New gold-producing rooms: Golden Treasure room, Gold Mine Cart room and Golden Cauldron Room

That was probably the big announcement from EA this week: the All-New Gold Producing Rooms.

Now that the Golden Goose Room (a.k.a., the Golden Egg Room) is history, they've actually been rather smart about replacing it with even more enticing gold-producing rooms.

The advertisement above refers to a room that I had to actually hunt for: The Golden Treasure Room in the Aquarium. It looks rather tempting.

The cost? 782 gold bars, for a yield of 4 gold bars and 100,000 experience points every 10 hours. I'd say the Aquarium was badly in need of something like this ... most of the other rooms in the Aquarium have been pretty uninspiring.

There are two other brand new gold producing rooms, and those are available in the normal hotels: The Golden Mine Cart Room and the Golden Cauldron Room. (I guess any room whose name starts with "Golden" is going to be a gold-producing room?)

The Golden Mine Cart Room costs 52 gold bars and pays out 1 gold bar every 2 days, 21 hours. Not a very exciting yield for a room that takes up 4 squares in a hotel. However, it's probably your easiest-to-buy "Golden" room, given that it only costs 52 gold bars. 

The final new room is the Golden Cauldron Room, and it costs a mini-fortune: 2,000 gold bars. It does have a nice payout, though: 10 gold bars and 250,000 experience points every 7 hours. BUT. It occupies 6 squares in your hotel ...

Of course, the high yield means that it will probably pay for itself quicker than most of the other gold-producing rooms: If you manage to collect rent 3 times a day, every day will give you 30 gold bars ... so it would only take you 66.67 days to earn back the 2,000 gold bars you spent on it, and the rest of the weeks, months, and years of rent you collect will be pure gravy.

This leaves us with a total of 4 gold-producing rooms, 3 that you can buy with gold bars, and one (the Midas room, a.k.a. the Golden Touch room) that you can save up a huge sum of M$ for.

I'll analyse these "Golden" rooms in more detail in another post, but at first glance, I'm tempted to say that the Golden Cauldron room sounds the most exciting of the lot ... or maybe it's the Golden Treasure room in the Aquarium.

Keep in mind that I have not purchased any of these rooms, so I cannot even confirm if you can put more than one of them in the same hotel or in the Aquarium, and I find that does make a difference in how attractive a room is to me. If it's a one-off, then I find I don't lust after it quite as much as if I have the mouth-watering potential of filling a hotel with them ... yes, I'm weird that way.

Mr. Potato Head and family are on sale!

EA has been busy this week!

 

In addition to taking away the Golden Goose room, they've put up their weekly sale - this time, it's a sale on the Mr. Potato Head family of rooms. 

The original prices? 

Let's see: 

Mr. Potato Head normally costs only 10 gold bars. That was the cheapest. 

Mrs. Potato Head is usually 27 gold bars.

The Tiki Room usually costs 60 gold bars.

 The Cruise Room is usually 98 gold bars!

The Skyline Room normally would set me back a frightening 110 gold bars!

Lest we forget: The Pyramid room? It's usually a whopping 350 gold bars to purchase this room!


This would explain why I normally don't even consider buying any of these rooms, although I'd love to have them show up in my Guest Book.







But at this weekend's sale price, I can grab all 6 of them for just 6 gold bars - and 2 of them (the Skyline room and the Cruise room) even help you towards completing stickers!

Right now, of course, each of these rooms costs a paltry 1 gold bar. Just ONE gold bar.

Even the very expensive Pyramid room now costs just a single gold bar.

This kind of sale doesn't come along every day, or even every month. And EA has been notoriously stringent in keeping the sales to just one weekend or at most a whole week.

Knowing that the sale won't last until I have enough of all the other rooms required to collect various stickers, I believe I can afford to spend 6 gold bars on these usually pricey rooms.

The funniest bit? I just rolled double 5s on the Community Chest card ... I guess that mostly pays for my Mr. Potato Head rooms!

I am off to build my new Potato Head rooms now... I suspect that the more expensive ones will take several hours to build, so the sooner I start, the sooner I'll have those new entries in my Guest Book!!

Update: 24 hours later (or is it more than that?):

Here is my Guest Book, now that I've built and painted all the Mr. Potato Head rooms in Monopoly Hotels:

The Golden Goose / Golden Egg Room is gone!

It's gone.

Really, truly, gone.

Yesterday morning, it was available for purchase.

When I logged in to Monopoly Hotels last night, the Golden Goose room was no longer available.

If you have already purchased it, you will continue to have it, but you can no longer buy a new one.

There are two new gold-producing rooms to replace it, but no Golden Goose room.

Oh, well.

I guess when Electronic Arts says "Limited Time", they really mean it! 

R.I.P. Golden Goose room!

Neanderthal Room vs. Flute Room

As you know if you have been following this blog at all, I have been saving up my gold to buy a Flute room. Someone said, "Why a Flute room, why not some Golden Goose rooms or a whole bunch of Neanderthal rooms?"

I've already done the analysis of why not to buy a Golden Goose room (I simply don't find it worth the expense, when I can get as much or more gold each day just from the Community Chest cards - more on that in another blog).

But this got me wondering about the Neanderthal rooms.

This room is only found in the Ventnor Museum, costs 90 gold bars at full price, and yields M$312,500 and 77,968 experience points every six hours.

When I first bought the Ventnor Museum, this room was the object of my room lust. Great experience points boost every few hours, plus a nice fat payout of M$, what's not to like?

Saved up my gold from checking out the "Free Gold" videos and the then very rare gold from Community Chest cards, and finally lucked out in that I had 45 gold bars when EA put up their last "gold rooms for half off" sale a few weeks ago.

I've been loving that room. It only takes up a single square, and it pays out *nicely* each time!

But, recently, I've been lusting for the Flute room.

This one is available in each of the normal hotels, also takes up only one square, and it produces even better: M$10,000,000 and 225,000 experience points every 8 hours.

But there's the price tag: a whopping 1,998 gold bars.

Until the recent addition of the Boxing Gloves room, the Flute room was the most expensive room you could buy for gold.

And until the recent upgrade to Monopoly Hotels, this room seemed entirely out of reach for someone like me who refuses to spend cash on freemium upgrades to a game.

But now, with the easier-to-earn gold in the sticker book, not to mention the Golden Goose room, the Midas room, and, of course, the Community Chest cards, it's no longer so far out of reach.

It will still take a while to save up enough gold for this room, but it's doable.

My friend's question made me think, though: what if I filled up the Ventnor Museum with all Neanderthal rooms? Would that equal or exceed the daily take from a Flute room in M$ and experience points? Potentially for less than buying a Flute room?

Hmm.

Let's do the analysis.

First off, how many Neanderthal rooms can I buy for the same price as a single Flute room?

That's easy enough: 1,998 into 90, which means I can buy 22.2 Neanderthal rooms for the same gold. (Assuming that the Ventnor Museum takes a total of 40 squares, that means it would cost approximately as much to fill the museum as it would to buy two Flute rooms.)

Back to the math: I can buy 22 Neanderthal rooms for the price of a single Flute room. 

22 Neanderthal rooms means M$312,500 x 22, or M$6,875,000 every 6 hours.

And 77,968 x 22, or 1,715,296 experience points every 6 hours.

At first glance, the Flute room seems to win if you consider M$ alone: 10,000,000 versus 6,875,000. But consider also that the payout schedule is slightly different: the Flute room only pays out once every 8 hours, while Neanderthal rooms pay out every 6 hours.

So, to truly compare apples to apples, let's figure out the per-hour yield from 22 Neanderthal rooms versus a single Flute room.

22 Neanderthal rooms:
M$6,875,000 /  6 = M$1,145,833.33 per hour

1 Flute room:
M$10,000,000 / 8 = M$1,250,000 per hour

Hmmmmmm.

And similarly, let's compare the experience points yield.

22 Neanderthal rooms:
1,715,296 / 6 = 285,882.667 experience points per hour

1 Flute room:

225,000 / 8 = 28, 125 experience points per hour

Well, that math makes it even more interesting again. I would obviously make slightly more cash on a per-hour average by investing in a Flute room, but I would make TEN times as much experience points with the 22 Neanderthal rooms.

Which brings up the question: which do I need more, cash or experience points?

For me, the answer is experience points. As you get higher and higher in levels on the game it's harder and harder to collect enough experience points to move up to the next level!

Oh, if you are wondering what the math looks like when EA puts on a 50% off gold rooms sale, let me reassure you that the math does not change. 

The Flute room will then be at half price, but so will the Neanderthal rooms, so the ratios remain the same, so the sale is irrelevant, except for the fact that you may not have enough saved to buy a Flute room even at half price(998 gold bars), but you will likely have enough to buy one (45 gold bars) or more Neanderthal rooms!

Also, keep in mind that there is only one Ventnor Museum, so the maximum you can buy is probably 40-ish Neanderthal rooms.

I think my strategy is going to be to slowly fill up the Museum with Neanderthal rooms first, collecting huge numbers of xp every day, and then, once it's full, start tackling the Flute rooms.

Of course, if you are willing to pay real cash to buy gold, then you will have no need for this analysis - you can buy one or more of each of these rooms as it takes your fancy. :)

On Sale: Midas Room and Golden Goose Room

Note: The Golden Goose / Golden Egg Room has been retired as of September 28th, 2012- you can no longer purchase this room in the Monopoly Hotels game.

This week's special is a 30% discount on "gold-producing" rooms. There are, of course, only 2 of those, the Midas room (aka Golden Touch room) and the Golden Goose room (aka the Golden Egg room), both introduced last week amidst much fanfare.

My earlier blog analyzes the value of these two rooms, and I have to say, the Midas room is still not really good value at M$175,000,000 because it pays out only one gold bar and 391,667 experience points every 23 hours (let's just call it every day).

I have to admit, after my analysis a few days ago, I did use up my first saved 450 gold bars to buy a Golden Goose room.


And I've been playing the game for a couple of hours a day (okay, maybe it's more like 3 or 4 hours each day) and find that my average total gold collected from the Community Chest cards seems to be 6 or more.


In fact, last weekend, over the weekend, I actually collected over a hundred gold bars just from the Community Chest!

So I'm inclined to shrug at the Golden Goose room now. If you really only have time to just click on the game a very few number of times each day, then the 3 or 4 gold per day may be worth your while to invest either the current discounted price of 315 gold or even the 450 gold full price.

But for me? Nope. Not buying any more of those. I'd still much rather save up gold for a Flute room instead of the Golden Goose room, and save my cash for a Microphone room instead of the Midas room.

Your mileage, as usual, may vary.

New Sports Rooms: Hockey Stick Room and Boxing Gloves Room

Today, EA released two new rooms. And it didn't even require an upgrade, just entered the app fresh after a previous exit, collected my GO bonus, and there were the two new rooms the next time I tried to purchase a room.

The new rooms are both "Sports Rooms".

The Boxing Gloves Room costs 2,850 gold bars and pays out M$100,070,833 and 750,000 experience points every 3 days and 22 hours. It uses up 4 squares, though.

The Hockey Stick Room costs M$130,000,000 and pays out M$1,083,333 and 10,000 experience points every 4 hours, occupying 3 squares for the room.

Neither of these new rooms seems to be worth the cost, though.

The Hockey Stick room works out to paying out M$541,666 per square, per day.

The Boxing Gloves room works out to M$6,387,499.99 per square, per day.

In either case, the math simply isn't compelling enough for me to buy either of these rooms over my current objects of desire: the Flute room and the Microphone room.

To Buy or Not To Buy: The Golden Goose (Golden Egg) Room and the Midas (Golden Touch) Room

To buy or not to buy, that is the question. (Apologies to Shakespeare there).

The ultimate quest in the Monopoly Hotels game is to collect gold, because of the perceived scarcity of gold, which you seem to need oodles of in order to buy the high-producing rooms.

If nothing else about the game had changed and the Golden Egg room were available for 450 gold bars, I absolutely would buy at least one Golden Egg room and I may have considering saving up for a long time to purchase a Golden Touch room.

Today, though, the Monopoly Hotels landscape has changed.

A Golden Touch rooms cost M$250,000,000 and pays out one gold bar and 391,667 experience points every 23 hours, while a Golden Egg room is available right now (for a Limited Time, says the blurb) for 450 gold bars, and pays out 1 gold and 25,000 experience points every 6 hours.

It would seem to be a good bet to at least pick up a Golden Egg room as soon as I can save up 450 gold bars, because then I'd be guaranteed 3 to 4 gold bars every day if I just collect the rent on schedule every 6 hours.

This would have been perfect last week, when it felt like it could take forever to earn just ONE gold bar.

BUT ...

Since the latest update to the game, there are not just the new gold-yielding rooms, but there are also now other, fairly easy and consistent ways to earn gold in the game.

I can earn large sums of gold by purchasing all of each colour of hotel (200 gold bars each for collecting all 3 orange hotels, or all 3 yellow hotels or all 3 green hotels). 

Considering the Golden Touch room (a.k.a. the Midas room), I probably will use the M$ to purchase additional hotels instead, which will make it easier to save up gold (as I said just now, purchasing all hotels of a particular colour now pays you in gold!).

So, for me, no Midas rooms. M$250,000,000 will purchase me a few Microphone rooms in those pricey hotels, too, instead of splurging it all on a Golden Touch room.

I can also earn gold by completing a few other stickers that don't require me to spend gold. 

Like, for example, this one (A Fistful of M$), which earned me 10 gold bars.

But the best part of the latest upgrade to the game is that now, the Community Chest cards give you gold if you roll doubles. Not just double 1s, but ANY set of doubles. 

The laws of probability would imply that you roll double 1s once every 36 attempts, so, rolling any doubles basically implies a 1-in-6 chance of earning gold. Okay, you may wind up rolling double 1s a few times, so earning only one gold bar each time, but you may also wind up rolling double 6s, which earns you 6 gold bars.

So ... even if I get only ONE gold-yielding double-roll on a Community Chest card each day, that's a pretty good return for zero investment of gold (yes, I'd have to play the game at least long enough to roll one double on a Community Chest each day - but my gaming style means that I already do that).

For me, this means that spending the 450 gold bars to purchase the Golden Egg room would simply guarantee me a slightly better gold take-home every day over what I could get simply by collecting gold from the Community Chest cards.

True, that would mean I could get DOUBLE the gold over the day if I collected from the Community Chest cards AND the Golden Egg room.

BUT, I have to give up 450 of the previously-extremely-hard-to-come-by gold bars, so I'm feeling stingy. I really, really, really want one of those Flute rooms.

Last week, a Flute room was a pipe dream, because gold was so hard to come by, and the room costs 1,998 gold bars.

This week? I can easily see saving up the 1,998 gold bars over time, even without the Golden Egg room. It would be faster with a Golden Egg room, though.

So, let's do the analysis.

If I have 450 gold bars today and choose to save it rather than purchase a Golden Egg room, and my average from Community Chest cards is 3 gold bars a day (fairly doable - some days I will only get 1 gold bar from the Community Chest, and some I will get up to 6 gold bars), it will take me 516 days to earn enough gold to buy a Flute Room at full price. 

That assumes I complete no other stickers.

516 days. That's ... more than 17 months, almost a year and a half. 

Yikes.

If, instead, I choose to buy a Golden Egg room, then I have to start saving again from scratch.

The Golden Egg room would take at least 150 days (assuming I can only collect about 3 gold bars a day - sleep being a regrettable necessity) to pay for itself, i.e., to earn 450 gold bars at 3 gold bars per day.

Ignoring that, my total average take home per day would be 6 gold bars, assuming a daily average of 3 gold bars from the Golden Egg room and 3 from the Community Chest. 

At that rate, it would take me ... 333 days to save up enough gold to buy a Flute room.

Oh.

Now I see why doing math is so important. :P

At first glance, I was completing rejecting the Golden Egg rooms as being not worth the expense.

Even *with* the Golden Egg room, it seems like it will take a loooong time (almost a year) to save up enough to buy a Flute room. But that is still a lot less than it will take without the Golden Egg room. About 33% faster.

Okay, I guess if I can save up the 450 gold bars to buy a Golden Egg room before the price goes up to whatever the final price is, I may just go ahead and buy one!

Of course, if gold rooms go half price again any time soon, this entire analysis would be moot.

So, let me figure out the math for that.

At half price, the Flute room costs 999 gold bars.

I again will assume I start with 450 gold bars saved.

No Golden Egg room would mean needing an additional 549 gold bars, which, assuming I collect 3 gold bars a day from the Community Chest, will take me ... 183 days, which is just over 6 months.

If I start out by buying a Golden Egg room, then collecting the 999 gold bars (again assuming 3 gold bars each day from the Community Chest and 3 from the room) will take me 166 days, which is about 5 and a half months.

It seems the bottom line is that it does make sense to buy a Golden Egg room, even if the gold rooms go to half price.

So that's going to be my first purchase when I have saved up 450 gold bars, I guess. It will help that I will also be collecting gold from the stickers (I think I am close to collecting 25 gold bars for catching the burglar (or "jailbird" as per EA) 100 times ... I should have my Golden Egg room by next week for sure.

Note: The Golden Goose / Golden Egg Room has been retired as of September 28th, 2012- you can no longer purchase this room in the Monopoly Hotels game - this is now a collector's item room: if you have it, you have it, and if you don't, you're just out of luck.

The Midas Room and the Golden Goose Room are here!

Yep. Really. For sure.

And you don't have to build the fairytale rooms to get them, either. Maybe they do unlock at some specific level: if so, that level is lower than level 36, my current level.

Pricey? Certainly!

And I have to say, the Golden Egg room really is paying out much lower experience points than I expect, but hey, it's a guaranteed gold bar every six hours - not too awfully shabby, when you come to think of it.

Sadly, I don't have enough gold to go buy that Golden Egg room!

Will have to save up - and goodness knows how long that "Limited Time" sale will be on.

If you have 450 gold, this might be a good time to snap up that room - but then, EA also occasionally has 50% off sales - I don't know if 450 gold is half price: could be the full price is more than 900 gold or maybe less than 900 gold. It's all a gamble!

I also don't have enough M$ stashed right now to pay cash for the Golden Touch room, a.k.a. the Midas room ... M$250,000,000 to purchase means you'd better have another M$175,000,000 to build it and probably another 50,000,000 to paint it! I don't own any Flute rooms or Microphone rooms ... I can see a long wait coming. :)

It may be easier to save up for that Golden Egg room, after all!

Note: The Golden Goose / Golden Egg Room has been retired as of September 28th, 2012- you can no longer purchase this room in the Monopoly Hotels game.

Happy gold hunting!

Easier to Earn Gold with the Updated Sticker Book

Yes, really! There is now an easier way to earn a LOT more free gold in the Monopoly Hotels game!

EA just put out an upgrade to Monopoly Hotels today (Sept. 12th, 2012).

I hear the new Golden Goose room and Midas Room are both now available, one for M$250,000,000 (paying out 1 gold bar every 23 hours) and the other for 450 gold bars, paying out 1 gold bar every six hours.

I'd say that's pretty darned expensive gold, but hey, at least it's a consistent amount of gold once you have those rooms.

What is exciting to me is the updated sticker book and new stickers. You get stickers for things like owning all of one colour of hotel.

You only get the sticker reward for actually clicking on the sticker and starting to collect, so go open your sticker book and see how many stickers you've already completed just by playing the game.

Here, for example, is the sticker (and gold) that I won for simply owning all the Light Blue Properties:

I'm too excited to stay here blogging. Off to see what other stickers yield gold.

Oh, the stickers are no longer on individual pages, they just roll down one after the other. The best part is, each sticker now tells you before you start just how much gold or M$ you will earn by completing it.

I like that!

Over all, I have to say I like this upgrade from EA for Monopoly Hotels. Yes, the new gold-payout rooms are pricey, but didn't you expect that? And the payout isn't huge amounts of gold, but it's not terrible, either!

The sticker book? I *love* that upgrade ... gotta go collect some stickers now!

Coming soon: Golden Goose Room and Midas Room

Not sure what I am talking about?

Well, check out the video on YouTube: The New Rooms, coming soon

So there are going to be two new rooms, viz. the Midas Room and the Golden Goose Room.

The fact that the blurb seems to indicate that it's GOLD, GOLD, GOLD, I'm thinking (hoping?) that these rooms pay out in gold rather than M$, but haven't seen any confirmation of that - although the video does seem to all but say so.

No hints yet from EA what the cost will be for these rooms, nor what levels you need to get to, to unlock them.

Current rumour has it that building all 4 fairytale rooms unlocks the Golden Goose Room, but I've only seen one confirmed report of this (and, from watching that video, it looks like this room is "coming soon", not available yet), so I wouldn't rush out and buy the fairytale rooms just yet.

If you DO decide to build those fairytale rooms, prior experience tells me it's probably better to build all of them in the same hotel (that seems to be the required strategy when collecting stickers, so I'm going to assume that's needed here as well).

If you manage to unlock one of these new rooms, come back here and tell us how you did it, and what level you were on, and, of course, all the luscious details: how much did it cost, what is the payout (M$ and XP), and how frequent is the payout.

I'm lusting after these rooms ... hope they're not toooo outrageously priced! I still haven't managed to get even one Flute Room ...

Note: The Golden Goose / Golden Egg Room has been retired as of September 28th, 2012- you can no longer purchase this room in the Monopoly Hotels game.

My Favourite Rooms

I started out, as everyone does, with just the Horse room, moving along soon to pick up a couple of WheelBarrow rooms, and so on through the point where I was filling my original hotel or two with Thimble rooms. Thimble rooms were boring, but they paid more cash than the other rooms I could afford at the time, so I was happy with them.

Then I discovered that it was annoying to feel like I had to keep checking my hotels every 45 minutes to see if there was any rent to be collected. And I noticed that Top Hat rooms paid out a LOT more cash, plus only paid out at 6 hour intervals.

Graduated to filling my hotels with Top Hat rooms, which also paid out enough for me to buy several more hotels.

Along the way, I discovered the Sweet Apple room, which doesn't pay much in terms of M$, but does give you a boost of 200,000 experience points every 2 days and 21 hours. So I made sure to put one of these in each hotel I own (11 hotels now, I believe). This helps me graduate to higher levels a little quicker ... especially the levels above 30, where the difference between levels seems almost to double each time you cross a level.

I also noticed the Dragon Breath room, which pays out M$31,250 every 3 hours *and* gives you a decent boost of almost 8,000 experience points at each payout (much more than the Top Hat rooms that only give you 30 experience points per payout.

And then there is the Golden Oaks room, which pays out M$6,125 and 1,374 experience points every 6 hours. Yes, it takes up 4 squares (the equivalent of 4 Top Hat rooms), but I realised that 4 Top Hat rooms would only pay M$3,000 and 120 experience points every 6 hours - so it was a no-brainer to rate Golden Oaks rooms higher than Top Hat rooms.

Of course, I would have filled my hotels with Sweet Apple, Dragon Breath and Golden Oak rooms, except for the minor detail that they are both specialty rooms and so you are only allowed one of each per hotel.

So this is what my hotels all looked like for a few days: mostly Top Hat rooms, with one each of Sweet Apple, Dragon Breath and Golden Oaks rooms. Sweet Apple is the one with the walking pony, Golden Oaks is the large 4x4 square with the lounging pony, and Dragon Breath is the one with the dragon, of course.

And then I discovered Key Rooms. They pay out M$10,000 and 625 points every 3 hours. So I started filling my hotels with those, or at least replacing my Top Hat rooms with Key rooms ... the key rooms don't pay out enough experience points to displace my Golden Oaks rooms yet, so I decided to focus on replacing just the Top Hat rooms with Key rooms.

Then, wonder of wonders, I discovered there were even MORE enticing rooms.

Namely, the Camp Site room, paying out M$100,625 and 24,605 experience points every 21 hours. Okay, it's a much slower payout, but it means I don't have to check Monopoly Hotels quite as frequently during the day. So I have been stocking up ... instead of Key rooms, I am slowly replacing all my Top Hat rooms with the Camp Site rooms.

And I've often mentioned how slow it is to collect gold ... so have been hoarding the little gold I've earned from floating Community Chest cards, and finally managed to pick up a Neanderthal room in Ventnor Museum: this room is a beauty, paying out M$312,500 and 77,968 experience points every 6 hours.

True, Volcano rooms in the Ventnor Museum have a better experience points payout, but they cost 750 gold bars normally (or 375 at 50% off), so I figured it was easier to concentrate on the Neanderthal rooms first.

What I really would love?? Ideally a Flute room ... but even at 50% off, it's WAY out of my range: I only have about 40 gold bars right now, and a Flute room costs 1998 gold bars normally, 999 at half off. So that's a dream for later.

For now, I am focusing on making enough Camp Site rooms so that I can soon afford my first Violin rooms, and then eventually graduate to Microphone rooms at a sweet M$7,500,000 and 210,000 experience points every 36 hours.

Oh, and there is a rumour (unsubstantiated as yet, only ONE sighting so far) that building all 4 of the new fairy tale rooms (Magic Beans, Pillow, Basket and Fairy Wand) below unlocks a Golden Goose room ... I'm waiting to hear if it's true, but, as you can see below, the Pillow Room and the Basket Room aren't cheap. Even at half price, it requires almost 500 gold bars to collect both of these, so I think I'll be waiting a while ...

But there you go - these are a few of MY favourite rooms!

GOLD for stickers

That's what most of us do when we start playing EA's Monopoly Hotels game: focus on adding rooms, attractions and/or decorations in order to earn stickers.

Then, we get wiser. We realise that the cash/gold and experience points earned by collecting all the rooms for a sticker are just a one-time bonus, and the sticker rooms actually don't do very much for you.

So we stop collecting stickers.

Or, at least, we collect them only when we really want to.

Like me with the Yeehaw sticker (the branding iron thing on page 8) a couple of days ago, when I realised that I would be able to earn 20 gold (yes, really, that one pays out 20 gold bars) for a total cost of just 12 gold bars (only because gold rooms are on sale right now).

So then I got all excited. Decided to find out what other stickers have a good return on investment.

I had heard that some of the stickers on pages 7 and 8 gave as much as 200+ gold bars if you completed them, so of course, those were the stickers I investigated.

And, much to my disgust, discovered that I'd have to pay WAY more than 200 gold in each case to earn those 200 gold for completing the sticker.

I found only 2 stickers that pay out high value in terms of gold:

"And the Winner is ..." (the statue thing on page 6): it pays out 250 gold bars. However, it costs 1500 gold bars to buy a Film Room, and 290 gold bars to buy a Salon. Completely not worth the price for the reward.

If ever both these rooms go to 90% off, you'd still pay 150+29 gold bars, a total of 179 gold bars. At that time, and probably ONLY at that time, it may be worth buying these two rooms to collect the sticker.

The other high-gold-payout sticker is "Happy Birthday" on page 8: it pays out 225 gold bars. Again, you have to purchase a Film Reel Room (1500 gold bars) and a Pink Balloons decoration (50 gold) bars, plus a Floral Shop attraction (M$5,000) to earn this sticker.

So, again, not worth it until the Film Reel room (at the very least) goes to 90% off - if ever that happens.

I believe I will just save up my gold bars for more Neanderthal rooms in the Ventnor Museum instead of chasing after the stickers.

Sneaky strategies to earn more gold in Monopoly Hotels

Gold!

So far, the most reliable (HAH!) way to earn gold in Monopoly Hotels has been to simply click the Community Chest every time it floats past, and keep my fingers crossed that I'll roll double 1 and earn 3 gold bars.

This week, though, I think I have a sneaky new strategy.

Well, not really sneaky.

Sneaky would be to go jailbreak your iOS device and then have the ability to give yourself as much gold as possible. That tends to go against my gut instincts, so I don't do it.

But here's what's *very* doable.

Last week, the decorations were all 70% off. So I looked through the stickers and picked up the decorations that needed gold (at least the ones I could afford).

That meant I stocked up on things like the American Flag, Spanish Flag, and a couple of those Oriental lanterns.

This week, Electronic Arts decided to give us a new goodies: 50% off all rooms you buy with gold. (Of course, decorations are now back to regular price).

So, right now, I am building a few of the rooms that lead to stickers, on the assumption that each sticker gives you at least one gold bar.

Then I read that completing the Yee-Haw sticker gives you 20 gold bars. Okay, then, I think: it's definitely a no-brainer to spend 10 gold (half price this week, remember?) to buy a Cowboy Hat room, because I picked up the flags at 1 gold bar each last week! 

As long as you remember to put the Cowboy Hat Room in the same hotel as the American flag and the Spanish flag, I stand to earn 20 gold bars for a total outlay of 12 gold bars. Nice little gold profit there.

I hear some of the other stickers on pages 7 and 8 have much larger gold payouts (200?), but I am still in the baby stages when it comes to earning gold, so I will have to wait for those and look for similar half-price-or-better strategies. 

Another attraction I'm going to pick up as soon as I have enough gold is the Fancy Restaurant, currently at 28 gold rather than the regular 55 gold ...

Ooooh.

Just completed the Cowboy Hat Room, and here's what I get:

Sandy, of course, had to introduce herself:

And then, finally, I saw this:

YESSSSSSsssss!

The Yeehaw sticker is definitely worth 20 gold bars! Now that's a tidy little profit!

Happy hunting!