FrontierVille Horseshoe Pit Help ~ THEGAMETECH

Got this article from Zynga support. Hope this would help everyone who wants to complete the Horseshoe Pit goal on FrontierVille. Remember, all Zynga games must be played to be able to get the special items.

Here it is:

Horseshoe Pit Games - How to Guide

A lot of questions are being asked about various games and how to play them, what to do when something goes wrong so I thought I'd try and compile a help thread. My main focus will be Mafia Wars since that is the game I actually play.

ALL games must be entered through the Frontierville Horseshoe Pit menu for them to count towards your goals!!! Do NOT forget this.

Farmville
This one is actually really easy if you're a new player. The interface is simple. Load the game from FTV. When you first load there is a short tutorial, you can skip it. Harvest whatever crops are ready and use the coins you earn to plow land and plant Strawberries. They take 4 hours to ripen, note the time, unlike FTV farmville gives you a percentage complete not how much time is left. After 4 hours return, harvest the new crops and repeat the process this time plowing more land and planting new crops. Doing the math isn't hard, plowing costs 15 coins, strawberries cost 10. So plow enough land so you can plant it all. You should have to do this process 3 times (maybe 4) expanding each time to get the planks.

Claiming reward: When you harvest the 200th plant you will get a plank icon on the left of the screen. You may have to do some gifting since there are other icons there, just click them and send however many gifts it says to make those icons go away and the plank should appear.

Cafe World
Again a very easy task to complete. In Cafe World you get experience for creating dishes to sell. You don't get experience for selling them. Getting the required levels in this one is a walk in the park. Create a dish by clicking on a stove and pick French Onion Soup. Then click the stove again to go through the steps of creating the dish. There are 4 steps after the last one the dish starts cooking. At this point click the stove again and delete the dish and repeat the above steps. You start with enough coins to do this enough to gain the appropriate level to complete the task.

Claiming reward: This one is like all the rest other than Farmville, it will pop up telling you the quest is complete and asking if you want to return to FTV. Click yes.

Treasure Island
Treasure Island starts you on your island (I think it's been a while). Click the boat in the bottom of your screen and choose travel. Pick an island. When you're there the idea is to find Treasure and doing that gives you more experience so you want to find it. You'll get messages if you're close, nearby means there is treasure within two spaces, extremely close means there is treasure in a connected square. Avoid trees and bushes these take more energy to search. If you run out of energy sometimes you find fruit which is kept in your backpack (bottom right) this fruit gives you extra energy. The first few levels fly by so again this one shouldn't be an issue.

Claiming reward: See Cafe World, the process is the same.

Poker
Okay Poker is different from the others because how you play AFFECTS OTHERS. Being an idiot and folding every hand is extremely ignorant, do it if you like but think about how you'd feel if you liked the game and someone else was wasting your time. Also pay attention to your turn make sure you aren't making people wait. Okay, that being said the easiest way to level is to win. I'm not going to give a lesson on Poker here if you want game basics Google it. Start on low stakes tables or the tournaments. 10/20 tables are good for beginners. Trust me playing to win is the fastest way to make this go away, pick a table with 5-6 players. When you enter the room choose a spot at the table where it says "sit" then choose your buy in amount (the default is fine). When it's your turn you'll have a few options. Check, means that you don't want to raise the bet but you want to stay in, this is only available if no one else has raised the bet. Call means someone else has raised the bet and you want to match it. Raise means you think you can win and you want to raise the current bet, you can do this with the slider or by typing in an amount. Fold means you think you have no chance and want to leave that hand. Don't fold if you have the option to check, ever. It's a wasted hand, sometimes you'll get lucky on the draw cards. The game goes through rounds of betting. After the initial deal, then after each river card is drawn. Your final hand consists of your two dealt cards and 3 of the 5 face up cards that all players share.

Claiming reward: Same as Cafe World.

Mafia Wars
This game is incredibly easy IF you know what you're doing. Leveling in the beginning is mindless but it does take doing certain things. Click Jobs, here you are given one tier Street Thug to start. Do the jobs by clicking the button, you'll notice each click gives a job "mastery" This is important. Every time you master a job you get a skill point. Once you have mastered a job move on to the next one.

The goal here is to get to jobs that pay better energy to experience ratios. The first job is 1 energy for 1 experience not so good but as you progress they'll get better. Once you have mastered all the jobs in Street Thug the mastery goes back to zero on all of them and you can do them again, this happens twice for a total of 3 masteries. You never want to repeat a job that is already mastered except as described below.

One very important thing about MW's experience is it rolls over. Meaning if you need one experience to level and do a job that pays 9 exp you start with 8 exp towards the next level. This is critical in choosing jobs. Early on you want to get to ONE experience from leveling then do the highest paying job you have energy for. This is what I meant by repeating jobs. Even if you have to do a job that you've already mastered it's okay for this purpose.

Changing Tiers, something some new players miss is the tiers on the jobs page. You start at Street Thug but as you level new tiers will open up, look at these tiers and do the jobs that give the most experience per energy. Divide the experience given by the energy required to get the ratio.

Skill Points. The thing most new players miss is the skill points, you get one per mastered job and 5 per level. If leveling is your goal (and this guide assumes it is) ALL your skill points go in energy, nothing else. You add skill points by clicking Profile. You want to add skill points as soon as you get a few or if you run out of energy and have some in reserve.

Claiming reward: Same as Cafe World.

Tip on retrieving the spike from another player: If you got locked up and refreshed after your popup for earning your spike, it is still there. If you go into Mafia Wars and click on the M at the top that says Live updates, you can scroll down through where you earned the Spike and it will have a claim button there and take you into Frontierville. It says something about earning respect throughout the territories or something like that, but it will say Frontierville.

General Claiming issues

I have managed to claim everything except Mafia Wars (I just don't level fast enough =/) so they generally do work. If for some reason you don't get your pop up from the game try leaving and reentering the game via the Horseshoe pit (remember that is CRITICAL to these working!!!).

If that doesn't work attempt to get another level if you can, just to be sure.

If you still aren't gaining your reward it's time to contact support. You want Frontierville Support, click support at the bottom of your game. On the support page in the bottom right enter Horseshoe Pit and choose Frontierville as the game. When the next screen comes up click Email Us in the upper right. The rest of it is a step by step process. Be as descriptive as possible, take screen shots if you can remember support workers are human, "I didn't get my ***** spike" doesn't help them solve your problem.

credits to: Calder12