Cash and Donuts

Before you jump head-first into the game you should become familiar with the nature of the in-game Money that is used to grease the wheels and save time as well as being required in order to buy pretty much everything...

Helpful Tip: When you have more than $100,000 in your Cash Account in the game the odds of the Scratch-R-Ticket and the Daily Prize Mystery Box delivering a Donut Prize climb to much higher than equal chance - so you may want to work on banking $100,000 and then keeping that as your minimum balance in order to ensure that you have a steady supply of Donuts coming in!

Cash

The basic currency of Tapped Out is Cash. You earn this from completing the tasks the game sets you and generally through progressing along the game's path.

Donuts

As mentioned earlier, The Simpsons: Tapped Out is a 'freemium' game. This means that it relies on premium currency for the developers to make any Money. But luckily, you can always play for free if you don't want to fork out.

The premium currency in Tapped Out is Donuts.

You have to buy these with real Money (they can rarely be found through other means, but see below for more information on this) and they can then be used to purchase exclusive Characters and speed up your advancement through the game (apparently because they have been given super powers by the nuclear plant's radiation!).

See below for a table of how many Donuts your hard-earned, real life Money gets you:

• A Dozen Donuts (12), costs $1.99.

• A Stack of 60 Donuts, costs $4.99.

• A Tray of 132 Donuts, costs $9.99.

• A Truckload of 300 Donuts, costs $19.99.

• A Store Full of 900 Donuts, costs $49.99.

• A Boatload of 2,400 Donuts, costs $99.99.

As you can see, the more Donuts you buy, the more Money you save on them.

You can also convert Donuts into Cash, which can then be used to buy the more ordinary in-game Items. See below for a table of how much Cash your Donuts can get you:

• 5 Donuts buys $500

• 9 Donuts buys $1000

• 21 Donuts buys $2,500

• 41 Donuts buys $5,000

• 80 Donuts buys $10,000

• 115 Donuts buys $15,000

• 325 Donuts buys $50,000

• 600 Donuts buys $100,000

• 1200 Donuts buys $250,000

• 2000 Donuts buys $500,000

Where to find free Donuts

You will be given a few free Donuts while cleaning up Springfield in the opening stages of the game with Lisa, as well as one from reaching your first level.

This is primarily to get players hooked on the idea of the Donuts, and to encourage them to spend Money on more! Some players have reported getting another Donut after the initial, first run of cleaning, but certainly they are incredibly rare after the first stages.

You can also find some from the Mystery Prize boxes, if you're lucky. This is an aspect of the game which seems to be glitched as a lot of players report getting the same item each time from these.

- Information above provided by Mongoose General

Harvesting Houses for Money

At various points in the Guide you will see references to maximizing your Game Play Income through harvesting Buildings, and by placing Decorations that increase the percentage you get for jobs and tasks. This is good advice but there is an issue that you should be aware of - placing too many of one type of house can negatively impact the meter and cost stars (and thus reduce the percentage Bonus that the meter normally provides).

Now the same is true about having too much open space, and for having a lot of houses but not having a lot of shops, restaurants, and community Buildings as well as "employer" buildings. There has to be some balance in the game for you to maximize your meter Bonus.

What that means is that placing nothing but Brown Houses, for example, can have a significant and negative effect. A mixture of Brown Houses, along with Pinks, Oranges, Purples, and Whites will offset that negative.

You may be tempted to place White Houses since they are a two-a-day harvest that pays off really well, but again as those are upper-class housing, if you have too many of those and not enough of the other types, you end up with an game-impacting imbalance.

The easiest way to address this is to keep an eye on the meter and if it drops after you place, say, a White House, you will want to place a lower-Income house next to offset that negative and return the balance.