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Farming Simulator 23 just got even more realistic than before. A realistic game about what it's like to cultivate a farm for mass production is bound to get complicated. There are endless vehicles and animals to work with, with only a short tutorial at hand.
This guide will detail things you should do during your first in-game days as a real farmer. The game can get pretty overwhelming. Luckily you can live your farm life how you desire, and with these tips, you can better judge what you want to do next.
What To Do With Your Beginner Wheat
There is a whole plot of land of full-grown wheat for you to get started with. You can go ahead and sell it all the same way you did in the tutorial, but there are other options. If you want to get a head start in Animal Husbandry, you will want to save some of that grain as feed for your starter chickens.
If you want to feed it to your chickens, you will need to purchase a Baler to turn it into hay bales and then bring them to the chicken pasture. If you aren't interested in investing in animals early on and would prefer to sell, keep an eye on the lot of land. It will start to grow weeds and will need to be plowed over and cleared.
How To Start Animal Husbandry
Starting off, you own two young chickens and one rooster. A rooster is not needed for reproduction in the game. Your two chickens are also too young to produce eggs. Chickens are the cheapest animal to buy, being $50, so you should go ahead and purchase at least one mature chicken from the shop.
You can't actually collect any eggs you produce until you purchase a Pallethandler vehicle such as a forklift. The eggs your chickens produce will sit on a pallet outside of the fencing. To start buying other animals, you will need to buy pre-made barns and lots on the map.
Head to the map and select the tab Points of Interest to find the cow barn, horse barn, pigsty, and sheep barn on the map. They will all cost you some money to unlock and also have farming lots full of ready crops nearby. Buy one of these barns, and then you will be able to purchase animals at the barn.
Choose Different Machines For Different Tasks
There are tons of different machines that perform different tasks. You do not need to purchase them all. It's up to what you want to get out of your farm. You start off with the essentials; a seeder, harvester, and cultivator.
To continue your farming venture, you will need to purchase a fertilizer and sprayer eventually. You can use cow manure or regular fertilizer to increase the yield of your crops. Sprayers will spray herbicide to prevent and block weeds from sprouting and ruining your fields. These are essentials to buy first.
The other machines are specific to what you feel like doing. There are Forestry machines and Animal Husbandry machines that are optional. The rest will allow you to produce and transport in different ways. The more money you have, the bigger machines you can get to make farming easier as seasons go by.
The Weather Affects Your Farm
A new system has been put in place to make the game even more realistic than before. You can now access the Weather Forecast to see how the following days and months will pan out. When it rains, you will be able to harvest your crops, but it will cost half of what you would normally harvest.
The seasons will change, and visual effects will alter on your farm. You start in the warmer months and will head into autumn and winter eventually. Your crops are seasonal, meaning you have to plant the right crops for that month.
You Can Change The Timescale
This is by far one of the more important things to note. Everyone has busy lives and jobs to get to. If you go into Settings, the first option will be the timescale. This allows you to make days go by faster or slower. If you are looking for a grind and don't have enough time to play through the seasons regularly, you may want to make time faster.
You can also adjust it so the time in-game lines up to real-time. The speeds go as slow as 2x and as fast as 90x. Nothing is limited in this game. You get to change things how you see fit, to better fit your play style.
Second Day Basics
All your plots may start growing weeds or new crops. You will want to start clearing out any weeds and preparing your first real bounty on your own. To clear grass from plots, use the cultivator, which is the smaller green truck.
Even though there is a lot of room to expand and purchase other plots, you are given a lot for just one person. You can use AI workers to help you get started, but using them will drain your money every second since you must pay them hourly wage. When you are starting out, it is best to do everything yourself without using AI until you have built a sturdy production line.
If you aren't spending money to do Animal Husbandry on the side, you should buy your first new machine; either a fertilizer or a sprayer.
You can use manure to fertilize your crops, but you won't have a cow or pig yet. Regular fertilizer will do.
The lowest-priced fertilizer spreader is $25,000. A Sprayer will spray herbicide to prevent weeds from ruining your produce, which can be purchased for $39,000 in the Crop Protection section of the shop.