The Final Definitive Beginner’s Guide to KEM and Bonus % Farming

The topic of Donut Farming has always been divisive and contentious. But it can also seem frustratingly complex to newer players, or players trying to KEM farm for Free Donuts for the first time. And…I am saying that this is the FINAL time we are going to talk about it. At least I hope so. Either farm, or don’t farm. We’re fine either way!

And again…before we start the conversation, this is NOT the place to brag about your own percentages or giant amassed stockpiles of donuts and XP. There is nothing more boorish than talking about money/XP/Bonuses etc. in public.  If you do so…we will delete, shred, and blow out your comment.

This is to help those who are just starting out, and want to understand the “How/Why” of the basics.  Everyone plays the game differently…and has their own pace. There is no wrong way to play the game. However, there are ways to play for free…and still get what you want…if you are willing to grind.

As I have said many times…I was late to KEM farming (as in just the last 6 months).  I have been playing since Oct. 2012, so I already had a good jump on Bonus Percentage simply by buying Premium Items over the years. I am still hovering around 360%, which is on the “low side” for real KEM SUPER Farmers.  But, I have found that this level is more than adequate to bring in between 24-36 donuts a day, if I keep my “Kasual KEM Farming Cycle” going.  I am an advocate of Safi’s method…and will break it down even further in this post.

Safi’s EXTENSIVE  POST (as in HOLYFREAKINSHIRT…LOOK AT THOSE CHARTS!!!) can seem daunting at first. But, the simple…as in REALLY simple way of looking at this, is to start with these three basic steps.

1. Begin with a “Clear Town”…no characters doing tasks…all of your rents, and building rewards uncollected. Then…run a 4-hour cycle. Send all of your available characters on 4-hour tasks, and make note of the starting cash number before your start.
2.  At the end of the cycle…clear/collect all of the character rewards, as well as all of your rents, and building rewards. Collect EVERYTHING. Make note of the ending number.
3. Subtract the ending number from the beginning number…that is the “Net Cash” you have available each 4-hour cycle, to buy KEMs.  This is important…as the “Safi Method” is all about keeping your expenses/income in a “parity” mode. You don’t want to spend more than you have…while still being free to farm KEMs.

Buying KEMs…what will your Net Cash Buy?
There is no reason to discuss the “good old days” before EA changed the prices of KEMs and made the XP bonus caps different after all of the “Level Up” bonuses changed.  It is…what it is.

Safi laid it all out pretty specifically…
Initially, you can level up from Level 61 to Level 100 each time you fill up an XP bar of 40k XP. You receive 1 donut for each time you level up, for a total of 40 donuts. — You can then continue to level up from Level 100 to Level 939 each time you fill up an XP bar of 500k XP. You receive 1 donut for each time you level up, for a total of 839 more donuts. —Beyond Level 939, your Level does not go any higher. However, each time you fill up an XP bar of 1 million XP, you have the opportunity to choose one of three boxes for a chance at 1, 2, or 3 free donuts.

I know. It sounds complicated. But, it really isn’t. KEM Farming just helps you Level Up Faster, and with the help of the XP Collider, to make every XP you collect count 5 times more.

So…Now that you have your Bright, New, Shiny “Net Profit Earnings” to spend…the first thing you want to do is take some of your donuts (did I mention you should START with at least 25 donuts? You can’t make money without spending money…right?), to turn the XP Collider on for 10 days.  You can do less…but, I just keep mine on all of the time now.

Here is How Much It is Going to Cost You for Blocks of KEMs (remember, they go up in price…so this is an Aggregate Chart).
CLICK TO ENLARGE

In my case, I net just over 200K in game cash every 4-hour cycle.  This is WITHOUT house farming. Not a fan. They are ugly. But, again…lots of farmers swear by house farms.  For me…the trade off for loss of space, and ugliness, isn’t worth it.

I will buy and place 40 KEMs every 4 hours.  As I am currently over level 939, I will get 2-3 cycles (attempts to get 3 donuts) per 4-hour cycle. I never get fewer than 2, and usually get 3 with the overlap. So…between 6-9 (I always go until I get 3), per cycle.  I do 4-5 cycles a day, so that adds up pretty quickly. You may need to start out with far fewer, to keep your cash at a “parity” level.

**NOTE:  Picking the right box to get 3 donuts (once you are at level 939), is an inexact science.  It seems to be different for each player, at least a bit different.  What I have discovered, is that the “3 Donut box” moves from right to left, then left to right, but often pauses in the same place for a couple of hits, especially if you are cycling quickly.

The other rule of thumb that seems to stick, is that it is almost always to the Right of the Single Donut box, and to the Left of the Double Donut Box.  So, if you guess wrong the first time, tap accordingly. No matter what, it will cost you 50K in game cash to guess wrong and keep going.

Unless it isn’t… Like I said…this is an inexact science at best!!

Back to Farming…
Again…this is based on a large town…with approximately 360% bonus.  If you have less than 360%, your return is going to be less than that. If you have more (as in a LOT more), your return is going to be exponentially higher.
HERE IS SAFI’S MASSIVE CHART on RETURN for BONUS % 

INCREASING YOUR BONUS %
with Mystery Boxes

I have decided to start the grinding process of building my Bonus Percentage up.
The best way to Build Your Bonus Percentage Up, is by spending your donuts on Mystery Boxes. They are cheap…and have a  percentage of “smalls” that earn Bonus %. Adding them to your Springfield will increase your earning power…so, yes…as much as I hate to admit it, you need to consider doing this, if you want to increase your Bonus %.  But, also be warned, it is a grind-tastic way to do this. 

CLICK HERE for a pretty expansive List of Items that Earn Bonus %.  It is not up to date…but gives you a good idea of the best returns.  The trick is to find those items that offer the most percentage, at the lowest cost. Many Premium Items offer Bonus % earning…but fewer and fewer these days in each event do so. You need to watch the “Should I Buy” posts to know which ones do. You also need to check the Info on each item in the store, before you buy.  It will give tell you if there is a bonus % associated with the item or not.

The GOLDEN Return on your investment you are looking for on this chart, is something that has a cost that is below .025% or less per point…and has enough XP Bonus per single item, that it doesn’t take a zillion of them to get to 500%.  An example of this is a Jet Engine Bike…which adds 2% to your overall XP, and has a .0667% cost per XP.  You can buy one (when they are available) for 30 donuts.

So, by first appearance, there isn’t a better deal than Mystery Boxes. Period.  BUT it is a gamble…you aren’t guaranteed to “win” a bonus earner…and you may just end up with something else to store, so the “JUST 6 Donuts!” can actually be a lot like “Just a Quarter!” when playing the slots.  You might win a %Booster, and you might not.

Like I said…it is like pulling a slot machine handle. And, I seem to get more Itchy and Scratchy Signs, and TV Trucks than anything else.  The list is supposed to be random. But it is not...although they do flip the contents every once in a while. HERE is a list of the most current…(April 1st 2015). If anyone can find a newer one, let me know…

Object	Chances
Lard Lad Donuts	2%
Blue Haired Lawyer/90	14%
Kearney/60	7%
Tire Fire/40= 2% XP/$ Bonus	14%
Channel 6 News Van =2% XP /$ Bonus	7%
Itchy & Scratchy Billboard = 1% XP /$ Bonus	7%
Squeaky Voiced Teen/30	14%
30	1%
10	2%
Chalmers’ 1979 _ONDA	7%
Bomb Shelter	7%
Minnow Pond	7%
Khlav Kalash Stand	7%
Lemon Tree/250	6%

So…….Yes….You can get a GREAT Deal on a Bonus Multiplier Item…or you can get something that will likely go into your storage.  6 donuts per whack…how many will you earn in 10 tries?? Well…the chart above lays out a programmed algorithm. It’s not random. So,  if this chart is accurate, take ten pulls, and you have a less than 1 in ten shot that it will give you a multiplier item.  The percentages do go up a bit, once you get some of the “one only items” (Characters). But, you are playing the odds that it will end up being cheaper than just buying the 2% for 40 donuts (for the News Van).

But…as you will see in the video below…these published odds are pretty much out the window…at least in my brief experience. They may be improved greatly, because I DO have all of the characters listed.  But, it was still an interesting first test…
Let’s do this in real time…

So…as I say in the video, this may or may NOT be indicative of a standard run of 70 donuts invested in the Mystery Box.  It is clear that the algorithms for this session were way off, compared to the published odds from above. Way more Free Donuts…but, around the same number of “Storage Unit” items (Non-Bonus Items), for the math.

In the final analysis…it cost me a net of 70 donuts, to earn 7% in additional bonus. But, that was by getting another 50 Free Donuts in the mix…for a total of 120 donuts spent for that 7% return. Still better than buying it outright from the store. But, hard to know if you can count on that return. I suspect not.

If you are essentially BUYING your Bonus XP Multipliers at 2% for 40 donuts as an example…You are going to have to lay out a TON of donuts to earn 500% Bonus.  How Much of a Ton??? Let’s see…that would be 250 TV Vans…at 40 donuts each…that’s 10,000 donuts.  So, if you earn 30 donuts a day, it will indeed take you almost a year to reach that level. But, it will go faster, as your bonus increases…right? Still…a LOT of grinding!

And then…you have to have somewhere to PUT all of the TV Vans. That is why some of these Super Farmer’s towns look awful. Or, they take their entire Springfield Heights section, and turn it into a huge parking lot.

Can you HAVE IT ALL???  Can you have a beautiful town…a high Bonus %…and still have room to design?

Well…again…I go to the TSTOAddicts “Gold Standard,” Ebron.  She gave me the details of her journey to “Max XP” this way…
“I’m at 1355%…add in 15% hidden from 3 SH modern mansions in my town and I end up at around 1370% bonus. I also have around 150% stored from SH and other various items that I pull out for a day when I farm RTTrucks (and then turn the collider on for a day).  The funny thing is…it didn’t take any more time or effort to reach this multiplier. I just played the game like everybody else, but focused my purchases for a year on only characters and xp bonus items.  I bought mystery boxes (you’ll see there are quite a few news vans and billboards in my town) and multiples of “bonus % bargains” whenever I could find them. I think I have a total of 30 something mini-nukes hidden behind buildings somewhere.”

OK then.  So…buying only items that earn a Bonus, and doing the RatTrap Trucks bit (that takes a ton of cash, but builds XP fast), and you have what you want.  The bottom line is, you have to decide just how much grinding you want to do. Because EARNING the 10,000 donuts is going to take a long, long time…but it will make it easier to get more donuts…free…when all is said and done. But, by then…after a year of grinding for news vans, you may never want to watch the news again. There are other reasons for this…but, I digress.

There just isn’t an EAsy way to do it. It takes time, commitment, and grinding every 4 hours, without fail…and buying loads and loads of items you may or may not want.

Now, if you are already nearing the 10,900 Hard Item Limit in your town, like I am, you may be in trouble.  Ebron sacrificed her monorail. I won’t do that. Others fill up the perimeters of their towns with huge farms, or turn their Springfield Heights into storage units.  I won’t do that either. But, you CAN have it all (except for a monorail) like Ebron, if you want to put in the time!

Or…you can earn enough donuts to buy what you want…not everything offered, but what you want…if you just keep playing “normally” while doing a bit of KEM farming on the side. It’s really your call! There is no right way or wrong way to play the game!

And remember…as I have said before, the advantage to all of this, is that you keep your “real money” in your pocket. You are buying, selling, collecting on “house money,” (EA’s dime, not yours). So you have nothing to lose and lots of donuts to gain.

Freemium? Don’t even get me started on placing an actual monetary value on your time. We won’t go there. Instead, I’ll just say “Time to Get Yer Grind On!” 

FOR ALL OF YOU SUPER FARMERS out there… I’d like to see some screen shots of where in the heck you hide all of your Bonus Percentage Items. Do you have a Huge Dump?  Do you have clusters of signs behind buildings?   Send me your screen shots at tstopatric@gmail.com

Happy Tappin’!