Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Welcome to another edition of From the Mouths of Addicts, where YOU get to sound off on anything and everything in the world of Tapped Out! This week’s post comes to us from Addicts reader, Doc.
Doc reached out to us recently via email with an idea for a post on a one-stop guide on how to earn bonuts since there are so many different methods now. It’s always great to have all of this information in one place, so naturally I thought it would be great to get this up on the site!
So without further ado, here’s Doc with his Bonut post! (Bonut = Bonus donuts for those who don’t already know) Enjoy 🙂
I thought it might be helpful to some if there was a one-stop guide on how to earn bonuts in our favorite, most additive game. If you are an avid freemium player, like me, you covet the opportunity to earn bonuts whenever you can. I will list each method, and give you a breakdown of how much you can get in a month.
Regular Methods:
Railyard: Every 7 days, you can earn 5 bonuts from completing all the railyard tasks. You may not need an extra 16 monorail track pieces every week, but 5 bonuts is worth the effort it takes to complete the weekly tasks. If you do this all four week of the month, it nets you a guaranteed 20 bonuts. (From Alissa: If you don’t already have the Rail Yard it’s currently NOT available, and it’s hard to say when/if it will be again)
Daily Challenges: EA replaced the daily play bonus with daily challenges a little while back, and it has been much better for earning bonuts. Instead of possibly winning bonuts in a Burns mystery box at the end of the week, we are guaranteed to get at least 3 every five days. Here is a list of the different options you may receive once you open a set of challenges.
3 bonuts-5 days
6 bonuts-10 days
10 bonuts-15 days
Sometimes you will get a “Special Prize” for completing 20 days of tasks. I have only encountered this once and when I completed it, I think it gave me another Lard Lad Donut shop. Prizes will vary on the “Special Prize” for everyone, and so will the number of days to bonuts, so there is no set pattern on what your rewards will be. There is a more detailed breakdown in the initial post Alissa made for the Daily Challenges when the update first hit. It should also be noted that you will often receive bonuts for doing the daily task assigned. It is usually 1 or 3 bonuts, but there will be the rare occasion when you can get 6 for a single daily task. Because I have enough cash and Springfield Heights resources already, I always try to swap a daily task that awards cash/resources to see if I can get one that will give me bonuts. I would say it works about 30-40% of the time, so do this at your own discretion. I have noticed that, on average, I get about 5 bonuts from daily tasks for every 5 days worth of tasks.
So, if you get around 5 bonuts just for the tasks, and 3 for completing 5 daily tasks, that gives you roughly 8 bonuts every 5 days, which comes out to 40 bonuts for every 30 days. This will vary drastically from person to person, but the bare minimum you will earn is 18 every month. I kept track and earned 47 in the month of March. I was very happy with that.
Find Maggie: Every 16 hours, you have the ability to send Maggie somewhere in town. Once you find her three times in a row, you get the chance to earn up to 3 bonuts. I always pay to try again if I don’t get 3 on the first or second try. If you find her once a day, that is up to 3 bonuts every 3 days, for a total of 30 bonuts per month. Because the task is available every 16 hours, you can technically earn 3 bonuts every 2 days, but not everyone has the time to log in every 16 hours on the dot, so we will use the 3 bonuts every 3 days stat and say this is a guaranteed 30 bonuts per month.
So, between the railyard, daily challenges and finding Maggie, you can earn 90 bonuts every month. Sometimes it will be a lot more if you get lucky with the daily tasks, sometimes it will be a little less, but 90 seems to be the magic number. 90 bonuts every month means you can earn well over 1000 bonuts every year. That’s several premium building, characters and decorations you can get for just playing the game. No too shabby.
Other Methods:
Sideshow You: The only reason I have to visit Krustyland anymore is to play sideshow you. I still collect tickets once a day in hopes that EA will release new content for the area in the future, but once I reach 30,000, I always trade it for the $100,00 at the KL entrance. From what I have read, you will get 5 bonuts for every 100 plays/300 balloon pops at Sideshow You. Sometimes you can get them a little more frequently, but I wouldn’t count on it. It might not seem worth it, but I just got 5 bonuts last week and was very happy when it happened, so it validated the 30 seconds it takes to visit once a day. If you have the time, you can cut the time it takes to get to 100 plays in half by visiting twice a day.
Visiting friends: Unless there is something I don’t know, this is totally random. I always have right around the maximum number of friends (100) and visit them every day. I have had streaks of 3 days where I didn’t earn anything and days where I found 3 bonuts, so we will say you should find 1 bonut every other day to be conservative. That means you will likely wind up with about 15 bonuts every month if you visit every day and have the max number of friends. Again, there is no guarantee, so it could be less and it could be more. (Note from Alissa: You must be maxed out on FP (Friendship Points) Levels to earn donuts from visiting neighbors)
Clearing debris: Most people cleared their debris when they opened up all the land, but I hoarded most of it for a long time. Once we were able to earn debris from the rocket ship, I went and cleared all of it out. I had a little over 120 pieces of debris and earned 3 bonuts, so let’s estimate 1 bonut for every 40 pieces cleared. If you get debris when the rocket returns, you get 4 pieces, so if you can accumulate 40 in a month, it could get you 1 bonut. Not much, but every bonut counts when you are freemium.
Levels: Whenever EA releases a level, we get 2 bonuts, so if the company ever gets off its duff and gives us level 60, there will be 2 bonuts. You will also have the chance to earn up to 3 bonuts when you earn enough to advance to the next level before EA has released it. I have been able to do this once a month on average, and since I always pay the $50,000 if I don’t get it on the first or second try, that gets me an extra 3 bonuts per month. I have been able to do this 7 or 8 times since passing level 59. Some of you have probably been able to do it even more than that by playing more than I do.
Holidays: Every so often, EA will just give us free bonuts for holidays. It doesn’t seem to happen very often, and there doesn’t seem to be a set list of holidays where this applies. Since they have given us so many ways of earning bonuts over the past year, they may not even offer free bonuts on holidays anymore, but if it does happen, it will be a welcome surprise when you log into your game that day.
Mystery Boxes: If you are so inclined, you can purchase a Burns Mystery Box for six donuts. You may win a good prize, a decoration or bonuts. The only amounts I have ever earned from this are 10 and 30 bonuts, but it happened so rarely that I do not recommend spending donuts on these in an attempt to earn more because you probably won’t come out ahead in the end.
Events: Whenever you earn enough event currency to complete and act, you are given the ability to earn up to 3 bonuts by earning a certain amount of currency. Judging from the comments, many of you were able to earn around 3 bonuts each day during the third act of the casino event. And we all remember how easy it was to earn them during Tapball thanks to a certain glitch. This only happens during major events, which pop up every few months. Also, certain events have given us the ability to earn a few bonuts during the act itself by sending a character on a one-time task, but this is even rarer that earning bonuts from sideshow you. Still, every little bit helps.
To summarize, you can earn around 100 bonuts every month if you complete the railyard tasks, daily challenges, find Maggie tasks, visit every friend every day, clear all the debris you earn from sending the rocket and earn enough points to pass to the next level. After keeping track in March, I earned 127 bonuts in all, but I don’t expect to earn that many every month. Still, it’s nice to see EA giving us so many ways to earn bonuts every month. I think I got everything, but if you know of another way to earn bonuts, feel free to leave a comment. I hope this helps some of you and happy tapping.
Thanks again Doc for providing us with the overview on all of the ways you can earn Bonuts in TSTO! As always we love hearing from you guys…so if you have an opinion or take on something going on in the game (or something that should be going on in the game), please send it along to us TSTOAddictsblog@gmail.com…
I thought you couldn’t clear the debris you get from the rocket, just what was originally on your land?
If you place them in your Springfield you can clear them…
And from what I’ve read in other posts, apparently Lisa seems to have better odds at getting donuts? At least with the new spaceship debris.
Well it would make sense…Homer’s more likely to eat them all. (personally i haven’t noticed a difference between the two..)
Me either, just basing on what some have said on other blogs on here.
Even though I joked about Lisa being “a better cleaner-upper,” I strongly suspect that was coincidental. I’d be very surprised if the coding was different for Home vs. Lisa (in fact, I would guess that the coding goes with the activity, not the character – the character coding just pulls that particular subroutine). But I don’t know any of this for a fact, so I certainly coul be wrong.
Homer eats most of those donuts 😜
I agree. I had Homer picking up 44 pieces and not 1 bonus. UGH
I like to send Lisa to clean up better anyway, because she always seems much happier about than Homer, who usually whines about it. 😉
That’s why like more to send Homer doing the cleaning.
During the casino event I was averaging 9 donuts a day which is pretty sweet. Most I’ve ever got was 22. During the event I must’ve got over 300 free donuts. Here’s hoping for another donut friendly event.
The issue I have with earning from the railyard every week is it takes all your main characters and playing there very aggressive in order to meet the quota needed to get the bonuts. That’s been impossible for me to do when we also have an event going, as those also require the same characters. Plus, mine anyway always resets on a Tues at like 4am.
Also, hint with Maggie — I make sure all my buildings are cleared and other characters are as to missions, then make sure sound is turned on before I search for her. She’s so small that it’s hard to see her sometimes and I didn’t know when I first started (since I usually keep my sound off) but she makes a suckling sound when you get close, which makes it a LOT easier to find her. Prior to realizing that, trying to find her was very frustrating.
I found it much easier to find Maggie after I placed all the possible buildings she would be located together in my town in the same area. It took a little while to rearrange my town, but I haven’t failed to find her since.
But it’s definitely doable. I don’t play as often during the day as some folks and I play fewer hours of the day than some folks, too, but I have yet to not collect my 5 rail yard donuts, even during the past event (although I did come pretty down to the wire one week during that). You just have to be strategic about it (and be willing to tap more than just once or twice a day).
Yep…absolutely doable. I’ve had a couple times where I might have had to pull someone temporarily off an event task, though. But I always make it.
I usually play multiple times a day and if I do make it that week, it’s usually just barely. It’s prob 50/50 that I just miss the cut off, too. I don’t even try to do it when we have an event because it would take up too much of my main character’s time. I’ve tried before and I just wind up not getting either one.
You might mention that you need to be at max friendship points to earn bonus that way. On my game I earn 2 bonus every 48hr from visiting neighbors. It’s pretty consistent for me. The rail yard however is not. I’m rarely able to complete the wks tasks. Lst nyt I only needed 600 BP & I only had 53minutes left. I hit it hard lst wk, too. I’m about ready to give that route up untill EA give us a way of getting rid of all those extra track pieces I don’t want sucking up data in my game. Even if could just delete them. Thx for the post, it will be very helpfull to newer players. 😊
I don’t think the track pieces “suck up data” in any meaningful way… but they do clutter the general inventory screen. If they’d tweak the inventory to hide all of my extra tracks exclusively under the Railyard icon, I’d be much happier. (Of course, there are numerous other things cluttering up my inventory as well… but I guess that’s what I get for not wanting them to clutter up my Springfield! 😀 )
How can I get the rail yard? I missed the event.
Right now you can’t.
Always thought for those that are new tappers, or just missed the railyard for whatever reason, they should have it at least as a purchaseable item. But it makes sense that they don’t also, what value would you give it, 20 donuts? Ok, they’d make that back in 4 weeks lol
I would think somewhere around 200-300ish donuts. But they’d also need to have the recycling centers…
Ooh right forgot they wouldn’t have those either. Maybe 200-300 as a bundle? Nah, make them pay more, have them as separate purchases lol jk
As a bundle probably 350
I suppose they will bundle it with the raiyard for a measly 400 donuts.
If there is a Krustyland update just after you redeemed your 30,000 tickets (leaving maybe just a couple hundred) for $100,000, you will have to wait to build your Krustyland building. So, I recommend NOT redeeming at 30,000 tickets but waiting until you have a larger amount of tickets left after your redemption. I wait until I have 120,000 tickets then redeem 30,000. That leaves me 90,000. Then I accumulate 30,000 more before I redeem.
I don’t bother about changing Krusty tickets into game cash. I have 232 million.
I had a break when the railroad event happend, and it annoys me so much 🙁 Do you guys think I’ll have a chance to get railroads myself? Or was it a one time thing?
If it comes back it’ll be premium and probably close to 200 donuts..
A lot cheaper then the whale and much more useful 🚝
if it costs that much it would be a steal. I would guess if it returns it will be much higher.
Thanks Doc, great info. 🙂
*sighs with relief* “phew” , (resisted the urge to do the obvious Bugs Bunny one liner) 🙂
What’s up Phil ?
😃🔫 🚂🚃🚃🚃 🐎 🐎
I was gonna say that. 😀
There you go , dangle a carrot long enough , something will bite….:)
Bugs Bunny probably would 😉
Leave it. 🙂
Thank you for this post. I do all things and my family (who also play) think I’m nuts! I am getting almost 90 donuts a month, that is awesome.
Something I do is break up visiting neighbors throughout the day I tend to get 1-4 donuts a day, I don’t know if it would work for everyone. I have the maximum amount of neighbors and they are all active players.
Thanks for this post! To speed up the XP bonuses (after level 59), once I accumulate a lot of cash, I will buy an xp multiplier for donuts and then buy/sell blood mobiles. (Before purchasing the multiplier I also make sure that my characters are all toward the end of 24 hr tasks and that the majority of my buildings are ready to be cleared.) I’ve earned a lot of donuts this way such that the cost of the multiplier gets more than made up for. However, now my XP to donuts bar is up to a million, so I haven’t done it in awhile.
I also wait to do the collider until my corn is ready to harvest. With my multiplier (over 300% now) and the XP collider, it gives a TON of XP for donut harvesting. 🙂
Great guest post – informative, well written and useful. More like this please 🙂
With a massive house farm, the xp collider, and a 450% bonus rate thanks to wailing walls and tennis courts… I can convert cash to bonuts via rat trap trucks at an amazing rate (around 6 bonuts a day)
Tennis courts earn % ???
The green tennis courts purchased during the beginning of the Springfield Heights event came with a 2.25% bonus. Those green tennis courts are no longer available. They were replaced with Clay Tennis Courts, which do not give a bonus as far as I know (I never bought one).
Those Brown Courts do give you a bonus of 0.0 percent 😛
Each green tennis court has a bonus of 2.25 percent as do the wailing walls.
Thanks for the post – it was very helpful! I had no idea you could earn bonuts by playing Sideshow You.
There was a very rare glitch during the Treehouse of Horror XXIV where character were gooed by ghosts. Eddy got gooed permanently. After 2,000 taps you got 3 bonuts with 3 extra randomly. It took some heavy tapping but I got 300 bonuts 🍩🍩🍩
When I got the “Special Prize”, I got a Mystery Box, and when I opened my “present”, I got 30 donuts/bonuts.
Not to get all picky, and since “we” (Sandra, maybe??) coined the term, it can mean any-dang-thing we want it to mean.
But here comes the picky-ness! To me, “bonuts” are those specific to the events. It seemed like that’s where I first heard the term, so maybe it fixed in my puny brain as that, and only that. Everything else is regular donuts.
Pedantry disengaged. Carry on.
I will sometimes hold a daily task for a couple of days until I get a bonuts prize. You can only switch out one task per day, but you can complete several if you have them. I usually get a bonuts task every other day, but sometimes I have had to switch out the same SH or cash task several days in a row until I get bonuts. You can have up to 3 tasks at a time so I gave found this worth it.
I’m so glad the XP for post-level bonuts doesn’t grow beyond 10 million, I can only imagine it’d be 9-digits after almost half a year with no fresh level reset.
At least the IRS made collecting money / XP easy, had long given up on level bonuts before that was introduced.
Great Post. Thanks. As for Sideshow you, I have only found 1 donut to date and I visit 4-5x/day since I started playing in May of 2015. But did get 6 donuts on a number of occasions with the daily challenge, so I guess it all evens out at the end of the day.
If you found donuts once on Sideshow You, then you probably found 5, not 1.
Doh lol, didn’t see that…i blame the medication x
Very useful information.
BTW does anyone have an idea when the event might hit I’m home and waiting for the event.
Excellent collection on ways to earn Bonuts, I was unfortunate not to get the monorail update as I started playing just after it had finished. There were a few ways there that I didn’t know about and it’s always nice to have all the different ways in one post.
EA has done very well in the past year with the changes that they made to let use earn bonuts. Thanks EA !!!
On the bit about Levels, it might be worth mentioning that you can turn spare cash into donuts by repeatedly buying Bloodmobiles or Rat-trap trucks (I think, someone please confirm!).
It works even better if you invest in 24hours of 5 x XP Multiplier first. When I did it I was able to convert 150million bucks into 150 donuts.
Hmmmm bonuts! ☆☆☆☆☆
EXCELLENT POST! Yes I shouted that out loud ♡
Comprehensive. 😉
(Could you switch the italics from Doc to Alissa? Too italicsy.)
The bonus rounds from levels is only 50,000. 150,000 is for Maggie and events.
Thanks, great information
😃
Any idea if people who wernt around for the monorail even will ever get the rail yard opportunity? Just seems like a huge thing to miss out on 🙁
No idea. If it comes back it’ll be premium for sure though
Have u seen the new post on facebook about upcoming update…
The ones we talked about yesterday?
http://tstoaddicts.com/2016/04/18/eas-facebook-teaser/
I don’t see anything else beyond those
Ah, I didn’t care when I didn’t reach the Railyard prize, because I didn’t want to expand my Monorail and I didn’t care about that character. Now I wish I had put forth the effort so I could reap in the benefits of those Bonuts! Lesson here: always try for the last building prize no matter what. lol
The Monorail was the first event I completely cleared when I started playing. I wondered if other events had a similar bonus at the end, but I guess this was the first.
haha true, it’s a lot of effort though, unfortunately, as much as i hate to say it, I stopped using the rail yard a few months back…
Where’s Maggie is still awesome though!
Either that, or get some information before you decide you don’t care about something.
Nobody here knew that the railyard was going to give donuts too, so I was going off the exact same information as everyone else.