Salutations Stats & Strategy Specialists
(Today’s post is sponsored by the letter ‘S’)
A couple years ago, I wrote a post about KEM farming (which can be found here) and how it yields donuts. Since that time, many of you like myself have gone on to grow your KEM farms to over 100 KEMs, earning over 100 donuts every 4 hours, as you have raised your XP bonus percentage into the thousands.
At this point, some of you may wonder is it worth always going for 3 donuts when you fill an XP bar? Or are you better spending that money on additional KEMs?
Let’s take a look and see…
ALWAYS GOING FOR 3 DONUTS
There are 5 possible outcomes of those donut boxes if you always go for three donuts:
- 3 donuts on first try
- 2 donuts on first try, 3 donuts on second try (Cost $50,000)
- 1 donut on first try, 3 donuts on second try (Cost $50,000)
- 2 donuts on first try, 1 donut on second try, 3 donuts on third try (Cost $100,000)
- 1 donut on first try, 2 donuts on second try, 3 donuts on third try (Cost $100,000)
If we average these 5 probable outcomes (taking into account the first possibility is twice as likely as the other 4), you’ll earn 3 donuts at a cost of $50,000.
18 donuts at a cost of $300,000 / 6 = 3 donuts at a cost of $50,000
So “Always Going For 3 Donuts” cost $16,667 per donut.
$50,000 / 3 donuts = $16,667 per donut
THE QUESTION?
Now the question is are you better off spending that money on more KEM instead of going for 3 donuts? Another way to put it, can you earn a donut for under $16,667 by buying extra KEMs?
SPENDING MONEY ON KEM
Unlike the 5 outcomes that exist if you always go for 3 donuts, there are only 3 possible outcomes of those donut boxes if you stop at the first choice:
- 3 donuts on first try
- 2 donuts on first try
- 1 donut on first try
So the average of these 3 outcomes is 2 donuts when you fill a 1,000,000 XP bar. So 1 donut would require 500,000 XP.
6 donuts / 3 = 2 donuts
1,000,000 XP / 2 donuts = 500,000 XP per donut
With $16,667, you can buy 1.157 KEM at a cost of $14,400. [For the sake of simplifying the math, I’m ignoring the fact that the first 24 KEM are cheaper, resulting in a slightly lower average KEM price than $14,400 depending on the size of your farm. However, the more KEM in your farm, the closer the average cost gets to $14,400.]
$16,667 / $14,400 per KEM = 1.1574305555555555555555555KEM
So the question is how can we earn 500,000 XP with 1.157 KEM. Or alternatively, that comes down to 431,991 XP per KEM.
500,000 XP / 1.157 KEM = 431,991 XP per KEM
To earn 431,991 XP per KEM with the XP collider on, we divide by 5 for the XP collider resulting in 86,398 XP per KEM.
431,991 XP per KEM / 5 = 86,398 XP per KEM
When we divide this by 2,000 (the base XP of KEM), we get 4,320 as the XP multiplication factor.
86,398 XP per KEM / 2,000 XP per KEM = 4,320%
Minus the 100 that just naturally exists gives us a required 4,220% XP bonus in order to earn 431,991 XP per KEM with your XP collider on.
CONCLUSION
That means you need an XP bonus of 4,220% to make it wiser to spend your money on more KEM and just stopping at the first box, rather than keep going until you get to the box with 3 donuts.
4,220% is the magic XP number.
What is your XP bonus? Is it over 4,220%? If it is over 4,220%, have you been stopping at your first choice? If it under 4,220% have you kept going until you get 3 donuts? Sound off in the comments below. You know we love hearing from you.
Ok – am I missing something? I read in this post: https://tstoaddicts.com/2016/09/28/from-the-mouths-of-addicts-kwik-e-mart-farming-for-free-donuts/
that each KEM generates 2000 XP. Is that really true? Im only seeing 1 XP in my game lol. I need an answer on this….thnx
It generates a base of 2000 XP when it completes its 4 hour build time; not every 3 minutes once it’s built.
Another thought…
If you are farming less than 30 to 40 KEMs per cycle I think the staggered pricing would play a far more significant role in any of the above calculations as the average price would be markedly less than $14400 ( or $10800 factoring in the resell amount )
Always going for 3 donuts seems to be working for me without delving into the nitty gritty of the numbers. I’m on a little under 300% bonus currently.
Thanks for the KEM farming bump and excellent comments. I was a tapper back in the early days but stopped during the great monorail crash. Recently got back into it when I bought a new phone. So I missed a bunch of stuff and completely forgot about the XP collider.
So I’ve ramped up and as of writing have just completed my first 10 days of XP collision. In that time I’ve jumped about 250 levels and increased my bonus by about 111%. And still managed to have enough donuts spare to pick up Golden Goose Realty.
Thanks again for compiling all this info and clarifying in the comments!
Thank you Safi, your posts are so interesting, useful and valuable! I got lots of tips from this post itself and comments!
This is something that I use every day, and the importance of this topic cannot be understated.
Safi, Thank. You.
Trying this again.
When should you go for 3 donuts?
(1) Am I generating more cash than I can use even if I go for 3?
If yes, go for 3. Stop. (Your time/effort is worth it).
…
If no, you are concerned by cash, continue.
(2) Calculate the number of KEMs (nK) needed for a new Choice Box*?
(3) Figure the cost of nK (CnK)**.
(4) Figure cost per donut (CpD) = CnK/2.***
(5) (a) If the first box is 1, on average it will cost $75K for 2 donuts or $37.5 per donut. ****
(5) (b) If the first box is 2, on average it will cost $75K for 1 donut.
(6) Compare the cost of (5) to CpD (4). If CpD is less than (5), don’t go for 3.
e.g. You have a bonus of 400%.(2) nK = 100/5 = 20. (3) You farm (a) 20 or (b) 100. (a) CnK = 27803. (b) CnK = $216,000. (4) (a) CpD = 13,901. (b) 108,000
(6) (a) 13,901 is $75, so always go for 3.
*(2) Assuming you have the collider on, it is 100/((bonus%+100%)/100)
e.g. if your bonus is 900%, 100/(900% +100%)/100 = 10.
**(3) The maximum cost of a KEM is $10,800.
For example, if you bonus is 900%, (nk = 10) and farm only 10 KEMs, the first 10 KEMs cost $4253. If you farm 24 KEMs, then the cost of the last 10 KEMs is $47475. If you farm 100 KEMs, that last 10 are $10,800 each for $108,000.
***(4) 1/3 of time you will get 3 donuts, 1/3 two donuts, 1/3 one donuts (3+2+1)/3 =2. E.G. The CpD of CnK of $108,000 is 108,000/2 = $54,000.
****(5) 1/2 of time you will get 3 donuts the first time, 1/2 it will take two times ($50K + $100K)/2 = $75K.
Something went wrong with my paste.
(6) (a) 13,901 is $75, so always go for 3.
Another bad paste.
(6) (a) 13,901 is $75, so go for 3.
This is infuriating.
(6) (a) Stop. 13 is less than 37 (b) Go for it. 108 is greater than 75.
Charles,
Thanks to you I stopped hoarding donuts for future event and bought a bunch of mystery boxes (and had a ton of fun doing it). I was able to significantly jump my bonus.
So I bought 84 mystery boxes.
But I went down from 890 to 536 (because I was winning the donuts along the way). -354 donuts.
I jumped my percentage from 735.35 to 779.35 (+44%)
I feel the boost significantly now!
Charles, Thank. You. For reminding me the importance of the mystery boxes.
Thanks, it is always nice to hear that I helped. 🙂
So with all this talk recently about KEM farming I decided to look into it and give it a whirl. I bought & placed a whack of KEMs and read Safi’s detailed post while they were building.
Conclusion #1 – I do not have the patience to farm KEMs.
I noticed Safi listed a “quick” method using the Bloodmobile or Rat Trap trucks.
Conclusion #2 – this has a much better ROI for me 😉
I paid 5 donuts to get the 24 hour multiplier and I’ve earned over 1000 donuts so far 😁
I have about 400% XP and farm 38 KEMs at a time. I always get 3 donuts 🍩 no matter if it costs me 50k or 100k. This is as much about time as anything else. I’ll take the instant extra donuts for a bit of cash which is easy to obtain over waiting another 4 hours to harvest more KEMs. At this amount of KEMs I am still increasing my money even with buying the maximum amount of donuts from the boxes. To me this is the most effective use of my KEM farming and my time
I have been affected by the rollback glitch since Feb 2018. I was going to quit TSTO…then I read the article on KEM farming and here I am lol. I have been playing since 2012 and up to XP bonus of ~320%… trying to reach 1,000%. I throw in the odd Blood Mobile to supercharge my KEM farming if I’m feeling like it.
However, having my Springfield ravaged by the “glitch” makes it very difficult to collect up all my characters manually. I realise I can use the Employment office, but I’m cheap lol. It takes me a good 30 mins to clear my town AND manually get all my characters reset for another 4 hr cycle.
Interested to hear if anyone affected by the “glitch” is KEM farming and if they have any tips to share with a fellow sufferer.
First of all thanks for the calculation. Please don’t hate me for what follows, I’m writing this with my best intentions.
I did it myself a couple of months ago but was a bit more elaborate. I divided it it 4 stages:
1. You don’t buy any boxes with cash
2. You only buy ONE SINGLE box if you get 1 donut.
3. If you get one donut first, you got for the 3 donuts, if you get 2 donuts first, you don’t do anything
4. You always go for 3 donuts
You should do 4 until you reach 980%
You should do 3 until you reach 1401%
You should do 2 until you reach 1620%
After that just 1
(Happy to send you my calc)
I see 2 mistakes in your calculations:
a) a KEM costs 10800$ since you get 1/4 back after selling it (which you always do)
b) the cost per donut is 50k and not 16,7k. You spend these 50k (on average) to get a net increase of 1 donut so it should be 50k/1 donut, not 50k/3 donuts. How this helps/gets read at all.
And thank you for introducing me to KEM farming in the first place.
*Hope this helps…
I am repeating myself, but, the higher the bonus the more cash you should be generating. Therefore use that cash to buy more donuts to increase your bonus faster.
@charles instead of buying more donuts right aways you invest it into KEMs and end up with more donuts than if you would have opened more boxes because you have a high multiplier
On average you will earn 1% per 9 donuts. Going for 1 more would on average cost $75K. 90 donuts would earn 10% plus 2 Lard Lads ($270 every 4 hours). 90 times 75K is 6750K. A KEM’s net cost is 10.8K. 6750K would buy 625 KEMs.
With the collider on, at 0% bonus 625 KEM would earn 6.25 boxes. At average of 2 per box, that would earn 12.5 more donuts.
With the collider on, at 10% bonus 625 KEM would earn 6.87 boxes. At average of 2 per box, that would earn 13.5 more donuts. Plus your characters and buildings would also earn 10% more cash and XP. That 6750K would earn and additional 675K., which would be enough to buy 62.5 KEMs. or .687 of a box or 1.37 donuts on average.
So, if T represents the time to generate 90 donuts, on average if you choose to go for 3 donuts and buying mystery boxes for the first T, then you would better off in 12.5/2.37T or 5.27T than using the cash to buy more KEMs.
i.e. If you use the cash to buy KEMs instead of going for more donuts to buy Mystery boxes, you will earn less donuts in the long run.
I think we might be talking past each other. One the one hand you have donut income on the other donut spending. This thread focuses entirely on donut income, how you spend it doesn’t matter since no matter if you open boxes (I am talking about the boxes with 1,2 or 3 donuts you get after reaching lvl 939 and then levelling) or buy more KEMs, you will always spend money and earn donuts. Neither one requires you to spend donuts. This is NOT about buying mystery boxes vs buying KEMs with cash.
It is about buying KEMs with cash vs opening those boxes you get at every level up after lvl 939 with cash (it’s the same interface as the boxes you get after finding Maggie 3 times but the cost is lower, instead of 150k you pay 50k per box.
Hope thus clears things up for you!
“This thread focuses entirely on donut income, how you spend it doesn’t matter since no matter if you open boxes” – I think it is important to know how you spend your cash/donuts, it determines what you do. If you are saving cash to buy land/houses in the near future, then you don’t want to go for more donuts. If you don’t have enough cash to buy the $14,400 KEM, the you don’t want to go for more donuts. If you can no longer buy land and will not use the cash saved to buy additional KEMs, you might as well go for 3.
My point is, if you want to earn the most donuts with limited cash, you will want to use your cash to earn more donuts sooner, so that you may buy Mystery Boxes (6 donuts each) to boost your bonus. Because of the exponential effect of a bonus increase, (and the addition of Large Lads), you’ll want to increase your bonus ASAP.
Charles, with all due respect, desperate farmer makes his thoughts much clearer than you.
While you bring an important point about how to increase your percentage more effectively, this post (and consecutively, desperate farmer’s comments) were directed at “should I open all three boxes with extra donuts with ingame cash or stop at the first one”.
Everybody decides what to do with their farmed donuts. Some collect them for characters, some want to increase bonus.
While your comments are correct and valuable, they discuss a different topic, and make the current one muddled.
Again, with gratitude for your input and total respect from my end,
Your sincerely,
Casual farmer.
I am sorry I haven’t made myself clearer.
So I’m trying to understand how these or the original calculations lead to the optimal strategy at < maximum %… I'm sure they do, or are close! They're certainly interesting discussions that I'm happy to see!
I sorta swing my arms and vacillate around what seems optimal at #3. Meaning I almost always do that but sometimes I get annoyed at 2 donuts and see that I've been recently lucky or lazy enough to be above my normal operating range of cash and go for three all the time.
this is the 2nd time I’m writing this since i accidently pasted over it on my phone. The last one took me 30mins so this will be shorter and less polite (sorry)
Also quick note my original post should say
You should do 4 until you reach 897%
You should do 3 until you reach 1301%
You should do 2 until you reach 1520%
explanation below
I’ll try to answer both replies and add the math.
Dots [.] are for seperating 3 digits like 1.000 is one thousand
Commas [,] are for decimals e.g. 1,5 is one point five or three halfs
Here the variables I used:
p: the bonus percentage iin decimal plus 1
a: the average cost of opening boxes fllowing the rules from the original post for the coresponding ‘level’. levels are 1-4 and the values are, from 1 to 4: [0; 16.667; 25.000; 50.000]
a*: same as a just use the value of the level below. if a is 50.000 then a* is 25.000
b: the average amount of donuts you get at the corresponding ‘level’- again, 1 to 4 [2,0 ; 2,5 ; 2.67 ; 3,0]
b*: same as for a*
c: how much money you spend on average opening boxes to get one bonus donut, done by dividing a wiith (b-2). why minus two? because we want the net increase that we get from spenind money on boxes, we get an average of 2 anyways. values are, from level 1 to 4 again: [0; 33.333; 37.500; 50.000]
here formula (1):
c >= (1.080.000 / p + a*) / b*
as long as c is greater or equal the right side you can stay on your level. where did i get the 1.080.000? 1M xp to get from 0xp to the donut boxes, divided by the xp of one KEM with xp-accelerator (10.000xp) times the cost of a KEM (10.800, the do cost 14.400 but you get back 1/4 after selling it). So 1.000.000/10.000 = 100
100 * 10.800 = 1.080.000
After messing with it you get (2)
p = 1.080.000 / (b * [a*] – c)
this one tells you at what percentage you want to go one level lower
example for level 4:
p = 1.080.000 / (b * [a*] – c)
p = 1.080.000 / (50.000 * 2,67 – 25.000)
p = 1.080.000 / (133.500 – 25.000)
p = 1.080.000 / (108.500)
p = 9.97
now we substract 1 from that and multiply it with 100 and we get the bonus percentage: 897%. after that oyu got to down to level 3 fomr level 4.
sorry if this sounded a bit choppy, tried to reconstruct my lost post and truly sorry about forgetting to substract 100% from my original post. I just copied the percentage since and i use the raw values for further internal calculations.
thanks for reading!
Good analysis and appropriate username. 😀 I did the math myself and found the same thing. The cost per bonut changes depending on what you get.
For the first box it’s (1+2+3)/3 * 50000 = 25000 average. If you get 3 you beat the odds, woohoo! If you get 2, you could get 1 more after 1 or 2 tries so the cost is (1+2)*50000 / 2 = 75000 average. If you get 1, you could get 1 or 2 more after 1 retry so (1+2)/2 * 50000 = 37500 average. If you only got 2 after the retry then to get the 3rd is straight 50000.
So, there are three breakpoints: (1) settle for 2 but always go for 3 from 1, (2) settle for 2 and only retry once from 1, and (4) settle for 1. Based on net cost of 10800 per KEM, and assuming your collider is on, these occur at about 650, 1000, and 1350 bonus % respectively (rounded to 50s).
You can calculate the same breakpoints for RTTs or anything else based on their net cost. I’ve moved up to RTTs which are less efficient per in-game cash, but much more per real life time.
Happy farming!
I’m intrigued by the fact that you ended up with different numbers than I did.
Wonder what we did differently.
Yes you are right! My calculations/definition for c are flawed. The values are [0; 33.333; 50.000; 75.000] and c stands for the maximum you spend to get one extra donut. Bit confusing, sorry about that.
Which means that once I get I have to correct my thresholds:
You should do 4 until you reach 516%
You should do 3 until you reach 897%
You should do 2 until you reach 1520%
After that just 1.
1-4 are explained in my original comment
I also noticed a copy paste error in my long math comment, the formula is:
p = 1.080.000 / (c * [b*] – a*)
I used the right values but confused c and a since in my first attempt I named them the other way around
I think I might have found two mistakes in your calculations. First you have to subtract 100% if you want to list the bonus (“additional”) multiplier. And 2nd the one for opening only one box after opening one donuts should be 33.333 instead of 37.500 (50.000/1,5)
Thanks for giving me a shout though. Pretty sure I got it nailed down now
D’oh, you are correct, I wrote some of those equations wrong.
Cost per bonut at start: 50000 / ((1+2+3)/3) = 25000
Cost to go for 3 after you get 1: 50000 / ((1+2)/2) = 33333
So the cash/bonut breakpoints are 75000, 50000, and 33333.
I’m off to do some algebra and see if I get the same bonus % values.
Yep! Same bonus % values, except the last one, since I had the cash/bonut value wrong. The exact (displayed) bonus %s are 620, 980, and 1520, for KEMs.
Dear Desperate Farmer, you are amazing! I cannot verify your math until I physically get to those bonus numbers, but these are great references and I am so happy I saw your comment. Thank. You.
You’re welcome, happy to help!
thanks for this break down … I think I may give this method a try, I am above 1620 and was looking at generating as many as possible for this event (the huge mystery box) … my KEM farm is 440 and have 0 extra ingame money and have been focusing on raising my %
I want to take advantage of the new mystery box for the next 2 weeks so I hope this helps generate more donuts
So I’m seeing different comments make reference to “do this once you have all 5 beach hideaways leveled up”. When I look at beach hideaways in the store it gives 2% for 40 donuts… what am I missing here? Doesn’t feel like it should be any different to other items at the same ratio (and the jet bike was better?). On a side note, anyone else notice the jet bike has dropped from the store? Thanks!
http://tstoaddicts.com/2016/09/22/should-you-buy-and-everything-else-you-need-to-know-about-the-beach-hideaway/
This post explains it all
Thanks Alissa, for everything you and the group does!
The jet bike will occasionally appear in your Vault 🙂
So what if we always re-choose on a single donut but accept a double or a triple?
I will admit: I completely 180 degrees missed the conclusion of this exercise. I read it as “you need X% to make it reasonable to keep buying donut box chances” rather than what it actually is. What I thought it was doesn’t make any sense at all so I feel a little dumb 🙂
I think my strategy of pursuing enough chances to get 3 donuts will have to continue to depend a little bit on how flush I am feeling, even though I know that the math says just decrease my KEMs a bit and get 3 on every chance 🙂
No, I am at level 636 or something
I no longer get the three choices when I level up – only a “level up” and here is one donut. I reported to EA…
Are you at level 939?
No, I am at level 636 or around that
This article relates to Donuts once you’re at level 939. Prior to that you have 1x donut per level up. Unless you’re making a joke about when Springfields telephone area code changed ? Lol
Really cool to see all the different approaches.
I have a bonus of 1462% and over a billion dollars. Whenever I need more donus, I just spend a few minutes buying & selling rat trap trucks. I keep the XP Collider on pretty much continuously, and keep my characters doing jobs constantly.
(I have to confess, I’m lazy enough that the thought of a “collect all character jobs” button has crossed my mind. But then I woukdn’t get to tour my town several times a day.)
What the heck is KEM?
Kwik-E-Mart
Heres my take on it
1’st box – 3 doughnuts – woohoo
1’st box – 2 doughnuts – live with it, more boxes will come
1’st box – 1 doughnut – 50/50 chance for 3 using 50,000 cash – get 2, again live with it, it’s far cheaper in the long run than trying to get 3 every time
I don’t KEM farm regularly – I just build up a hundred million or so in cash and blow the lot on massive KEM farms once a day for the 10 days the collider is on. I can’t be doing this “collecting and building every 4 hours” shenanigans
and as has been emphasied – TIME is more valuable
I will probably move over to Rat Trap Trucks in the future and just blow all the cash on a one day drunken RTT fest!!
I think as long as I have enough doughnuts to see me through the next event (I don’t buy it all (if anything)) and just ask myself How many doughnuts do I really need?
Just curious, how many times a day do you visit your game?
Visiting every 4 hours is based on, in the past, to finish a quest required visiting the game every 4 hours. So if you visited 4 times a day, instead of creating a huge, for example, 100 KEM farm once a day, you would create a 25 KEM farm. This is an advantage for those low in cash, since, if done right, the first few KEMs are cheaper, i.e. $220, …, $14,400.
Also, most farmers just keep the collider on all the time, taking advantage of the XP earned by characters and buildings.
During an event I’ll login 4 sometimes 5 times a day depending on work/holiday commitments (and wifi availability)
Between events all characters are on 8 and 12hr tasks
When I do a farm, I’ll slowly build up to about a 1000 KEM’s. Come the end of the day, I will relax in bed and clear the lot. I know it’s cheaper to buy and sell 25 KEM’s but I’d rather blow the 10 million+ a day (what else are you going to spend it on?)
I’m in no rush to “get it all”, I don’t get every character/building that comes along, I just play the way that suits me best
A 1000 seems a little excessive or a typo, unless you just like to farm. Or your bonus level is low and/or you don’t turn the collider on.
No typo, 1000 or so KEM’s (costs +10 million) I just add to the farm throughout the day and clear the lot last thing at night. XP collider is on, 650% bonus
As I said before, I don’t farm very often but when I do, I’ll just blow the entire budget over the 10 days when the collider is on
As long as I’ve got enough doughnuts in reserve (1500) should I want to spend them on an event (which isn’t often!) then I’m happy
This thread was originally about should you go for 3 doughnuts, so I say this —- “below 1000% – go for it if you can afford it, 1000% and up – who cares? You’re making so much in game cash and getting mystery boxes so quickly that you (probably) already have more doughnuts than you really need”
What is more of an issue and should be discussed is the higher price of characters/buildings because of farming……
IMHO, your bonus is way too low. I would concentrate to get your level to 1100% then you will not care about the price of items. On my low bonus game I hit 1000% about a week ago and adding about 10% a day. (FYI, it took me about 15 days to go from 900% to 1000% But I was buying Christmas Mystery Boxes).
I started reading through this… Then you lost me when you got to 4200+ % bonus. Holy moly!
I’ve been playing for like 5 years and I’m just below 400%.
I can’t imagine reaching 4000+.
It is actually very easy to reach 4000%. I did it two years after stopping trying after 1 year.
If you were to increase from 0% bonus to 400% using KEM farming only, you would have farmed 62,500 KEMs. That same effort would get you over 3500%. To get to 500% you would farm 68,500 KEMs, that same effort would get you from 500% to over 5300%.
Do you mean pouring all of your earned donuts into mystery boxes? I’m sorry for being confused.
Yes. You could by other items with bonus but it would take a little longer. It actually would take less time because your current items would be earning XP along the way.
I’ve been meaning to ask your opinion about the junk yard. I just started KEM farming a few months back & sometimes wonder if I should be sending characters to earn at the railyard or sending them on tasks for $ & xp? My percentage is around 870….thank you for any advice. Math & #’s are not my strong point! 😜😱
Save Homer for the Insanity Cauldron if you have it. Save Lisa for the Eliminator if you have it. Once you KEM farm you will ignore the railyard. If you need tracks, buy Little Lisa’s Recycling Plant.
I do both … usually I can get the 5 extra donuts a day … depending on how many times I check back between kem placements, I imagine when I get higher perecentage (500 now) I may stop but its just habit forming now to build pieces
At 4000%+ bonus, you’d be making so much money that it’d be easier to just buy a load of bloodmobiles as and when 🍩 are needed.
I’m at around 1300% but I have a have a lot of cash so I just go for the three donuts.
When I level up, I only get 1 donut. There’s no option to choose like in Maggie’s game. Why is that?
Have to max out levels first
You have reach the max level (939) to get the donuts box.
EEEEEEEK!! You haven’t factored in the most important aspect of all of this…TIME!!!!!!!
To reach 4,000% (or for that matter even 2000%) takes an unbelievable amount of time to accomplish. Months and months of time…
What happened to the concept of CASUAL donut farming? I am currently just below 600%…I farm 40 KEMS at a time…and guess what…I have MORE than enough donuts to buy everything I want.
Notice the word, “WANT.” As in I actually don’t buy everything, out of choice. I enjoy the game for free. I buy the content that makes sense to me (no three-eyed whales, thanks), and I am not a slave to the % bonus grab.
There is no wrong or right way to play…but, it is a disservice to talk about bonus percentages that are so exorbitant. It makes new players feel feverish and puny!
CHILLAX! Casual is where it’s at!
Partic is right, it does take time to increase your bonus at first. He is happy at 600% and a 40 KEM farm. If my calculations are correct, that will generate 2.8 donut boxes per round (or about 9 donuts). At 9 donuts per 4 hours, 4 times a day, that is 36 donuts a day, or 936 a month. It takes about 900 donuts to up 100%. He could use those 900 donuts to buy 9 100 donuts deals a month. Which he may be very happy with.
However, if Patric decide to use those donuts to increase his bonus. He could then decrease his farm to 35 to get the same result. In the first instance, he farms 40*4*30 = 4,800 KEMs a month. In the second instance, he will farm only 4,200. 4800/600 = 8 month payback.
Or he could keep his farm at 40, and earn 3.2 boxes vesus 2.8. That is .4 box *4*30 = 48 boxes or 144 extra donuts per month. In 6.25 months he would earn back the donuts spent to increase his bonus. He could then decrease his farm to 35. Thus saving the time spent harvesting 5 *4 *30 = 600 KEMs per month.
I forgot to add when you increase your bonus the cash and XP return on your characters increase, thus further decreasing the number of KEMs needed to farm if your goal to produce X amount of donuts per month.
I think it would be closer to 120-140% on those 900 donuts? since 3/5 sequences on mystery boxes only cost 58 donuts and gain u 9% ….
I’m on Patric’s side and thank him for making me think of this.
My time started to be worth more than the time it takes to KEM farm and max out 3 donuts every time. There is such a human time sink in waiting for all the KEM exp to gather up off the screen and then trying for 3 donuts so I gave it a rest. I stopped farming and just max out donuts on the natural collection of jobs from characters and buildings. I did some quick math and I’m sitting on enough game cash to potentially make 17000 donuts with Blood Mobiles so I think I’m good if EA springs the mother of all mystery boxes on us.
Just get some exercise in realspace while playing, and the time doesn’t matter as long as you enjoy what you are doing. I walk in place mostly. But a stepper or stationary bicycle, for example, would also allow for tap tap tapping while getting some exercise. I learned to do this way back when Nintendo was 8 bit and Gameboy was 4 bit.
Wow. As soon as there is a post about farming, about the whole community jumps in. I lkke that (Alissa might not). I never really made the math, but I’ just a kinda rooky farmer. I’m at 730 % xp at what i can make about 80 donuts a day. That allows me to buy most (if not all) the stuff i really want during an event. Reading this post i tried just to buy boxes, and i must say you can increase the % very fast withought loosing too much donuts. From what i read, if i follow that strategy i might be much more confortabe, not to worry about donuts anymore
I love when the community participates 😀
I used to casually farm blood mobiles every few months, however, I’ve been KEM farming now for about a year. My advice for people new to this is to first go to your storage and click on the “i” next to each stored item and decoration to find anything you may have stored that generates bonus %. I found a lot of stored items that when placed and hidden behind buildings, added to my bonus %. As discussed before, make sure you have all of your Springfield heights buildings out (no need for all the building accessories parts though) and ABSOLUTELY build and upgrade fully (AND display all parts) of all the Beach Hideaways for an immediate large bonus.
Beyond that, I try to pick up any items for sale in the vault that give a decent bonus, and I take advantage of the event mystery boxes for bonus items. I play the Rocket Launch pad game to win % generating Alien shrubs. My bonus has increased by roughly 200% in the last year and continues to grow faster now that I have extra donuts to purchase bonus generating items that I might have passed on before I had the extra donuts.
It’s slow going at first, but over time, if your patient, your bonus % and donut earning will begin to build. I typically earn 50-75 donuts a day with a 650% bonus (playing Railroad and Find Maggie, daily challenges, 65 KEM farm) which is plenty for me to get all I want in most events and from the weekly vault.
***The group delete function and boxing out a small square for farming really cuts down on the KEM farming time. Usually only takes a minute or so to clear and reset my new farm.
Alien Shrubs DO give bonus XP%? Did not realize that, Thanks! I have a bunch in Inventory, but didn’t bother to put it on my town.
Also, I’ll take your advise on the Beach Hideaways; I only had one until I read your post.
More power to all of you in the community who grind out doing this KEM farming stuff. Reminds me of grinding for XP and level-ups on SNES FFVI (orig released in N.A. as FF 3) more than 20 yrs ago.
I’m a “casual” addicted TSTO freemium player for 3+ years now, if that makes any sense. I login multiples times a day, but play in very short spurts.
“Organic” growth is the best way to describe my style I guess.
Level 347, ~362M in-game cash, sitting on 620 donuts.
Bonus XP is only at 545%.
Willielikesthat….the alien shrubs that give % bonus are the ones that are shaped like Kang & Kodos. At 1st I thought the little blue/green rigellian shrubs. Just wanted to clarify,,that’s all. I still go through all my inventory items to check if there’s anything in there that’ll help.
I did take that Beach Hideaway advice. Bought the remaining 4, at 40 donuts each.
Bonus XP% is now at 628, up from 545 earlier today. Woohoo!
make sure you fully upgrade all of those hideaways and put all the parts out … each part is more % …
and those 600 donuts should generate you close to 90% if u bought mystery boxes with them … the sequences cost 44,58,58,58,88 donuts each and gain 6,9,9,9,9 % points each at random ….
Ok, I’m going to divert a little bit.
I used to do KEM farming almost daily. With my bonus I was getting close to 110-120 bonuts a day.
But now I’m doing RTT farming. I plant maybe 12-16 a time and I get an almost equal # of bonut chances, plus maybe 1 or 2 more. So in theory, I will end up with maybe 48 bonuts for 15 RTTs. Do this just twice a day and that’s like 100 bonuts daily. AND I get the donut pop ups all in a row, as opposed to sporadically when I do KEM farming.
Am I missing something? It seems that RTT farming is better than KEM farming, but of course I can be totally wrong.
BTW my bonus % is I think around 1500%. Whenever the jet bike is in the vault, I try to buy at least 10-20 of them.
The advantages of both techniques are discussed in the original KEM farming post here.
“better” is subjective. One advantage with RTT farming is that you can turn the Collider on for one day, but then you miss collecting the extra XP on characters/buildings the time the Collider isn’t on (which for me pays for itself). The other advantages are time and space. You don’t have wait 4 hours to collect and leave a area for farming. For cash conservation, KEM farming is better, especially if most of your KEMs cost less than $14,400. Total time placing and harvesting is probably a wash. (Caveat: I have experienced problems in losing donuts when harvesting RTTs. And occasionally gaining donuts when harvesting KEMs and being disconnected.)
I have also had problems getting all my bonut windows from multiple RTTs. I get 2 or 3 and the game reboots. Then I’ll maybe get 1 or 2 more, and I end up losing like 14 bonut windows. I have found that as long as I don’t buy more than 14-16 RTTs at a time, I don’t have that problem.
I guess I now understand the biggest benefit of KEM farming might be it takes up less cash, or even none all…assuming you plant the optimum number of KEMs.
But for me, I think I’ll end up sticking with the RTT method. I have a slew of blue houses generating income, and I got like half a billion in cash, so worrying about in game cash isn’t a huge problem.
In some of my games I have billions in cash and don’t farm anything. If I need donuts I will RTT. In a couple games I have small KEM farms – I feel it is more Zen like than a grind. In my low bonus and low cash game I have a larger KEM farm and house farms. There is no right solution.
This post made me realize I had to improve my % money and XP. I was around 580%, giving me something like 70-80 donuts a day. Not bad, but since I saw people with over 4,000%, I thought I could do better and invest on %. Now I’m on the box! Almost 20% in less than two days. A good thing about the box is that you also get 30 or 10 donuts in some shots. Yesterday, I got 145 donuts (KEM + the box), what made possible more boxes! I made an excel table to show me the improvement.
Talking about theses numbers on the game, one thing I miss on TSTO is statistics. The could have a place to show the amount of $, XP, donuts I have collected.
What does “on the box” mean? I’ve looked for a Mystery Box but don’t see one right now. Should I be looking for a different “box”?
That’s the Mystery Box. Go to the store, look for the premium itens. There you’ll find the Mystery Box. It costs 6 donuts.
I agree, on average, if you always go for 3, you will get 3 donuts and have to pay an additional $50,000 for guesses.
I also agree, on average, taking no additional guesses, you would yield 2 donuts and $0 for guesses.
So I think your initial comparison should be “Is spending $50,000 on average, worth 1 additional donut?”
So in your “Always go for 3” section, I think you should use $50,000/1 additional donut, instead of $50,000/3 total donuts.
Let me know what you think or if I’m way off base.
Going for 3 on average should cost $75,000 per extra donut. But if figuring on total cost on, for example on 18 donuts, then you would add $50,000 per donut to your total cost.
In order to compare the plans together all scenarios have to be factored in.
The no guess plan (1/3*1 donut+1/3*2 donuts+1/3*3 donuts= 2 donuts).
Go for 3 everytime (1/3*0 additional guesses+1/3*1 additional guess+1/3*2 additional guess= 1 additional guess= $50,000)
You are correct from a budget standpoint because if you are going for 3 everytime, and don’t get 3 on the first guess, it will cost you an average of $75,000 to get 3.
1) my Bonus % is over 500
2) I always go for 3 🍩 ‘s regardless of how many attempts
3) I always leave enough Simpson’s $ left over between Kem Farming (anticipate using $ to always get 3 🍩’s)
4) I always sell off Kwik-E-Marts after every 3 rows are built (getting back over 200,000 Simpson’s $ each time)
5) I average earning at least 60 🍩’s per 4 hours of Kem Farming (I Kem Farm at least 3 times a day, then concentrate on obtaining more Simpson’s $ the rest of the day)
I must be doing fine, however, the more I raise the Bonus %? the more certain factors could change 👍
Hi
How many KEMs do you build? My % is 429 and I only manage to get 9/12 donuts per 4 hours on 54 KEMs
Do you run your XP collider? That helps a lot.
Hi. Yes collider is on constantly!
@CJBrownLV, 2 questions;
How many KEM Stores do you farm foe each 4 hour cycle?
Can you elaborate on point 4, I’m not entirely sure what you are saying. Normally I just sell off all of my stores at the end of the cycle are you doing this differently?