User blog:Sonieee/The Busy Person’s Guide to Playing The Simpsons Tapped Out (Part One)

You’re probably reading this article because you’ve just started playing The Simpsons Tapped Out and you’re realising just how time-intensive it can be. I mean, the tagline for the game is that it’s “life-ruiningly fun” (not untrue!) and if you’ve got work, study, family and other social commitments, devoting a lot of time to playing can be difficult (and not very healthy either!)

Now, different players have different strategies and expectations from their gameplay, and everyone has an opinion on how best to advance through the game. The two prevalent strategies appear to be a) cheat (give game “hackers” your login details and get them to unlock all the premium items and a stash of premium currency so you can play without pay – don’t even get me started on how ethically wrong and ridiculously pointless I think playing the game this way is) and b) house farming (which I think is a waste of time and (limited) space, but others may beg to differ.)

I started playing the game in late March 2014, and since then I’ve managed to get to level 39, build a reasonably large Springfield (including the full Squidport Expansion and some of Krustyland) and get to the point where I earn enough cash each day to grow my little town much more rapidly. I didn’t need to engage in either of the above strategies to do so, but chose rather to be consistent and play smarter rather than harder.

(I think that 3 months is a decent timeframe to get this far. Again, you may differ in your opinion but, like I said before, we all have different styles of gameplay and different expectations.)

Below I’ve listed some tips that have helped me manage to progress this far in the game at a reasonably fast pace while still being able to live my life. Enjoy!

1. Don’t waste donuts
I’ve had experience playing “freemium” games before, and I’ve always played the games at a slow, steady (and free) pace (…and then tend to get bored and stop playing, but that’s another story!) When I first started playing TSTO, I didn’t even know whether I’d like the game, let alone like it enough to buy premium items/currency with my own cold hard cash.*

Unfortunately, this led me to be a bit wasteful with the free donuts that you receive in the early stages of the game. Once I realised that I did actually enjoy the game, I was kicking myself for wasting donuts on the initial friend quests (of which I had none at the time – see Tip #2) and buying Mystery Boxes.

Now that I realise how precious a commodity free donuts are in the game, I’m very careful with them. Make sure you only spend them on premium items you really want or need (like premium limited time buildings/characters) and don’t waste them on things like Mystery Boxes (which you get for free every 5th day if you play consistently) and speeding up buildings/quests.

Also, turn on the “Confirm Donut Spend” notification straight away. I’ve wasted donuts at least 2-3 times by accidently speeding up dumb things like earning income tax on the Brown House; you’ll just kick yourself for it if you don't set this sooner.

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 * NB: To date, I’ve purchased donuts twice but I used iTunes gift cards that I got from competitions, so technically I haven’t “spent” anything. I do know a few game developers IRL, and I know how hard they work to produce good quality games, so I don’t actually think buying premium currency is a bad thing. EA isn’t working for free, after all!=====

2. Connect with as many Friends as you can, ASAP!
Following on from my first tip, I would encourage you to connect with as many friends as you can, as quickly as you can to earn cash and get some cool Friend level items as well. The TSTO forums on this wiki are a very valuable resource to help with this, and I wish I had found them sooner!

Once you’ve maxxed out your Friend levels, you’ll start earning over $30k/day just from visiting friends (and you’ll also have an increased chance at winning free donuts!) which will help you build your town – and progress to higher levels – a lot quicker.

Having 100 friends can be pretty time consuming (on average it takes around 30mins to visit and collect from all of your friends) so I would try to plan a time during the day when you’ll be stuck somewhere for a good period of time (commuting, sitting in front of the TV or on the treadmill at the gym) when you can multi-task and not “waste” time so to speak.

3. Be Consistent
I’d liken levelling up in TSTO to an exponential growth curve: it’s pretty quick and easy to get to level 10, then you’ll really struggle to push through to level 20, and after that it just gets easier and easier to build, earn cash and progress to level 40 and beyond.

From my experience, playing the game consistently for short periods throughout the day will help you earn more cash from buildings/character jobs and get you progressing through quests a lot quicker.

Technically, you can earn much more cash setting your characters off on 60 minute jobs, 24 times in a day, than you would giving them one 24 hour task. Realistically, most of us have to sleep at some point, and we’re not going to be able to access the game 16+ times per day to make this happen.

Balance is important in life, and I’ve found that the best balance between life and TSTO comes from playing 3-4 times a day for short periods (literally 5-10 minutes). Visit once in the morning to collect everything earned overnight and set everyone off on a 4hr job (if they have one), visit again at lunch and do the same, again in the afternoon (if you can), and then finally at night, to give everyone an 8 or 12hr job to get you through to the next day.

It’s a lot easier to be consistent if you’re playing with a portable device like a tablet. If you can, you’ll find that you will progress pretty consistently with this method.

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Next week I’ll post the second half of this article with three more tips on how to progress in the game while balancing a busy life, so stay tuned!