Farm Expert (FE) is a rapidly developing alternative to the Farm Simulator Series. Farm Expert boldly goes where Farm Simulator (FS) has not gone before, at least without mods. Here is a partial list:

• 3D deformable terrain with bumps, ridges, deep plowing, and weather effects
  
  
• Advanced soil parameters including need for deep plowing, shallow plowing (loosening / cultivating), fertilizer, addition of herbicide, insecticide and fungicide for protecting crops, then lime for rebalancing the soil pH
  
  
• Skills: As you perform tasks more often, you increase your skill at it, which in turn makes the action less wasteful, more profitable. For instance, higher driving skill uses less fuel and puts less wear and tear on your vehicles.
  
  
• Extensive Animal Husbandry: Breed and sell animals for profit, not just for milk and eggs. There are many animals available, including goats, ducks and horses, in addition to your usual cows, chickens and sheep.
  
  
• Build & Upgrade farm buildings: You don’t need a silo for corn? Then don’t build one!
  
  
• Buy different farms for specific farming tasks: You start with a base farm with fields and tractor, but can at your discretion purchase the animal farm or vegetable-growing farm (greenhouses).
  
  
• Repair and clean your vehicles: You’ll want to fix your vehicles before they break down. Else you’ll have to call the breakdown truck, which is quite expensive. So build a workshop to repair and a car wash to keep your equipment fancy machines clean.
  
  
• Seasons / calendar: Year starts on April 1, and crops take months to grow. You can timewarp or jump forward days/weeks ahead while waiting for the crops to mature.
  
  
• Summer and winter growing seasons

In some ways it plays very similarly to FS. If you’re an FS player you’ll immediately see how you must cultivate, sow, wait, harvest, collect, and sell crops. The equipment for sale will all be familiar. There are “people” visible in certain areas. There are also some interesting places to explore in each map--I won’t list them here, that would spoil the fun.

Development work for FE 2016 ended in Winter 2016. The reason was that they were working on FE 2017. In FE 2017, the developers have already achieved much of the promise of their ambitious game design, while continuing to add features and fix bugs. What follows is a list of major changes for version 2017:

• Added greenhouses and the ability to plant and harvest seedlings for tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers. Added specialized greenhouse equipment including the electric tractor (called a “forklift” in game) for pulling a sprayer unit or a harvesting platform. The game description says you can tend the growth at each stage by varying temperature and humidity with the “on board computer.” I don't think they've implemented that computer control yet (NYF).
  
  
• Added many new types and models of farming equipment including models based on actual hardware from licensed partners such as Landini, McCormick (tractors), Krampe (tippers aka grain carts), Kuhn, Grimme, Vogel&Noot, and many others. I believe the number of available machines is at least 2 times larger than FE 2016. Note, they kept their fictional companies such as Xena—analogous to Amazone—for sprayers, Galadhon for harvesters, etc.
  
  
• Much more extensive vehicle damage model and need for repairs and preventive maintenance.
  
  
• New Physics for vehicle / terrain interactions including effects of rainy weather. Fields now appear puddly and get slick with mud. It is possible to get stuck in a mire. Vehicles get dirty from mud as well as dirt.
  
  
• New AI worker option for harvesting. You can put off purchasing an expensive harvester and call a neighbor to bring their harvester over and do the work for you for a small fee. You pay even less if you pick up the grain from the worker's harvester using your own grain cart, and pay slightly more if the worker delivers the grain straight to your silo.
  
  
• More maps. You now get 4 maps to choose from:
  – Solar Valley. Dry, rocky, hilly terrain surrounded by mountains and sea. Resembles parts of Italy, Sicily and Southern France. Villa-type homes. You start with one tractor--nothing else--and a base farm, but plenty of money: 500,000 Euros.
  – Quiet Corner. I believe this is the map also used in the tutorial, which may have been made to resemble an Eastern European village. You get a tractor, small grain cart, plow and cultivator, then only just 20000 Euros, so you need to find a way to make positive cash flow, fast, and "bootstrap" yourself to a larger farm.
  – "Lakes and Rivers" (title unknown) is a map filled with many water features. Here too, you start with a tractor, plow and cultivator, and 20,000 Euros. And a need for careful planning.
  – "North Hills" map--I think this is the one inspired by Southern Germany with Mad King Ludwig's Castle watching over you. You get a tractor, harvester, small grain cart and 20,000 Euros to start with. Another "bootstrapping" scenario, but the harvester is a pretty high value.
  
  
  
• New plant protection products (herbicide, insecticide and fungicide) and yield penalties for not protecting the plants. You can spray from a tractor-pulled sprayer, or hire an aircraft to spray your fields.
  
  
• Modding will be supported (NYF) which I take to mean the ability to add machines with meshes, textures, scripts and API interactions with the game as in Farm Sim. Steam workshop will be supported (NYF).
  
  
• I believe they removed the biodiesel synthesis facility as an available farm building type. Maybe this will return someday as a mod.

* Not Yet Functional?
Some of the features described here are currently, as of September 12, either buggy, temporarily removed or otherwise Not Yet Functional. I will mark these items with NYF. Please correct me if you notice something is working after an update and I'm slow to update this guide.

Definitely start with the tutorials. These will step you through 80% of what you need to know to play the game. However, a word of caution: The tutorial is in a separate map, and any skills you gain here DO NOT transfer to your career game, which for some reason is called “Free Play” in the game. So there is no need to do a super good job in the tutorial. That is, don’t waste your time on perfect plowing, it won’t count toward your character building.

Note, currently each tutorial plays as a separate scenario. As of Sept 12, 2016, you need to exit the game and restart it in order to play the next tutorial or start a career mode game (see below). The developers will add an "exit to menu" option to the game soon (NYF).

After finishing the tutorial, start a “Free Play" game in one of the 4 maps. This is the actual Career mode. Just like in Farm Simulator, you start at the beginning, with a largely empty farm and very basic equipment, including a tractor, small combine, small plow, small cultivator, small sower and small grain cart / tipper. Just like in Farm Simulator, it’s up to you what you do next.
You can:

• Purchase equipment of all types, including tractors, combines, headers, tippers, plows, sowers, cultivators, slurry tankers, manure and fertilizer spreaders, fruit harvesters, greenhouse vegetable harvesting equipment etc.
  
  
• Get bank loans and pay them off on their schedule or faster
  
  
• Upgrade your farm buildings to increase capacity for animal raising, grain storage, etc.
  
  
• Buy different farm types to expand your capabilities (animal farm, vegetable greenhouse farm)
  
  
• Grow, store and sell crops, with all your own equipment or hiring a local farmer to help you.
  
  
• Sell milk, eggs, and mature animals (over 1 year old). Mature animals are worth more than the young animals you purchase. So you're getting paid to feed and house them until they are mature.
  
  
• Sell crops, fruit, vegetables, surplus hay
  
  
• Mow grass, tedder it, create hay, collect it in a wagon or bale it
  
  
• Create straw bales, both square and round. Sell them if you like.
  
  
• Transport bales on various carts.
  
  
• Create corn silage (needed to get the most milk out of your cows and goats)
  
  
• Marry an AI zombie (if you succeed at this, post a screenshot please)

(Some of this information may be a repeat of other sections but I wanted to be sure I had a chapter on this specifically.)

• To purchase tractors, plows, sowers, sprayers, harvesters, headers, mowers, a pickup truck (NYF) and just about anything else mechanical, head to either of the "Machine Shops." FE 2017 now has shops for both new and used equipment*.
  
  
• To purchase seeds for grain, seedlings for vegetables, saplings for orchard trees and bushes; fertilizer; crop protection spray tanks and other "consumable" items, open the Agricultural store at any time, from any place by clicking on the AGR icon on the large map (M menu). At last, a store you can use without having to visit it.
  
  
• To purchase a new farm, travel on foot or in a vehicle over to that farm. You'll see it on your map with a colored circle centered on it. Purchasable farm types include the animal farm (farm with pens for all animals, upgradable if you have additional funds) and Vegetable farm (greenhouses).
  
  
• Unlike in FS, you will see multiple instances of shop types on a given map.

*The used equipment represents some real bargains--much cheaper than buying the same item new--and this stuff is great for getting you started. However the selection of used equipment is limited to "starter" class items. For a full selection, at full prices, head for the New Machine shop.

It’s almost exactly like Farming Simulator, except for a few important details.

First, crops take about 4 to 4 1/2 months to grow, or “about 140 days.” You’ll have to check each field visually before attempting to harvest; you can’t harvest too soon. The field information is visible from the map view of the M menu, or from the quick info view (lower left corner) with the F2 key setting. (F1 is minimap, F2 is field info, F3 is status of other items such as how many fields you own.)

Using the calendar wisely when waiting for crops to grow. You will want to jump forward in increasingly small increments as you approach the best date to harvest so you don't go too far and ruin your crops. Also, some crops may be ready sooner than others because of crop type, or because they were planted earlier or later than others.

You must purchase seed, fertilizer, protection sprays etc. from the agricultural store. Just click on the store from the pad menu (m) map, and you can purchase from anywhere. YOU DO NOT NEED TO PHYSICALLY VISIT THE AGRO STORE. The product is automatically delivered to your farm's storage area for immediate use.

Before driving out to a field you need to fill your sower with seeds / spreader with fertilizer / sprayer with the desired product. Just drive near the storage area and hit Enter and you'll get a list of choices. There is even lime (alkaline chemical) for rebalancing the soil pH every few years as needed.

You can unload any unused consumables, including seeds, fertilizer, crop protection sprays and lime here too when done.

More Advanced Info
You can plant winter crops in mid to late September which will be ready June 1. Confirmed: I planted wheat fields on Sept 15, 29 and 30, and all 3 were ready at the same time on June 1.

Then it's possible (I hear but not yet confirmed by me) to plant crops again just after June 1, such that they are harvested in mid to late September. So you should get two crops per year per field! Given the timing I observed, you should be able to replant as late as about June 15. I'd favor closer to June 1 to be safe.

But, I noticed, after spending almost 2000 Euros to spray my fields from the air, that all these sprays disappear during the "6 month hibernation" between Sept 30 and April 1, and yet their presence on the fields don't count. That is, any weeds you have on the field that would normally be killed by herbicide just are not harmed...because the herbicide disappears. The devs confirm the disappearance of the crop protection is deliberate, however there should have been some effect in controlling weeds & insects during that time...this issue is a bug and will be corrected.

So: For now, if you plant in late September for a winter crop, don't spray the fields until April 1! But once fixed, you may have to spray in September and re-spray on April 1.

Orchards are now included with the base game, it is no longer a DLC. In an orchard--a field that's designated as an orchard--you can grow and harvest fruit trees and berries. You can convert any field to an orchard, but note that anything growing there will be wiped out if/when you do.

To grow seedlings in a greenhouse, you need to purchase the Vegetable farm. The price is about 100,000 Euros (a steal) and comes with 5 or 6 very large greenhouses, each capable of holding 270 seedling units. (At the moment, vegetable farming is extremely profitable...don't know how long that will last if they rebalance it!)

There are special types of equipment intended solely for fruit and vegetable harvesting that can’t be used for grain field work. There are orchard tractors, orchard mowers, orchard harvesters, orchard trailers, also vegetable harvesters and sprayers.

Tree fruits take a year or so to grow for the first time, but I believe you can get a first harvest of berries the same year you plant the bushes.

In a greenhouse, tomatoes and cucumbers take roughly 90 to 100 days to grow, while peppers take a bit longer. There are supposed to be temperature and humidity controls for greenhouses but I have not seen them implemented yet (NYF). You can also add fertilizer and spray (for insects?) in the greenhouses (not tried this yet).

More Advanced Info
So, you've harvested your first batch of greenhouse items and sold them at the market. In the greenhouse, some rather large, green leafy plants remain. What to do with these?

If you have less than 110 days left until September 30, that is, if it is no later than about June 10, then I suggest removing all the old plants immediately (one by one, by hand, right click each) and putting in new seedlings in their place. The old plants don't produce anything, they just take up space. Then, fill all the available space with new seedlings. They are cheap and make you a ton of money.

But if you plant after June 10 (or, say, June 20 if you're just doing cucumbers and tomatoes), then all plants...old and new...get deleted from your greenhouse during the "hibernation" period from September 30 to April 1. In the game it seems like just one evening, but a lot of things happen that "night."

Long story short, you can get about two crops of greenhouse vegetables per year, but be careful with the timing, and be sure to remove the old "seedlings" because they don't do anything.

You can grow grass, mow it, use a tedder to dry it, then rake (windrow) and collect it in a loading wagon or baler. Then it’s called hay and you can feed it to your animals or drop it off at a baling center.

You can, just like in FS, collect straw--the stuff dropped on the ground behind a harvester while it collects wheat and barley--and make bales of it, for sale at a bale collection point or to feed to your animals (see below).

I hear you can no longer scoop up straw using a loading wagon--such wagons are for hay only now. (Would like this confirmed).

Confirmed by Showgunn84: straw bales can be fed to your animals. For the purposes of animal feed, FE handles straw bales as though they were hay bales. Just drop a straw bale into the grass silo and it becomes hay.

Around the map there are several places where you sell your products. Unfortunately, as of Sept 12, they are mislabeled "purchase" points. The English translations are being improved as we speak.

Anyway...

• To sell grain, go to a Grain selling point, marked on the map with an icon resembling silos. Drive up to the grating near the large grain elevators, lift up your grain cart / tipper with the R key, and let your grain drop in. You'll see your available cash balance go up. Currently there is no pricing information provided in game, but that will be added in the future. (Unlike in Farm Sim, you don't need to hunt around for the best price or for Great Demands before you sell grain. Just drive up to any grain elevator that isn't yours, and dump in your grain.)
  
  
• To sell Orchard Fruits or Greenhouse Vegetables, go to a fruit collection center. On the map these look like a fruit icon. When you arrive with fruit / veggies in crates on your trailer (which you loaded by hand, you, personally, by using the E key), you will be prompted to sell the items. Do so and you get paid.
  
  
• To sell haybales: Drive your haybale-laden trailer to a haybale selling point, looks like a swirl (or galaxy, to my eyes) icon on the map.
  
  
• You automatically get paid on a daily basis for milk and eggs produced by your animals.
  
  
• To sell used equipment and tractors, go to a "Machine shop," open the menu with the Enter key, and select "Sale." No, this isn't the bargain of the day, it's your means of selling back that tractor you didn't like or that slurry tank you couldn't get to work.

FE handles worker hiring in a much more satisfying and perhaps more realistic manner than FS. You go to the Worker tab of your pad menu (press M to open the menu) and you will see a long list of available tasks, including plow field, cultivate field, sow field with wheat, sow field with barley, harvest field, aerial spray of herbicide, etc. After selecting the task, mouse-over the field where you want this work to occur. When you do so, you are shown the price to be paid, which may be actually higher if you select an expensive seed type. But it’s a lot cheaper than the thousands of Euros spent per field on wages in FS. As of Sept 12, 2016, the devs have said that a future update will allow you to cancel work being done on a field by a worker (NYF).

When you hire a worker, watch in amazement as a different tractor, with a driver that is dressed differently from you*, shows up at the field in question and starts working it. When the job is done, he goes away. Just like hiring a neighbor to help you. You don’t need to own multiple tractors! They bring their own equipment and seed! This saves you lots of time and money, for sure.

Hint: To speed up the work, just skip to the next day. The worker will have finished the job 100%, and you can do the next task on that field immediately. Watching the worker do his/her job in your field can be hypnotic, or boring, depending on how you feel about it. Some larger fields can take upwards of 30 minutes of real time for the worker to finish.

*For some reason, in game, you look like a firefighter. Play multiplayer to see what I mean.

You get money from the animal-keeping business by selling their produce (milk, eggs) or selling them when they are over a year old. Any animals born on your farm can replace the adults you sell.

Your critters must of course be fed. You can grow and collect your own hay and silage (corn silage) for cattle, or buy hay from an agricultural store (sorry, no silage from the store). You have to purchase bird feed at the store. Just click on the store icon with the pad menu (m) open to map view, and you can purchase it no matter where you are anywhere. The product is automatically delivered to your farm for immediate use.

• Cattle eat corn silage and hay.
  
• Goats, sheep and horses eat hay. If you drop straw bales into the grass silo, it is treated as hay and the animals eat it. Thank you Showgunn84 for the info.
  
• Hens and ducks eat bird seed (aka feed)

Every day, your productive animals will give you automatic income for the sale of eggs and milk. No more chasing around the hen coop looking for eggs. No more trying to get out of the way of the milk truck. The money just shows up magically.

I don’t know what ducks do other than quack. But you can sell them for profit when they’re over a year old.

Horses can also be sold when over a year old. I imagine that if you have more than 2, they might breed, then you can sell the young horses (any over a year old) for profit. (Not verified in game yet--I’m still mostly a newbie--but if you can’t breed horses, why buy them in the first place?)

Older animals eventually die. Animals of any age will “begin to die after a couple of days” if they are not fed. So please be careful to check their food stores before doing any big time warp actions.

You can upgrade your animal pens if you want them to hold more animals. Do this by visiting the Buildings tab of the M menu, and pay to upgrade the desired buildings.

Having skills of adds RPG elements to the game, and as you get better at the game in real life, your virtual farmer in-game reaps the benefit. You skill up just by doing the action--just like in Skyrim--and you get the benefit automatically, without having to select anything.

• Driving skill increases the more you drive, including going back and forth working a field and driving down roads. The higher your level, the less fuel you use per km and the less rapidly wear and tear you subject your vehicle.
  
  
• Plough (plow) skill makes you a more efficient plowman. Perhaps this means you can go over bumps without being knocked off course, making steering easier.
  
  
• Manager skill makes you a better manager of hired workers.
  
  
• Sower skill makes you use seed more efficiently
  
  
• Trade skill (FE uses different term) decreases your costs when purchasing items from a store.
  
  
• And there are several more as you will see.

Unlike Farm Sim, crops grow at realistic rates. You can get “summer” and “winter” crops, which are planted and harvested at times similar to reality.
Similar to Farm Sim, you can increase the pace of time so it will pass quickly when there is nothing going on. The time steps are different in FE: 1x, 2x, 6x, 12x, skip to next day, and skip to any future day in your current month.

Find the time controls in the Mechanics tab of the M menu.

As described above, you can set the passage of in-game time to some multiple of real time. For instance, 1x means one minute in game takes 1 minute of real time. At 2x, for every real minute the in-game clock advances two minutes. If you seem to be running out of time every in-game day, consider slowing the rate of time.

The “Wait [to next day]” button will skip you to 6:00 AM the next morning.

Last but not least, there is also a calendar function for skipping multiple days. Please note it only displays the current month. To get to the next month, go to the last day of the current month, then "wait until next day."

Be careful! There is no function currently implemented to stop the passage of time when you are needed. So it is easy to jump past animal feeding time or harvest time, resulting in ruined crops or starved animals. However they may soon implement an “alarm clock” function which should allow you to skip forward until the next time you are needed to feed an animal, harvest an orchard, etc.

This is a feature I really like.

Note that in Farm Expert 2017 there are now two types of upgrades: Purchasing entire new classes of farm (greenhouse farm and/or animal farm) and purchasing buildings and upgrades to your base farm, which by default handles crops and comes with about 3 fields.

Your farm starts out with lots of space yet may have skeletal facilities. You get, for instance, just one small silo for wheat, and empty concrete pads for 5 more silos for the other grain types. You start off with a very small motor pool area, and fenced off places that will, if you elect to pay for them, become a fuel station, a weather station, a car wash, etc.

The fuel station lets you buy fuel in 1000 kg quantities so you get a volume discount. The weather station will display the weather forecast for today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Good so you can avoid working in the rain, or to actually see the rain if that's what you want. The car wash allows you to wash your machines.

So there is no need to pay for a large farm with items you have no interest in. This helps a lot in the early game.

Several game playability features are found in the options menu. Here you can change:

• Information Coins - Turn on / off “Information” messages. Those question mark icons floating near points of interest need not bother you once you become experienced with the game. Turn them on later if need be.
  
  
• Steering - Switch between steering types, “Easy” which allows FS style forward and reverse controls (w for forward and s for reverse) and “Realistic” in which you must stop, hit the z key to switch into reverse, then w moves you backwards until you stop again and hit z once more to put it in forward. With realistic steering selected, the w key is the "go" button (forward or reverse) and the s key is the brakes.
  
  
• Braking Force - Switch between hard (immediate) and soft braking for all your vehicles.

Other Things to Note

• Collisions - In FS, you drive through wandering townspeople as though they were ghosts. In FE, you bounce off of most obstacles including ai people, even if you are driving a big heavy tractor. However, some smaller objects such as signs can be knocked over without slowing you down.
  
  
• Breakdowns / Getting Stuck / Running out of Gas - If your vehicle reaches 100% damaged, or if you run a vehicle out of fuel, or if you get stuck in such a place as a river or down a steep ravine--or possibly even in the mud--you can call the tow truck from your M menu, which should return your equipment to your base farm.