Monster House!

Make $$$ in the Comfort of Your Own Tiny Monster Habitat, er, Home!

Almost through here with Tiny Monsters - really, I promise.  Time to take a look at Tiny Monster Habitats. The place where out little critters, uh, do stuff, when they're not breeding or evolving. This doing "stuff" mostly involves making money whilst sitting around the house doing nothing. They are, in effect, the 47% of the monster population Monster Mitt Romney also thinks are lazy. However, they can make money for you to expand your domain, so let's not be too judgmental, OK?


So let's check out Small Habitats:

Habitat	Max Coins Small	Monsters	Max Amt In?
Earth	1,000	2	16.7
Fire	100	2	0.6
Plant	500	2	3.8
Ice	1,200	2	20.0
Water	1,500	2	12.9
Electric	900	2	6.2
Air	1,700	2	10.6
Light	700	2	4.5
Shadow	4,700	2	61.8

There really isn't an optimal choice here - it's really personal preference. The "Max Amt In?" column tells you, in Minutes, how long it will take you to accumulate the most amount of Coins with maximum allowed number of Monsters (at Level 10). If you want to collect your 100 Coins every .6 Minutes, go with Fire Habitat. If you rather go for the bigger bucks, invest in multiple, fully occupied, Ice & Water Habitats, and collect Coins less frequently.

A few caveats to keep in mind: Water, Air, Light, and Shadow Monsters only become available at higher levels, so for all intents and purposes, you'll primarily have only Earth, Fire, Plant, and Ice at your disposal for the first 10+ levels. I only got my Light Monster maxed out to Level 10 at Player Level 38, so be aware some Monsters you realistically won't be able to get rich off of until later in the game. Also, some hybrids will actually create Coins at a per minute rate faster than their forebears - for example, the Flare Monster, a Fire/Electric hybrid, will make 101 Coins per Minute.

Fly the Unfriendly Skies

And other random thoughts on games

Sorry for the lack of any game-related postings today (Wednesday) - I spent the day traveling from the San Francisco to NYC. As luck would have it, I was seated next to two women who considered my seat part of their domain as well, so it was hours of passive-aggressive guerrilla warfare over which part of my seat (all!, IMO) was mine, and not theirs to rest their feet on, store their shoes under, etc etc. I took a nap after finally having it out with them both, and hopefully snored obnoxiously, and bothered them both in doing so, for the remainder of the flight.

I was surprised at the number of people NOT playing games on mobile devices on the trip to NYC today. In total, I observed one guy playing Solitaire. Flying out to San Francisco a few weeks ago, the flight was gamer geek central - Civ IV, Majesty, Doodle Jump were all fired up on various devices - it was a cornucopia and cross-section of gaming interests. Today - one poor soul trying to put down and 8 of Diamonds.

One other surprise, of the noob blogger variety. Ads finally started showing up on my blog today. However, the first ad I saw was for Frosted Flakes - in Spanish. This was replaced by an ad for Alpaca Farms. I was like WTF? Then I realized my previous Tiny Monster posts were all about Farm optimization, so some algorithm must have picked up on the F-word (rhymes with "Harm") and placed ads accordingly. Here I was thinking I'd the poster boy for Cybernetic iPhone Video Game Simulation Users, Apps, and Terminators, and instead the Dairy Council thinks I'm just swell. Stupid Skynet...

Now I'm afraid to run a bunch of posts I was honestly considering to blog Zombie Farm 2 and Farmville2, lest I end up becoming the Best Sales Rep of 2012 for Burpee Seeds. Any suggestions? Seriously.

Living Large on the Farm

Best Crops on Large Farms in Tiny Monsters

Good old Wacky Packs.
And my dad said they were a
waste of money.

Cram time - today we are going to finally finish up Farms in Tiny Monsters and look at Large Farms. However, we'll tackle best Food relative to Harvest and Time in one post, rather than keep all 6 of you reading this in suspense for another day. As with the previous posts on Farm optimization, the best Food choices for the following Large Farms will be in red. Lets start off with Harvest versus Cost:

Food (Large Farm)	Cost	Harvest	% H/C
Heartichokes	30	10	33%
Toadshrooms	60	70	117% !!!
Egg-Plants	270	120	44%
Golden Guavas	750	310	41%
Lucky Lettuce	1,470	490	33%
Royal Radish	4,350	845	19%

In this case, it's not even close. Toadshrooms are the clear standout choice of Food ROI, hands down. Now, lets keep up the pace and check out Time versus Harvest:

Food (Large Farm)	Time*	Harvest	Ratio H:T
Heartichokes	0.75	10	13.33
Toadshrooms	15	70	4.67 !!!
Egg-Plants	120	120	1.00
Golden Guavas	360	310	0.86
Lucky Lettuce	720	490	0.68
Royal Radish	2,160	845	0.39

*Units of Time in minutes.

Much like Cloudberries and Bluff Broccoli in Small Farms, while Heartichokes is miles ahead of Toadshrooms in theory on paper, from a practical perspective, the time to plant plant and re-plant has such a quick turn-around (45 seconds), that Toadshrooms are the more reasonable, best choice in reality. Yet Toadshrooms still offer a huge advantage over the rest of the Food types, again with the exception of Heartichokes.

I know I promised XP rewards for Food, and I will get to that in a subsequent post, but at the moment, I'm probably just as sick about writing about Farm 'n Food production as you are of reading about it. So stay tuned for that tidbit of information.

Monster O'Clock

OK, this post will hopefully be short and sweet, and not another multi-parapgraph discourse of the relative merits, or lack therein, of Plumpkins etc. Lets now take a look at amount of time is required to grow each of the Small Farm Food types as they relate to the amount harvested. In other words, what Food types give you the most amount of Food in the least amount of time.

Food (Small Farm)	Time	Harvest	Ratio H:T
Cloudberries	0.50	5	10.00
Bluff Broccoli	5	20	4.00
Baby Banana	45	40	0.89
Nimbus Grapes	180	90	0.50
Mount Melons	240	195	0.81
Plumpkins	1,080	275	0.25

In this case, the largest number in the "Ratio H:T" column will show the best Food to plant, at least with regard to time spent. You'll notice both Cloudberries and Bluff Broccoli are highlighted, despite the fact Cloudberries have  a Ratio number 2 and ½ times greater than Broccoli. Theoretically, if you were to grow Cloudeberries every 30 seconds for the 5 same minutes  it takes to grow Broccoli, you'd get a Harvest of 50, not the 20 Harvest Bluff Broccoli provides. In practice, it takes much longer to select each Food type to grow at a Farm, and it would probably get to quite tedious very quickly for the player. So while Cloudberries is the best choice on paper, Bluff Broccoli is the best choice from a realistic point of view.

So there you have it - once again, broccoli is the best choice, even in games. Moms everywhere would be proud.

Disclaimer: I was never a numbers wiz growing up, so if anyone notices errors with my math, or my nomenclature, please drop me a line and I'll correct it. Danke.

Feed 'Em and Breed 'Em aka Tiny Monsters

"You can make a small fortune in farming - provided you start with a large one."- Anonymous

Currently, I have been playing a ton of Tiny Monsters, for reasons I cannot explain. Tiny Monsters is much like any of the seemingly endless numbers 'breeding cutesy creature' simulations out there, albeit well-done. If you've played one, you know the drill - purchase creature eggs,  hatch 'em, feed 'em, and breed 'em. All of this done via an interlocking system of farms, habitats, and various monster concierge-service buildings that aid in the creation of the greatest variety of little monsters. Tiny Monsters has a light touch, at least through the first 50%+ of the game, when it comes to making the player spend money to level up in the game. We'll get to some of the less "polite" F2P games in later posts.

I'd originally blamed my daughter for getting me hooked on the game, when the truth of the matter is, I stumbled upon it myself. It's a bit embarrassing in certain conversations and social situations, as a grown man to own up to playing a game like TM - at a glance, it resembles My Little Pony. I don't want it to seem creepy that I play the game, as I'm doing quite well with the weirdo reputation I almost surely have already, thankyouverymuch.

Anyhow...the point of this post. Farms play a large role advancing through Tiny Monsters - Farms produce food, which you feed to the monsters to increase their level (all the way up to Level 10). As you increase their Level, they make more money for you while hanging out in the Habitats. For example, a Level 1 Fire monster will make you 11 coins/minute, versus a maxed-out Level 10 Fire monster, which will make 81 coins/minute. Again, feed the creature, increase the level; increase the level and increase the rate at which you make money. Also, creatures cannot be bred until they reach "Adult" stage (i.e. Level 8 and up), so it's in your interest to feed these suckers so they can add diversity to your creature gene pool. 

Farms come in two flavors: Small and Large. Let's start out and tackle maximizing Small Farm output, as it's the only Farm available in the beginning of the game. The below table is pretty straightforward. Tiny Monsters provides the player with the Cost (in coins), and Harvest (in generic Food units) in the "Grow" menu. 

Food (Small Farm)	Cost	Harvest		% H/C
Cloudberries	30	5		17%
Bluff Broccoli	40	20		50%!!!!!
Baby Banana	120	40		33%
Nimbus Grapes	390	90		23%
Mount Melons	990	195		20%

Plumpkins

2,190

275

13%

However, what the player doesn't know, at least in a readily apparent manner, in the game, is the ROI - Return On Investment. In other words, what Food should I grow in order to spend the least amount of Coins but obtain the most amount of Food. That's where the "% H/C" column comes in handy - in this case, the bigger the percentage, the better the investment. For Small Farms, Bluff Broccoli is clearly the best, standout choice. The most expensive, Plumpkins, despite the appearance of rewarding a huge pile of Food, relative to smaller harvests, is clearly the worst ROI.

There are two other factors that impact the game to consider when maximizing your Food Harvest: Time needed to grow the Food, and Experience Points (XP) given upon harvesting said Food. XP isn't even listed in the Grow menu, so you'll get a tiny (haha - get it?) bit of extra information here to consider, assuming you spend your free time pondering such things like I do.

P.S. Apologies in advance for the spartan formatting in the table - I still am a serious noob when it comes to Blogger, so what looks all purty and color-coded in Excel, show up looking like I put it together in 1978 on a Selectric typewriter in here.

Procrastination...

A mere 2+ months after I'd planned to start this blog, I've finally gotten around to it. Mind you, I have doctors notes (plural, and for real) that can account for several weeks of excuses as to what took so long, but the rest of the time is sheer procrastination, and minor bit of terror getting this off the ground.

Getting what "off the ground" you may ask - well, a bit of back of back story. As gamer (both personally and usually professionally), I play lots of games. As a parent, I've found mobile gaming to be the easiest way to get my gaming fix, as I don't have the time, and often, energy, anymore to plop down on the couch for multi-hour gaming sessions. 5 minutes chunks of games is often all I get. So I've migrated to the iPhone for my gaming fix. But despite the short bursts of fun it offers, I find many of  the game experiences still just an in-depth as say Civ 4. There are still important choices to make in app games. But the choices, particularly with the rise of so-called freemium or free-to-play games, makes these choices more critical, as often enough, you need to either wait out a time-clock barrier to continue playing, or cough up real money to bypass the barrier and continue on with your gaming addiction. And thus, the purpose of this blog.

 My goal here is to enlighten and guide players into how to maximize their Free2Play (F2P) games without spending tons of their hard-earned money in the process. I don't begrudge game developers of F2P in trying to find ways to make us part with our cash, and indeed I've spent more than my share of money on in-game purchases (hello Smurfberries !). But lacking even the basic rudiments of instruction into how to best play a F2P game, I find it a challenge thrown down by developers in how to maximize my game experience cheaply. Steven Tolito described it best in a review of Farmville2 in today's New York Times in beating the arbitrary gameplay constraints as "meta-game" in itself. Hopefully, what will follow on this blog will be specific information on some of the more popular mobile and casual games that provides some additional hints and tips, so you don't break the bank.