Beginner's Guide to Farming Simulator 22: Tips

With a plethora of gameplay mechanics in Farming Simulator 22, you can earn money, acquire new fields, and expand your farm. In this guide, we've prepared a set of tips to help you quickly get the hang of the game and become a successful farmer in no time.

You can go through the tutorial on basic game mechanics on the first two maps provided you choose the «New Farmer» difficulty level.

To complete the game's introductory tour, you need to follow all the tutorial steps:

At a lower difficulty level at the start, you will have access to some machinery, tools, and funds. Before you start sowing crops in the field, you need to prepare the soil. Soil can be processed with a cultivator, plow, disc or active harrow, as well as mechanical shovels. If you are planning to plant a cereal crop, a standard small cultivator will suffice.

Drive onto the required field, press the «V» key to lower the cultivator, and start processing the soil. You can hire a worker by pressing the «H» key. By the same principle, you can assign almost all tasks related to soil processing, sowing, or harvesting in the game to hired workers. The only thing workers do not understand is when you want to collect leftover straw or dry grass using cargo trailers or balers. We will talk more about collecting straw a bit later.

Now you can proceed to sowing. For this, you will need a special tool — a seeder or a planter. Seeders are designed for sowing cereals and grain crops, while planters are for potatoes, corn, beets, and sunflowers.

At the start on lower difficulty levels, a seeder with seeds of wheat, canola, oilseed radish, grass, sorghum, and soybeans is available. On higher difficulty levels, you will need to purchase the tool from the store, as well as buy the necessary seeds. You can fill the seeder with seeds in only one way: hook up the seeder to the tractor and drive up close to the pallet with seeds. Press the «R» key to fill the seeder or planter.

Each individual crop can only be planted during a specific period. Open the main menu and go to the «Crop Calendar» section. Here you will see a list of all crops and a schedule with the seasons for planting and harvesting.

Different equipment may be required for harvesting each individual crop:

As you collect crops, the combine gets filled with the harvested crop. If you hired a worker for harvesting and they stopped working due to lack of space in the storage, get into a tractor, hook it up to a cargo trailer, and drive up close to the combine. To start unloading, you should first open the cover on the cargo trailer (if there is one), by pressing the «N» key.

After the trailer is filled with the harvest, it needs to be placed in a silo or sent for processing. On the lower difficulty levels, a grain silo will be available to you. You can also sell the harvest or use it for processing at special factories.

For storing the harvest, you need to build silos:

Other crops that exist in the game will either have to be sold or processed at factories. Open the main menu using the «Esc“ key, select the ”Prices» section, and track the most interesting offer on the market. To mark a buyer on the map, press the «Enter» key. From this moment, the buyer will be displayed on the map, and you just need to deliver the goods to the destination.

This is the simplest way to sell the harvest and other available goods. Besides, you can build various processing factories, such as a «grain mill,» "dairy farm," «sugar factory,» "spinning mill," «oil press,» and others. In this case, you will be processing the harvest into finished products and sell them at a higher price.

You can reach the store via public roads, or by pressing the «P» key. In this case, you can purchase the equipment you are interested in directly from the farm, but to pick it up, you will still have to go to the farm store. Generally, such stores are located near your farm and are marked with a grocery basket icon on the map.

In the store, you can purchase absolutely everything you might need for the development of your farm: from heavy machinery to pallets and seeds. The main feature of the store is that you are not obliged to buy the necessary equipment for sowing or harvesting, as you can also rent it. This is a very convenient game mechanic that allows you to save on equipment. Of course, having your own tractor or combine is more profitable, but in the beginning, you can manage with this service.

Many tools and vehicles can be upgraded. To do this, select the necessary tool, press «Customize» and on the right side of the screen select additional configuration. Here you can change the size of the wheels, engines, add other devices and accessories.

Some vehicles can be equipped with additional attachments. Thus, medium and large tractors can be fitted with front loader attachment. Without this device, you cannot attach selection shovels, buckets, and other tools.

Note that in the store menu you can purchase used tools and equipment at a discount. The assortment of this section is updated approximately once a week.

Before starting to fertilize the fields, it is necessary to thoroughly process the field. During soil cultivation, cultivators or shovels often unearth large stones. Such stones remain on the ground and can damage your equipment. To prevent this, you need to purchase a stone picker. Trailers for stone picking can be found in the store, in the «tools» section.

Using stone pickers not only helps to protect your farm equipment but also allows you to earn a bit. Collected stones can be sold at stone crushers. The price of stones is small: at a low difficulty level, it fluctuates from 150 to 170 euros per ton.

After you have collected stones from the fields and sown the crops, it needs to be fertilized. This can be done using dry, liquid, and solid fertilizers. For liquid fertilizers, you should purchase sprayers, and for solid and dry fertilizers, you will need fertilizer spreaders.

Solid and dry fertilizers are best spread before sowing, and liquid ones — after. You can find the fertilizers in the section «Objects“ — ”IBC Pallets», «Pallets“, or ”Big Bags».

Instead of fertilizers, you can treat the soil with lime. Hover your mouse cursor over the field and look at the bottom right corner of the screen. If lime treatment is necessary, under the indicators of your field you will see the inscription «Lime Needed“. Bags of lime can be purchased in the store, in the section ”Objects». For spreading lime, you will need to purchase fertilizer spreaders.

Weeds significantly reduce crop growth, so they must be timely removed. This can be done using weeders or by spraying herbicides. Weeders are suitable for removing weeds between slightly grown crops. Herbicides, on the other hand, can be used at any stage of maturity. Herbicides can be sprayed in dry or liquid form, just like fertilizers.

All fields in the game can be bought or sold to other farmers. To buy a plot, go to the store menu (key «P»), open the «Miscellaneous“ tab and click on the ”Land» section.

On the map that opens, you can track your fields or buy land from other farmers. To buy land, select the desired plot and click «Buy“. To sell your plot, select it on the map and click ”Sell».

You can purchase cowsheds, pastures, and apiaries in the store, in the section «Miscellaneous“ — ”Construction».

Here you need to select the «Animals» section, then click on the necessary pasture, cowshed, or apiary, and place it. It's worth noting that you can only place buildings on the territory of your farm.

For keeping each type of animal, it is necessary to prepare a specific type of feed. For example, cows only eat grass (hay), chickens are fed wheat, and horses — oats. Pigs, in turn, can be fed with balanced pelleted feed or silage.

If you keep buying feed for animals from the store, your farm is unlikely to ever become profitable. Before building enclosures for animals, it's necessary to prepare the farm for growing and harvesting its own feed.

For keeping cows, one field should be allocated for grass. The grass needs to be mowed, dried, and collected using forage trailers or packed into bales. Any mower can be used to cut the grass, and the drying process can be accelerated with tedders.

It's most profitable to collect mowed and dried grass with forage trailers. They immediately load the grass into the trailer, after which you can easily unload the feed onto the pasture or into the cowshed.

If you keep animals on pasture, in addition to feed, you will need to provide them with water. Water can be bought at water towers, but this is very expensive. To save on water, purchase a water tanker (if you keep cows, it makes sense to immediately buy a combined tanker, in which you can transport milk as well) and head to the nearest body of water. Back up to the water body so that the tanker's wheels dip into the water and fill up with the necessary amount of water.