EXPANSION: Lightning Leopard - 2014 Aug 28

[SANDSCApe]

First plot on upper ice cliff: 3 Fail Shales (250K coins each) and 1 Radiating Rock (100K coins). Total cost of 850K coins to clear. Can place a small habitat by removing only the Radiating Rock

Down on lower ice cliff: 3 Fail Shales and 1 Frozen Fir (25K coins). Total cost of 775K coins to clear. Can place a small habitat by removing just 1 Fail Shale..

The 2 plots that I skipped on the lower ice cliff have the following obstacles:

A. 2 Fail Shales and 1 Radiating Rock. Total cost of 600K coins to clear.

B. 1 Fail Shale and 1 Harmful Hemlocks. Total cost of 700K coins to clear.


As you can see, we now have a few choices on which plot to explore. But whichever way you turn, the prices are ghastly.

[Anyuszko]

Very nice layout Sand, I like it

[zenobia42]

It just plain sucks to have to save up for days to be able to expand, then save up for days again to be able to clear the obstacles you find. I have been working very hard to maximize my income but I feel like I cannot get anywhere without super rares. At best I'll be opening one expansion a week. That is just not as fun as when the game let all of us move forward at a decent clip. Losing more interest in this game daily.

[SANDSCApe]

It just plain sucks to have to save up for days to be able to expand, then save up for days again to be able to clear the obstacles you find. I have been working very hard to maximize my income but I feel like I cannot get anywhere without super rares. At best I'll be opening one expansion a week. That is just not as fun as when the game let all of us move forward at a decent clip. Losing more interest in this game daily.

True. My SANDSCAPE and PLAYPEN accounts are crawling along while my main account SAND progresses quickly. But since they are moving at a leisurely pace, they are doing okay with the costs. They are still below Level 17 and their expansions are still costing 30K to 50K coins. The game is less stressful when played that way.

With the SAND account I knew I would want to play often and push forward wherever I could. That's why I put a drone system in place EARLY when I realized I wasn't going to be blessed with super-rares. Getting lucky with the ultra-rares helped make up for that and allows me to negotiate the speed bumps.

Make no mistake. All this expensive stuff amounts to just that -- speed bumps to ensure that we don't quickly get to an end point (all animals collected and raised, all expansions done and cleared, all battles fought, all goals met; bored and complaining. The game strives to make sure that, for a long while, we encounter expenses that drain our coins faster than we earn them. This forces us to slow down or pause from time to time. Eventually, every investment breaks even and the player begins to see nothing but net. Some get there sooner than others, but the game seeks to postpone that for the average player.

Less than 2 weeks ago, players were complaining of hitting a dead end. Bored; very little to do; cramped for space; unable to build large habitats because space would not permit it even though the coins were available. The developers listened. They gave us our expansions, but made sure that most of us would not race through them, build all the big stuff then complain next week of being stuck again.

Those of us who don't want to go slow can easily get frustrated by these obstacles, which for some of us seem insurmountable. My most recent expansion yesterday left me with less than 3K coins. But as soon as I raised enough for one Fail Shale, I paid it out again. Then another... and another... I'm making coins faster than many players, but I'm parting with the money almost immediately. This morning, I grinned at a coin balance of 8 coins! But this is not a playing style I'd reccomend for most players.

[SANDSCApe]

Very nice layout Sand, I like it

Thank you!

[SANDSCApe]

Upper ice cliff. This is the plot to the left of the first one up there. At a glance, the obstacles appear to be the Harmful Hemlocks and 2 Fail Shales. But there are two additional obstacles hiding behind the Harmful Hemlocks and cannot be reached until it clears. (I've placed a Fire Fir in the corner and 5 Stone Paths to show the squares that are free.)



This business of hidden obstacles is nasty because it means that after 33 hours of waiting for the visible Harmful Hemlocks and Fail Shales to clear, we may have another 33 hours on top of that if there are 2 more Fail Shales back there.
Total cost to clear is probably 1.4M if my suspicions are correct (950K coins to clear the immediately visible obstacles and another 500K for hidden ones).
Don't expand here if you still have expansions available on the lower ice cliff. If you HAVE already expanded here, please post a confirmation of what's behind the Hemlocks once you clear them.
Again, I did this expansion so I could make room in my storage for more bombs. No need or desire to clear this one anytime soon.

[SANDSCApe]

The cost to expand is not fixed to any specific plot. The first five expansions are in an assigned order on the first Green Cliff. Your 6th expansion will offer you more than one plot to choose from and you can opt to skip Plots 6-9 on the Green Cliff and move on to the Ice Cliff. Track your expansions by counting the plots you have already explored (even if they are not cleared).
Note that the first 11 plots on the Green Cliff did not require expansion, so don't count those.

Expansion costs are as follows:
Everybody's 1st: 0 Runes & 1K coins
Everybody's 2nd: 0 Runes & 10K coins
Everybody's 3rd: 0 Runes & 20K coins
Everybody's 4th & 5th: 2 Runes & 25K coins & 5 minutes
YOUR 6th & 7th: 4 Runes & 30K coins & 20 minutes
YOUR 8th & 9th: 6 Runes & 40K coins & 1 hour
YOUR 10th & 11th: 8 Runes & 50K coins & 2 hours
YOUR 12th & 13th: 10 Runes & 100K coins & 3 hours
YOUR 14th & 15th: 12 Runes & 200K coins & 4 hours
YOUR 16th & 17th: 14 Runes & 500K coins & 5 hours
YOUR 18th & 19th: 16 Runes & 1M coins & 6 hours
YOUR 20th & 21st: 18 Runes & 1M coins & 7 hours
YOUR 22nd & 23rd: 20 Runes & 1M coins & 8 hours
...
I have done 22 expansions so don't know the cost of the 24th one yet. But we can see a clear pattern.

Players who skipped the last 4 plots on the Green Cliff could expand to the Lightning Leopard for as little as 8 Runes & 50K coins in 2 hours, if that was only their 10th expansion. Those who had already expanded 15 plots by the time the Lightning expansion opened would pay 14 Runes & 500K coins with a longer wait. Ultimately, all progress comes at the same cumulative cost. Skip smartly if/when you can!

Posted on the Pre-Lightning expansion thread.