Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
YeeHaw! The Wild West has arrived in our pocket-sized Springfields! With bandits to tie up, guns to sling, gold to pan & gold ole’ Homer getting everyone all riled up! So bust open the vaults and grab those donuts because there are loads of new Wild West themed premium items in our stores!
Of course with that limited-time label it can be tempting to buy everything because it’ll be gone soon. But don’t sweat it! That’s where we come in to tell you what’s worth those donuts and what you might want to hold off on.
Wondering if you should add either the Hot Springs or the Old West Sign to your Springfield? Well before you hit that confirm button let’s break down these Wild West themed decorations and determine if they’re worth your donuts….
So these are both decorations…and as you all should know by now, when it comes to decorations I believe it’s a personal decision. What works/doesn’t work with your town is up to you. Nevertheless, I know there are some of you curious about these two, so I figured let me do a quick breakdown of each.
But in the end, the decision is yours. If you like them…get them. Otherwise, pass if you have no use. There’s no need to spend the donuts on something you don’t really need/want 🙂
Decoration: Hot Springs
Donut Cost: 45 Donuts
Size: 7×7
Bonus%: 2.25% on all cash and XP
Conform-O-Meter Impact: Tree-hugging +40
What Does it Do?: Steam comes off (as the picture shows) always, and when tapped it bubbles. Other than that it’s just another water decoration…like the free river, but costs donuts.
Where Can I Place It?: Grass
Leaves stores on May 30th
Would You Buy It?
No. While the bonus % is the better of the two decorations in this post…at the end of the day it’s still just a body of water for your Springfield. And we have a TON of those. Plus it can’t even go on dirt. So it kind of defeats the purpose of using it in your Old West area, no?
But, as I say above, it’s a decoration…and your Springfield design is your own choice. So if you like it, and want it…get it. Otherwise pass.
Decoration: Old West (Springfield) Sign
Donut Cost: 35 Donuts
Size: 1×7
Bonus%: 1% on all cash and XP
Conform-O-Meter Impact: Vanity +400
What Does it Do?: Nothing. It’s a sign. It just sits there and acts sign like.
Where Can I Place It?: Grass, Dirt, Pavement, Boardwalk, Beach
Leaves stores on May 30th
Would You buy It?
Not really. It’s just a sign and the 1% bonus isn’t that great (jet engine bike or Police Car are better deals). I’m perfectly happy with the Bloodbath Gulch Sign for my Old West Area. 35 donuts seems steep on this…at least to me.
Of course as I said earlier, if you like it buy it. It’s a decoration. And decorating your Springfield is a personal thing.
So get it because you like it, but not because it’s a good return on your investment.
And that’s it, the complete breakdown of the Hot Springs and Old West Sign!
What are your thoughts on the Hot Springs or Sign? Will you be picking either of these up? Or did you already? Where have you placed them in your town? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!
Considering the current (Nov ’16) holiday sale price of just 30 donuts, does this change your ‘buy it’ decision? Seems like a nice 2.5%
Pass and pass
I bought them because they were there.
I bought them because they were there
With a decent bonus %, thanks to tennis courts and wailing walls, I haven’t been too concerned with using donuts to raise it even more. But with the new way leveling up works (requiring so much less XP) maybe it’s in my best interest to get it as high as possible. The higher my bonus, the more money and XP I earn, the more free donuts I earn.
I’m not interested in the sign but I’m sure I could find a spot for the hot springs.
But you’d have to do the math to see how fast that incremental increase will actually pay back your initial investment. At 1 donut per 500,000 or 1,000,000 XP (i’m ignoring the 40,000 levels, because those are so easy to blow through), it could take quite a while to pay back a 35 donut expenditure for getting a couple extra percentage points.
I didn’t mean to imply I’d recoup the donuts spent (at least not anytime soon). In the past, when I’ve been on the fence about an item that offered a bonus I had always passed using the rationale that I didn’t need a higher %. But if there’s an item that I like, but maybe don’t love, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get it if it bumped up my bonus %. I don’t like the sign so I wouldn’t get it either way. I sort of like the hot springs, even though I don’t know what I might do with it. The fact it boosts my bonus is just an added benefit.
I’ve been thinking similar thoughts. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing the maths to see how quickly I’d recoup the donuts but I just don’t have the inclination right now!
They’re both a Pass for me just now.
I got the hot springs but I’m going to place it in my snowy area up with my ski lift, chalet, and igloo. Santa needs a little getaway area from the elves and Mrs Claus! 😝
Just testing. Thx
Sorry I couldn’t wait for the open thread to start, but my obsessive side is running a little wild right now.
Is there a table/list of objects and buildings and the base XP they give somewhere on the site?
I just confirmed that rattrap, tiki, bloodmobile and woodchipper all give the same relative payoff (bookburning slightly less but may be a data collection error on my part)…but i’m wondering if there may be an outlier hiding in the store somewhere. Has anybody already done this work?
Scott
The “cheapest” XP in the game comes from Kwik E Marts, especially the first 20 or so (the price starts super low and gradually increases to, I think, 14,400). Each one earns 2000 XP on build, the equivalent of a normal decoration costing $20,000.
Krusty Burger outlets are similar, paying 2,500 each but always costing well under 25,000.
Both of these of course take a lot of land and time to build, but if you’re in permanent bonus level mode it might be a good idea to always have some under construction.
Stone walls are (I think) the best xp return. But xp farming with a $220 item is ridiculous. Some of the statues are better than the bloodmobile/rat trap truck/tiki bar payout, but again it’s an issue of using a small ticket item to farm for xp. Overall, the high price makes rat trap trucks etc. a good option for this (10% xp return before resale, 13.3% after). The prison bus also gives this return (unless they changed it in the level 60 update) if you want a higher-priced item. But stay away from aspirational items – they give one tenth the xp (1%).
KEMs are a good bet. But they’ve a 4-hour build time and take up a fair amount of space. They actually return about 13.9% before resale at the highest cost (18.5% after) if you’ve the space and the patience. And a fair number of them will give you a better return because of the sliding scale for price increases. But I think most people stick with rat trap trucks ’cause they’re expensive, easy to place, provide a decent xp return, and the math is easy.
Wow – that was a GREAT response! (A heck of a lot better than mine…)
Wow, that is a great return (but it would be pretty tedious at only 220 each). Fwiw, i’m at 331% bonus and so with that the bloodmobile, woodchipper, rattrap etc all generate 2.88 XP/$. KEMs generate 3.999 XP/$ but have the four hour wait period. Stone walls generate 5.27 XP/$ but that’s an awful lot of tapping. I might use them for a quick level-up but hard to imagine farming with them…
I’ll checkout the prison bus and statues….thanks for the pointer!
Scott
>And a fair number of them will give you a better return because of the sliding scale for price increases.
This is the key thing, if by “a fair number” you mean building relatively few at a time.
I only have 2 KEM’s permanently in my town. When I build no. 3 through 23 for the XP, the total cost after selling the completed buildings is about $30,000. That’s 40,000 XP (before bonus) for about 10% of the usual cost.
With a high enough multiplier, you can easily level up multiple times a day on this alone while barely affecting your cash. It’s a grind, but IMO much more worthwhile than the Rail Yard grind, which I’ve now abandoned.
KEM? Though I know I will SMH when you tell me
Kwik-E-Mart 🙂
That is the best payoff, currently.
I got the hot springs. The bonus isn’t bad and I have some green areas in my wild west sections, so I was able to incorporate it. The sign is not a good value. If it was like 5 donuts or something I might have gone for it.
I just noticed my carriage and cemetery never unlocked! So now I can’t play the finale since the mortician carriage is needed. What should I do?
So the prize track says you got it, but you don’t have it in your town?
If that’s the case double check your inventory…your WHOLE inventory list, not the individual icons. If you still don’t see it contact EA.
The prize track says I got it; it has the check mark next to the item. I already went throu my inventory and it’s not there. And I don’t even remember getting the “congratulations you’ve unlocked this item”message. I noticed it because I kept on seeing people playing the finale and noticed I couldn’t play it cause I was missing the carriage. I thought I’d obtain that from the daily item prize. Its not in my inventory neither the carriage or the cemetery.
i would contact EA
Vaguely related to that… it seems to me that the inventory system is in need of some serious attention. Scrolling through that “uncategorized” listing is getting to be quite the chore, particularly for those of us who prefer to store most of our “event” and “seasonal” decos. Can you imagine how horrifying it would be at this point, to try to rebuild after nuking? …
– “Crap! My bonus is only back up to 75%… where did the other 125% come from, again?”
– “Crap! I know I had more Halloween decos than this… where did they all go??”
– “Crap! Where did that blasted Hippie go? And why isn’t he in the #$%* ‘Characters’ category?!?”
(etc, ad nauseam…)
*Shudder.*
I absolutely agree. I think that each “event” should have its own icon in the main inventory section. They have all been identified during their event, it seems like it wouldn’t/shouldn’t be that difficult to keep them categorized that way.
The optimist in me wants to believe that a simple system such as what you’ve described has already been considered and discarded, because — to use my own post above as an example — EA already knows that it wouldn’t solve all three of the scenarios I listed. The Wailing Walls would fall into one (or more!) of the Halloween events, as well as the “bonus enhancers” category. Uriah would fall into the Monorail event, but also the characters category. Thus, they’re going to have to come up with some intuitive way of listing items in multiple categories, kinda like the many-to-many relationships created with the index tags at the bottom of each WordPress post… and while the technical backend programming is probably pretty straightforward — we’re basically talking about adding a single linking table to establish all of the relationships, and then coding several functions to tie it all together — I would imagine that actually making the interface intuitive to players is the more difficult challenge. So, hopefully the reason things have languished for as long as they have is because they’re still trying to puzzle that part out. (Disclosure: I’m a software engineer — but not an EA employee.)
I had this same problem but I reported it from the beginning…. Their answer? They told me to wait until the event it’s over to give me the items, it’s impossible or something to do something right now so… No finish for us 🙁
Still communicate with them to get the items later at least…
I once contacted EA because I couldn’t find the Three Eyed Sushi bar in my inventory. Sad, EA, sad.
Is anyone else annoyed that you can’t place signs across roads? That’s always bothered me…
I am!
I wouldn’t normally buy either of these items, but since my big doughnut windfall (XP Collider, level 939, etc) I decided to get the Hot Springs. I like the way it looks, and I like the bonus multiplier. The old west Springfield sign seems superfluous.
Changing the subject…..I’m done with this event (except for getting my 3 doughnuts- whoop-d-do). I’m starting to wonder what’s next. I’m thinking we’re due for another SH update. They gave us the Googolplex- which helps with SH. It would be nice to get some more land in SH, but I’m not looking forward to the grind.
I think so too about SH. I wonder if 2 Billion real estate is the next target. Got to start working towards it.
I agree with you about just using the Bloodbath Gultch sign instead (plus, it’s funnier).
I love when there are premium items that aren’t even slightly tempting…saves me a lot of angst! 🙂