The first time we   saw the mystery box was on the 21st of october, let's call it "Grey" Mystery Box I, the cost of this was 15 Farm Cash and could get you different decorations or a building: the Striped Rest Tent. It was not really received well since the new items weren't perceived as being worth the 15 Farm Cash. Today this is different though..

Then, at 6 November there was a sudden "mystery" mystery box which appeared to be out there. But… it seemed to be the case that if someone had kept a mystery item in her gift box that it would be retained although the mystery box itself was already gone.

Today however, a real new "blue" mystery box appeared. This time the new Mystery box costs 16 Farm Cash. And contains not new items but already existing items. And these ARE really worth the FV since the otherwise market FV is in about half the cases double the price you pay for the mystery box. In other words "always a prize" (although you miss the added XP when you would actually buy the item from the marketplace).

It's interesting what they did here:

1. they took the two highest selling decorations in the game (ROS-1947 was only available for a limited time):the white owl and the large pond.
2. they took the building with the lowest FV cost and the building with the highest FV cost. (the Haunted house was higher but was only available for a limited time): the gazebo and the manor
3. they took the highest (only) FV tree: the acai tree
4. they took the 2 large FV based fuel sets

So this is really cool. The best decoration and the best building and the best tree of the game are in there!!

The mystery items are not "exclusive" meaning: you have a chance of getting multiple times the same gift. The mystery box also gets you another 5 XP when you "buy it".

Update in database / FarmVille Farmers Almanac:

1. the second mystery box has been added as a new item in the "all items list" with a cost of 16 FV: http://almanac.farmvillechicken.com/all-farmville-game-objects

2. the ways to retrieve stuff has been adjusted by providing a "first mystery box" and "second mystery box" entry:

1. The ways to obtain trees section now contains the reference to the Acai Tree in gift Box round 2: http://almanac.farmvillechicken.com/all-ways-to-get-trees
2. The way to obtain the buildings has been updated with option Mystery Box 2: http://almanac.farmvillechicken.com/all-buildings-by-retrieval-method-cost-and-level
3. The way to obtain decorations has been updated: http://almanac.farmvillechicken.com/all-ways-of-retrieving-decorations
4. Fuel and Tractor etc… had to be added anyway as a separate section (TODO)
   .

3. The sometimes different XP has been added but is not reflected in the pages yet. This is the relation between the way of retrieval and the amount of XP associated with it.  It's probably the handiest to create a specific page for each mystery box and each way of retrieval of the objects. (TODO)

4. The second date run for the White Owl has been added but is not reflected in the GUI yet (there can be endless appearing and disappearing of objects so its probably handier for the gui to display it in another way. todo, maybe the first appearance can be marked as special and the rest in smaller letters). (TODO)

Links:

Twitter Dev Announcement: http://twitter.com/zfarmville/statuses/5612352758
Forums announcement by Lexilicious: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=257222
Darren McCall gives us images and posted first on his blog: http://darrenmccall.com/blog/?p=1048
Discussion on the Forum: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=257546
The Mystery Box 2 at FarmFreak: http://farmvillefreak.com/?p=996#comments
The Mystery Box 2 at FarmVilleMania.de: http://www.farmvillemania.de/2009/11/11/die-neue-mystery-box-16-fv-dollar-die-sich-wirklich-lohnen/
The Mystery Box 2 at FarmVille Fanatic: http://farmvillefanatic.com/index.php/2009/11/10/fall-items-and-mystery-box
Lightchan on the new mystery box: http://www.lightchan.com/2009/11/10/farmville-mystery-box-new/

Just to Note

The Gifts you receive come from "FarmVille". So instead of the name of the sender this name is used, which is rather logical :)

And as a difference with the first Gift Box, this Gift Box does not publish on the wall what you got. So the thought behind it is probably to make more people curious and encourage people to ask "what did you get" and increase social interation.

In the meanwhile on my own account

I still have the dreadful out of sync 2 error….I managed to get in 1 time after some reloads, so updating this blog and the database will go at a much much slower rate.

p.s. thank you Mia Fakie Chronicle for your support on this really annoying thing: