FarmVille Winter Holiday decorations: Snowy Tracks, Holiday Train Set & More

A few days ago, we brought you a sneak peek of some holiday train and snow-covered train track items that would be coming to FarmVille in the near future. We didn't have to wait long for that to become a reality, as in FarmVille's newest update, Zynga has released the full set of Holiday Train and Snowy Track items, allowing you to create a new train set wherever you'd like on your farm. What's more, there are new Winter Holiday decorative items also available to decorate your farm.

All aboard! Meet us behind the break to take a look at these new themed items.

First and foremost, you can now purchase for individual pieces comprising a Holiday Train. Unfortunately, though, you'll need to shell out quite a bit of Farm Cash, along with some coins, to make a complete train on your farm.

The engine is simply called the Holiday Train, and it is available for 20 Farm Cash. You can add more length to your train (as much as you'd like, in fact), by adding individual Holiday Cars to the train for 120,000 coins each. If you'd like your train to look as those it is carrying toys for boys and girls this holiday season, you can add the Holiday Flatbed to the train for 12 Farm Cash. Finally, once you've built your train, you'll need the Holiday Cart to bring up the rear. It can be purchase for 7 Farm Cash.

Of course, you'll want your train to be able to travel, even if only in your imagination, so you can also pick up five different pieces of "Snowy Track," named Snow Track I - V, which are available for either 5,000 coins each. An additional Snowy Crossing will allow your avatar and in-game vehicles to cross the tracks safely for 8,000 coins.

Aside from the train set, two other Winter Holiday decorations have been added to the game, with these items coming in the form of a Winter Carriage and a Santa Gnome. Both are premium items, setting you back 20 and 18 Farm Cash, respectively.

All of the above items will be available in the game for the next 26 days, giving you plenty of time to thoughtfully construct as elaborate a railroad system as you'd like on your farm, and still have time to enjoy looking at it once it's completed, but before the Holidays are over.

CityVille: Start unwrapping your Holiday Presents now!

UPDATE: It seems as though things aren't as user friendly with this event as we first believed. At the time of this post's original writing, present counters weren't being reset when presents were being opened, but some users have reported losing Holiday Present progress more recently. If you've yet to complete your Holiday Tree - open presents at your own risk!

Happy holidays readers! I hope you've been collecting a lot of Holiday Presents in CityVille, because if you have, you'll now be greeted with a very special treat - the ability to actual open those presents and find out what's inside! Similar to the first Holiday celebration in FarmVille (last year), each and every individual gift that you've received from friends can be opened.

To open these presents, all you'll need to do is click on your Holiday Tree in your town, no matter how far along you are in building it. To be clear, you'll need to click on the Holiday Tree each time you'd like to unwrap an individual present. That present will disappear from your tally in your inventory, as it has been "opened," but your progress in the Holiday Tree quests will stay the same. No need to worry about losing progress as you open presents - the total amount of presents that you had before you started opening gifts is where you will stay (thankfully).

Each gift can come with a different prize, or you can wind up with duplicates. While we work on accumulating a complete list of the available presents, here are some of the items that we've received inside:

50 coins
Plastic Snowman
Plastic Penguin
Individual square of Chocolate Sidewalk (in our experience, this is the most common decoration awarded)
Panda Ice Sculpture
1 XP
25 Goods
Hanging Flower
+1 or +2 Energy Refill
Red Holiday Tree
Well
Moose
Lion Ice Sculpture
CityVille Plastic Snowman

As you open presents, items like the coins, experience points, goods and energy can be clicked on as normal bonus objects, and they will be automatically added to their respective totals. All decorative items will go into your inventory, where they can be used as decorative items around your town.

Depending on how many gifts you've received, you will likely end up with a ton of duplicates. However, for a free item, the chance of receiving free Goods makes opening each present individual worth the trouble, at least in my opinion.

Update: Of course, after you've opened all 10 presents, you get the following "special message" from Zynga...
CityVille Holiday Tree Special Message from Zynga

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.

Cafe World: Daily Holiday Tree presents now available

If you've taken the time to build your Holiday Tree in Cafe World, remember that starting today, you can receive your free daily gift from Zynga. That's right, the developer itself is giving away these prizes, as a than you to users for their dedication over the past year. These gifts will be available until the first week of January, and can come in all forms, shapes, or sizes. Today's free gift, for instance, is a single free Cafe Cash.

Sure, 1 Cafe Cash may not be that great of a prize, but it's free, so we really can't complain. All you have to do to earn your free gifts is to log into the game once per day and then click on your Holiday Tree to receive that day's prize. If you don't receive a prize on subsequent days, but know that you should, we'd suggest waiting until it has been a full 24 hours before trying to collect your next prize, just to be safe.

Check out the rest of our Holiday 2010 coverage right here.