 stages, medium has 200, and hard has 300.

Playing on higher difficulties usually gives you more class experience, even if you’re at a lower stage. This means if you want to level up faster for reincarnation, it’s better to play on medium difficulty and complete as many waves as you can.

List of Soul Shop Purchases

Auto whack Auto –> Equipment Auto Recycle –> Kepo Ball –> Auto Whack Minimum –> Golden Clover –> Auto Material Conversion –> Phoenix –> Reclaimer –> Whack All Day –> Old clock (only at a14+).

• Note one: When you reach A10, grab Golden Clover tier 2.
• Note two: When you reach A10, A15, A20, A25, etc Golden Clover is ALWAYS the first item you get the latest tier for.
• Note for those >=A12 AND have maxed out golden clover, the ads banner (highest priority) and construction crane (for renown and building speed) become the priority items, start grabbing tiers of these.
• Continue increasing the tiers of golden clover, renown, and construction crane.
• At A30, the soul shop item to increase potato gain transforms into a sweet potato shovel, start leveling this up!
• At A40, the soul shop item to increase skull gain transforms into a skull powder booster, start leveling this up!

Optimizing Early Game Strategy: The 1-9m Set Advantage

Farming a 1-9m set before a1 and enchanting it as much as possible (hopefully mats weren’t converted) is recommended. You can wear it until around 750-1250rl or when your IR is is above the 1-9m IR.

I prefer to keep it for a longer time even if I lose milk because I prefer to have more skulls early on to push zones but changing it as soon as end game set gives more reinc is fine.

The reason behind this is that pot/class xp/skulls is very powerful in early game and you don’t need whack/milk/brewing/confection/poop that much.

The other reason is that your gear scales with max IR found during the ascension and that max IR is divided into 4 bonuses for 1-9 and 7 or 8 for end game set. So it basically gives x2 skulls/pot/class xp (and more if you can enchant it to +29) and 1-2% more reinc

x2 skulls means that you’re farming p3 skull page twice as fast so instead of waiting 2h to get to 2-5 for example, you can get it in 1h.

Experience Requirements

The experience requirements of confection upgrades are dominated by exponential growth, so we can calculate the maximum number of extra levels you can gain from a linear increase in experience generation. This spreadsheet shows the maximum number of extra levels that can be gained by doubling experience generation (for example, by using larva). At very low levels, the actual number of extra levels gained may be significantly lower.

Click to enlarge…

Reincarnation

When should I do my first reinc?

Reinc level refers to the one shown in this picture. Your level is most likely 0.

Your first reinc should be above reinc level 25 or 50 (you should see +25 or +50 in the after reincarnation text). I’d personally recommend to reinc soon after getting there, as the perks that you’ll get are pretty good. You’ll have a few perks to choose – some upgrading your stats / gear and some related to automation. Choose depending on your playstyle.

Why level 25 or 50? The formula for the total amount of reinc points is 5 + lvl / 5. Every upgrade in row 1 of reinc show costs 5 points. So reinc at lvl 25 will give you 5 + 25/5 = 10 points, which is 2 upgrades, and reinc at lvl 50 will give you 5 + 50/5 = 15 points, which is 3 upgrades.

Important: Notice that I wrote “total amount of reinc points”. What does that mean? If you started a new run after getting reinc lvl 54 you’ll have 15 points. If your next reinc will be at reinc lvl 76, you’ll only gain 5 more points.

What class should I choose on my first reinc?

By now you should’ve noticed that strength and health are the most important stats to get, as they directly allow you to progress faster and further. That’s why choosing smasher / hoer on your first reinc is recommended. The former has 4 str growth, which is twice the amount farmer has. Early game this means double damage. Hoer is similar, but has double hp. Generally smasher is preferred as higher damage = faster clearing time.

Should I main one class, or level them up equally?

While maining one class is highly unadvised, it’s alright to fall behind on leveling some classes. You might have noticed that you received some free talent points after your first reinc – you get 1 free talent point for 100 levels. For example if you have lvl 388 farmer and lvl 634 smasher on your next run you’d get 3 + 6 = 9 free talent points. They are extremely useful, and they add up quite fast. You earn free talent points much faster if you level up your classes in parallel

What classes should I choose when reincarnating? Strategy for the first few reincarnations

Remember that if you feel like you can gain more levels relatively easily, or you are close to x00 level milestone it might be worth to ignore the lvl advice and reinc later.

Important: Lvl advice refers to class level, not reinc level. Read point 5 of the guide before allocating talent points

Suggested reincarnation order:

• First reinc -> Smasher lvl 500-700 -> Hoer lvl 600-800

After finishing the hoer run you should be quite comfortable with the game and its systems. There is no point in advising when exactly should you reinc as you should be able to feel that the run is getting slower and decide that yourself.

I’d recommend the next run to be done with freeloader and to farm some gear with him for the first time. Area 1-9 has some sweet loot with bonus reinc xp. If you are into optimizing the game you might want to consider getting 2 sets of eq – one with the bonus reinc xp as high as possible, and the other without that bonus entirely. You’d have to remember to swap them out before and after reincarnation.

After finishing the freeloader run you should have decent gear, as well as quite a few free talent points. Now the choice is yours – you can choose to level up harvester and rancher, or go back to the other classes and get them close to, or above 1k. Just remember not to leave harvester and rancher at lvl 0 permanently. They become useful in the future

Keep in mind that you can skip some classes entirely, change the order, reinc earlier or later. This is just a suggestion. This might not be the most efficient way of playing. fapi is very flexible, and it’s hard to completely screw yourself over

What should I spend my reinc points on? Reincarnation upgrades ranked (Spoilers)

Note: r1c3 means row 1 column 3 (area auto in this case). r2c3 would be the poop increase etc.

Important: Those upgrades were ranked by me. Some of the upgrades may seem amazing, but looking at them from the bigger picture, they are not so great.

How should I interpret the score?

• 8-10 – must buy no matter what, with 10 being the most important.
• 4-7 – situational, some are worthy of considering
• -1-3 no.

Further Very Important Tips

When it comes to upgrades ranked below 4, you should consider not buying them at all. Even if you have some leftover points, it’s better to save them up for later. You’ll be able to buy more upgrades from the next row.

The rxc5 upgrades (headscratcher ones) are really good – the 9 next to them tells you that. BUT remember, that they are useful only for loot grinding. So you should make sure that you have them before farming for loot, but it’s not always necessary to insta buy them. On the other hand, they prevent your inventory from filling up with absolute trash, so don’t wait too long.

Explanation for rating some of the seemingly good upgrades quite low:

• r1c1 – potato auto is very slow, you’ll need to help it at the beginning of the run manually. Additionally, later on you’ll want to micromanage it a bit.
• r1c2 – skull auto is very unbalanced. If you have it mindlessly turned on it could do more harm than good.
• r2c1 – while potato price reduction may seem op at first, due to the exponential nature of it’s scaling you won’t get many more levels out of it. First 2 levels should be worth it, since they only cost 3 points total
• r2c2 – similar to r2c1, but since the exponential scaling of skulls is slower, you’ll get much bigger benefits from it.
• r3c1 – whack-a-potato temporary bonuses become worse the further you are in the game. Still could be worth it if you can be bothered to do it manually.
• r3c2 – trash
• r3c3 – larvae may seem op at first. Unfortunately they have really bad scaling further in the game. It still might be worth it to put points into this upgrade, and get some of them.
• r3c6 – 1:15 conversion ratio is simply bad. Even with the soul shop purchase it’s only 1:10. Bad.