Part 08: The Middle Stage (Level 13)

At the risk of offering you too much praise when you might feel like it is not really all that deserved, the fact that you have attained Level 13 – which it is naturally inevitable when you think about it since Level 13 follows Level 12 and proceeds Level 14 – in consideration of the vast universe of numbers the point is not so much that Level 13 exists, or that you found Level 13 after you found Level 12 and before you found 14, but rather that you stuck to it, pushed all of those buttons and tapped all of those tiny little “XP's” and bundles of Cash – and there were a LOT of tiny “XP's” and just heaps and piles of bundles of Cash, I am just saying...

But still, the point is that after tapping all of those tiny “XP's” and little bundles of Cash and, every now and then spending some of that Cash on useful and important things, you finally made it to Level 13! Good on ya mates! Well-bloody-done! Bonza job there!

Quest and Task Completion List

At this point when we left off in the previous section we had some builds in progress and we left our crew in a mixture of postures that included voluntary tasks as well as prompted tasks that were part of several different quest chains...

These will have all completed now, so it is time to review our immediate goals, re-task our crew on prompted and voluntary tasks, and continue the seemingly never-ending process of harvesting from our also never-ending Income source, Income Tax and Rent!

The obvious approach is to rapidly complete the following steps:

(1) Collect the rent from each of the Buildings starting with our subdivisions of low-rent housing which are made up of Brown Houses, moving on (and up the Income scale) to include Pink, Purple, Blue, and White Houses, then the named Houses (including the Simpson, Flanders, and Van Houten Houses).

A quick check of the additional Income-producing Buildings should include a nice and tidy sum from the Bad Dream House, Lard Lad Donuts, the House of Evil, Gulp'N'Blow, the Kwik E Mart, Krysty Burger, both the Springfield Cemetery and the Pet Cemetery (hail to the Master, Lord Stephen King), the Super Collider, Willie's Shack, and a crop from Cletus's Farm which if you are like me is placed on the outskirts of the city to the far right...

Just saying, no reason why the smell of pig poo should be forced upon the good and kind citizens of this new Springfield!

(2) With the rent now collected it is time to tend to the voluntary and involuntary outstanding tasks, so first we should complete the Apu's work shift, then tell Milhouse he can stop Flying that Kite.

Ned Flanders looks like he has jogged enough for the moment, and Homer? Well, Homer spent so much time in that little round pool that his back and buttocks (have you ever noticed that while it looks normal when it is written, when you actually say the word “buttocks” it sounds funnier than it could ever possibly be?) look like a very large rather oval-shaped pink raisin – so releasing him from the pool is a kindness that is well-deserved!

Helping Cletus to celebrate the completion of his current task – Allllrriigghhtt! – leads to accepting Lisa's reserved but no less enthusiastic finishing celebration, and that finally leads us to the point where we can tap on the tick-marked foundation for the new, crisp, clean, and as yet unblemished Cooling Towers for the Springfield Nuke Plant and hey – Bonus! – it includes the character of Mr. Burns, who is now a membah of dah krew!

Donkey Kong eat your banana out!

(3) Before you re-assign your crew to strictly voluntary tasks it would be an idea to tap the “!” over the head of Montgomery “Monty-the-Man” Burns to learn that far from being pleased, he is actually you know, feeling Burns-like about the whole matter of rebuilding the plant...

This revelation has the side-effect of flagging the next major stage in his quest chain, It's Pronounced Nu-cular Pt.2 – which naturally prompts you to construct the Reactor Core (cost = $18500.

Go ahead and place that now, and embrace the 24-hour build time – note that you always have the option of speeding up the build time by spending Donuts, and in this case a whopping 12 Donuts! – and you will note that the majority of the voluntary tasks you have hanging have an average of an hour or so left (assuming you are keeping to the schedule, if not, then you know, not) so you may as well set any un-tasked crew members to their 60m task and come back in an hour to get a clean set of un-tasked crew that you can set up for whatever one of the schedules that makes sense for you at this juncture.

I don't know about you but there are four Buildings that I am on pins-and-needles and desperate to place, those being Bart'sTree House, Springfield Library, the Android's Dungeon, and First Church of Springfield – and not just because each adds a new member to thuh krew, but also because they each in their own special way expand the available tasks!

I am more than just a little surprised that there has not been more emphasis upon the task chains that lead to the creation of those wonderful structures in our city, but hey, there you have it!

Did you find it surprising that the Premium and special trees that we bought and/or placed in the game do not have a harvesting option of their own? I mean yeah, I know this is not Farmville, but still, I think that they missed a cool opportunity there.

With that massive collection of tasks and not-tasks taken care of, and the next phase of the rebuilding of both Springfield and its wonderful and safe source of clean, reliable and cheap power now well under way – and the addition to our team of our Monty Burns – and the very cool klaxon alarm effect added to the game thanks to the Cooling Towers so that with the School Bell we have a rather disturbing collection of voluntary sound effects at our beck-and-call, our attention and focus now naturally turns towards the more mundane aspects of Game Play...

So hey, welcome to Level 13!

Now that you are here, I think it is time to remind you yet again that you are going to need an obscene and purely incredible amount of moola, cashola, dough, loot (or whatever you want to call it) to progress any farther in this game.

In simple terms, as we have previously hinted at, if this game were a camel – and specifically if it were a very large brown furry bigger-than-a-standing-typical-male-human cud-chewing milk-producing mammal that to this day is still used as a draft or saddle animal in desert regions – with the finer examples of the species that are more properly known as Camelus One-Humpious being bred and trained as racing animals by wealthy Saudi Princes and their cohorts – you have figuratively reached the point at the very base of the hump, and are now looking up at this massive fleshy mountain you have to climb, and the climbing of it is measured in Cash.

You following along here? Good!

In previous sections we went out of our way to illustrate the methods that are necessary to establish a strategic power-base, and then used that goal as the primary aim for this Guide – and it is a good thing you followed that guide because this is where the following of it will actually pay off!

You don't have to re-read the previous section, because I am going to repeat the basic challenge that you are facing now - which is to say that in the now-future, in the near-future, and in the future-future, you are going to need to purchase and place the following Buildings (with the most urgent and present ones listed first, and the others pretty much in order of the manner that you need to place them in – with this all neatly arranged as a table to make it easier to follow and give you a better idea of the costs that you will now need to meet.

Oh and before we do that, let me also add that the reason for the specific order of placement has nothing to do with the types of Buildings or their payout, but rather it is based upon convenience and to a lesser degree a presumption that you have been expanding your city as we previously discussed.

So without any deeper qualifications, this is the task that faces you:

Gathering the Moolah!

Assuming for the moment that you have been following this Guide, you should be in an excellent position now to gather in Cash (and XP but really it is the Cash that concerns us at the moment) since the entire point behind the Strategy that we have been employing was to place you in this position and give you the option of playing in a pure harvest mode when it is necessary.

As long as you have been following this Guide you should have at least a basic crew of the following Characters, and the following Buildings present in your Springfield.

If you happen to have additional Characters (and particularly the ones that cost Donuts to unlock) that is great, and you should absolutely use them within the limits of the times scheduled, but because those are strictly voluntary and for the most part require spending real-world Money, I am not including them in the listed schedules below...

Following these schedules will earn you the base amount of their title (not including your Bonus which when applied increases your Profits) which I thought you might like it if I provided a summary of which below:

The yields above are largely predicated upon the notion that you are logging in on the listed schedules for the most part - it should be evident that in addition if you are logging in several (or many) times within these longer schedules, the potential yield can (will) be much greater.

The suggested yields above are intended to demonstrate what your Income will be if you are in a position where you can only log-in to the game and harvest subject to those limitations; if I have not made this clear to you, you are encouraged to log in and harvest Buildings more frequently. The more often that do do this the better. Just saying...

You may also wish to take note of the fact that with each new Building that you place, a series of additional and new tasks (of both types) become available to the different Characters on your crew, tasks that while they do not really change the tasks you will be choosing for the different scheduled time-banditry, almost certainly offer additional options for the very short-term results of active play in both long and short sessions.

Schedule Play AKA “Time-Banditry”

You should now be more aware of the fact that the inclusion of notes in the store screens and menus that cover the basic minimum requirements like Levels...

Just because the minimum level is listed on a special Building does NOT mean that it will automagically be unlocked and available for placement when you reach those levels.

In addition to the minimum level requirements, special Buildings and their placement is in fact mostly the product of the quest chains under which they are ordered, so you will need to complete the many (many many) tasks that are part of the primary and secondary tasks that are part of the quest chains under which Building placement is a prerequisite...

Finally we now cover the schedule system and time-shifting in a much more formal manner, largely because this is rapidly becoming a focus for the primary elements of Game Play at this point in the game.

In very simple terms the game has transitioned to the point at which Resource and time management have now become its principal mechanism. A more formal and complete Reference to the schedules for play that is the major mechanism for Time-Banditry in Tapped Out, are noted below:

The One-Hour Schedule

The following displacement of resources is ideal for the one-hour play schedule, that being play in which you log into your game every hour or so to harvest your Buildings and re-task your team of Characters.

As always, if you can log into the game more frequently that usually results in better Profits, though not so much with the one-hour schedule...

Total: $805 / 196 XP

The Building options for the 1-hour Schedule are a little bit limited, but include:

Total: $273 / 50 XP

The total collected between Characters and Buildings works out to $1078 and 229 XP before any Bonus is applied. Assuming that you have been following the Guide, you should actually be pulling in a bit more than that but the point behind totaling this up minus the bonus is that our target Income was $1k per hour assuming that we only logged in once every hour. That provides a predictable income base that we can live with!

The Four-Hour Schedule

The following displacement of resources is ideal for the four-hour play schedule, that being play in which you log into your game every hour or so to harvest your Buildings and re-task your team of Characters. As always, if you can log into the game more frequently that usually results in better Profits.

Total: $1800 / 464 XP

The Building options for the 4-hour Schedule are listed here based on a single log-in every four hours, but in this case you are better off logging in more often, since most of the Buildings renew much more frequently, and again any additional log-ins basically means extra profit. The following building Income applies to this schedule:

Total: $448 / 65 XP

The total collected between Characters and Buildings works out to $2248 and 529 XP before any Bonus is applied. Assuming that you have been following the Guide, you should actually be pulling in a bit more than that.

The Six-Hour Schedule

The following displacement of resources is ideal for the six-hour play schedule, that being play in which you log into your game every hour or so to harvest your Buildings and re-task your team of Characters. As always, if you can log into the game more frequently that usually results in better Profits.

Total: $2245 / 562 XP

The Building options for the 6-hour Schedule are listed here based on a single log-in every six hours, but in this case you are better off logging in more often, since most of the Buildings renew much more frequently, and again any additional log-ins basically means extra profit. The following building Income applies to this schedule:

Total: $788 / 99 XP

The total collected between Characters and Buildings works out to $3033 and 661 XP before any Bonus is applied. Assuming that you have been following the Guide, you should actually be pulling in a bit more than that.

The Twelve-Hour Schedule

The following displacement of resources is ideal for the twelve-hour play schedule, that being play in which you log into your game every hour or so to harvest your Buildings and re-task your team of Characters. As always, if you can log into the game more frequently that usually results in better Profits.

Total: $4170 / 1015 XP

The Building options for the 12-hour Schedule are listed here based on a single log-in every twelve hours, but in this case you are better off logging in more often, since most of the Buildings renew much more frequently, and again any additional log-ins basically means extra profit. The following building Income applies to this schedule:

Total: $1823 / 236 XP

The total collected between Characters and Buildings works out to $5993 and 1251 XP before any Bonus is applied. Assuming that you have been following the Guide, you should actually be pulling in a bit more than that.

The Twenty-four-Hour Schedule

The following displacement of resources is ideal for the twenty-four-hour play schedule, that being play in which you log into your game every hour or so to harvest your Buildings and re-task your team of Characters. As always, if you can log into the game more frequently that usually results in better Profits.

Total: $5990 / 1465 XP

The Building options for the 24-hour Schedule are listed here based on a single log-in every twenty-four hours, but in this case you are better off logging in more often, since most of the Buildings renew much more frequently, and again any additional log-ins basically means extra profit. The following building Income applies to this schedule:

Total: $2148 / 311 XP

The total collected between Characters and Buildings works out to $8138 and 1776 XP before any Bonus is applied. Assuming that you have been following the Guide, you should actually be pulling in a bit more than that.

Getting Over the Hump

The schedules that are laid out above combined with the strong position that your game is in were created to allow you to succeed in this Freemium Grinder in the face of the focus created by the dev's that is meant to encourage you to spend real Money on in-game money.

That is something that we have previously covered, so I am not going to spend a lot of time on it now, I am just going to remark that you are now in a pretty strong position, and should not need to resort to that ends just to move forward in the game.

As you can see by the examples that were provided in the tables above, I was not kidding about this being the “hump” stage of the game. Fortunately a side-effect of getting through this part of the game is that you will be adding to your crew in the process, and thereby adding to your ability to earn.

With any luck you have been completing your daily play towards the free Mystery Box that you get for each five days of play...

I admit that I was not very impressed with that gimme as the first two times that I got the free Mystery Box the prize it awarded was x10 Toilet Paper, but then the Halloween Event was going on and so far as I know that was actually a good prize (but I sort of doubt it).

Thinking that it was just a come-on to make it seem like there was a chance to get something good when there wasn't, I pretty much had dismissed it – but I was still ticking the daily box towards the free Mystery Box.

So you can imagine my happy surprise when today I ticked the box for the free Mystery Box and was awarded the Squeaky Voiced Teen! If I had had to pay for that character it would have cost me something like 30 Donuts, so hey, Bonus!

At the moment he only has one task available to him – a 24h task called Advertise Burgers that pays off in $1000 and 225 XP, so there is nothing to complain about, but once some of the other Buildings are added to the city he gets additional tasks... I do not include that here to brag it up mind you, but to confirm that the free Mystery Box actually can deliver Premium Items just as it claims to do...

Rebuilding the Nuke Plant

The quest line that makes up the chain that restores the Springfield Nuke Plant is the perfect example to illustrate the problems that a lot of players are having with understanding how the Building unlocks work.

The reason it is a good example is that a lot of you are already well above the minimum level that is listed for the Buildings but they are still locked, which is the source of the confusion.

The first thing that you must accept is that the level listed on the Building in the store is meant to indicate the minimum level you have to be in order to unlock and purchase that building – it is NOT the level at which the building will automatically unlock.

With that in mind, the process of reBuilding the Springfield Nuke Plant centers around the main quest chain called “It's Pronounced Nu-Clear” and although this is not obvious or stated anywhere in the dialogue, this quest chain is completely dependent upon you placing the Control Building building which first requires that you purchase and build the Cooling Towers – $15,000 / Level 11 – and then the Reactor Core – $18,500 / Level 11 – in that order, which finally allows you to build the Control Building, which will end up costing you another $15,000 plus the build time, after which you can then proceed with completing that quest line and its chains!

To put that in perspective for you, the order in which you have to proceed (you have no choice in the process) is by the following steps:

(1) Buy, place, and construct the Cooling Towers, unlocking Mr. Burns who is required;

(2) Required Mr. Burns Task: Walk the Hounds (12h);

(3) Build the Reactor Core;

(4) Required Mr. Burns Task: Hide Nuclear Waste (8h);

(5) Build the Control Building;

(6) Required Mr. Burns Task: Fire Random Employee (45s);

(7) Required Mr. Burns Task: Run the Plant for 24 Hours (24h);

(8) Required Mr. Burns Task: Read from the Necromonicon (4h).

That should complete the quest line, however depending upon your luck and the random number generator in the game you may (very likely will) be required to complete additional prompted tasks, with the list drawn from the above noted tasks in addition to the “Brisk Constitutional” which is Monty Burns' one-hour task (his Version of Shop at Kwik E Mart basically).

This example should fully explain to you the process by which the special Buildings are unlocked, and bearing in mind that the other special buildings will obviously have other prompted tasks and other required quest lines and chains attached to them, the basic idea is the same.

Your challenge is figuring out which tasks and chains are associated with each. Simpatico!

If it is not obvious your primary tasks for this part of the game are to rake in Cash and XP and work on completing the core quests that revolve around placing the Buildings that are outlined in this section as well.

Each of the core tasks/quests that apply have been carefully outlined in the tables so that you know which quests will result in releasing which Buildings, but even so the factor that is going to slow you down is not the quests or the Building times, but the actual costs of purchasing these buildings. That being the case, we come right back to the harvest Cash point.

If your goal is a more passive approach to this process the smart way to handle it is to use the 12 or 24 hour assignments for The Characters and the Farm Crop, as that gives you a predictable schedule for the Characters while you can pretty much log in whenever you want to harvest Buildings, as often as you like, as they are not really on a schedule that you control anyway.

Assuming that you are averaging out to around $1k per active hour played, that works out to be a pretty good profit and should allow you to average placing one of the Buildings every second day. Anyway that is the goal.

In the section that follows this one – the second part for Levels 13 and 14 – we will start to deal with the continuing Strategy for the remaining part of the hump, but so far you are doing very well and should be feeling proud of yourself, especially considering you have managed to beat the game out of serious advances without spending a dime!