As always seems to happen with these major events, confusion, panic and excitement are the order of the day, until we step back and take a breath, and take a long, hard look, at the basic math involved. What I am always going for, is what I call, “Return On Tapping” or ROT. This is the best method to use, which requires the least amount of effort, to maximize the return for your time. It is my credo for a happy life.
In short…you want to do what earns you the most, by doing the least. And it seems in every update these days, there are some patterns that emerge that make “getting everything” far EAsier!
Let’s take a look at what we are trying to accomplish, and what method provides the best ROT.
As with most of the updates, there are three basic levels of earning/prize gathering that we need to work on.
As you will see…the “Magic 4 Hour Cycle” comes into play over and over again…so get used to living your life if four hour chunks…with your phone timer (or kitchen timer) going off every 4 hours for the next few weeks.
The first, is actually the EAsiest…but seems the most difficult. The Prize Track earns most of it’s “currency” (French Pins) by clearing tourists, and tapping pins in your neighbor’s towns. There are also some rewarded in chunks for daily prizes, and bonuses, but the basics are the basics, and the best way to earn them is by clearing your tourists.
HOWEVER…there is a reason that the Magic 4-hour cycle is “magic.”
Once you clear all of your tourists, they will repopulate at a rate of 1 every three minutes, or 20 per hour. 20 times 4 is 80…and if you clear them every 4 hours, along with the task to send Springfielders on trips, you will actually not have to worry about chasing down the tourists in your town. THAT is Maximizing your ROT. You will max out at 80 either way…as the “reserve” only allows for this max.
Every four hours, your airport will look like this. Tapping all of the icons will produce your rewards, and clear all of the tourists in your town, and your reserve. BOOM! Maxed out.
Each tourist that you tap in your town earns you 4 Pins and 2 Sky Credits. So…if you are clearing 80 every 4 hours (set your timers!!!), you will earn 320 pins…times at least 4-5 cycles per day (I clear at 6a, 10a, 2p, 6p and 10p) that is either 1280/1600 pins per day. So…you’re already almost halfway there to the required 3365 per day, to reach the “got everything” on the prize track.
When tapping the the Pin Shields in your Neighbor’s towns, you can collect 5 pins for 90 actions (3 per 30 neighbors).
That is an additional 450 pins. And you will also get game cash at the same time. I have also found donuts …rare…but it happens.
Add to this, rewards that happen in the daily challenges (today, I collected 1025 for completing the daily challenge), and you are well on your way to your goal.
Collecting Pins for Sending Characters on Flights
In addition…(and THERE IS A LOT OF CONFUSION ON THIS ONE…)you can/will collect pins from ALL of the characters that you send on flights. There is a trick to maximizing them…and it requires some patience and game management.
You can only use three tickets at a time…even if you have far more players eligible to fly the friendly skies. Each of these tasks has a “riddle” associated, so begin by tapping the character with the correct answer…but then keep tapping available characters until you max out…but then WATCH THE TIMER IN THE TOP RIGHT, and it will generate another plane ticket every two 20 minutes. (They changed this to fix the multi-flyer bug).
Use this to expand your “flyers”…If have 3, 4,5, or even 6 characters available…USE THEM ALL. Each one will bring in another 34 pins every 4 hours. That’s an additional 150-170 pins every 4 hours…times 4-5 cycles…up to 850 EXTRA Pins plus the 170 from the one “solving the riddle.” More than 1000 pins per day!
BONUS ROT…
I have experienced, (and it has been reported) that ADDITIONAL flyers can crop up every 2 hours during this cycle. There is no reason to wait out the 4 hours…SEND THEM ALL on fights by waiting out the timer…for new tickets. Every 34 pins helps…right? And yes…these flyers can be regular or Premium Characters…and I HAVE seen a preponderance of Premium Flyers. (Our bonus for buying Premium Characters?)
Each Cycle will help in completing your THREE ADVENTURE TASKS each day to earn even MORE Pins.
SKY CREDITS for Reward Center Earning
This really isn’t any different than previous events, in that you have loads of options as to earning prizes and leveling up. The sky credits are earned by tapping tourists (2 per, or 160 every 4 hours) and tapping the Pin Shields (or pins if you want to be specific) that show up when a neighbor taps a pin/shield in your town. This is where BEING A GOOD NEIGHBOR pays off. You only get one Sky Credit per pin, but a neighbor can tap three pins a day in your town…and if you have 50-100 GOOD NEIGHBORS…you could earn an additional 150 Sky Credits.
These will also show up in tasks, rewards etc. The thing to remember is that you can level up (which opens a larger variety of prizes), by purchasing items, or by simply using your stash of Sky Credits to do so (or a combination of each). There is no perfect ROT plan for these, as you are only going to earn what you are going to earn. But, you can either get a bunch of little stuff…or save them for bigger items…or just keep leveling up. There is no real advantage to any plan.
IN SUMMATION…
The Key Is to CHILLAX…and log in to clear your tourists, send flyers flying, and clear your Neighbor pins at least every 4 hours (more frequently if you want to check for Bonus Flyers). We are used to this by now...no doubt about it.
So…in basic math terms- you can/should earn at least 1600 pins per day in straight pin collection from your town. Another 450 pins from tapping pins in your neighbor’s towns…and at LEAST 1,000 pins from sending your characters on flights. That leaves just a little over 350 pins per day to earn through tasks, rewards, and challenges and Adventure Task bonuses. EAsy? Not so much. But, everyone can handle 3 minutes of tapping every 4 hours…with 15 minutes to clear your neighbors. Right?
OK. So,it will be a bit grindy. What’s new? The First Act always feels grindy.
How are you doing? What tricks, tactics are you using? Share with the community…we love to know what you think.
NOTE— THIS FROM A READER (Thanks IA!)… THIS SEEMS TO WORK– So Try it until they fix it!!
I finally worked it out!, and looking at some most recent posts there doesn’t seem to be anyone else with this info,
So you can send tons and tons of ppl to the airport!
All you have to do is send all but one of the characters from the list, then send that one on a normal job instead.
Airport will allow another 5 characters to go, repeat over and over 😀
Still have to wait for tickets though so to send everyone will take a long time.
UPDATE— this method is working for me! Try it…use it til they fix it!
Try it and report back, Addicts! Use it while you can…sounds like it is a short-term deal.
UPDATED- I was right…they corrected this bug on 02-02 (bastids!) so now you have to wait 20 minute for each ticket to generate…Making it VERY cumbersome to keep multiple layers of fliers in the air (but it can still be done).
The trick is working for me. Too bad I read about it at 2 am post work lol. Still I’ve been 4 sets and will try 2 two more before bed. Thanks for the tip 🙂
I’m still super confused about the flu as others are.
Football items are now in store and we get a football field and character 🙂
Cool guide! I am also combining the four hour cycle with KM farming, so this is working out just fine. Love the addition of “clear all tourists”, a feature which has started with the “future springfield” event iirc. Huge time saver and makes the four hour cycles much more bareable in the long run.
Will try the bonus tip for more trips, when my current cycle stops. However since I have to wait a few minutes for the tickets to refill, I doubt I’ll make much use of it. Especially since I just got a daily task for over 2,000 pins (after the recent small update), so hopefully that kind of grinding won’t be needed.
Also I caught the Osaka flu….
Update: I was able to add more characters to earn pins at the airport, probably around 12 characters at the same time. When the time was up and the first characters returned, I immediately sent the next group away before everyone else had returned. At some point, the timer for the last three people stopped and they got stuck. Restarting the game, or going to Krustyland and back, didn’t work to finish the countdown. I had to store the buildings connected to the characters to kick them out. So maybe it is a good idea to let all tasks finish, before sending people away again.
HELP!!! I almost don’t have tourists in my town😭 This happened to me with Halloween event as well, for the first 3 days I almost didn’t get any. Now I have a ” tap tourists” task in my daily challenge, I tapped 10 and now they finished… I don’t have the message saying ” no tourists in your town”, they are just not there! I visited all my neighbours and went to krustyland but nothing changed 😭
What happens if you don’t tap any and you use the Visitor Center at the 4hr mark. Do you get enough currency for tapping 80?
IA’s tip is working a treat (thank you) and guess how loudly I squealed when my country of origin came up? So much fun…..☺️…..💜X
i totally want the flu
And what of this, “Osaka flu”? Am I missing something here? Have my peers have a two day head start on my town?
From what I’ve noticed if you don’t find the tourist with the germ cloud and get rid of it the germ icon turns colors and the number up top goes up. So I’m thinking it gets stronger and maybe spreads. But it’s all a guess no one seems to know anything about it.
Storing a character will also work. I’m trying really hard to send most of my town tonight.
Oooh! New update- is this potentially a return to communiy prizes? Ive tried visiting neighbours to spread the flu but can’t figure it out – can’t wait for the post to explain this new addition!
I was able to send 66 characters using that neat trick. Took me a little more than 2 hours
For if/when the should I buy comes out, I will say that I really like the flag bundle (especially because of the 7.75% bonus)! Also, the Point du Guard is working well with my river! Worth it!
The method works! I’m able to send lots of characters out to fly. Waiting for the tickets to regenerate is the hard part.
I maxed out at 65 characters, with plenty still wandering around town.
Good Post Patric, I hope the readers read it all the way through.
In the spirit of being silly (which I feel right now) – I wonder, why are these other characters traveling to these other destinations? Are they really to stupid to decipher the clue? Which I doubt because that would mean I sent Hawking to England to find a giant wooden horse after I sent Wolfcastle to Troy. – just wondering if anyone has made up fake storylines as to why certain characters have tickets to certain places, but I think it’s all very random but still fun. Why does Otto what to go to South Africa? Why didn’t Booberela go to Transylvania but Thailand instead (I do here they have good surgeons)?
If I had the time I’d be working on that post right now as the throwback time machine is still in the shop. But I don’t think I have the time, nor the machine at the moment. BUT it’s out there for the taking You, Alissa, Wookie and even the elusive Bunny to do a silly “Where do you think You’re Going?” Post.
I’m going to the councilor to make sure my meds are working :p
Love it. Too funny!
I have a job and I like to sleep at night. So ill play when I can and get what I can but I’m not going to set any timers for four hours.
anyone else notice that not all premium characters earn premium pins? Jasper and babysitter bandit aren’t earning 68 like kumiko
great event lots of time lots to do ways to get free land love it
I don’t understand how one actually gets the plane tickets?
They generate by themselves but you can only have 3 at a time. I don’t know if this changes as the game progresses or how buying them with donuts affects this. But once you use one of the three, new one starts generating immediately and each one takes 2 minutes to generate, so if you use all three, you will have three more in six minutes.
Just by waiting. If you haven’t maxed out on tickets (the max is 3) you can get 1 ticket every 2 minutes. You can watch the timer by tapping on the Airport to see how much time you have to wait for your next ticket.
Uhm…as it says in the post??
Where can i find the post on the tickets?
On this very page…
They generate automatically at the the tourism center, one every two minutes I believe. You just have to wait.
The plane tickets are earned automatically every 2 minutes, but they max out at 3 tickets. So you have to wait a little while if you want to send all available characters on tasks.
The above post is extremely informative and will help you understand.
There is nothing to understand Holly, just send your characters on their way, sit back, wait a bit & more tickets will generate. If you have any folks left then send them as well. The ticket regeneration thing is ongoing, it will always restart when the total drops below 3.
As Patric says you can always refer to the post.
Does anyone else have a “new!” Notification in the friends icon? After updating to the new launch for the new event the notification popped up and doesn’t go away even after I click on it or close and re-open the app… anyone else with this issue or just me?
Maybe a friend was added and you need to accept request?
I’ve been checking and there’s nothing. The notification seems to be permanent and doesn’t go away. I reset my iPad and nothing changed, i close and re-open the app and it’s still there. I’ve been checking for new friends but there is no one who has added or requested to add me.
Yes, I have it too after coming back to the game after a year break. There is a “new!” notification and the number “6” on the icon. Still there after 1.5 months 🙁
i tie the 4 hour cycling into my farming. two birds, one timer. p
Smart farmer…
Hi there!
I finally worked it out!, and looking at some most recent posts there doesn’t seem to be anyone else with this info,
So you can send tons and tons of ppl to the airport!
All you have to do is send all but one of the characters from the list, then send that one on a normal job instead.
Airport will allow another 5 characters to go, repeat over and over 😀
Still have to wait for tickets though so to send everyone will take a long time 😀
Flashf0rce 😀
WOW!! I’m going to add that to the post…and will try it on the next loop!
Tested and verified.
I don’t think I did it that way but about an hour into the cycle, I was able to add 5 more flyers
Ok an update! i was able to send ~65 ppl on flights before it only let one more person on.
So its about 2200pins every 6 hours instead of 150pins if you can manage to tap for 2hours waiting for tickets LOL 😀
Which I am. Boom. Yo Rock IA.
I can confirm this, it only let me send 65. I would have probably done all 150+ of my characters if it would have let me😂
Worked for me…I had to stop at 20-ish flights, as I should really get to bed. But in the morning, I’ll have over 600 pins thanks to you!!! 🙂
It’s taking forever, but it’s working great. Also… this is gonna be sooooo worth it!
Nice add!
Omg you rock
Thanks Flashf0rce! Working for me!
Thanks for the tip.
Doing this right now. It’s a bit tedious but more than 2000 pins worth it 😀
I’m really curious to know…. Is there any “reward” for answering Norbert Van Houten’s riddle by sending the character on the correct flight the first time?
It seems like the riddle doesn’t really matter since you might as well send everyone on the maximum amount of flights every 4 hours regardless.
Yes…the riddle gets answered and you are rewarded for getting three a day. But, that is the point…the rest keep earning, so send them.
What reward do we get for answering 3 per day? I know there are the pins the mystery gift box, but what I was wondering is, say we choose the method of sending all characters on all flights every 4 hours when they become available … the riddle will automatically be answered by sending all for flights. But another method is to answer the riddle first then send everyone else on the flight after answering. Do we get any reward for answering the riddle first instead of sending everyone on flights?
Sorry, this question became super long!!
Nope. Acts the same either way.
Three a day. No matter what order. No bonus gif first.
I have to say I am not a fan of the 4 hour cycle. I play on a tablet at home and can therefore only play when I am not working.
Something worth mentioning, which I like to do especially around events, is to make sure the daily task reward is event related or during non events, donut related.
Example : collect krustyland tickets for 1000 cash. (Heck no)
Delete that and hope donut/or event pops up in its place.
Sometimes it can be 2 days in a row on deletions, hopping for a better reward, but it comes. And they all finish at the same time in the end. 10/10 as an example to claim bonus reward.
Ok, I ain’t no rocket surgeon but I skimmed your article and what popped out is
Chillax!
Got it.
As always, Tappa,tappa,tappa
At the airport u send 3 people on their flight, while u are waiting for tickets to reproduce (2mins per ticket) make ONE of the remaining characters actually do a different 4 hr normal job, not airport job.
When u click back on the airport it has loaded up a fresh batch of 5 people that are available for flights. Send 3, and pick one of the remaining people to do a normal job, fresh batch again.
Rinse & repeat.
Only costs u the 2minute waiting time per ticket to send 100’s on flights.
Yes. ALL of that is in the post……………….😇
Also I’ve learned that when you tap the pins that a neighbor left in your Springfield it makes the progress increase on the Osaka Flu tab. So far I’m at 90/100 from tapping neighbors pins from my buildings. I have yet to find any infected tourist in a neighbor’s town.
Until now I had only one character available for the flights, and that is Database. Is it normal?
I don’t know, but try storing him and placing him back on. See if other characters show up available for flights
My experience so far says to keep all your characters free and you’ll have more options.
Cause I started 1 day late and wil not be able to play 2 days next week, I bought chateau maison, in the hope it will give me an advantage early on
If you do everything on the list and make sure you have every character that can go on a flight on a flight then you should be able to make up for it.
How does the game decide how many characters you can put on flights? I am currently sending 8 characters on flights–Should you just keep more characters available? Does this number continue to increase or is it random?
On this past Holiday event, I leveled up instead of crafting hundreds of stuff I’d usually store in the end. It was the first time I ever leveled up & crafted everything that was available. I’m planning on doing it for this event, because I don’t need 20 mopeds in my town. Thanks Patric for the breakdown!
Hiya.
Great post-thank you!
I have completed my 3 tasks today but now it has gone back to the first one and has let me go again.
Should I be waiting until it is ‘tomorrow’ to do this? Or are you meant to be able to keep going?
I hope that makes sense haha
It’s a 24-hour clock, so, if you started at, say, 7pm and cleared the first task at 11pm, then went to sleep and cleared the second task when you awaken, and the third task sometime in the afternoon (earning a prize), at 7pm, a nude task will open up, because 24 hours have past.
*passed
So you corrected “passed” but left “nude task” in there? Nice. Getting to know you better Sandra.
Lol – missed that one. I sometimes forget to watch what Swype is actually typing, especially in the middle of messages. “Past” was at the end, so it caught my eye.
But I have no problem with having nude tasks, too! 😉
Uhm ok?
I was answering Keggy’s question…or at least that was my intent….
I’m not understanding the Level Up/Purchase option in the Reward Center. Items are locked until I level up, but I can’t level up without using Sky Credits to do so? Maybe I’m missing something…
That is correct…but you get sky credit credit toward your level up, when you buy something that IS unlocked…or multiples thereof.