Prepare to plow with our Farming Simulator 25 beginner’s guide
11.12.2024
By Steven T. Wright, Contributor
Listen to granddad
When you meet your grandfather in the game's opening minutes, he offers to show you the ropes. If you're new to Farming Simulator 25, we highly recommend listening. He teaches you the basics of cultivation, planting, and harvesting.
Farming Simulator 25 offers several customizable difficulty sliders to adjust before you begin, including the amount of money you start with, the loan you owe (if any), and whether or not you start with actual farmland and equipment. If you're a newbie, we strongly recommend setting Start Farm and Guided Intro-Tour to “Yes”, as you'll need both of those to trigger your grandfather's tutorial. Otherwise, you'll be left to fend for yourself.
Start with contracts
Regardless of whether or not you opt to start with some farmland, you're going to want to start your farming journey by taking on a few contracts. You can find these in the pause menu, and they allow you to perform a task for a small fee. Naturally, some of these contracts are more lucrative and time-consuming than others, and most require you to learn a new piece of equipment (or three) to get the job done.
It's important to note that you can rent the equipment you need to fulfill a contract by pressing Backspace (or clicking the appropriate icon) when accepting it. The equipment will spawn at the store near the gas station in town. In general, we recommend starting with simple tasks like clearing away deadwood.
AI workers are your friends
The AI workers in Farming Simulator 25 are vastly updated from previous entries in the series, and they're one of the game’s most impressive additions. You can set an AI worker to do many mundane tasks around the farm, including driving vehicles from point A to point B, plowing fields, delivering cargo, and more. You can even set the workers on loops so you don't have to worry about refreshing their routines every cycle. Under the Game Settings menu, you can further customize their behavior, such as whether or not they will automatically refuel your vehicles or refill any fertilizer or seeds they use.
AI workers do draw a small wage from your reserve funds as they work, but they allow you to operate your farm far more efficiently than working alone. In the field-plowing example, you can automate various aspects of production to speed it up. For example, when your harvester fills up with grain, you can send an AI worker to drive the trailer full of the fruits of your labor to the drop-off point, or you can drive the tractor and get the AI to continue the hard work of plowing. Of course, you can opt to do it all yourself—it's all up to you.
Here’s one of our most useful tips for Farming Sim 25: If you aren't quite sure how to do something, check if you can get an AI worker to do it for you in the main menu. Set them to the task and follow the AI worker's vehicle by using Tab (or the D-pad on a controller) to see how they perform the task, and you should be able to get a better idea of how to do it yourself next time.
How to plow your first field
Before you plow and harvest your first field, you'll need to determine a few things. First, make sure you actually own some land that you can cultivate. If you don't, complete enough contracts to buy a field. Second, decide what crop to start with. We recommend starting with canola for two reasons: first, it's a grain, which are the most beginner-friendly crops in the game; second, since the game begins in August, it'll be in-season for you to plant.
To plant a grain crop, you'll need a tractor, a cultivator, a seeder, a fertilizer spreader, a weeder, a harvester, and a trailer. While some of this equipment is technically optional, we recommend using them all to get a sense of the basic process and maximize your yield. You'll start with most of this equipment by default if you inherited your farm.
The first step is cultivation. To cultivate the field, attach the cultivator to your tractor and run it over the ground you want to plant; this primes the field for the seeding. The next step in the process is actually planting the seeds. First, you'll need to buy seeds from the shop in town—don't worry about the type, as seeds are universal in Farming Simulator 25. Then you need to fill your seeder. Hook your seeder to your tractor, drive to the seeds, and hit the R button when the "fill seeder" prompt appears. Once it's filled, drive to the field, start from one corner, and plant the crop row by row.
To maximize your earnings from your crop, you'll want to fertilize the ground at least once. The process is very similar to filling the seeder: buy bags of fertilizer at the store, take your tractor and spreader to where they're delivered, and press the button to fill it up. Drive back to your field, turn it on, and cover the whole area as best you can.
Next, you'll want to tackle the pesky weeds that grow on the field. Attach your weeder to your tractor and rake the whole area. Once that’s done, you simply have to wait for the crops to grow and harvest them. Get your harvester, attach the grain header to the front, turn it on, and fill your tank up with the crop. When the tank is full, extend its pipe, hitch your trailer to your tractor, and park it under the pipe, where it'll automatically dump the grain into the trailer.
Take your hard-won grain to the selling point and unload it for some cash. As you progress through the game, you can build a silo to store the grain in order to sell it when the market price is at its highest, but don't worry about that your first time around.
What to do next?
Once you've plowed your first field in Farming Simulator 25, it's really up to you to decide how you want to proceed. You can branch out into other easy-to-grow grains like sorghum, barley, or soybeans, or you could experiment with the new crops that this fresh entry offers, such as rice and peas. If you want to branch out into animal husbandry, with cows being one of the easiest animals to start with, you can buy a barn. You can even try your hand at beekeeping if you so desire—but don’t blame us if you get stung! (If you're really advanced, you can even use the manure or slurry from your animals to fertilize your fields!)
Overall, we recommend learning a little at a time and using contracts to gradually build your game knowledge until you feel comfortable managing multiple fields of crops. Keep an eye on the prices of the crops you’re selling, and remember to upgrade your equipment as you progress. For instance, a harvester with a larger capacity should be one of your first major purchases once you can afford it.
That about does it for our beginner's guide to Farming Simulator 25. While it might seem a bit impenetrable at first, this is a deeply satisfying simulation game with plenty of systems to learn. Just don't be afraid to Google every now and then.
You can find Farming Simulator 25 right now on the Epic Games Store.