General Friend Question

dcacooper wrote:
Having only just recently got into the social side and gathered a few friends/neighbours, I have a question that I am sure has been answered eons ago ...

Leaving aside the Halloween stuff, when we are visiting friends' Springfields in the normal run of the game, do they only get to collect items that I have not collected? In other words, if I go around my town collecting all of the taxes from houses, cafes, shops etc. essentially leaving it bare of dollar signs, menus etc., does that mean that if a friend visits at that moment, there will be nothing for them to do?

Or am I safe collecting all of that stuff because the friends see different stuff than me (like with the Halloween ghosts) ... obviously they can graffiti my town where I cannot, but what about the taxes and stuff?

Thanks,
D

Normally (not during the Halloween event), when visiting a neighbor town, the buildings that you can collect from are the ones that are available to collect for the towns owner, i.e. sufficient time as elapsed for them to become due. I usually do not worry about it too much though as there are several short cycle buildings that will usually be available (e.g. Simpsons House 45s, Kwik-E-Mart 3m, Brown House 5m, Flanders House 10m, Krusty Burger 15m, etc). Unless you are playing non-stop, your neighbors should be able to find some buildings to collect.

Another thing to note about collecting from neighbors' buildings is that when you collect from them, the timer gets reset from that moment. So, if you visit my town and collect from a Blue House (8 hour cycle), and I return to my town 4 hours after you visited and collect from that Blue House, it will now take only 4 more hours to be ready again.