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Sometimes, you just want to take a break from competitive games and chill on your ranch. Developed by Piece of Cake Fabulous and published by Nacon, My Fantastic Ranch allows you to train multiple horses and dragons on your ranch and even host various festivals and tournaments to attract more people.
As the manager, your job is to oversee everything that's happening in your ranch, and you have to take care of your creatures and the visiting students. Multiple activities can be performed that keep your place lively while you sit back and relax in your chair comfortably.
Pay Attention To Your Creature's Stats
The game will tell you how to get more creatures in your ranch, but it's important to keep an eye on their statistics. There are two main stats every creature has: food and energy. Their main purpose is to have a lesson with the students coming through the portal, and you can do that in different types of playgrounds.
At a later stage, you can also use creatures and students with a good bond to run in a tournament or to perform in front of the king and the queen in a Carousel. It's better to choose a Super Duo or a Perfect Duo for these purposes.
Every time your creatures perform a lesson, tournament, or at the Carousel, they will lose a portion of their food and energy. After going below a certain point, their mood will be changed. A bad mood increases the chances of a creature acting silly while they're in a lesson or roaming around on the ranch.
When you're selecting a duo for anything, you'll be able to see the creature's mood. If they're in an angry mood, it's best to wait until they feel better. Once you have more creatures on the ranch, you'll be able to cycle through them regularly to avoid their bad mood.
Don't Go Overboard With Buildings
In the beginning, the tutorial will take you through the placement of all the necessary buildings on your ranch. Once you've finished learning the basic mechanics, they'll leave you to decide the rest yourself. At this point, it's important to not go overboard with your buildings and spend all your gems unnecessarily.
As enticing as getting a bunch of creatures quickly sounds, it's not a good idea for the general management of your ranch. Ideally, you'd want as many staff members as you have creatures so that they can be taken care of. If you have too many creatures, their stables won't be cleaned, and they might not have food on time.
You have to assign one staff member whenever you start a lesson in one of the playgrounds, or if you start a tournament. Moreover, they need to clean every stable, fill up the food in the enclosure and clean it.
Furthermore, there is a limit to the number of Tiny Tack Rooms and Staff Offices you can place on your ranch. While you can upgrade everything once after you reach Reputation four and nine, it's more important to keep a balance of all kinds of buildings.
Another thing to remember is to place important buildings close together. Certain buildings like the Staff Offices and Tiny Tack Rooms aren't important because creatures and staff members never use them. Other than that, it's necessary to place Stables, different playgrounds, and Snack Barns close together because staff members have to constantly go to these buildings.
If they're far apart, a lot of staff members' time will be wasted in covering the distance, and this will in turn slow down the cleaning and food refilling process.
You Need To Make Every Student Feel Included
Similar to creatures in My Fantastic Ranch, the students that arrive through the Magic Portal also have their respective moods including Ecstatic, Happy, and Angry. These students have arrived at the ranch to take part in lessons and not to just roam around and appreciate the beauty of the place.
When you're selecting a duo for any activity, you can check a student's mood as well. You need to treat this in an opposite manner of the creature's mood. If a student is not feeling Ecstatic, they should be preferred for the lesson because their mood has worsened after not being involved in an activity for a long time.
If a certain kid isn't involved in anything for long enough, they'll decide to leave the ranch. This can lead to you losing all the badges you've worked hard to gain on them. You need to use normal training sessions as a means to make every student's mood better.
Optional Objectives Are Time-Limited
Once Feritella takes you through the tutorial and leaves you to grow your ranch, some objectives will start covering the bottom left of your screen. In the beginning, there will be only one objective in this location with a star on its edge. This star means that the objective is necessary, and you need to finish it to progress to the next one.
Generally, the necessary objectives include important things like finishing a certain number of lessons in a specific playground or fighting different tournaments. Apart from these, you might get optional objectives at times that will have a time limitation below the objective's description.
Different optional objectives have different time limits based on how easy they are. For example, an objective to start a lesson with Super Duo lasts longer because you can already have the lessons running when it arrives. On the other hand, an objective to stop a creature's silly action lasts only for a few seconds.
These optional objectives provide experience for your Reputation bar, and they can make a significant difference if you dedicate yourself to finishing them all.
You Can Play Around With Time
One of the neat features that you'll thank the developers of My Fantastic Ranch for is the ability to mess around with time. On the top right side of your screen, you'll be able to see the day and time you're currently on. Once a week ends and the day reaches Sunday, you'll get a report to highlight how you've done throughout the week.
Right below the display where your current day is shown, you'll see two options that can pause the time or change its pace. You can click on the left button or press the key highlighted below it to pause or start the timer again. Similarly, you can click on the button to the right if you want to fast-forward the time.
Here are a few situations where these mechanics can help you a lot:
- If you're getting overwhelmed by the number of activities you have to take care of at the same time, you can use the pause mechanic to take a breather and figure out exactly what you need to do.
- If you have all the activity grounds, tournaments, and festivals ongoing, you can use the fast-forward mechanic to quickly get through the phase and get a ton of gems.
- Finally, you can also use the pause mechanic to check the stats of different creatures and students. If a certain creature is low on energy or food, you can direct them to the enclosure by clicking on it and selecting the respective creature.
There is no need to use this feature for pausing the game in general if you have to do something since the game gets paused if you're on the menu screen or the codex anyway.
Management Gets Hard As You Progress
After you've played My Fantastic Ranch for a couple of hours, you'll most likely have multiple playgrounds, tournament arenas, and festival grounds. These will require you to select creatures, students, and staff members rapidly to earn gems and raise your reputation. This can easily get overwhelming.
While there is a way to fast-forward time, there's no way to slow it down. Thankfully, the time pauses automatically when you're selecting a duo for an activity. Make sure you select the right synergy even if you have a lot to do because this can significantly affect your gem output.