There were some new goodies in FarmvVille today:

1. Elephant madness!

When I arrived home there were a whole bunch of Baby Elephants available in my gift box. I first thought "huh?" but it seems the Zynga FarmVille Team has added the Baby Elephant as a 76 hours exclusive "because the circus is in town".

Anyone over level 9 can gift the Elephants which has a selling value of $ 125 and needs 4 days to grow.

I had to delete some crop space for it… (but I really like elephants :) ) (though I deleted all brown cows) … and the elephants keep coming in so I probably have to delete some more farmland for it.

It is the third special item for the game. The first were a sort of supercrop, the berries, the second was the balloon and this is a special "animal". Probably  the next special item will turn out to be a building.

Not everyone is that enthousiastic about elephants though, as can be read in the forums, and well.. it does make a point lol:

"Ah now this is getting really stupid. ELEPHANTS this is not a safari game PLEASE....
Elephants are NOT FARM ANIMALS... I swear they are on something... What a mess. I got one and promptly sold deleted. Trashed.
HEY GUYS over there it is called FARMVILLE> Get a dictionary."

Though the counter answer is:

"To: The What's An Elephant Doing On A Farm People.
One of the largest Elelphant Sanctuaries in North America is located in Arkansas. And guess what?, it's located on a farm. I think the people of Zynga are doing an outstanding job of bringing different, unique items to us all for FREE."

and "the developers DID listen": http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?p=1791554#post1791554

So I think either it transforms or it will produce paper.

Since the only other animals that takes 4 days is a rabbit, which a profit of 60. I think this will turn out then to be a profit of $ 120 (since the selling cost is twice that as from a rabbit) so with an hourly profit of $ 1.30.

But who knows…

They produce circus peanuts for 150 coins.

2. Crop Mastery

Starting from 30th of september a new mastery level has been added: "Crop Mastery".

Each time you harvest a crop you will earn a level to that specific crop mastery level.

And ofcourse that is brilliant because now… all players need to refocus on all crops again instead of focussing on the crops that produces the most value.

Brilliant!

So as you can see with each crop there are now 3 stars that indicate your mastely level. If you achieve the 3 crops then you get a special bonus :)

I think that each star means that a certain amount of crops have to be harvested, how many, and if it is the same amount for all crops, that remains the question for now.

See comments (thanks!):

This is a comment on the author missing the hover over pop-up of the crop mastery.
If you hover over the bar below the stars it tells you how many (harvests you have done)/(how many are needed)

Right now 198/300 harvests for grapes. This is for the first grapes star. The status bar is filled i would say almost 2/3 so they are meaning the same thing. If I remember I will post back when my grapes are done and will share what reward if any I received at 1 star.

over and out -  If you want to add me as a farmville neighbor click here
For my FarmVille strategy sheet click here.