UPDATE: Looks like EA lowered the time for the Hunt Nightmares task. It’s now been reduced to 4hrs from 8hrs. So you should earn twice as many each day. This will be a big help for many of you worrying about just how you’ll earn the 9,000+ Candy Apples for Act 3.
Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Just popping in with a quick tip for earning more nightmares via the Hunting Nightmares Task. We’re seeing loads of you in the comments upset because you’ll send all your kids to Hunt Nightmares, and it’ll only yield 20 when the task is complete.
So why is that? Well it’s because the max in your town allowed at one time is 20. Now there’s been a bank of 40 throughout the entire event (that your nightmares will appear from when you clear the first 20), but it appears that..at least for now..the bank isn’t working with the Hunt Nightmares task.
So how to we optimize and get the most out of the task to yield the most Candy Apples? Let’s take a look….
Here’s the key to maximize the most out of this task….
Multiple Brown Houses
Since the task takes place at the Brown House, the best thing is to have multiple Brown Houses in your town. Then send various characters to perform the task at different Brown Houses. Count up how many nightmares the characters will yield and don’t have more than a yield of 20 from any of the houses.
Then clear each house one at a time, clear the nightmares that spawn & reassign the kids to the Hunt Nightmares task at that house.
Basically…if you have ALL of the kids (or almost all of the kids) you’ll need 4 Brown Houses to maximize the Nightmare spawns….here’s a look for each one:
Brown House #1- Yields 20 Skeleton Nightmares: Bart (2), Database (2), Gino (4), Sherri and Terri (8) & Laura (4).
Brown House #2- Yields 20 Bunny Nightmares: Milhouse (2), Ralph (2), Rod (2) , Todd (2) , Shawna (4), Jessica (4) and Uter (4).
Brown House #3- Yields 20 Zombie Nightmares: Martin (2), Michael (2), Kearney (4), Greta (4), Jimbo (4) and Squeaky Voiced Teen (4).
Brown House #4– Yields 10 Snake Nightmares: Lisa (2), Hugo (2), Nelson (2), Dolph (2) and Janey (2).
So when they’re ready clear the thumbs up over Brown House #1, then clear the skeletons that spawn from it, then reassign the kids to the task and move onto Brown House #2.
Repeat for each Brown House.
Important….Space your Brown Houses apart OR store your IRS building so you don’t accidentally clear them all at once. This will only work if you clear 1 brown house at a time.
This will help you complete maximize how many nightmares you’ll get from doing the task….
Hopefully this will help many of you clear up the issues of nightmares not appearing when you clear the Brown House and help you maximize your Candy Apple earnings for Act 3!
What are your thoughts on this strategy? Have you been doing this or sending them all to the same Brown House? Think this will help you earn more Candy Apples? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!
It’s good to see EA have reduced the time from 8 hours to 4. Makes the game a little more interesting 😊
Act 3 is S***, before I could have all kids making one nightmare and upgrade the campfire in no time, now I only have bart making 2 skeletons every 4 hours, how am I supposed to get 200 of them to upgrade the campfire, which is currently one of the shopkeepers challenges
Patience. Don’t panic. It can be done. Many are hitting the daily marks just fine. Just takes a bit at first to get used to the new set up. But it can be done. 🙂
I separated my kids tasks by nightmare, but I never get any skeletons. No problem getting/fin ding the other nightmares. When I clear the kids that are supposed to spawn skeletons, nothing. Any suggestions?
That is an odd one as I get them just fine in my game. Please report it to EA just in case something else is going on in some players games.
This is exactly what happened to me! Its stupid.
I only have Bart and one other character that can earn skeletons now, and don’t want to spend donuts on premium kids just for the event when there are other characters I want more. I can’t see any way of earning the 200 skeletons for the campfire upgrade, and even 30 for the daily challenge is a stretch when Bart is needed for monster fighting for some of the day. It wouldn’t be so bad if nightmares still spawned in neighbour towns, but all we get is crafting items, which I’ve got more than enough of and nothing worthwhile to craft. It was getting too easy to upgrade the campfire in act 2, but it’s like it’s gone too far in the other direction.
Same. And Bart is the only monster-fighting kid I have with a costume, so I always send him to battle at the campfire, which brings me down to only Database getting skeletons. It doesn’t seem possible to get any skeletons from my neighbors either, because I only see star spawn there.
You have all week to get the skeletons. So send bart when he’s not at the campfire. If it takes several days, it takes several days…you dont have to complete it all today
Just heard back from EA they said that they were working on increasing the number of nightmares that can be in the town the putting in separate house works for the brown house but it does not solve the issue with the gate to nowhere only spawning 20 instead of 24, EA said to expect a patch “soon”
I am really confused. I have spaced my brown houses apart and if I click on one it keeps telling me to hunt nightmares at Krispy murder but if I click on krusty murder it only has jobs for adults. Please help
Are your kids to the right spot? At the right level? Right Questline completion?
My brown houses say that, too, but see if you can scroll down to see the kids’ jobs.
I’m having the exact same problem. How are we supposed to finish the last challenge??
@Brenda, try scrolling down after you click on the brown house. See if the kids’ jobs are down there.
Also the portal from part 1 is broken it spawns only 20 when it says it should spawn 24 and the same thing happens if your items from years past are too close like the log and mausoleum and pet cemetery you can spread those out but the portal there is nothing you can do about it I have emailed EA about the portal will post when I hear back from them
It is not “broken”, it is the same comment we keep posting over n over n over n over n over… you can ONLY have 20 Nightmares MAX in your town at a time, so unfortunately until EA fixes the “bank” and brings it back to “bank” those extras up to another 40… you are going to lose ANY amounts over 20 that spawn at the same moment in your game.
sorry guess didn’t word that well and it also seems my tablet autocorrect spelled my name wrong yea I know it’s the 20 limit mostly was just posting to say the portal was also affected. I did manage to contact EA and was assured a fix was coming soon
This is working well for me, although I’ve definitely noticed something since the last little update the other day, and I’ve double checked this and it’s now happened twice
1 – log on to TSTO and clear the Mausoleum and then the two snake logs I have
About an hour or so later, log into game again and low and behold I can click on the Mausoleum again ( supposed to be 8 hour regen) and both snake logs (12 hour regen)
It only seems to happen once in day, but it’s giving me extra apples to get !
I’ve had the same thing happening in my town for a while except sometimes the snake logs will spawn 2 or even 3 extra times in a day.
Yep. Same here. Realised yesterday that I’d got the snake logs three times during the day with only an hour or so between. The mausoleum was the same but only twice
I’m not sure I understand the point of this strategy? You get the same numbers of nightmares whether all the kids are in the same house or different, so I do you see what difference it makes. Or am I missing something here?
You can only have MAX 20 Nightmares at a time, so if you make MORE than 20… you lost those extras. So by staggering them to different places or in my opinion stagger them time wise so you collect on them at different times, then you don’t lose that overage
The problem is all nightmares spawn from the same brown house, even if the jobs are being done at multiples, and clearing the tasks (like squishing a bunch of nightmares at a time) freezes my game for a few seconds, so by the time I make it back to the first brown house where all nightmares are spawning from, they have already dispersed and it takes me much longer to tap all of them. But I’ve been doing OK, I guess.
Funny that, while the 1-hour tasks at Krusty Murder are now earning 100 XP (EA screwup?), Holiday Homer only earns 26 (standard XP payout for a premium 1-hour task – although his cash payout for the job is premium too).
So stagger them. Start them 5 to 15 minutes apart so they’re not all done same time. 🙂
Thanks for the reply! They’re already scattered in my town, so I do collect from each one at a time. The problem is, no matter which brown house I’m collecting from, all nightmares spawn from the same brown house (the first one I had). It’s the same with the three freakmobiles I have. What I could do, I guess, is collect from the first house, then move each of the other houses next to it for the next three collections, then move them back to where they were. Not sure if that’ll take me less time, though!
Here’s what an anal-retentive game player (me) does:
1. Send Bart, Lisa, Milhouse and Martin to the “primary” brown house–the one where all the nightmares are spawning. Send all other kids to other brown houses so that no more than 20 nightmares will come out at any given time. (Sounds like you’re already doing that last part.)
2. When Bart, Lisa, Milhouse and Martin are ready, collect them first.
3. Immediately send them back to the house to hunt nightmares (unless it’s time for the to fight M’nthster.
4. Go to another brown house and release that set of kids and nightmares.
5. Immediately send them back to the house to hunt nightmares. This only takes a few seconds.
6. When you’ve sent that last kid to hunt nightmares, click “Go To” on any one of the kids at the primary house. This will immediately take you to the “primary” brown house–you don’t have to scroll through your town manually–and because only a few seconds have passed since you released the nightmares, they will still be very close to the primary brown house.
7. Tap those nightmares, and then repeat steps 4-6 for the rest of your brown houses.
Hope that helps! It’s been working great for me!
How do you send the kids to hunt nightmares???? Does Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse have to spend the night at camp krusty first?
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/11/05/thoh-quick-tip-making-the-most-of-the-hunting-nightmares-task/
In addition to the link Bunny sent, you might want to check out the Turbo Tappin’ thread:
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/11/04/turbo-tappin-thoh-2015-act-3/
Basically, you have to be in Act 3 and you have to have completed all the quest lines up to the Something Strange in the Neighborhood quest–that’s where you first send the kids to hunt nightmares. If you’re not there, get there first. 🙂
Once you’re there, the way you send the kids to hunt nightmares is by tapping on the brown house. Scroll down and you’ll see a list of all the kids who can hunt nightmares. (It works just like the recycling centers.)
READ BUNNY’S LINK BEFORE YOU DO THAT. It gives you a strategy that uses several brown houses so you don’t lose any nightmares (since you can only have 20 nightmares in your town at any given time).
Good luck. Hit me back if you have any questions–I want you to get the bonuts! I’m on email all day today and have subscribed to this post, so I’ll get an email if you post any more questions. 🙂
I hadn’t thought of using the “Go to” feature. I started moving the brown houses back and forth to a spot near the primary brown house when collecting, but that’s a good tip, thanks 🙂
Any particular reason why you send Bart, Lisa, Martin and Milhouse to your primary brown house, rather than separating them by the type of nightmare they produce?
At the beginning of Act 3, when we couldn’t really be sure what all the kids would be used for, one of the posters here mentioned that it might be a good idea to put the four “main” kids in one house. That way, if you needed them, you could store the brown house and kick them out of whatever task they were in quickly. That seemed like a reasonable idea to me.
Also, I wanted to thank you for mentioning that 1-hour tasks at Krusty Murder are now earning 100 XP. I have been using that glitch to my advantage!
I stored all my brown houses. Then I pulled out just 4. Everything spawns from the first one that comes out of inventory. I send all the zombie kids to one, snakes to another, etc. I stored the IRS. I clear the first brown house that they are going to all spawn from, tap all the nightmares, then send those kids back to work, then tap the second house and tap all the nightmares as they spill out of the first house.
I have all four near each other so I can see all on the screen at the same time, no issue going back to the first one. But you have to put away the IRS to prevent them all spilling out at the same time.
I am glad us issue was addressed as I have not been spawning anything other that zombies and snakes. I will try your suggestion, thanks!
Thank you, Alissa, for mentioning that we need to be on level 3 to see the kids’ nightmares at the Brown houses. That may be my problem.
I’ve been trying to finish my son’s shopkeeper’s tasks, and I’ve been able to get the adults do 4 hour jobs at the Krusty Murder, however, I’m not seeing any jobs for the kids there (although it directs me to a brown house when I click ‘go to’). Would anyone know what I can do to have kids start collecting nightmares in brown houses?
Scroll down in the pop-up that appears when you tap on a brown house. If you’ve progressed through the quest line you should see a list of kids to select for the ‘hunt nightmares’ task. Just click on them and they’ll start the task (a la Springfield Heights/recycling/adult Hallowe’en tasks).
If you are in Act 3 (not Acts 1 or 2), you go to a brown house, tap it, scroll down, and it should have a list of kids whom you can tap to hunt nightmares there. Only tap enough kids to get 20 nightmares at a time or you may lose the rest (there appears to be no more bank, although I’m seeing some reports that the bank is back–still, I wouldn’t chance it). If you have more kids available to hunt nightmares, build more brown houses. You can send the rest of the kids to those brown houses. Read more about it here:
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/11/04/addicts-question-corner-thoh-act-3-nightmares-spawning-too-many-nightmares-message-mnthster-attacking-and-more/
And this post describes more fully the “multiple brown house” strategy:
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/11/05/thoh-quick-tip-making-the-most-of-the-hunting-nightmares-task/
You can also collect nightmares from any friends who are still spawning them. About a third of my friends are still spawning nightmares. Good luck!
I’m just wondering what the best way of clearing the monster at the campfire is? I know we can only send the 4 kids at a time but should we send them all twice or send 4 then Say 1 a second time then the other three assign to brown house? Because it seems after the second time u send them u tap one of the kids and the monster is released and then u don’t seem to get any toffee apples from the other three? Hope that makes sense!!
I send them all twice because you get more candy apples that way. In my experience, even though I may tap on one kid and “free” the monster, I get the candy apples from all of them. (I watched my candy apple counter once. Not a very scientific experiment, lol.)
Ok I tapped the sunken temple and M’nthster went away and I had Star spawn, tapped it the second time and M’nthster is now sitting on the campfire and I do not have any star spawn showing up anywhere ! I tapped him again and still no star spawn.
Did you Fight him “to the death”? None will appear until you COMPLETELY killed him.
I tap on him till he disappears then he comes back to the campfire again. In fact I have to tap on him when I first start the game can not tap on anything else can’t send any of the kids to fight him cause they are fighting nightmares in the Brown house and I cannot release them.
If you mean that he needs to be battled at the Campfire, you will need those kids available to fight him or he will stay there. If you mean you are still in the Questline and need to progress, check what name and part # you are on against the Walkthrough and see if you need to continue the storyline somewhere and are missing it to progress on.
I am tapping on him and nothing happens. He dies but then he comes right back to the campfire
It’s supposed to loop… it’s one of the ways you earn candy apples in this act.
My spooky campfire is stuck on level 26 where I need to squish snakes. Unfortunately the random drops of eggs from star spawns don’t count towards this. So with the brown house being the only way to squish snakes (all my friends towns are filled with star spawns) I really only have a potential of earning 10 snakes every 4 hours. I need 147 snakes to complete level 26. So that would mean I need to do 14 rounds of Hunt Nightmare’s to finish level 26. Since I don’t play 24/7 I’m thinking I could get in 4 rounds a day totalling 40 snakes per day. Looks like it will take me 3ish days to upgrade my campfire when it would normally take 8 hours. Le sigh!
I jut want to add that the Formless Terrors egg drops DO count towards my campfire upgrade. I just got 3 from 10 terrors. WOOT!
Nice tip. But I realize its terribly slow to accumulate enough zombie brains for my crafting in Act 3, as compared to Act 1 and 2. I have 4 kids, without 2 premium kids, to do zombies, which gives me about 12 every 4 hours. Star spawns are also not many in numbers, perhaps due to my low low level 8 in my campfire, but their drops are random. Overall, where I used to be able to generate ~ 40+ brains, I get only 10+. Kudos to EA for increasing the difficulty level!
Any tip to maximize generating brains?
So I’m predominately a freemium player, which means I’ve only got Bart and Database to spawn skeletons…
2×2 skeletons every four hours = 24 skeletons a day…
And I need 200 skeletons to upgrade my campfire… ???
Is my thinking correct here?
If so, I guess no more spooky hedges for me!
Less. Don’t forget that Bart will need to keep running to battle M’nthster for 2x4h of the day. I’ve been on skeletons since the beginning of act 3.
What an anti climactic ending. I hope Christmas will make up for this….
I have four brown houses and separate by type, but they spawn from only one house, whichever house is the default. So I tap on the skeleton house and then go to my default brown house and they are there. So I tap each house one at a time go to the default brown house and tap on the nightmares and then tap the next house, etc. Hope this helps. 🙂
Love your avatar!!💜
Thanks! It took me a while to find one I loved.
I think the nightmares are banking again or at least in my A town. I’ve recently spent about 5-10 mins clearing them all & it was a lot I had all the kids at one house. I’d thought of separate houses after I’d sent all back to one house again, lol.
Clever idea, but I’ve noticed that the nightmares don’t spawn right away. It can be half an hour before I see a zombie after clearing zombie house. Personally, I think the whole program is getting overloaded in this event; the what a nightmare popup alone is tiresome. Not the best Halloween this year. I think last year’s event was much better.
What many of us have noticed is that they seem to spawn from one “primary” brown house. Maybe you have one of those too–next time your task completes, if nightmares don’t come out of that house, check one of your other brown houses and see if they are nearer to that one. (Assuming you have more than one brown house. 🙂 )
Thanks, that was true, but for me, it was the one I put at the top edge of Springfield Heights, near the towers, so I couldn’t even see them. If the thing wasn’t so laggy due to this event, they’d move so I could see them. I had to make buildings transparent to find them 🙂
Yeah like simp7fan said, I had no idea I wasn’t getting credit for all of my hard work. I was wondering if I was on track to get the 9000 apples, so I came here for the calendar. Thanks for the tip, it would have been a while before I figured it out.
Thanks for the tip, but now I have a couple of questions. I stored my IRS building before I moved my brown houses apart. Now that they are far apart, I cannot find the IRS building in my inventory. Which tab is it located in?
Also I only had one brown house before I started and now I have four, but the monsters only spawn out of the original brown house no matter which one the children were in. It is annoying because I miss some of the monsters that move too fast away from the original brown house and then I have to find them later. Is this normal or just my game?
It’s normal. And check your entire inventory…sometimes it hides in weird spots. If you still don’t see it contact ea..
Same here. I lost my IRS building when I put it in storage.
Then contact ea
I’ve discovered my IRS building doesn’t fall into any category of inventory. When I go to inventory to search for it, it’s only available on the main inventory screen, NOT if I select one of the tabs. The good news is, it’s usually relatively close to the beginning. So try that- just tap the box for inventory and look through the entire inventory without selecting a tab. Good luck!
Agree with Kat, right at the start after the Monorail pieces
🎃 💀 🐍 🍭 👻 🏈 🙂
Check your main inventory, not one of the categories. It should be near the end.
My IRS building “disappeared” too. EA Support directed me to an easy fix.
They told me we have a limit of 1000 visible items in inventory. When you’ve got too much stuff stored, items will become invisible … as if they’ve disappeared. The solution is to empty out your inventory until the IRS building becomes visible again. You can sell items from inventory or place them (temporarily) in your Springfield and Krustyland. After doing this, you may have to restart your game in order for missing stuff like the IRS building to become accessible.
Now with the weekly monorail prizes, the bramble hedges for leveling up the campfire, all the Heights extras we get for leveling up buildings, etc… there’s a lot of stuff that collects in storage that we can’t sell and that we may not want out on display. This problem is going to hit many more players.
I just go to the front page of the Inventory (I got at least 10-20 THOUSAND things stored) and start just swiping to the left through the main splash page. I can usually find it there.
Thank you so much for this great tip! I was wondering why it never seemed like I was getting enough nightmares from hunting. Brown houses to the rescue!
Act 3 sucks. Period.
This is fantastic advice, thank-you so much! One of the best things about this event was the ability to choose which crafting currency you get, so even though that’s gone away in act 3 it’s nice to know I’m not missing out on any precious brains…
Anybody having trouble getting some of the kids to hunt nightmares? I can’t get Uter to hunt. I’ve clicked on 4 different brown houses and there’s no option for Uter
A few others have reported this. All I can tell you is to contact EA
Me too I can’t send the kids to the brown house even though I’m on act 3…. so annoying and can’t contact them because it requires you to login somewhere and stuff
It requires you to enter your game log in. If you’re not saving your game you’re playing dangerously. I always link my game to an account name in case I need a new device, have to uninstall, etc I won’t lose all my progress
Thanks for all your work – I’d be lost without this site. Do you know how the game is handling the nightmares for the Gate to Nowhere? It spawns 24 nightmares but with the 20 maximum and no bank I seem to be shortchanged every time, and I’m not missing just four, but as many as 8.
Honestly i haven’t counted from it…i won’t know again until tomorrow…
My game seems to not be handling this well. The last 2 days, I’ve only received 15 from it, not even the 20 max, much less the 24.
I haven’t had any star spawn all day. I got loads yesterday but they’ve stopped – glitch? My campfire is level 40 so I don’t know why…
Is this one of those annoying questions that every second person is asking?
The Starspawn only appear when the M’nthster is gone (ie after you clear him and have to wait 12hrs from the Sunken temple)
Oh right! My kids have been fighting him for most of the day, thanks.
The Starspawn appear everytime i get in to my game. Glitch?
A couple of quick notes:
First, Alissa, thanks as always for the tremendous amount of work you do for us and your infinite patience! 🙂 Many thanks to Bunny and Wookiee as well, but this is your post, so you get the kudos. 😉
Second, to my neighbors- long story short, there’s been a family emergency that’s kept me at the hospital, and I’m keeping up as best I can, but I left the post-it at the hospital last night which had 6 names of neighbors who sent 10 formless terrors yesterday but I wasn’t able to return due to either full towns or dropping connection. (Also why I’ve been MIA on here the past couple of days.) If you’re one of those 6 and you see this, please comment so I can hit you back with terrors. Thanks, neighborinos!
lol thanks
Hopefully everything’s ok with the family. We went through that last month…spent a lot of time at the hospital..
Thanks, Alissa. 🙂 I appreciate it. Hope everything worked out well for your family last month, it’s rough. <3
We’re still going through it, although not as bad. But it’s still a trying (and exhausting) time..especially with the baby coming and the holidays upcoming . But we’re getting through it..
So sorry to hear it, Alissa. I hope your family finds a little happiness in the upcoming new addition so you all get a smile now and then, and I know you love the holiday season, so I hope you guys can find some moments of joy. (It’s hard, I know, said the pot to the kettle.) Sending you hugs, lady! <3
“Getting through it” is sometimes all you can do. Know that you have a “family” here too, supporting you and sending all our love. (Except the people who don’t read the posts. lololol. You have the patience of a patient saint.) <3
I love that you are still thinking about your neighboreenos during what sounds like a challenging time. As someone who has recently been in a similar situation, I totally get it. Like, playing the game is one thing that keeps you feeling normal, and you can’t stand the thought that you are letting down your friends. Or I could be totally off base, in which case I apologize. lol. At any rate, I don’t know you, but I’m sending you my <3. Because who couldn't use a little more love in their world? 😉
–mrslove80504
Nope, Patty, you hit the nail on the head. It’s the one *tiny* bit of control and normalcy I’ve got at the moment.
I appreciate the love, sending some right back atcha. 🙂
Best wishes Kat
💙💚💛💚💛💜💚💛💜💙💚💛
💗💗💖💗💖💗💖💗💖💖💗💞💟
Thanks much, Lee! I appreciate it. 🙂 <3
<3
I need some friends I have only 2, for tapped out:(
That makes me sad 🙂
This is the TSTO Addicts thread for adding friends:
http://tstoaddicts.com/category/add-tsto-friends/
I found all my friends but one (the one who got me into the game in the first place) through this thread. 🙂
All that I’m going to say about this is that it’s just pretty poor event documentation (again!) and a big thanks to the TSTO Addicts team, because without their information, who’d know about caps, limits, and the other nonsense the game refuses to tell you?
I’ve been sending all of my kids to the same brown house, because whenever I click on the Hunting task, it takes me to the exact same brown house. I got tired of trying to fight with it. Turns out, I guess I should have fought a little harder… 🙂
Again, thanks for the info! I guess as a player from Day 2 (my friend was late in letting me know), I should know better by now, but I’m an optimist.