Problematic Pearls

Supposedly some of those happy fish you feed in your fish tank will drop pearls -- and posts from people who had versions of Aqua Pets BEFORE June 2011 showed that they were getting pearl rewards from happy fish in their tanks.  This changed recently and now legendary fish can only be caught with bait that you spend pearls on.  I blew most of my pearls on "glowing red pellets" and it seemed as though the number of fish that got away was higher than usual. 

Bionic Panda's list of achievements for which you can earn pearls in Aqua Pets is short, and many of them cost far more pearls than you get in return.  I'm about 100 fish short of the 'sell a thousand fish' -- which will get you five pearls -- but the newly installed 'energy meter' keeps me from blowing all my coins and doing it in one afternoon.  While part of me thinks it's a good idea, part of me is frustrated.  I want those pearls to buy bait.

And no, I'm not into directly buying them.  That really leaves me with only two other options.


Sharing the tank -- not sure if I want to do it on Twitter.  I don't really want to share on Facebook, because I find all the game sharing bits aggravating. And there were a number of Facebook posts from unhappy people who clicked on ads which were supposed to grant pearls or bought pearls and they didn't get anything.  I'm rating THAT option as "stay away from!"

So what are the easy "pearl" achievements?  Legendary pet catches don't count because you need pearl bait for them.  By the time you've gotten 10 legendary pets (a 2 pearl reward) you'll have spent more than 10 pearls.  Other options like catching 500 sharks (for a 1 pearl reward) are just more effort than the reward is worth.  And the "8 different kinds of jellyfish" is something you won't get for a long time, since some of them are only caught at higher levels.  "20 different kinds of mammals" is also hard to get before level 20.

1 pearl - 1,000 uncommon pets
1 pearl - 10 rare pets
1 pearl - 250 different kinds of pets
1 pearl - 300 different kinds of pets
1 pearl - 20 different kinds of freshwater pets
1 pearl - 250 freshwater pets  (you also get one more pearl at 500 freshwater pets, but, honestly, that's a ridiculous amount of work for one pearl.)
1 pearl - sold 100 pets


2 pearls - 100 rare pets

5 pearls - bought 4 rods
5 pearls - sold 1,000 pets
5 pearls - bought 3 tank backgrounds

10 pearls - bought 8 rods

Buying tank upgrades for pearls is actually losing pearls.

Beyond that, there's the tank sharing, which I haven't done yet but will try to see how that works.  I'll use a fresh Twitter account that's dedicated only to that.