The Simpsons Tapped Out – Get Free Donuts!

Ok, sorry to write yet another post about The Simpsons: Tapped Out. If you play this game then great. If not, I am sorry.

I added several people at random as “Friends” in Origin. No one I actually know plays this so I got what I could. Visiting each of their Springfields is fascinating. Some people have clearly spent some real cash (in the form of donuts) on the Duff Brewery, the Springfield sign, etc. Some people don’t have all those things but they have built so many homes that I wonder how much they must be playing!

One thing I have noticed though is that, despite all the buildings, purchased lots of land, and other stuff, they have relocated their trash to a small area on the grid rather than get Lisa or Homer to clean it up.

Let them clean it!!

Not only will this get you $35 and a few experience points for each bit of junk removed, but you can also score the occasional free donut just for cleaning up Springfield!

That’s right! Every so often Lisa (the one I usually put on cleaning duty), will mundane lay clean up the junk and instead of just scoring some cash from it, a donut pops up as well.

I have already gotten a few for free this way and I haven’t purchased nearly the amount of land some of these people have!

I don’t think it had to be Lisa doing the cleaning but I do think it may have something to do with where the trash was located (i.e. how expensive is the land it was removed from).

Hope this helps my fellow cheapskates! 😉

What Are Freemium (or, Free to Play) Games?

If you have been living under a rock for the past several years, like me, you may not be up to date on the popular format of games these days: freemium. (Also knows as “free to play” or “f2p”)

What is this “freemium” game format?

A LOUSY RIPOFF, is what it is.

The Simpsons Tapped Out – Triggering Bart Crusoe

If you are having difficulty triggering Bart Crusoe pt 1 (let alone pt 2) and getting Bart, I feel your pain. I have been stuck needing to “Build Android’s House” for some time. I discovered that it is only built some time after getting Bart, but I couldn’t figure out how to get him!

After reading multiple vague responses advising players to “just keep going through the quests”, I finally came across valuable advice.

I had just finished building all the parts of the Nuclear Power Plant. I had reached Level 12 and still no Bart. No sign of him even. After building the Control Center, new jobs (things you can make him do, not tasks that appear in the notebook) appear for Mr. Burns.

One of the bits of advice said to make Mr Burns read the necronomicon – a 4 hour task.

I checked and sure enough, it was now an available task. But Mr. Burns wasn’t talking about it. I made him do it anyway (for the first time) and when he finished, Mr. Burns then said something and my next assigned task was to have him read the necronomicon.

I had him do that and shortly after he finished, a cut scene came up with Homer in his house. After that happened, Milhouse talked to Lisa about walking him to school and that was when I got the option to send them to school.

Having to send them to school confused me because I had already sent them to the school (as a task) shortly after it was built. I had originally thought I was missing Bart since that time, but that is not the case.

After they got out of school, Lisa prods Milhouse to tell her where Bart is. Then you build his treehouse (no “build” time since it is a tree) and – *drumroll*…

I now have Bart!

Here are some bits of advice that I found that did not work to trigger the Bart Crusoe event:

• Build the second Kwik-E Mart I have not built this and from what some others have also said, it is unnecessary.
• Wait hours between tasks Although this may be necessary at some point, nothing new appeared based solely off letting them walk aimlessly for a few hours. A couple minutes should be more than sufficient.
• Just keep doing quests and it will come up While I generally appreciate help where I can get it, some help is just unhelpful. I’m sorry, it’s true. Although the emphasis of this advice is to do regular tasks (not Halloween ones), it is still too vague, and for me this didn’t even apply. When I initially had Burns reading, it wasn’t part of a task yet.

Did this work for you? Or did you have to do something else?

Update: After a few Bart and Milhouse tasks, I have also completed “The Dungeon Keeper, pt. 1” and Android’s Dungeon is now unlocked!

PS – Save up your money. Bart’s Treehouse costs $25,000 and Android’s Dungeon is $30,000. From what I hear, it gets higher still from here on out. Whew!

The Simpsons Tapped Out Mayan Calendar Part 4

(If you aren’t familiar with mobile gaming, this post is entirely about games played on – in my case – the IPod Touch.)

If you are playing The Simpsons: Tapped Out and are stuck on the Mayan Calendar task (have all the pieces in a completed circle but it claims you need another), try this:

First, load everything into Inventory (use the orange arrow to access inventory, then click each piece and press the box icon).

Once all pieces are loaded into inventory, go back into your inventory and take them back out one by one.
As you remove them from inventory, put them back together but do not rotate them.

For good measure, start with the longest block. Apparently this made a difference for some people stuck on this issue.

Once done, you should see the Mayan dude and he will ask you a question. The answer (for a costume and 10 free donuts!) is: The Zune

Despite having gotten stuck on (and baffled by) this error, I really enjoy this game. I am not generally one to play these games that require actions over the course of several hours unless you want go use a special item to speed them up (donuts in this case).

I had previously played Crime City and originally I was quite intrigued by it. However, once I got past the initial introduction it became monotonous and very dull unless you paid gold blocks to speed things up. You could get all sorts of money doing missions but you couldn’t earn gold blocks for anything. You had to buy them with actual real cash. Not only that, but at the highest level through normal play, your equipment would be good to an extent. But you had to reach a certain level for that. OR, you could buy gold bars and buy some insane equipment at the beginning of the game that outshines anything you could work your way up to. Not just a little better but ridiculously better.

I have also played The Sims (the free version) which works the same way – many things take hours to complete unless you pay in a special currency (I forget what that was). At least in The Sims, you could earn that special currency. Granted earning it was slow, but nevertheless you could.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out works more like The Sims in that you do get opportunities to earn donuts. It isn’t fast and they could go quickly, but at least the option exists. You can also buy donuts of course, but the game is fun enough and has enough characters with quick task options to avoid it if you really don’t wanna shell out some dough. I should have said “If you really do NUT want to shell out some DOUGH.” Get it??? Har, har, har.