Monster World is just one of many Facebook games, and it’s played in a similar way to Farmville in that you start with a small garden, plant and harvest crops for money and stars, and as you climb through the various levels you have opportunities to enhance your domain.
This is a fun game with fun monsters doing the farming, and the crops that you farm are out of this world – literally!
Like most of the other Facebook games you can play Monster World for free, or opt to buy some of the items that you need to graduate to the next level instead of waiting for days or weeks to acquire them.
To advance through the levels, you need to earn enough stars to reach the target for the next level. Sometimes stars, like money, are awarded as prizes for completing tasks, however for the most part you need to plant and harvest crops to make both.
To get money and stars faster you need to plough more land and also to increase the size of your farm, and with each upgrade, the cost of the next one rises sharply.
It’s tempting to sell some of the crops that you have harvested so that you have enough money for the next upgrade, but this is where new players often begin to go wrong, as many of the tasks require you to have or to plant/harvest a lot of crops. If you sell most of what you have, you then might need to either buy more to plant, or to plant multiple lots of crops, which can take a lot of time.
I should maybe explain that when you harvest crops, you get 2 or 3 (sometimes more) times as many crops as you planted. So, if you planted 5 Monster Cactus, when harvested you would have 10 of them.
My first big tip in Monster World…
Do not be tempted to sell crops just to earn enough money to upgrade your garden. It will inevitably hold you back, and it’s better to spend a few more hours (or another day) planting and harvesting rather than rushing into things.
It costs twice as much to buy plants as it does to sell them, so purchasing any plants is an expensive option that you should make as little as possible.
The big shock that new players find after their first upgrades is that their helper (in my case a monster called Mary) becomes unhappy if you expand the plantable area of your garden, and she goes on strike.
It’s at this point that you notice a big heart symbol at the top right of the screen, which tells you the “Happiness Factor”, in other words how many squares you can plant. It’s now obvious that you not only have to earn enough money to increase the plantable area, you have to buy decorations for your garden to increase the happiness factor and to keep your helper happy.
My second tip in Monster World…
Work on increasing the Happiness Factor to bring it up to the next level, before increasing the plantable area or the size of your garden. This means that when you are ready to expand, you don’t have to wait to earn more money for Happiness Points before you can grow plants.
There is a lot more to the game as you might expect, and like Farmville you can send/receive gifts between your Facebook friends who are playing the game, to help you along the way.
These are just a few more Monster World tips for novice players…
Make sure you visit your friends gardens every day to pick up a pot of money and also to get stars for feeding their helpers or for reviving/fertilizing crops.
Don’t forget to feed your helper. You can feed them up to a maximum of 24hrs. Be warned that if you have 18 hours left and purchase 24 hours food, the total will be set to 24hrs not 42 hours. It’s sometimes better to buy 12 hours at a time, which costs more but which can work out cheaper in the end. If your helper runs out of food, they eat your crops, which might just be a prize item that took 24 hours to grow, so be warned.
Different crops take different lengths of time to grow, so it’s good to not only check what crops you need to grow to fulfill tasks, but if you have time to grow some quick crops and to harvest them before you plant the ones that take a long time, you can get additional crops, which will inevitably help you in the long run.
As you progress through the levels you unlock more plants that you can grow, however you do not automatically acquire them, you have to buy them. Some of these take 24, 48 or even 72 hours to grow, and they can cost a lot of money. I recommend buying one of these, planting it, then using a Magic Wand (which is a bonus item that you can buy for real money or which you win quite often) harvest it immediately, giving you two or more of them. Repeat as necessary.
Don’t waste your Magic Wands. Save them to harvest those plants that take days to grow. This can save you a lot of time on upgrades.
In conclusion…
Monster World is just another of those silly time wasting addictive games on Facebook, but it is cute, and did I mention that it is addictive…
If you decide to play the game, I hope that these tips prove useful.
If you have any tips of your own, please feel free to leave a comment.