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Recovering Energy – Energy is recovered at a rate of one energy point per 5 minutes of real time. You also completely recover your energy when you gain a level. Finally, you can gain an energy bolt that gives you one point of energy by taking certain actions. Whenever you tend the land of a friend you gain one point of energy. Finally, sometimes you will randomly gain a point of energy from harvesting or feeding animals. Harvesting trees is most likely to give you energy, feeding animals is next most likely, and harvesting plants is incredibly unlikely to give you bonus energy.

Trees – Watering and harvesting trees is the least efficient means of gaining experience points. Trees provide minimal experience points when harvested, usually only one point. While trees have a high chance of giving you additional energy, this does not improve the ratio to significantly above 1:1.

Animals – Animals give between 1 and 4 experience points when fed. They also have a very slight chance of providing bonus energy. Animals are oddly counterintuitive on which give good experience rewards. Fully grown chickens provide 3 experience points and fully grown ducks provide 4 experience points, while fully grown cows only provide 1 experience point. Across all animals, the average ratio is 1:2, which still makes them a poor choice for experience. The one exception is that it is worth having a few chickens around because the 1:3 ratio is reasonable and they can be fed every half hour. Thus, if you are playing at unexpected times, they are almost always available to be fed. A duck or two is also useful for this as well.

Crops – Crops provide the absolute best experience ratio, by far. If you can play the game every hour then 12 pumpkin patches can earn you 48 experience points every hour. And, that 1:4 ratio isn't even the best you can do. By carefully planning how you plant crops, you can earn significantly better experience points. For example, if you plan to play every hour for 8 hours straight, plan 12 pumpkin patches, 12 potato patches, and 12 flax patches. The pumpkin patches can be harvested in an hour, the potato patches in 4 hours and the flax patches in 8 hours. At the two hour point, harvest the pumpkin patches and plant 12 more pumpkin patches and 12 potato patches. Repeat this process again at the three hour mark. By the 4 hour mark and every hour afterwards you will simply be harvesting.

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