FarmVille Winter Workshop: Everything you need to know

The Winter Workshop is now available in FarmVille! This new constructable building is the first major step to the FarmVille holiday season and soon enough you'll be able to harvest special Holiday Gifts from the Winter Workshop for special use later (hint: they'll probably be used in quests).

This brand new building will most likely operate like the recent Halloween Candy Basket, requiring players to ask friends for parts to build it and upgrade it. As for the gifts, we imagine there will be a lot of sharing going around and not through the Gifts section.

Workin' on the Workshop

You'll get the base for the Winter Workshop for free the first time you play FarmVille after the game update, and you will immediately be entered into Placement Mode. You can place the Winter Workshop base on your farm now, or you can choose to place it in your Gift Box for use later.

You'll only be able to have one Winter Workshop at a time. If you sell yours and want another, you can find it in the Market in the "Buildings" tab for 5,000 coins. You'll need to be Level 5 in order to place and use the Winter Workshop.

Take a look after the break for more information about this winter fun factory from Zynga.

FarmVille Winter Workshop

The basic Winter Workshop looks pretty but you won't be able to harvest it for Holiday Gifts when the time comes. You'll need twelve (12) parts (4 bricks, 4 nails and 4 wooden boards) to complete construction of the first level:

FarmVille Winter Workshop Construction Parts

Like other constructable buildings, you can acquire these parts by:

    Asking your neighbors for these parts by posting a help request to your feed (click on the "Ask For More" button for each type of part).
    Give parts to your neighbors via the Free Gifts page or the "Send Gifts" button.
    Acquire individual parts by spending Farm Cash (click on the "Buy" button for that particular part). Each part is 1 Farm Cash.
    Acquire all needed parts for the building by spending Farm Cash (click on the "Complete Now" button to purchase parts for the rest of the building). The Cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the amount of parts left needed to finish the building.
    Parts awarded through Special Delivery Boxes.
    Using individual parts available in your Gift Box.

Once you complete construction of the first level you'll see this new window:

FarmVille Winter Workshop More Construction Parts

There are two more levels of construction; the second level requires forty-five (45) total parts (15 bricks, 15 nails and 15 wooden boards), where the meter will be halfway filled, while the third level requires an additional sixty (60) parts (20 each of the 3 above). The bigger the level of the Winter Workshop, the more Holiday Gifts you'll get when you harvest it.

Here's how the Winter Workshop will look:

Basic Workshop
   

First Level Constructed (Capable of Harvesting)
   

Second Level Constructed
   

Fully Built & Operational

Harvesting for Holiday Gifts will begin soon. Your neighbors will be able to harvest your Winter Workshops for Holiday Gifts as well. Seeing the logical, vertical progression of the Winter Workshop is interesting. It's currently unknown what gifts the Winter Workshop will hold, but expect them to have a grander purpose than just looking pretty. What's most exciting is this building will give us yet another reason to visit our friends' farms, something that isn't encouraged enough in FarmVille. But most importantly, will elves be included? Who knows, but a man can dream, can't he?

Source: Zynga FarmVille Forum

Find the rest of our Holidays coverage right here.

CBS comedy 2 Broke Girls gets Diner Dash-style Facebook game

More and more, TV networks are turning to games to promote new and existing shows. "Smack talk hipsters, serve coffee to loners and rack up tips!" is the hook of a new Facebook game launched by CBS last month to promote their new fall comedy TV series, 2 Broke Girls, about a pair of waitresses at a Brooklyn diner saving up for the chance to run their own cupcake shop someday.
2 Broke Girls diner game
Created by GameSalad (the generous hosts of the political Angry Birds homage, Angry Anna) and CBS Interactive, the 2 Broke Girls game is also available for iOS devices at the App Store as well as GameSalad's website. It's also not the first time a CBS show has made it as a Facebook game. Just last month, a fake collectible card game from CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, got turned into a real collectible card game for Facebook called "Mystic Worlds of Ka'a".
2 Broke Girls menu
2 Broke Girls is a Facebook game very similar in play to Playfirst's phenomenally popular Diner Dash. The latter had made a home for itself on Facebook until poor traffic forced Playfirst to announce its shutdown back in July. Seeing how 2 Broke Girls is definitely more barebones and less Facebook integrated than Diner Dash was, I doubt it'll take off as a game alone. But if the show is good enough, they could always deepen the game's development.

Click here to play 2 Broke Girls on Facebook Now >

[Hat-tip: ClickZ]

Are Facebook games about a show enough to make you want to check out the show? Have you ever played Diner Dash before?