Farmville 2 - Pecan-apalooza!

Strategies for "Bake Sale" and "No Horsing Around" Quests.

Hint: It Involves A Lot Of Pecans

Around Level 14, you will encounter the aforementioned quests in Farmville 2. Like most quests in FV2, they aren't difficult, but rather time-consuming, if you are not prepared. Both quests revolve around Pecans, which unlock at Level 13, so you in all likelihood, you might not have planted any Pecan Trees yet, which will put you behind the curve when it comes to completing these quests. In a nutshell (ha!), you'll need to craft/make 5 Pecan Muffins for the "Ho No Horsing Around" quest, and sell 10 Pecan Muffins for the "Bake Sale" quest. Luckily, this means the effort you put into 1 quest will apply to the other quest, which makes things a bit easier.  If you do the Crafting math, that means you'll need 50 Pecans to complete the pecan portion of both quests. The logistics of getting 50 Pecans are as follows:

1 Pecan Tree Harvest  =      2.5 Pecans Nuts (on average)

Pecan Tree Harvest Time =  12 Hours

Therefore, 1 Pecan Tree will = 5 Pecan Nuts per Day. 

So, it will take 10 days to get enough Pecan Nuts from 1 tree to complete the crafting for these quests. Or 5 days with 2 Pecan trees. And so on...So plant ahead, and save some time.

 

My Singing Monsters

Feed Me!

Overview of total food required to grow a Level 15 monster

I've been a bit curious to find what the maximum level was is My Singing Monsters. After literally 2 weeks of just baking food to feed one T-Rox constantly, it turns out it's level 15. I currently have all 4 Islands and 2 Green Crystal Mines, so I'm not lacking for monsters to generate cash, or bakeries to create food, or crystals to speed along the process, but even so, it took what seemed like an eternity to reach the max monster level. And it's costly process. Below is the required food ( and in-game money) required to reach that goal:

Level		Amt (Food)		SubTotal (Gold)
1		5		20
2		10		40
3		20		80
4		40		160
5		80		320
6		160		640
7		320		1,280
8		640		2,560
9		1,280		5,120
10		2,560		10,240
11		5,120		20,480
12		10,240		40,960
13		20,480		81,920
14		40,960		163,840
15		81,920		327,680
Total		163,835		655,340

"It's wafer thin!"

In other words, it would require a Turkey (1,000,000 gold), a Pie (500,000 gold), and 2 Pizzas (75,000 gold per Pie) to get enough food to reach Level 15, for a grand total of 1,650,000 gold to get just ONE Monster to Level 15. This is why I usually stop around Level 9 for monster upgrading. I'm stuffed.  

Farmville 2

No Horsing Around Quest

I Gotta See A Man About A Horse

The "No Horsing Around" quest in Farmville 2, which probably appears somewhere around level 13 or 14 (but your mileage may vary), contains yet another minor mystery concerning the acquisition of saddles to complete the quest. The quest text merely says "Gather 3 Saddles..." and unhelpfully has a "help" button marked "Go To Farm", which brings back to staring cluelessly at your farm. Are they hidden? Do I make them? What's the deal?

The answer, like most things in FV2, is that in order to get said said saddles, you have to buy them. Actually, you have to buy a horse which drops saddles. On occasion. When the mood strikes said horse, it appears. Go to the "General Store", and buy yourself a baby Black Arabian Horse. If you have the Farm Bucks, and want to save yourself the in-game money, or bottles, you can also buy an adult Black Gypsy Horse for 54 Farm Bucks, or an adult Black Arabian for 30 FB. Either way, they're not cheap. 

Even if you go the cheapskate route like I did, and buy a baby Arabian, the numbers still aren't great. Here's the cold hard numbers on a Baby Arabian Horse:

Cost:                                 22,000

Bottles Required:                6

Feed Required:                  12

Time Between Feedings:    24 hours

Drops:                               2 Horseshoes

                                         3  Saddles (sometimes)

Thus, it could take several feedings to acquire the Saddles i.e. days. You could buy multiple horses, but with Level 15 land unlock looming, which requires, among other things, 125,000 coins, this is not the time to be spend multiples of 22,000 coins to get 2 or 3 horses  to get 3 saddles. So settle in, cowboys and cowgirls. This quest might take some time.

Jurassic Park Builder

Get Ready For The Dino Doldrums

Review

Jurassic Park Builder is not necessarily a bad game. It's got really sweet graphics, lots of dinosaur species to care for in your zoo, and tons of missions. On the flip side, it's pretty damn boring. There is nothing to do. Find amber, play a gene sequencer minigame that essentially just makes you spend in-game money, feed dinosaurs, build some support structures (hotels, infirmaries  guard towers, etc) that have no bearing on the game, except to make more money, and import meat and veggies from a port for your dino denizens. 

You missions essentially are variations on the same theme - collect money from dinosaurs, move around dinosaur pens, build roads, delete roads, wash, rinse, repeat. Considering it's supposed to be a simulation of a visitor-driven business enterprise i.e. a zoo, there's no mechanic whatsoever that recognizes player actions that would have more/less visitors coming to your park, or providing amenities to them that would aid attendance. It's a sterile experience, with the lone visitor being the player. The most entertaining part is the "Code Red" minigame, which is essentially a game of chicken. But alas, it only happens perhaps 2 times a day, and then for at most 90 seconds each time. So if you wanted to be entertained for no more than 3 minutes a day, then this game is for you.   

FarmVille 2

"Spicing It Up" Quest Hints

aka Cheese Please!

OK, so I've playing Farmville 2. Well, that is to say, a lot of Farmville 2. It's a lot of fun, and the annoyance of having to co-opt FB friends to be farm "neighbors" is gone with the advent of the game on Zynga.com. Anyways....I am currently at around Level 13, and just got the 'Spicing It Up" quest series. Nothing on the surface of the quest seemed all that difficult: Master Habanero Peppers, Harvest some Wells, and make 5 Spicy Quesos sauces. Making Quesos proved more difficult than I thought - it requires 4 Cheese Wheels (which come from cows and some goats), and 10 Habanero Peppers. Simple enough on paper, right?

"Please don't cut the cheese!"

Wrong! Despite having 3 cows and 1 cheese-producing goat, I was getting no cheese after feeding them. After about a day, the goat gave up 2 cheese out of perhaps 5-7 feedings. I was regularly making milk, and fertilizer, but cheese drops were like winning the lactose lottery. In other words, very seldom. Turns out cheese is a rare drop, meaning it doesn't happen with every feeding. This is the type of thing I'd expect from a hardcore RPG like World of Warcraft, not a casual Facebook game like Farmville 2. Plus, there's no visual indication, or text, to let you know cheese is not going to be dropped 100% of the time after each feeding. It's a relatively hardcore game mechanic, coupled with really poor user feedback. So be forewarned in the future.

Also, I'd recommend going with the Sanaanen Goats, rather than the Loghorn Cows, for cheese production; Cows require 4 hours between feedings, Goats require 15 minutes.

Dragon Story Review

"The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?" 

- Joshua, WarGames (1983)

Such is also the case of Dragon Story by Team Lava. Team Lava seems to specialize in making odious free-to-play games that limit just about every aspect of gameplay, from money earned, to cost to create, and time to create, to say nothing of the number of missions that require you to download another one of their games, or make In App Purchases (IAP) to actually complete a mission. I get it's a free game, and they are trying to make money, but such over the top practices such feel like a visit to a user-car salesman convention.

Anyway, back to Dragon Story. The game itself is standard fare - breed dragons, feed them, they grow, you cross-breed them, yada yada yada. There's nothing original here, aside from the arm-twisting to make IAPs in order to make the tedium of waiting to collect enough coins, or for your minuscule crop yields to ripen, or for structures to get built. At it's core, Dragon Story is trying to monetize off of your boredom waiting for something interesting to happen in the game.

I put together a little chart on the plant farm yields in the game, in case anyone is interested. I know I wasn't.

Food		Farm Size		Cost		Time (Mins)		Harvest
Impruberries		Small		30		1		6
Buffbeets		Small		120		3		20
Firapples		Small		650		60		50
Pumpwings		Large		3,200		300		225
Eliteleeks		Large		5,500		480		325
Scalypears		Large		13,000		1,200		700

Home Sweet Home

Maximixe Your 'Bot Home Zone Cash in Gizmonauts

"Time for my money bath!"

Without a doubt, making money in Gizmonauts is one of the easiest jobs in the galaxy. Aside from the Large and Small Builder Zones, every other Zone is a cash cow. However, if you want to make a pile of cash quickly, the best way is to get the maximum number of high level 'bots in either Performance (Small & Large) or Nature (Large) Zones (see below). At the moment I have more money than I know what to do with - I am literally waiting for various breeding combos to produce new 'bots, while the money keeps rolling in. I'm about ready to start stuffing money under the mattress of a robo Sleep Number® bed at this point.

Zone		Size		Max # of Bots		Max Coins
Builder		Small		2		250
Mining		Small		1		10,000
Performance		Small		2		7,500
Nature		Small		1		15,000
Builder		Large		4		750
Performance		Large		3		50,000
Nature		Large		3		50,000
Astro		N/A		1		1,000,000

Free Ain't Easy

Warning: Actual Learning About Games Ahead. 

"[P]layers should be rewarded even if they don't pay to play, as we know their influence far surpasses their direct income generated and high value players are, of course, rewarded for their loyalty and commitment. Games that are able to respond to real-time player behavior will become the norm in the next few years and players will come to expect a level of support and interaction with the games they play, allowing them to progress further and take greater enjoyment from the experience."

- Games Analytics Whitepaper "The Science of Listening"

Although this whitepaper is focused on the free-to-play game experience, much of the analysis can, and should, be applied to boxed retail titles as well.

Link via Gamasutra

Ever Wonder How Free Games Make Money?

Then Meet These Guys...

Anyone who plays free-to-play games on a regular basis will wonder, on occasion, how companies that charge nothing stay in business. Well, wonder no more. Wired has a great article on the sugar daddies who will spend hundreds and thousands of cold, hard, real money to be the best in their game(s) of choice. Some of them even justify it by saying they are actually saving money. Regardless of the motivation or rationale, it's a fascinating peek into the economies of F2P gaming, and why games like them keep getting made.

Update

Interesting counter-point article over on The Verge about PunchQuest, a game that has received critical acclaim, but apparently isn't making much money at all.

Proper Breeding in My Singing Monsters

No Need To Send Your Monsters To Etiquette School.

We are talking about breeding monsters found on the Cold Island in My Singing Monsters. Each island in MSM features some new monsters only found on specific islands, just to keep you on your toes.  The following chart just contains monsters not found on the original starting island, Plant. So without further ado, here ya go:

Monster		Island		Breeding/Combo		Level		Coins/Min		Max Coins
Tweedle		Cold		Air		9		14		288
Dandidoo		Cold		Tweedle+Potbelly		9		29		2,160
Quibble		Cold		Tweedle+ToeJam		9		22		1,620
Pango		Cold		Tweedle+Mammott		9		29		1,728
Spunge		Cold		Dandidoo+ToeJam		9		43		20,736
Thumpies		Cold		Tweedle+Furcorn		9		50		20,563
Congle		Cold		Pango+ToeJam		9		43		25,920
Deedge		Cold		Multiple		?		?		?

Once again, the correct breeding of the four element monster, in this case, Deedge, eludes me. In general, I stop feeding my monsters after Level 9 as the cost is so prohibitive, and for some monsters, like the Tweedle, the return in investment i.e. Max Coins, is minimal and just not worth it.