Descent to the Core proved to be frustrating after awhile, so I tried several other "quest/adventure" modpacks that were offered in the Curse interface.
The Regrowth modpack is the one I've liked best so far, though the first time I started it I quit after a few minutes since the regular recipes I was used to didn't seem to work. After reading some of the items on the Reddit Minecraft subreddit, I felt a little less lost and hit it again.
One thing that I really liked about the Regrowth modpack was the scenario setup - waking up in a bleak desert and trying to make a go of things. You've got some type amnesia and don't quite remember how things work. Your adventure book is a bit of help - and if you've ever wanted to learn some of the modpacks (thaumcraft, Mariculture) or explore these interesting mods, this is a good way to do it.
As a new Minecraft player, I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out things since I have experience with only a few modpacks. The Internet was surprisingly little help. While there was some information on the Wikis, a lot of it was in videos. I find it annoying ot have to sit through 20 minutes of a video just to try and find out what fuel to feed the Hobbyist Steam Engine (more often than not, the video didn't actually have what I needed.)
So this blog is just a compilation of notes that I made as I went along. I started out knowing only basic Minecraft and a bit of Tinker's mods.
In The Beginning:
I made the crafting table, sword, mattock, and shovel (and hid the shovel since the mattock does double-duty) and headed out to get thoroughly lost. West is a good direction. Lets you know how long you've got before something wants to add you to the dinner menu.
This is a really bleak landscape and it's easy to get lost. I got lost lots. I carried a stack of cracked sand with me (20 high) and when night came, I'd build myself a nice pillar and wait till morning.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR AS YOU EXPLORE:
Stonehenge circles - they're inhabited (often) by one hostile witch - BUT inside the circle is a lot of dirt (that you'll need.) When digging around the altar, you'll find two monster spawners with witches (use your pickaxe to break them). Underneath the rock altar is a treasure chest with goodies (some useful, some not) that you can take or leave.
Hobgoblin houses; These guys are neutral (sort of "isolated villagers") and trade - but as with villagers, they often offer trades you can't use - or don't have the currency for. Help yourself to the cauldron, share the house as a temporary safe space, and if they have a chicken, collect feathers.
Beehives: you won't be able to collect them until you have lots of cotton for a scoop. (I'll talk about bees later)
Big Straw Men: These wicker men figures are made up of about 20 bales of hay, each one made up of nine sheaves of wheat. That's food for quite awhile and seeds for planting. Collect the flowers and dirt at their feet. Under one foot is a monster spawner with zombies.
Ruined farmhouses - I didn't find this useful as a base - too limited. They have a garden with alkaline soil and fence. Collect the fence to use later. Down in the basement is a lot of easy wood, the structure is the source of a lot of burned wood (for charcoal) and they very generously have two furnaces that you can help yourself to.
Dungeon - Big structure with flaming pots in front. Once you have metal armor, it's a great place to find treasures (the dispensers make good "hold this stuff that I will need to craft THIS thing" items) and it's a good place to find lots and lots and lots of bones and string. And when you need that "congealed blood" because you're trying to make a rune that requires slimes or blood, this is the best place to get Rotten Flesh (which you throw in the smelter and turn into blood.) Rotten Flesh thrown into mana pools also gives leather. I find these dungeons more fun than the mines in Minecraft.
Finding A Place To Live Make a first base but plan on moving - AFTER you get sugarcane so you can make paper and start crafting maps (no sense in wandering around the landscape only to end up back at the same place.) Your best final location is on the ocean with lava close and one of those big oil fountains somewhere nearby. And try to pick someplace with beehives somewhere near. I avoid islands (not enough resources.)
My strategy was to build a walkway out into the ocean itself and start my build from there. I put a layer of cracked sand one block down so that all around my house the water is "waist deep." This is useful if you decide to build a greenhouse room (you don't have to haul in all the water... you just have to set the dirt down.) I keep it modular (build up, build out in sections that have walls) which seems to keep the mobs down. I can then place rooms above the water - so when I put down my Petal Apothecary stone construct, I set it up next to a trap door. When I need water for a flower construct, I just flip open the trap door and haul up a bucket of water.
One of the best advice that I got from another site was to build a composter early so you can mix up fertile soil for your crops.
BOATS: Make the speed boat as soon as you can. Boats in this mod are extremely unreliable - they might carry you for a day or they might collapse within a minute of you sitting down in it.
Best source of food: fishing. Use the standard 3 sticks, 2 strings and toss your line out. Fish will strike within a 30 seconds or less (usually). Fish in an area of shallow water (or make one in your fortress - hip deep ) because they don't always land in your inventory. Fishing in shallow water makes it easy to retrieve the fish.
Collect charcoal and craft some of it into blocks. When you start the process to get diamond seeds, you will need 48 blocks of charcoal and you won't believe how annoying it is to try and get 480 pieces of charcoal together all at once. Start early.
Start breeding plants early. Breed sugarcane and then breed mandrakes and dandelions. It's a rather Byzantine process breeding common flowers to get mystical flowers but it's well worth it even though they don't always cross perfectly the first time. There are some processes that require 48 petals of one type, and if you're trying to get them by tossing out Floral Fertilizer, you will spend a lot more time and effort on that than if you'd just bred the flowers in the first place. Ssave at least one seed (but not more than three) of everything - the exception is Experience Seeds (you can make them with seeds from wheat if you have a mana pool...but in the earliest days you may not have one.)
FLOWERS TO GROW:
Breed three Snowbells (so when you have to do the Rune of Winter, you have snow available.)
Create the Endoflame. Yes, I know you're supposed to get mana from other plants but they have an annoying way of dying after a few days. The Endoflame sits there until you throw charcoal, coal, or wood at it (I use charcoal and coal) - when fired up, it produces a nice burst of mana. A field of about 12 plants will give you enough mana to "cook" your runes in less than 3 minutes.
Beegonia - if you've got beehives you'll end up with too many drones. You can turn an unnecessary drone into useful mana.
Mystical Flowers to grow
You'll need all of them, but the Green, the Black, the Brown, the Cyan are the ones that need more petals.
When you get mutagen, three plants to look for are the Glint Weed, the Sakura Cherry sapling and the Rowan Tree. These appear as random chances; sometimes you get them on the first try, other times it takes many fertilizings to get one. Glint Weed living torch (that multiplies when you put it on sand or dirt, so you always have a supply of ready-made torches.) Sakura Cherry is a tree that drops lots and lots of saplings and has a lot of easy to reach salmon-colored wood - it's easy to get a stack of 15 or more from a single tree. You will also need Rowan saplings later on for potions, so keep on laying down mutagen.
Collect all the trees - I use them as road and section markers. You can see some of them from quite a distance - the Citrine Autumnal Tree, the Sakura Cherry and the woods are interesting and colorful
Build lighted trails and lighted waypoints. The dungeon I was clearing was a day's ride from my base (by boat). Marking the shoreline with Sakura cherry trees and glint weed (and the occasional flaming Netherrack) made it very easy to find in the dark.
SEEDS
One of the most important things to learn in the Regrowth Modpack is how to breed crops. Most of them can be simply ignored once you've bred them because they'll be used on only a few occasions. But there's a group of them that you'll want to breed up to "Perfect Ten" - seeds have three characteristics when you look at them under the analyzer. Ten is as high as you can get any of them).
* cotton. You need bags and wool and strings
* Essence Seeds - you won't believe how much of this you'll need. A group of 9 of the "Perfect ten" seeds was adequate until I got to the advanced seed
* Wheat. Three "Perfect Ten" seeds are all you will need to keep you fed.
* Coal seeds - bunches of it
* Diamond seeds
* Emerald seeds
* Redstone seeds
* Fire seeds (this makes buckets of lava!)
* Blaze seeds for Blaze rods. Nine of them makes a wonderful light.
While it's not necessary to breed the metals up to a perfect 10, it's a good idea to at least breed them up to a 4 or better.
Basic plant breeding layout:
Put down dirt in a 3x3 (nine blocks) pattern. For crossbreeding, use just 3 blocks (one row) in an A-X-B pattern (where A is one plant, X is a blank square with the double crop stick and B is your other plant.
Plant Layout for Raising Seed Levels (basically a 3x3 grid Plus sign with a blank middle):
0 A 0
A X A
0 A 0
...where A is the plant type you want to turn into perfect ten seeds, X is the cross crop sticks, and 0 is anything you want to put there (or put nothing there). Once the plant at X is growing, dig it up, analyze the seeds, and replace the lowest "A" plant you have. It takes a number of generations (8 or more) to get your perfect 10, but the effort's worth it.
RUNIC ALTAR:
Hey! You can spawn cows, sheep, pigs, (but not horses) ocelots, and a lot of other stuff. You can spawn eggs...but not chickens (however, throwing them at the ground produces the occasional chicken.) Build a nice, tight, secure barn first because the very first night your lovely creatures are out, zombies will hunt them down and eat them. If you use a cheat code (I did) to get a horse, use the one to spawn a tame zombie horse with saddle. Zombies leave it alone.
A HANDFUL OF TIPS FOR THE EARLY PART OF REGROWTH MODPACK
After awhile, I used the minecraft command to keep my inventory when I died. I'm playing for fun, not for constant hunting of the (sometimes hard to get) stuff that I just found.
ALWAYS make a wooden plate to put behind your door. That way your doors will automatically close when you walk out or in and keeps monsters out of your house even if you're not paying attention.
SAND - Can be hard to find. I had been playing for quite awhile before I discovered that if you put a bucket of water next to cracked sand on a crafting table, it turns into regular sand.
PASTURE SEEDS - I worried about getting those. Turns out that if you make shears (once you have iron) you can cut grass with the shears, throw that grass in a mana pool, and voila! All the pasture seeds you need.
DIVING QUESTS
...turned out to be difficult. You'll need your good speedboat. Look for oysters in a place with lots of shallows. I had little luck finding gas until I got to the "make incense" quest, when potions/incense of Night Vision and of Gills (seeing in dim places and breathing underwater) made the whole thing much better.
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Mom Plays Minecraft - Descent to the Core: Things To Know about Level 2
You've descended towards the core and just landed in the new zone. Brace yourself - things will start happening fast!
You'll be in one of three places: a little cave, a big dark outdoors place, or an "island" (basically your transporter) in the middle of water. Wherever you land, the first thing to do is get to safety!
If you're on the darkened plane, dig down several blocks and then dig out very fast. Be prepared to beat off mobs (luckily, most of them show up on the minimap.) Mobs will come after you, and if you're on level 80 or above, you get different types of explode-y creepers,
If you're on the island, extend the island using your leaves (you can only extend it one block....try for two blocks over the water and you end up in the water). On harder modes, use the leaves to build a "fortress wall" because everything out there is coming for you right away. Once you're safe, build a boat to go to the "mainland" (if you die while doing this, it's almost impossible to retrieve your stuff from the bottom of the pitch-black water environment. Reset and try again.)
If you're in the cave, bring out a cube of dirt, plant one of your saplings on it, and relax. You're in the clear for now. Start digging outward and keep looking on your map for a patch of dark blue, indicating open space and water. You'll want to head there to make your home.
FIRE!
Torches work differently in Descent to the Core than they do in Minecraft. While they are your friend, they also set things on fire. Keep them away from trees, vines, coal, netherrack, and small children passing by.
AIR!
Vines are a good source of oxygen (particularly if you have a limited number of saplings) but you'll need to keep them 5 blocks away from torches.
FOOD!
You can starve to death. The two easiest foods to get are "rock soup" (probably hard on your teeth) and "Limes" from limestone. Rock soups do not spoil, but they do use up wood and stone. Limes are also your best and fastest growing crop.
GERTRUD
Don't get too fond of her. She has a habit of walking into walls and dying if she's penned up, and running into attacking creepers and zombies if she isn't penned up. I stick her behind stone walls, but that's not a guarantee. The first quest under "Noah's Ark" gives you another sanity pet, Rhea... but you have to find and kill some spiders, and if Gertrud's dead by this point, it's going to be a challenge.
STUFF TO COLLECT
Keep any marble and limestone you find. Eventually you'll need two stacks of the stuff. You'll also need two blocks of compressed gravel eventually.
Mine all the aluminum and copper that you see. Copper can be used for armor and a lot of other things. You won't be able to mine ferrous ore, iron, or anything else for a very long time.
You will need to find lots of dirt - and that's found in the open areas where all the monsters are. If you're not in the open area, 9 rotten foods (most of your food goes rotten) will make one dirt. Fastest way to get spoilable food is to create limes from limestone (it takes 4 days for food to go bad.)
Friendly NPCs
Believe it or not, they (like hay bales and other stuff like enchanting tables) are buried in the rock.
HACKS!
Cheat mode is enabled, but that takes the challenge out of it, I think. The one hack I do use after I get tired of dying is the map teleport (if you type M to get the map and click on one of the X's, you can either eliminate them or you can teleport there. I save useful locations)
TIPS!
Keep a tree and a block of dirt on you at all times.
One thing I wasn't aware of when I was first playing is that your pickaxe (and other tools) upgrade as you use them... so repair (with one piece of flint) rather than replace. Use 3 gravel to make one flint to repair pickaxe. No need for repair table - type E and do it in your 4 box crafting slot (flint on top, broken pickaxe on bottom)
No matter how stupid the "blind" rewards seem, put them in an inventory somewhere. They'll be something you need for a quest turn-in later on.
Boats are surprisingly fragile. Running into the shoreline, baling out of the boat, zombies, and perhaps even harsh words will cause it to vanish.
Zombies have pickaxes AND TNT. They will come into your house and will let other mobs in.
There's a display in the middle left of your screen that tells you what "floor" you are on. You start out around level 50, so you have to go up for copper and up even more for iron.
Watch your inventory display ("E") - you get experience for some crafting actions. After you've accumulated a certain number of points, you will have the option to unlock another inventory slot.
Build ledges and pathways as you go, along with "hides" to duck into for those times when you discover that you're being shot by a skeleton (or worse) and need to get out of their sight. Watch out where you place the torches, though.
You'll be in one of three places: a little cave, a big dark outdoors place, or an "island" (basically your transporter) in the middle of water. Wherever you land, the first thing to do is get to safety!
If you're on the darkened plane, dig down several blocks and then dig out very fast. Be prepared to beat off mobs (luckily, most of them show up on the minimap.) Mobs will come after you, and if you're on level 80 or above, you get different types of explode-y creepers,
If you're on the island, extend the island using your leaves (you can only extend it one block....try for two blocks over the water and you end up in the water). On harder modes, use the leaves to build a "fortress wall" because everything out there is coming for you right away. Once you're safe, build a boat to go to the "mainland" (if you die while doing this, it's almost impossible to retrieve your stuff from the bottom of the pitch-black water environment. Reset and try again.)
If you're in the cave, bring out a cube of dirt, plant one of your saplings on it, and relax. You're in the clear for now. Start digging outward and keep looking on your map for a patch of dark blue, indicating open space and water. You'll want to head there to make your home.
FIRE!
Torches work differently in Descent to the Core than they do in Minecraft. While they are your friend, they also set things on fire. Keep them away from trees, vines, coal, netherrack, and small children passing by.
AIR!
Vines are a good source of oxygen (particularly if you have a limited number of saplings) but you'll need to keep them 5 blocks away from torches.
FOOD!
You can starve to death. The two easiest foods to get are "rock soup" (probably hard on your teeth) and "Limes" from limestone. Rock soups do not spoil, but they do use up wood and stone. Limes are also your best and fastest growing crop.
GERTRUD
Don't get too fond of her. She has a habit of walking into walls and dying if she's penned up, and running into attacking creepers and zombies if she isn't penned up. I stick her behind stone walls, but that's not a guarantee. The first quest under "Noah's Ark" gives you another sanity pet, Rhea... but you have to find and kill some spiders, and if Gertrud's dead by this point, it's going to be a challenge.
STUFF TO COLLECT
Keep any marble and limestone you find. Eventually you'll need two stacks of the stuff. You'll also need two blocks of compressed gravel eventually.
Mine all the aluminum and copper that you see. Copper can be used for armor and a lot of other things. You won't be able to mine ferrous ore, iron, or anything else for a very long time.
You will need to find lots of dirt - and that's found in the open areas where all the monsters are. If you're not in the open area, 9 rotten foods (most of your food goes rotten) will make one dirt. Fastest way to get spoilable food is to create limes from limestone (it takes 4 days for food to go bad.)
Friendly NPCs
Believe it or not, they (like hay bales and other stuff like enchanting tables) are buried in the rock.
HACKS!
Cheat mode is enabled, but that takes the challenge out of it, I think. The one hack I do use after I get tired of dying is the map teleport (if you type M to get the map and click on one of the X's, you can either eliminate them or you can teleport there. I save useful locations)
TIPS!
Keep a tree and a block of dirt on you at all times.
One thing I wasn't aware of when I was first playing is that your pickaxe (and other tools) upgrade as you use them... so repair (with one piece of flint) rather than replace. Use 3 gravel to make one flint to repair pickaxe. No need for repair table - type E and do it in your 4 box crafting slot (flint on top, broken pickaxe on bottom)
No matter how stupid the "blind" rewards seem, put them in an inventory somewhere. They'll be something you need for a quest turn-in later on.
If you die and lose your pick (in the deep water, for example) you will have to make another flint pickaxe and level it. It's not much fun. Don't take your pickaxe on the water.
Boats are surprisingly fragile. Running into the shoreline, baling out of the boat, zombies, and perhaps even harsh words will cause it to vanish.
Zombies have pickaxes AND TNT. They will come into your house and will let other mobs in.
There's a display in the middle left of your screen that tells you what "floor" you are on. You start out around level 50, so you have to go up for copper and up even more for iron.
Watch your inventory display ("E") - you get experience for some crafting actions. After you've accumulated a certain number of points, you will have the option to unlock another inventory slot.
Build ledges and pathways as you go, along with "hides" to duck into for those times when you discover that you're being shot by a skeleton (or worse) and need to get out of their sight. Watch out where you place the torches, though.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Android games: "Alchemy" -- a glorious waste of time
Android Game Review: Alchemy
Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=me.zed_0xff.android.alchemy&hl=en
Android games: "Alchemy" -- a glorious waste of time
Game category: Puzzle game
Game type: Similar to ...alchemy, actually
Initial review: Five stars
Recommended device size: Any
Who'd enjoy it?: Most ages
Andrey 'Zed' Zaikin's lovely time-wasting Alchemy game is one of the classics of the free game market -- and if you haven't tried it yet, you really should. It's sort of a twist on the Greek view of the Universe -- that there were four elements that made up everything in the universe. You start with fire, earth, air, and water and drag them on top of things to make new items. So, fire plus water equals steam. That was easy! You can take elements you've already made (steam) and add it to something else (air) and make something new: a cloud!
But it gets weird after that. "Ash tray" = ash + glass. "Grape" = earth + wood. "wolf" = werewolf + moon. "Star" = sun + scientist (I like that!)
The final list of elements? Well, the app maker updates it occasionally, and there's always new combos. I had this on another device and downloaded it to my new Samsung Galaxy and was very surprised to find out that some combinations were for countries. The "Kama Sutra" combination also surprised me.
Items with a tiny red dot on the picture are "final products" and can't be combined in other ways.
The first fifty or so are easy... for the rest, there's hints and cheat sheets.
It's a real classic time-waster!
Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=me.zed_0xff.android.alchemy&hl=en
Android games: "Alchemy" -- a glorious waste of time
Game category: Puzzle game
Game type: Similar to ...alchemy, actually
Initial review: Five stars
Recommended device size: Any
Who'd enjoy it?: Most ages
Andrey 'Zed' Zaikin's lovely time-wasting Alchemy game is one of the classics of the free game market -- and if you haven't tried it yet, you really should. It's sort of a twist on the Greek view of the Universe -- that there were four elements that made up everything in the universe. You start with fire, earth, air, and water and drag them on top of things to make new items. So, fire plus water equals steam. That was easy! You can take elements you've already made (steam) and add it to something else (air) and make something new: a cloud!
But it gets weird after that. "Ash tray" = ash + glass. "Grape" = earth + wood. "wolf" = werewolf + moon. "Star" = sun + scientist (I like that!)
The final list of elements? Well, the app maker updates it occasionally, and there's always new combos. I had this on another device and downloaded it to my new Samsung Galaxy and was very surprised to find out that some combinations were for countries. The "Kama Sutra" combination also surprised me.
Items with a tiny red dot on the picture are "final products" and can't be combined in other ways.
The first fifty or so are easy... for the rest, there's hints and cheat sheets.
It's a real classic time-waster!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Android games: "Crystal Portal" -- a glorious waste of time
Android Game Review: The Mystery of the Crystal Portal
Initial review: Four stars
Game category: Puzzle game
Game type: Similar to Paradise
Recommended device size: Tablets
Who'd enjoy it?: Teens/adults who like puzzle story games.
Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.g5e.crystalportal&hl=en
I'd tried and got frustrated with other puzzle stories before, so I was a little wary of this one. There's no real action in these (the art is stunning, however) -- if you're not familiar with this type of game, it's "sort of" like the old "choose your own adventure" book. The protagonist is a journalist named Nicole Rankwist, who arrives home to find her archaeologist father missing. Anyone who knows us anthropologist/archaeologist types knows we're a LOT of trouble. Like all other missing archaeologists, he's just made a discovery that "could change the course of humanity." But he departed (voluntarily?) for parts unknown, leaving a journal that directs her to go to Japan.
The graphics are delightful -- intricate, colorful, and eye-catching. Game play is smooth, with a very useful help and hint function (this is a pet peeve of mine -- bad help screens.
The screens unlock after you find the right pieces to group together (a key, a fan, a statue, a frog -- which may not be related to each other or to the container you put them in.) The game is more or less a "prequel", where you get the first chapter for free. It's a nice little game, and if you've got a boring jury duty call, this is a perfect little time-passer to take with you while you wait.
The only reason for four stars is that the play isn't random. Once you've solved the riddle, that's it. You can go back and re-solve it, but you know how to do it now.
Initial review: Four stars
Game category: Puzzle game
Game type: Similar to Paradise
Recommended device size: Tablets
Who'd enjoy it?: Teens/adults who like puzzle story games.
Android Market link: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.g5e.crystalportal&hl=en
I'd tried and got frustrated with other puzzle stories before, so I was a little wary of this one. There's no real action in these (the art is stunning, however) -- if you're not familiar with this type of game, it's "sort of" like the old "choose your own adventure" book. The protagonist is a journalist named Nicole Rankwist, who arrives home to find her archaeologist father missing. Anyone who knows us anthropologist/archaeologist types knows we're a LOT of trouble. Like all other missing archaeologists, he's just made a discovery that "could change the course of humanity." But he departed (voluntarily?) for parts unknown, leaving a journal that directs her to go to Japan.
The graphics are delightful -- intricate, colorful, and eye-catching. Game play is smooth, with a very useful help and hint function (this is a pet peeve of mine -- bad help screens.
The screens unlock after you find the right pieces to group together (a key, a fan, a statue, a frog -- which may not be related to each other or to the container you put them in.) The game is more or less a "prequel", where you get the first chapter for free. It's a nice little game, and if you've got a boring jury duty call, this is a perfect little time-passer to take with you while you wait.
The only reason for four stars is that the play isn't random. Once you've solved the riddle, that's it. You can go back and re-solve it, but you know how to do it now.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Android Games -- Pretty Pet Tycoon
Sim type games have been around for awhile and seem to be very popular for phones and other small devices. So, when I checked in the Android market to see which games were popular, and "Pretty Pet Tycoon" came up as a high rated, highly downloaded one. So I decided to take the Halloween Edition out for a test drive.
The idea for this episode of Pretty Pet Tycoon is that you're helping a cartoon pig (Piglina, who has moved to a farm in the countryside) set up a business that grows and sells fruit -- as well as (if you choose to go there) running a juice bar. Later levels unlock the candy factory section as well along with a mysterious competitor who seems bent on driving her out of business.
The instructions are... well... hard to find. I figured it out after a bit, but it took some doing.
The scene begins with Piglina on her farm and boxes of vegetable seeds coming down a conveyor belt. You use the touch-and-drag method to pull these plants to a certain box (red or blue... the plant will have a red or a blue box around it.) Then you tap the planting box and Piglina comes over to tend the crop. A few seconds later it's ready to be harvested, so you you drag it to the scale and tap the scale icon. Piglina trots over and boxes it. You drag it onto the truck and tap the truck. Piglina starts the truck and it heads off to Pretty Pet Tycoon Town and sells her merchandise.
As the days go on, the seeds come down the conveyor belt faster, and if you don't get them planted quickly enough they will go bad. If you don't harvest the crops quickly enough, they'll go bad. If you leave the packages sitting on the scale too long, they'll go bad and she'll lose money. My early mistake was buying plots of land rather than hiring workers -- as it turns out, workers are only hire-able with "Pet Points"... an in-game currency. You start out with zero pet points, by the way.
I played this one to level 8, but found that I could only hire one worker for Piglina with the money she had. There is the option to buy enough Pet Points for workers and automatic machines with Paypal, but I really don't care for games that rope you into paying for extras. The quick pace of the gameplay wasn't enough to hold my interest -- frankly, it was a bit too much like some jobs I've had.
For people who've played this style of game (Soda Shop, Waitress, Hair Salon), this one will have a lot of charm. The graphics are clean, and visuals are decent on an Android phone.
As for me, I deleted it and went back to "Dragon, Fly!" I've almost mastered swooping now.
The idea for this episode of Pretty Pet Tycoon is that you're helping a cartoon pig (Piglina, who has moved to a farm in the countryside) set up a business that grows and sells fruit -- as well as (if you choose to go there) running a juice bar. Later levels unlock the candy factory section as well along with a mysterious competitor who seems bent on driving her out of business.
The instructions are... well... hard to find. I figured it out after a bit, but it took some doing.
The scene begins with Piglina on her farm and boxes of vegetable seeds coming down a conveyor belt. You use the touch-and-drag method to pull these plants to a certain box (red or blue... the plant will have a red or a blue box around it.) Then you tap the planting box and Piglina comes over to tend the crop. A few seconds later it's ready to be harvested, so you you drag it to the scale and tap the scale icon. Piglina trots over and boxes it. You drag it onto the truck and tap the truck. Piglina starts the truck and it heads off to Pretty Pet Tycoon Town and sells her merchandise.
As the days go on, the seeds come down the conveyor belt faster, and if you don't get them planted quickly enough they will go bad. If you don't harvest the crops quickly enough, they'll go bad. If you leave the packages sitting on the scale too long, they'll go bad and she'll lose money. My early mistake was buying plots of land rather than hiring workers -- as it turns out, workers are only hire-able with "Pet Points"... an in-game currency. You start out with zero pet points, by the way.
I played this one to level 8, but found that I could only hire one worker for Piglina with the money she had. There is the option to buy enough Pet Points for workers and automatic machines with Paypal, but I really don't care for games that rope you into paying for extras. The quick pace of the gameplay wasn't enough to hold my interest -- frankly, it was a bit too much like some jobs I've had.
For people who've played this style of game (Soda Shop, Waitress, Hair Salon), this one will have a lot of charm. The graphics are clean, and visuals are decent on an Android phone.
As for me, I deleted it and went back to "Dragon, Fly!" I've almost mastered swooping now.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Glorious Time-wasters --"Fly, Dragon!" Android Game
(Review of free game, "Fly, Dragon" found in Android Marketplace)
Initial review: Five stars! Fun!
Game category: Angry Birds type game
Game type: Arcade
Recommended device size: any device
Who'd enjoy it? Anyone. Good for distracting kids, whiling away time in the dentist office, de-stressing after a nasty morning, etc.
This one's got a really cute premise -- you're a baby dragon who can't fly yet but CAN glide... and you're hopping out of the nest to have an adventure, gliding through the sky. You have a ten second head start before Mom notices you're gone and comes to take you home. Along the way you can pick up speed boosting potions, invisibility potions (to sneak past her) and so forth. Game levels add complexity to the setup.
You start out by sliding downhill -- the trick is to let your finger represent gravity -- so you touch the screen when dragonlet is headed downward, but lift the finger off just before dragonlet gets to the ground. Don't touch the screen when dragonlet is headed upwards -- unless there's a line of potions over the hilltop that you can collect on the way down. If you get the right kind of glide (a 'swoosh') three times in a row, the dragonlet will breathe fire. But Mom's right behind you (there's a distance indicator on the lower left that shows how far back she is) and if you slow down too much, Mom's gonna get you and take you back to the nest.
It's an easy game to learn (so it's good to share with the kids) -- and the scenery changes to different "lands" as you get farther away from Mom. Different levels have different challenges that you can accept... or you can just have silly fun letting your dragonlet fly all over the place. The screen is colorful and uncluttered (so it's easy to handle, even on a small screen)
It's ad-supported, so expect ads on the bottom of the screen -- but it's free!
Initial review: Five stars! Fun!
Game category: Angry Birds type game
Game type: Arcade
Recommended device size: any device
Who'd enjoy it? Anyone. Good for distracting kids, whiling away time in the dentist office, de-stressing after a nasty morning, etc.
This one's got a really cute premise -- you're a baby dragon who can't fly yet but CAN glide... and you're hopping out of the nest to have an adventure, gliding through the sky. You have a ten second head start before Mom notices you're gone and comes to take you home. Along the way you can pick up speed boosting potions, invisibility potions (to sneak past her) and so forth. Game levels add complexity to the setup.
You start out by sliding downhill -- the trick is to let your finger represent gravity -- so you touch the screen when dragonlet is headed downward, but lift the finger off just before dragonlet gets to the ground. Don't touch the screen when dragonlet is headed upwards -- unless there's a line of potions over the hilltop that you can collect on the way down. If you get the right kind of glide (a 'swoosh') three times in a row, the dragonlet will breathe fire. But Mom's right behind you (there's a distance indicator on the lower left that shows how far back she is) and if you slow down too much, Mom's gonna get you and take you back to the nest.
It's an easy game to learn (so it's good to share with the kids) -- and the scenery changes to different "lands" as you get farther away from Mom. Different levels have different challenges that you can accept... or you can just have silly fun letting your dragonlet fly all over the place. The screen is colorful and uncluttered (so it's easy to handle, even on a small screen)
It's ad-supported, so expect ads on the bottom of the screen -- but it's free!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Special food the key to getting pearls?
I had my carnivore tank set up yesterday and was feeding them chicken nuggets. They returned 110 coins plus one pearl. Most of them were rare or uncommon (Isosceles Squid, Ribbon Seal, Baby Harp Seal, Caribbean Reef Squid, European Squid, Excited Golden Lionfish, Red Lionfish, and a Piranha) and they all flashed happily when fed -- and then hid offscreen. I'd like some smaller carnivores but am not sure the common ones will drop pearls as often as the uncommons and rares do.
I haven't counted to see if they all drop the same number of coins.
Today's tank is the (Legendary) Night Sky Angler, Baby Harp Seal, Candy Angler (apparently all Anglers eat chicken nuggets), Isosceles Squid, Caribbean Reef Squid, European Squid, Golden Lionfish, Ribbon Seal, and a Piranha. We'll see what they drop.
Many of the fish don't seem to want a specific food. They'll be happy with basic foods -- I haven't compared gold drop rates yet.
I tried fishing with the Rainbow Pellets, but am not sure they were any better than the Glowing Red Pellets.
I haven't counted to see if they all drop the same number of coins.
Today's tank is the (Legendary) Night Sky Angler, Baby Harp Seal, Candy Angler (apparently all Anglers eat chicken nuggets), Isosceles Squid, Caribbean Reef Squid, European Squid, Golden Lionfish, Ribbon Seal, and a Piranha. We'll see what they drop.
Many of the fish don't seem to want a specific food. They'll be happy with basic foods -- I haven't compared gold drop rates yet.
I tried fishing with the Rainbow Pellets, but am not sure they were any better than the Glowing Red Pellets.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Fish Food For Fish
Sometimes I think it'd be simpler and more exciting if they just ATE each other. You know; toss a couple of those I-can't-believe-I-caught-another-one Chalk Basselets in with a few of the Seals and Sharks and let them have at it. In any case, I'm experimenting with the fish food bits to see what's the best bang for the buck.
I did get my very first pearl from feeding fish yesterday, but it was on a tank of miscellaneous fish that I was feeding "Organic Pellets" to... and I have no clue which fish it was, either. None of them flashed with excitement about the "Organic Pellets." As I recall, the tank was one of those miscellaneous "I'm just fishing it up, what the heck" tanks.
Meanwhile, a partial list of Aqua Pets fish that adore "Chicken Nuggets"
I did get my very first pearl from feeding fish yesterday, but it was on a tank of miscellaneous fish that I was feeding "Organic Pellets" to... and I have no clue which fish it was, either. None of them flashed with excitement about the "Organic Pellets." As I recall, the tank was one of those miscellaneous "I'm just fishing it up, what the heck" tanks.
Meanwhile, a partial list of Aqua Pets fish that adore "Chicken Nuggets"
Sunday, October 23, 2011
The Aquapets Fish Foods List
So after the last screeches and howls of outrage about the game (I think they're valid ones), I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it to start from level zero. This time I'm figuring out some of the "extra things" that would make it even better as a beginner. One of them is figuring out what in the heck to feed which fish. They will accept the basic food, but the goal is to find out what food they really like. When you feed them, they "blink" to a shadowy gray color for a moment.
You can spend a lot of coins trying to figure out what to feed your Aqua Pets fish so that they'll give you a present of coins the next morning. Sadly, the number of coins they give you doesn't seem to be related to how common or uncommon the fish is. Bigger fish give more coins than little ones... but the downside is that three size 1 fish give about the same amount as one size 3 fish.
Best strategy is to go with one category of fish (carnivores, freshwater, etc) per tank and use slightly larger fish. It's fun to watch the little ones scooch up into a feeding frenzy, but the advantage of going with larger fish is that it's easy to make sure you've fed everything in your tank. And they won't give you coins unless they've been fed.
Hands down, the easiest thing to focus on when you're at levels 1-6 is to keep all the freshwater fish you get (caught with the original fishing rod.) I've made a list of the ones I caught with "black bugs" and "orange bugs" and as long as you keep fishing with the wooden rod, you'll fish up enough of these to make a tank.
A list of fish for your first "money tank":
You can spend a lot of coins trying to figure out what to feed your Aqua Pets fish so that they'll give you a present of coins the next morning. Sadly, the number of coins they give you doesn't seem to be related to how common or uncommon the fish is. Bigger fish give more coins than little ones... but the downside is that three size 1 fish give about the same amount as one size 3 fish.
Best strategy is to go with one category of fish (carnivores, freshwater, etc) per tank and use slightly larger fish. It's fun to watch the little ones scooch up into a feeding frenzy, but the advantage of going with larger fish is that it's easy to make sure you've fed everything in your tank. And they won't give you coins unless they've been fed.
Hands down, the easiest thing to focus on when you're at levels 1-6 is to keep all the freshwater fish you get (caught with the original fishing rod.) I've made a list of the ones I caught with "black bugs" and "orange bugs" and as long as you keep fishing with the wooden rod, you'll fish up enough of these to make a tank.
A list of fish for your first "money tank":
Friday, October 21, 2011
Grumpy customers!
Although the comments about the latest incarnation of Aqua Pets are really nice and chirpy on Facebook, the comments in the Android Marketplace (where Bionic Panda can NOT have them removed) are scathing. After playing for awhile, I've decided that although I'm keeping the game, I do agree with some key points:
* they should have gone with both free and paid versions
* they should have done like Angry Birds and gone into merchandising
* the "bonus" feature for catches isn't working well (ten catches in a row and you get a 'secret bonus.' Most of the time, my catches with ANY bait and a 'secret bonus' are a common fish that I've caught a dozen times or more.
* the "energy" feature is a real pain.
The October 18th (version 1.2.03)update was nothing to write home about. In the words of the Aqua Pets Facebook support staff, they:
BUT... I've tried some of the other fishing games (Tap Fish, which bored me to death) and they weren't as much fun. So I'm running the game up to level 25 or so (or until I run out of pearls) and am tinkering with the strategy on "how to make it more fun without actually spending anything."
* they should have gone with both free and paid versions
* they should have done like Angry Birds and gone into merchandising
* the "bonus" feature for catches isn't working well (ten catches in a row and you get a 'secret bonus.' Most of the time, my catches with ANY bait and a 'secret bonus' are a common fish that I've caught a dozen times or more.
* the "energy" feature is a real pain.
The October 18th (version 1.2.03)update was nothing to write home about. In the words of the Aqua Pets Facebook support staff, they:
Uhm... yay?
BUT... I've tried some of the other fishing games (Tap Fish, which bored me to death) and they weren't as much fun. So I'm running the game up to level 25 or so (or until I run out of pearls) and am tinkering with the strategy on "how to make it more fun without actually spending anything."
Monday, October 17, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
There's a Fine Manual! And I read it!
Geeks tend to leap into things without actually reading the manual because... well... it takes longer to read about the thing than it does to figure it out, if you're a "hands on" kind of geek. With Aqua Pets on Facebook rather coyly hinting about pellets and poles, an option that I only skimmed in the "help" section suddenly caught my eye.
The store actually gives you the approximate percentages of catches on your bait purchases. (d'oh!)
Spotted worms catch rare creatures 5% of the time (and uncommon creatures at least 20% of the time.
Orange worms catch them 3% of the time
Green bugs catch them 1.5% of the time
Yellow bugs catch uncommon creatures more than black bugs do (no surprise)
On the high end, blue glowing pellets catch rare creatures 20% of the time and legendary creatures 10% of the time.
Red glowing pellets catch rares 25% of the time and legendary creatures 20% of the time -- at a cost of 3 pearls per ten.
Rainbow pellets, which cost 4 pearls, catch rares 30% of the time and legendary creatures 30% of the time.
Helpful hints are also found in the fish food area
The store actually gives you the approximate percentages of catches on your bait purchases. (d'oh!)
Spotted worms catch rare creatures 5% of the time (and uncommon creatures at least 20% of the time.
Orange worms catch them 3% of the time
Green bugs catch them 1.5% of the time
Yellow bugs catch uncommon creatures more than black bugs do (no surprise)
On the high end, blue glowing pellets catch rare creatures 20% of the time and legendary creatures 10% of the time.
Red glowing pellets catch rares 25% of the time and legendary creatures 20% of the time -- at a cost of 3 pearls per ten.
Rainbow pellets, which cost 4 pearls, catch rares 30% of the time and legendary creatures 30% of the time.
Helpful hints are also found in the fish food area
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Aqua Pets for Android -- tips and tricks
There's not a lot of games that I'm tempted to play these days -- I'm an avid World of Warcraft player and I do enjoy playing the Sudoko puzzles, so I'm not really sure why I picked up Bionic Panda's "Aqua Pets" game for my Android tablet, other than it was free and the little logo was cute. I loved it and played it in the bath tub or whenever there was "down time." It was just perfect for that -- you could stop it at any time and come back to the same spot.
Then I dropped my Android tablet (AIEE!) and had to go buy a new one (because, of course, nobody fixes screens) and by the time I got back to the Android Marketplace, Aqua Pets was gone. So you can imagine my delight when I found Aqua Pets back on the Android Marketplace last week.
The in-game currency had changed and other things were added. When I went looking for tips, I found there were none. So here's a list of some of the tips that I picked up from the Facebook page and other pages. Right now my character is level 13, and I'll be posting results from various experiments like testing fish food and bait and rods.
SOME BASIC TIPS -- fish tanks
SOME BASIC TIPS -- fishing
PEARLS (a bone of contention)
According to the Bionic Panda Facebook staff, there are three ways to get free pearls in Aqua Pets:
1) a random fish may give you a pearl as a reward for feeding them the prior day
2) reaching an achievement - like sharing your tank (total over 100 pearls available)
3) trying the free offers - located by clicking on the pearl
SHARING TANKS
I'm a little reluctant to share games on Facebook (mainly because I don't want to see game updates from friends.)
Bionic Panda's tips for posting your tank on Facebook:
1) Try to post your fish tank on Facebook while you are connected over a wireless connection.
2) Be sure you are logged in to Facebook before you post
Then I dropped my Android tablet (AIEE!) and had to go buy a new one (because, of course, nobody fixes screens) and by the time I got back to the Android Marketplace, Aqua Pets was gone. So you can imagine my delight when I found Aqua Pets back on the Android Marketplace last week.
The in-game currency had changed and other things were added. When I went looking for tips, I found there were none. So here's a list of some of the tips that I picked up from the Facebook page and other pages. Right now my character is level 13, and I'll be posting results from various experiments like testing fish food and bait and rods.
SOME BASIC TIPS -- fish tanks
- Feeding the fish does result in happy fish that will reward you 24 hours later. Different fish, however, like different food. Although you supposedly can get pearls when you feed the fish, so far, all I've gotten are coins (3 to 12 gold coins. So the coins DO make up for the cost of the fish food plus a little... but not much.)
- You can feed your aquarium fish all day on the food you purchase. Some of them swim faster than others and will eat the food before the others do.
- If you feed the fish food that they DON'T like, they won't eat it. No happy fish the next day, so no coins from them.
- Don't be afraid to sell the Aqua Pets you catch (including rare and legendary pets) unless you're saving them to create a special tank.
- Feed your fish when you're connected to the Internet (because the rewards will be calculated on their servers. No internet access = no record of feeding.)
SOME BASIC TIPS -- fishing
- Some items can only be caught with certain poles and baits
- The ice cube fish can be caught by using a snowflake rod and pellets. More about that when I reach that level.
- Orange bugs and spotted worms (according to the Bionic Panda team) are probably the best "bang for the buck" NON-free bait.
- You need pellets to catch most of the legendary creatures.
- Fresh water fish can be caught with the wooden rod.
- You can catch common, uncommon and rare fish with regular bait.
- You can catch the panda with bamboo
- mechanical fish like the Metal Bits
PEARLS (a bone of contention)
According to the Bionic Panda Facebook staff, there are three ways to get free pearls in Aqua Pets:
1) a random fish may give you a pearl as a reward for feeding them the prior day
2) reaching an achievement - like sharing your tank (total over 100 pearls available)
3) trying the free offers - located by clicking on the pearl
SHARING TANKS
I'm a little reluctant to share games on Facebook (mainly because I don't want to see game updates from friends.)
Bionic Panda's tips for posting your tank on Facebook:
1) Try to post your fish tank on Facebook while you are connected over a wireless connection.
2) Be sure you are logged in to Facebook before you post
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Aqua Pets -- fishing for rares and uncommons
For any game out there, there's always some geek who just has to try out all the options and figure out what's the best strategy. That'd be me. I'm one of those. Since I've just restarted Aqua Pets, I'm working through the early levels (now at level 18) to see which combos are best.
Catching Fish -- some strategies
By the way, although there are rumors of "cheats" for the game, the pages I get directed to seem to be full of ads. There's no list of hints or cheats for Aqua Pets running around in the wild. On the other hand, it's a pretty straight-forward game for the Android, based on a random calculator -- it can be difficult to beat random number generators.
The new "luck meter" and pole/bait combos have caused a bit of confusion, particularly since some of the baits are VERY expensive (4 pearls, for instance, for rainbow pellets.) Pearls are hard to come by unless you buy them directly from Bionic Panda or start sharing your tank. I did buy a packet of glowing blue pellets and tested it out. The catch rate of rare/legendary/uncommon fish was high -- about 70%. However, unless those fishes in my tank start dropping pearls, I don't foresee a lot of buying bait with pearls.
.
Currently, I have one legendary fish (the Loose Triggerfish), which was NOT caught on the expensive bait and 19 rare fish (I caught more than that, but I've sold duplicates.)
Catching Fish -- some strategies
By the way, although there are rumors of "cheats" for the game, the pages I get directed to seem to be full of ads. There's no list of hints or cheats for Aqua Pets running around in the wild. On the other hand, it's a pretty straight-forward game for the Android, based on a random calculator -- it can be difficult to beat random number generators.
The new "luck meter" and pole/bait combos have caused a bit of confusion, particularly since some of the baits are VERY expensive (4 pearls, for instance, for rainbow pellets.) Pearls are hard to come by unless you buy them directly from Bionic Panda or start sharing your tank. I did buy a packet of glowing blue pellets and tested it out. The catch rate of rare/legendary/uncommon fish was high -- about 70%. However, unless those fishes in my tank start dropping pearls, I don't foresee a lot of buying bait with pearls.
.
Currently, I have one legendary fish (the Loose Triggerfish), which was NOT caught on the expensive bait and 19 rare fish (I caught more than that, but I've sold duplicates.)
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