TSTO Race to the Finish. The Race is ON! (Wish us luck.)

aidx1054 wrote:
Oh God if I knew I was going to be the first to vote I wouldn't have picked that one

:lol: :lol: :lol:



Ramblings:
Don't use donuts in forced tutorial,
Jebediah,
Perfection -- 45s task -- need to tap immediately after it finishes, or it dies.
XP Farming (e.g., weather stations, bloodmobiles)
Donut Confirmation -- check after every update (even small ones)
Store building to release character.
Store KEM if accidentally send Apu on 7-day task
Store farm if accidentally "grow corn"
Warn: Cannot store Homer or Lisa if they're in Simpson House, or on exterior task that doesn't 'link' them to another person/object that's storable. (Good luck making this one coherent, Annette.)
Crop revival
Hide training walls
Burning bushes
Plot prices ... Offer old chart?









FINAL DECISION: There will be no use of glitches in competition towns. If you discover one, you can obviously use it in your MAIN town, but not in this competition town.

If it seems too good to be true, and we aren't reasonably certain that it will be a permanent thing, I will disallow it. If we think to ourselves "brother, we hope EA doesn't find out about this and patch it", I'm going to disallow it. If you come across something and are not sure, feel free to PM me. Even if it IS talked about openly on the forum, please wait before using it.

Here's why: This "race" -- at its core -- is an attempt to build a valuable resource for people coming to the forum looking for help earning money the most efficient way. I would like us to share creative ideas for doing that, and learn the ropes from one another as we discover things (like not spending those donuts to rush things even though Lisa tells you to!).

What I do NOT want is to play through this game in a way that uses temporary advantages. For instance, in lower levels, I was lucky to be around during the "stacked handshake" glitch. Whew. I made hundreds of thousands of ingame dollars, and it changed the face of the game for me. I did NOT have to struggle through, saving for the next level's buildings and wait months to buy land.

So far, when a new player comes to ask how to earn/save money to progress through levels, the best I can really do is say "Boy, I don't know how I would have done it without that stackable handshake glitch." They're asking for help. I'm giving them nostalgia. THAT is what I want this game to avoid. I want us to share and build up a resource of HELPFUL advice for people who come along at a time the game is "normal" and ask for advice. I don't want them to get nostalgia. I want them to get clever solutions.

Our "challenge", from the start, was to "get down in the trenches". That, to me, is much more important than finishing by the end of the year.





RELOCATING THESE FIRST-POST INSTRUCTIONS TEMPORARILY, until I'm sure we won't need them anymore ...STARTING YOUR NEW ORIGIN ACCOUNT:
Use the same name as your Forum ID, BUT with prefix “00_” (ForumID annettemarc, so town is “00_annettemarc”)
1. On Origin website, click REGISTER in the top menubar.
2. Enter your new username followed by @live.com
3. Next screen, enter new ID in top field (NOT the whole email address)
4. Complete that page. On the next screen, click “SKIP”
VOILA! Your Origin Account for your new town is created!


GETTING YOUR TOWN READY FOR COMPETITION DAY:
Before the competition starts, play until you reach the "Level Up" screen for Level 7.
Here are some special tips. Read carefully. They involve donuts.
1. When you are told to Build the Kwik-E-Mart (4 hours build time.) Lisa will tell you it’s a great idea to use donuts to rush building the KEM. You can choose to wait the 4-hours, and SAVE those donuts! When I first played this game, I thought it was required to rush it. Live and learn.
2. After your visit to "Other Springfield", you'll come back to the Daily Play Combo. Bad news: The Mystery Box costs 6 donuts. Good News: You’ll win THIRTY donuts.
3. When you send Lisa to the Kwik-E-Mart, you’ll be encouraged to spend donuts to rush. Remember! You can choose to wait an hour instead.
4. You will be forced to spend 5 donuts on Homer’s Hammock. No way around it that I could see.
5. Lisa will start the “I Choo-Choo-Choos You” quest, with a 5-donut button on it. You CAN add friends WITHOUT it. Close that popup. Go to your add-friends screen and add people that way. (Edited to remove information that was incorrect.)

At some point, you're prompted to build the purple house.
You may get the Level Up at any point after that. You will need to accrue enough XP to level up. After building the purple house, look at your XP meter to see how far you need to go. To accrue the XP, you'll need to collect some rents and set your characters on unscheduled tasks. And maybe visit some friends. As soon as you get the Level Up screen with Chief Wiggum on it, that's where you begin Level 7. (At least, it was Chief Wiggum in the picture I found online.) :)

I really enjoyed building up my side towns in this way. Getting to max level takes so much longer than it used to. I took my time with my third town and started during CoC, and finally got caught up recently around level 51. If you started a fresh town now I'm thinking you'd have to have serious dedication to meet annettemarc's challenge.

KillaSqirl wrote:
I really enjoyed building up my side towns in this way. Getting to max level takes so much longer than it used to. I took my time with my third town and started during CoC, and finally got caught up recently around level 51. If you started a fresh town now I'm thinking you'd have to have serious dedication to meet annettemarc's challenge.

Yikes.

CoC was last August ... almost a year ... when you say "took my time" ... could you be more specific? :mrgreen:

If I was insane, I would go look at the walkthroughs and calculate the cumulative hours absolutely needed, to get there ... but I'm not THAT insane.

I didn't housefarm and I would only check in 2-3 times a day using 8 hour or longer tasks, nothing shorter unless a quest specified. I used donuts for charecters more than decos and didn't keep more than 10 neighbors until I was high level. The only way I skimped was to avoid decorating. My other towns are nice, so this one is squished to the max. Squidport turned out ok, but the rest is sort of like Tetris.

I'd be into this, but it looks like there's not many of us. I'm level 53, but a new town competition could be fun.

I oughta add a few more poll options. ;)

So far, all I've done is discovered a bunch of people who believe in the right to vote.

I'm all for setting things up if anyone wants to do this. A lot of us (me included) have said we don't know how we would have done it without the stackable handshake glitch. I'd be interested to see what it WOULD be like.

If anyone wants to "play", we could each set up a brand new Origin account (Perhaps the same name as our current main town, but with the prefix "aa_" ... (e.g., "aa_annettemarc" would be my start-over town.)

People participating would be listed in my first post in this thread ... if people want to do this.

The rules I had in mind were:

1. NO use of any form of RL money (that means gift-cards, rewards from amazon, and anything of the sort.)

2. NO storing or selling of any item once it's in your town. (Exceptions: event-related items that are forced upon us.) (The idea is that if you buy it, you find a place for it.)

3. NO use of any sort of anything that resembles a glitch. ("If it sounds too good to be true, and you're afraid to ask on the forum about it in case EA issues a patch, then it's a glitch.")

4. Every participant must add every other participant. (and as many other neighbors as they want)

5. NO use of feeder towns as neighbors.


NOTE: I also considered this: at a random time and without warning, tell everyone to assign Apu to his 7-day task, and not allow them to store the Kwik-e-Mart to release him. Players would have to either wait, or pay donuts to rush. Just one time. But that sounded kind of cruel. Then again, I have a dark side. :)

What do you think if I used this thread as a signup thread? (I can change the title to indicate that). We could wait a few days ... (maybe to Friday?) and then if we have enough people, we'd start adding one another as friends and get started.

Thoughts?

de_mariac wrote:
I'm totally game. Sign me up, hope we can get enough. Should we limit our friends/neighbors to those specifically participating?

Well, I was sort of thinking it should be for each of us to play our own strategies, whatever we are each willing to do to reach the goal ... So taking on a lot of friends would be up to the person.

Also, shouldn't we add Krustyland questline in as well?

I was originally thinking of all the advice we give people, and thinking of recreating their whole experience. I came within inches of proposing that we not be allowed to refer to walkthroughs, since 99% of players never know about them. Can you imagine not knowing what character to leave free to trigger the next step? And often, multiple characters need to be idle at the same time. I had a habit -- before the character locator came along -- of clearing a few thumbs, retaking those characters, and moving through my town doing that. I can't imagine how people would know that they need to have a specific combination of characters free.

So I decided there's no WAY I would play a town without the walkthroughs. That would be torture. ;)

BTW, how does a player handle very many neighbors when they need rents from the few buildings they have, and are still supposed to leave enough available for visitors to tap? I recall having a little "campsite" of maybe 12 brown houses, so I could clear my town constantly and there would be something to tap. No longer an option, though, since the price rises so rapidly as you buy multiple houses. TOTAL money grab by EA. They could have left the price stagnant for, say, the first half dozen of a house. :(

I thought things were getting a bit serious around here too.
Brava madame!

I'm not under level 21, but I started last March and I'm currently level 42 (Yes I've spent too much time on this game). I started playing in the middle of Superheros. Considering I started in the middle of the event with almost no characters I didn't do terrible getting things. I got a couple of skins, Radioactive Man, and Fallout Boy. I also snagged O'Flannigans Pub from *. Patrick's Day. Without following online forum walkthroughs.

The only money I've spent so far is a couple of scratchers. Right now, my town is a little tetris and I've got about 8 levels that are only 80% done where I've built the character building but not the secondary building for the quest.

I think it would be interesting for some of the long time players to see the what the current newbie experience is like with the ability to house farm etc.

Hmmmmm sounds interesting...... I may join, let me think it.....