Skylanders: Lost Islands

Making Money With Your Skylanders For Fun & Profit!

Strategies and tips for beating skyrocketing Skylanders costs. 

The economy in Skylanders: Lost Islands can be best describes as a bit like a dog chasing it's tail. To make money (gold coins) you need to send Skylanders on missions; missions require energy, which you can get by paying gold coins to grow energy plants. Gold is the primary resource you need in the game, as it's required to build structures, and to unlock additional elemental islands. Early on in the game, it's not that big of deal - the first islands you have to unlock cost around (and I'm going on memory here) 30,000 gold coins. However, at later stages in the game, say around level 20, the costs skyrocket. I'm currently at level 25, and to unlock the next island requires 750,000 gold! Given you're essentially on a fixed income, as the maximum amount you can receive on a mission is 15,500 gold coins, and 18,000 for a Sanctuary trip, it takes a lot of days and patience to amass that much gold.

So, lets look at a reasonable plan to maximize gold production in a 24 hour period. I did some number crunching in Excel, which I won't bore you with here (although e-mail me if you want to see the spreadsheet) to come up with a fairly easy way to bank around 40,000 gold a day, without having log into the game every waking minute.

Energy Production:

1) Have 15 Plant Fields

2) Grow Grave Diggers = they take 2 hours and produce 425 Energy

3)  Do this 6 times a day

4) Total Energy in 24 hours = 38,250

Gold Coin Production:

1) Have 6 Adventure Balloons

2) Go to Dark Water Cove (a 7 hour mission) twice a day - once in the morning, and once before bed

3) After the morning Dark Water Cove is completed, do 2 Cadaverous Crypt missions (this will leave some flexibility to deal with Trolls, Sheep, and the occasional Treasure Chest)

4) Do 3 Sanctuary trips.

Now Show Me The Money!

Total Gold in 24 hours = Net 37,200 (Subtracting Gold required to grow Energy Plants)

Obviously Sheep etc. will add the additional 2,800+ gold coins to get you to 40K a day. With a bit of coffee,  ADD, focus, and diligence, I've easily made 80K in 24 hours, but you have to log into the game an atrocious amount of time to get that much. The above methodology presumes a degree of having a normal life. Enjoy!

Skylanders: Lost Islands

What Do Skylanders And The Island of Dominica Have In Common?

Part I

Perhaps you've heard of a little 'ole game franchise called "Skylanders"? You know, the one that made $500 million dollars in the US in 2012? To put that number in perspective, the island of Dominica, located in the Caribbean, has a GDP of $490MM USD. That's a lot of Skylanders for 1 little island. Eric Kain over at Forbes called Skylanders "Diablo for Kids..." That is an honorific that is not lightly bestowed.

Anyhow...onto the latest incarnation in freemium app crack: Skylanders: Lost Islands. On the surface, there's nothing about this game that is that much different than your average monster breeding and farming game, like say, Dragonvale. But the Skylanders personalities, perceived attributes, and the rich environments, while mostly just window dressing, serve to enhance and vary the game experience. Skylanders come in different elemental forms (Fire, Air, etc), sizes (Regular and Giant), Experience levels, which is sufficient to mix up the missions, quests and the tasks that can be performed under these constraints such that the game never feels repetitive. New Skylanders are gained every 5 levels, which is probably the most tedious part of the game, if you're not willing to part with real world cash to buy Skylanders, which is a real temptation. With 55 possible Skylanders that can be acquired, that's 275 levels at a minimum you'd need to acquire them all.

There are two primary resources in Skylanders: Gold Coins (from Missions), and Energy (from Farms). It costs Coins to grow Energy plants, and Energy plants to go on missions to acquire Gold Coins. Sort of a perpetual motion Ponzi scheme of in-game economics. So let's start off by looking at maximizing Farm output:

CROP		TIME		COST		ENERGY		COST PER NRG		NRG PER MIN
Floats		1		10		4		2.50		4.00
Ambrosia		3		30		11		2.73		3.67
Cloudlings		10		105		37		2.84		3.70
Luminaries		30		320		110		2.91		3.67
Eufirbia		60		650		215		3.02		3.58
Grave Diggers		120		1,300		425		3.06		3.54
Moss Stash		240		2,700		840		3.21		3.50
Domedelion		420		4,800		1,450		3.31		3.45

 Obviously, you get the highest per-minute return on Energy for 1-minute Floats, but that that would take forever to amass enough Energy to take on the big 5,000 Energy Sanctuary missions, so Cloudlings seem to be the best choice. They provide a livable time-frame and balance for maximizing production while minimizing cost. I still like to mix it up with Luminaries and Eufirbia as well sometimes, or perhaps Domedelion right before I go to bed, just for a big instant Energy inventory boost upon harvest.

So that's it for Part I. In Part II, we'll take a look at maximizing mission return on Gold Coins. Can you feel the excitement?!