Decoration Strategy
To make your workers happy and decrease your production costs, you need happiness from decorations. To build an effective decoration strategy, you need to understand where you will end up in the future and then work backwards. There are many different ways to get to your end goal. I have a level 200 farm with 45 expansions and 13 level 10 houses. My farm will not change much going forward.
I have 18 decorations at 110 happiness or better placed on my farm or in storage, plus two Easter Bunny Factories at ~107 happiness per 6x6 space. This leaves me at a happiness of 90 with 48 workers for upgrading (and temping).
The key thing to take away from this is with a mature farm (started around level 140), I have all the decorations I need plus some to spare without spending a penny.
For decorations, you naturally want the best (most happiness per area) out on your farm. This will mean having a well organized and arranged farm to minimize small decorations in spaces that are 3 wide. At most, a well arranged farm will have no more than one 3x3 and one 3x6 decoration at any one time. Usually when people ask for advice, I look at their farm and tell them to rearrange. I had one last night that found a free 6x9 area just rearranging and putting out better decorations.
Any decoration can be put into storage (green box under your the construction menu) by holding down on the decoration until the yellow arrow fills all the way to the top, and then select the storage box. You can store up to 100 decorations at any time, and this cap includes the adventure farms and mystery boxes.
There are tasks in the blue quest book to place decorations on your farm. It will always show the highest number you have accomplished to date and not the current number placed. The best way to tackle this task and get the rewards is to box all of your decorations and place flowerbeds. They are cheap and fast.
Decorations To Have
The core of your decorations will be the theme upgradable decorations at +110 happiness when finished. These can be found under the special decoration tab in the construction menu. You can only purchase the decoration(s) for the active theme, but upgrade them at any time. There are 11 themes that rotate, plus seasonal ones at Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. I have the Easter, but not the Halloween (I think its... visually appealing challenged.) Included in this core is the birdbath that uses the same red build coupons. That gives you 11 decorations. The theme pages now display the available decorations for each theme.
The next 3 big ones are tournament decorations - Chessboard, Chicken Bush and Garden of Imagination. These start at 101 - 105 happiness and reasonably upgrade to 115 - 117 at level 3. Levels 4 and 5 are a joke. These are found in the shopping cart (Piggy Store) under tournament tokens. When you buy one, it is sent to your stored decorations and can be placed from there.
Next up is the Wellspring, which is bought in the same place (under the loyalty point tab) and placed in storage, but uses loyalty points (from your friends and co-op). This is a huge boost to your farm and it is fairly easy to attain if you focus on saving your points. Save up your loyalty points and make this your first redemption. There is also a Handshake of Charity that can be purchased with loyalty points, costing more and giving better happiness.
Under the special decorations tab, you will also find the Star sphere that uses adventure tokens. Adventure buildings are expensive and difficult to upgrade and this decoration doesn't take that many, so it is a very good option for your adventure tokens.
Every Christmas (and Easter), there is a decoration that you can build through a seasonal event. The Christmas trees (2019, 2020) are 110 happiness each and the Bunny Inc is 160 (in a larger space = 107 in a 6x6).
There are also decorations that can be purchased (and upgraded) instead of gift boxes during different seasonal events. Easter has two 6x6 decorations with 120 happiness. Some of the seasonal events (Oktoberfest, Halloween) give 150 orange coupons to purchase seasonal deco, found at the end of the special deco tab under construction.
There were also 3x6 nursery decorations that we could build, but that event wasn't repeated.
If you have been around long enough, there were also dedicated decorations from each theme event that are no longer available.
This means we have all the decorations that a farm needs, and then some. But, every even expansion will always leave you with a 3x3 space, so a high happiness 3x3 deco is a good investment. Advancing to Bronze 2 in players tournament will give a reward (check the tournament tent rewards tab) of orange tickets and each theme has a 3x3 deco (20 coupons each). There are also gnomes, but they cost twice as many coupons for the same happiness.
Depending on your farm, you may also need a 3x6 to fill in your decorations. The daily login calendar (first 90 days) will give you a Western Windmill at +41 happiness. You will pick up more orange coupons as you play. Most weekly themes have a 3x6 decoration with +47 happiness for 50 orange coupons, which is easy to gather with the daily tasks..
Early game, before you can collect all of the theme decorations, clotheslines, fountains, vegetable gardens and hay bales are all good options. You will replace them shortly.
Decorations to Avoid
Next, we look at the hot springs. We have a saying: 'Friends don't let friends build hot springs.' The hot springs takes just over 7000 purple coupons to get 112 happiness; that is 2 happiness higher than the decoration I have in storage. With 7000 coupons, you can also build a level 7 free range cow, with is better than a level 10 regular cow. So the question becomes a 'Level 10 equivalent cow with further upgrading capacity' or 2 happiness. Not convinced? How about 2 happiness or $26 million and 4100 mallets? (Remember the cafe makes a max of 15 mallets per day.) If you have a hot springs, don't upgrade it any more and leave it until it is your worse decoration.
That leaves us with gold decorations and orange coupon decorations. Things like the pavilion, duck pond and western windmill will leave you wishing you hadn't used gold on them in the future.
Each theme event has orange coupon decorations. Side note is that it is much smarter to buy gold and then buy orange coupons in game (if you buy the decoration and don't have the coupons, you can buy the balance in gold; also offered from the balloon) vs buying packages with orange coupons. You get 3-4 times more coupons. Again, when you have 110 happiness decorations in storage, how much value does a +99 happiness decoration have? If you buy these, understand they are a short term (80-100 levels) solution. Buy these more for personal taste, or not at all. The Tree of Lanterns falls under this as well. At 3100 paw prints for 103 happiness, it will end up in storage. I do have an enchanted tree from fairytale in storage because I really liked them.
Big Farm recently introduced the wolf and horse masterpieces that take about $40 USD in gold to build to level 10 and 120 happiness. The also started offering decorations in the best seller shop (blue bag some weekends), +120 happiness in a 6x6 package for 200,000 gold. I have 2 thoughts about these:
If you like horses, wolves, crystal carriages, or any of the other offerings, and you don't mind spend a little, get them and enjoy them. Just understand the full cost before you buy it.
If you are a frequent gold buyer and have fertile fields and orchards, fancy houses and premium buildings,
Don't forget to upgrade your fence as you can afford it. The last levels get really expensive on materials and you may want to hold off for a while.
If you can see the end goal, you can see that buying decorations (orange coupon and gold) are a short term investment and you get nothing back. Purchase these items for visual appeal or understanding they are a short term solution.
The game provides all of the decorations you need, if you are patient and intentional about them.
Tips on Upgrading
Every time you upgrade a decoration, you may have the option to box some decorations to decrease your new found happiness and place another building on your farm. You want to box a +60 or +66 instead of a +92 happiness decoration. At the same time, you want to spend your red coupons where they will have the most impact. I always recommend that farmers leave one or two theme decoration at level 2 or 3 (60-66 happiness) and then upgrade the cheapest. If you have 7 placed on your farm, focus on 5 of them. It will give you more freedom and flexibility to add stables, hives and orchards to your farm moving forward.