Day Four. Levels 9 & 10.
I’m going to leave our adventurer to his (or her!) own devices for a bit and talk real-time strategy because it’s at about this point in the game where time management really starts to matter. If you want to level your tribez without spending even a dime of real life money, it’s all about making sure you take maximum advantage of the time you can play actively, and then also take maximum advantage of the time you’re offline. Doing that requires setting up the long-term quests to run together, but not starting them until you’re ready to log off for a good while.
The long quests that are starting to pop up at level 9 and 10 are: upgrade the main building, explore the cave, plant 3 corn patches, and to a lesser extent, order lengthy deals in the bar. The bar deals take 30 minutes each, but the corn planting takes an hour to harvest, and the exploration and building upgrade each take several hours to complete. Don’t start these and tie up your workers until you’re ready to log out, whether for class, for work, or for the night.
Game Tip:
Focus first on all the short quests, as well as the shorter sections of multi-part quests. You can accomplish these quickly, and you can use the forester’s huts and watermelon patches to gather the necessary resources in 3-minute cycles. Upgrade the huts to prepare for the main building upgrade, for example, but don’t start the upgrade of the main building until you’re ready to log off for several hours.
Quests that you can, and should, finish quickly include upgrading the huts, building and upgrading the forester’s hut, building and upgrading two more ancient bars, and leveling the patches (but don’t plant the corn yet!) – use some judgment in deciding what to do immediately and what to save for logging out. The upgrades on most buildings will tell you how many workers and how much time they take right on the tool tip. One-minute to three-minute upgrades are always worth doing while you are actively farming, but watch out for those 4-hour marathon construction projects!
Follow the quests as they spawn and focus on the short ones until every quest you have left either requires a long completion time or is “stuck” behind another long-term quest. (For example, you can’t build another warehouse or a quarry until you upgrade the main building, which requires several hours to complete.)
Game Tip:
Go ahead and upgrade the nice huts too if you have the time to do it, even though you won’t have the quest yet. It only takes a few minutes to complete each of these upgrades, including the required farming. Each kind of housing must be leveled to the maximum (level 4) before the next main building upgrade can be started, so you might as well take care of it. It’s also worth building another cafeteria to increase your workers’ happiness level so that you’re prepared to build the next round of homes once you have them open.
If you follow this plan, using three watermelon patches and two forester’s huts to farm the resources you need for each quick quest and upgrade, you should also have some workers available to do three-minute deals in the ancient bars. Don’t start any 30-minute deals until you log out. The 3-minute deals make a lot more money in a much shorter amount of time, and they don’t tie up your workers for very long in case you need to put them on another task.
Lengthy deals are only worthwhile if you’re logging out for a long period of time, in which case setting your workers on longer-term goals will keep the game moving forward while you’re taking care of other things. Putting your “extra” workers on short-term money making is a great way to work toward buying more land, which is going to be especially important if you want to beat the game without spending any cash. If you’re done with everything else you can do quickly and you find yourself with more time to play, spend a few 3-minute cycles farming cash in the bars to build your in-game purse.
Game Tip:
Another “key to free” is making the maximum possible use of the space you have available. There will be times when you have to choose between spending crystals to upgrade a warehouse or simply building a new one. If you want to avoid spending the crystals, you’re going to need the extra “land.” This often means bulldozing the decorations that the game occasionally asks you to build. Using a square of space for just 8 happiness is horribly inefficient when there are single-space options that grant 30 happiness instead, so use your land wisely.
Logout Snapshot
Overview:
- Game Level: 10 (5,939 / 6000 xp)
- Happiness Level: 620/660
- Workers: 9
- Gems: 51 (still have not used any)
- Cash: 7,407 (I got bored of collecting cash but could have continued as desired)
- Available farming: food and wood, both at current max of 150
Open Quests:
- Upgrade Main Building to Level 2: started construction on logout
- Build Another Warehouse: stuck behind the main building upgrade
- Build a Quarry: stuck behind the main building upgrade
- Explore the Cave: started this process on logout
- Upgrade Patches and Plant Corn: completed by planting corn on logout
- Order 5 Lengthy Deals in the Ancient Bar: started one lengthy deal on logout
- Gather Material for Carnival Costumes: stuck behind cave exploration
- Find 3 Suitable Pumpkins: waiting on corn planting
- Fight Evil Spirits: waiting on grass to spawn during logout
- Clear Out Massive Stone Blockage: stuck until warehouse space is increased
Non-quest Activity:
- Upgrading current warehouse to level 2. One of the biggest priorities in the game is adding workers, which depends on both happiness level and main building upgrades, which depends in turn on having enough warehouse space.
Catalog of Buildings:
- Housing:
- 3 huts, all level 4
- 3 nice huts, all level 4
- 1 house, level 1
- Production:
- 1 warehouse, level 1 (upgrade to level 2 in progress)
- 3 patches, all level 3
- 2 forester’s huts, both level 3
- Trade:
- 4 ancient bars, all level 3
- Happiness:
- 2 cafeterias
- cauldrons at max number until main building upgrade
Published: Jun 3, 2013 01:08 am