A pathetic upgrade this week from EA

Seriously pathetic. Today's update to the game is going to upset many Monopoly Hotels fans.

We have users screaming about having lost all their rooms, EA tells us to send them a private message using their FaceBook page, and doesn't even bother to respond to those messages for days on end.

And then they decide to do an update: gold-producing rooms have gone to double their previous price. No, I don't just mean that the Golden Cauldron, which cost 700 gold last week, is now 1,400 gold (last week's full price). Instead, it now costs 2,800 gold - even higher than the price of 2,000 gold that this room originally debuted at.

All the other gold-producing rooms have similarly doubled in price from two weeks ago, or quadrupled compared to last week's half-off sale. Even a Gold Mine Cart will now set you back a nice 72 gold instead of the old price of 36 gold. And you will pay almost 1,100 gold for a Golden Treasure in the Aquarium this week!

Could it be a simple mistake? That someone forgot that the gold-producing rooms were NOT on 50% sale any more and just said to double the price of rooms you buy with gold, not realising that the gold-producing rooms would also be affected? It's certainly possible. But how likely is that? I just don't know.

I'm NOT impressed. I'd had 5 Golden Cauldrons before I lost all my rooms ... over this past week, I've painstakingly scraped together enough gold to buy 2 replacement Golden Cauldrons. I don't think I have the patience to save up 2,800 gold for a full-price Golden Cauldron, or even 1,400 gold for one at half-price if they ever go on a 50% sale again.

In another apparent attempt to limit players' ability to generate gold, EA has also removed the two top gold-yielding trains: the Big Boy Locomotive and the Bullet Train are no longer available for purchase. 

If you ask me, those trains will reappear at a later date, at a hugely inflated price to "compensate" for the excellent gold yield they provide ... and I suspect there will be a couple of different trains introduced that will cost about as much as these two did last week, but will yield less gold and/or will depart less frequently.

EA has also introduced two new rooms this week, but I seriously cannot find it in me to be enthused: I did manage to purchase 3 Harvest Pumpkin rooms since my personal Black Friday loss of rooms, and was saving up the cash hoping for a good sale on M$ rooms this week or next week.

Now I find myself just shrugging and deciding to find something else to do rather than play a game where they move the goal-posts whenever it suits their fancy.

It feels like EA just decided to shaft their users this week - I'm not sure I understand why. Someone at the decision-making level apparently decided that gold was now getting far too easy to achieve in the game, I think - hence the changes.

Meh. Colour me unimpressed. I was willing to be patient, to defend EA despite the buggy releases ... but not any longer.

I'm still waiting to hear from EA about the rooms I lost, but I definitely will not be holding my breath for any length of time: I think my best bet is to simply continue rebuilding my rooms as fast as I can and save up for any sales in the hopes of getting even remotely close to my old hotel landscape and average daily rents.

Another unexpected update - Gold-producing rooms are no longer on sale

Sad but true.

While the "50% off rooms you buy with gold" promotion still seems to be active for the other rooms you buy with gold, the gold-producing rooms are now back to full price.

That means you will have to pay M$1,400 for a Golden Cauldron ... or wait until these rooms go on sale again at some point in the future. 

In my case, I guess this means I won't bother saving up for a new Golden Cauldron or a Golden Treasure. Instead, I'll use whatever gold I manage to collect between now and Wednesday to buy some of the other enticing gold rooms: Neanderthals or Volcanoes or Harvest Pumpkins are my current top priority.

Why Wednesday? Because the last major update (the beginning of this current half-price sale) started mid-day Wednesday, unlike the previous starts-on-Thursday updates. So there is a good chance that the next one will happen one week later, this coming Wednesday.

Sadly, given that I now only have two Golden Cauldrons, I guess I'm most likely to pick up either some Neanderthals or, at best, one more Harvest Pumpkin before the sale ends some time on Wednesday or Thursday. I really doubt I'll get to pick up even one of the Volcanoes this time around.

When will EA start the next sale on rooms you buy with gold?

Your guess is as good as mine. 

I am thinking it will likely be in the Christmas-to-New-Year time-frame, but I've been known to be wrong before.

I just hope I have a better stash of M$ and gold saved up by whenever that next big sale comes around! I really, really, REALLY want to get back to having 5 Volcanoes and 5 Golden Cauldrons!

Reconstruction efforts are under way

While I wait to see if EA responds to my message about losing all the rooms in my hotels in the Monopoly Hotels game, I've had a bit of hard work rebuilding what I can.

I was fortunate, really, because I had both enough M$ and gold on hand to be able to make a decent recovery. The first purchase I made was a Golden Cauldron as soon as I had enough gold (THANK YOU to all who sent me trains! It was exactly what put me in the position of buying my first Golden Cauldron in this emptied-out game!)

And fairly soon after that, some time yesterday, I managed to save up some more gold and bought a Harvest Pumpkin (thank goodness for the half-off sale on rooms you buy with gold).

Thanks to even more trains coming in and my tiny ability to send out ONE train a day, I also managed to rack up one more Golden Cauldron and one more Harvest Pumpkin (gold really is *much* easier to come by these days than it was when I first started playing this game back in July!)

Here's my newly-filled Mediterranean Avenue hotel:

The 3x1 room being built at the bottom is a Sweet Apple, the one being painted just above it is my first Harvest Pumpkin, above that is my second Golden Cauldron (Melchior is already hard at work in the first one, as you can see). And the final 2x1 room at the top is the second Harvest Pumpkin I'm working on.

The cash I had went to buying one Tiny Pilgrim Hat room, but there wasn't enough left to start building it, so it's still in ready-to-build mode, waiting the remaining 4 days or so until the first Harvest Pumpkin starts paying rent. Actually, since I am still M$50,000,000 from being able to start building, I guess it's likely to be closer to a week - I need at least 2 collections from the Harvest Pumpkin before I can begin building the Tiny Pilgrim Hat.

Here's what Baltic Avenue now looks like, with my very first new Tiny Pilgrim Hat awaiting the cash influx to start building:

The 4x1 room at the bottom in Baltic is my very first ever Gold Mine room ... decided that even if it's not a great producer, it still will at least look good in my Guest Book! And for the price ... meh, I have spent more than the 18 gold I spent for it just in accidentally clicking to finish building or painting a room a little faster!

The other being-built room is, of course, the obligatory-for-me Sweet Apple.

What I don't have are good XP-producing rooms. I did purchase a Sweet Apple room for each of my hotels, so there is some XP coming in every 3 days or so, but nowhere near what I'd have had with all my Volcanoes rooms in the previous incarnation of the game.

Oh well, it is what it is. I guess it will take me longer to get to level 44 and beyond.

Here is the current status quo on all my newly-filled hotels: basically, they are all filled with Thimbles, with one each of the Sweet Apple and the Golden Oaks rooms just because those two were so cheap to purchase.

    

     

     

     

     

     

     

    

     

As you can see, I now own all the properties except for Park Place ... and I really don't anticipate buying that one for a long, long time: I've got my hands full trying to make the current hotels produce good rent first!

The specialty properties (Vermont Aquarium, Tennessee Zoo and Vermont Museum) are currently all empty - I am not spending M$ or gold on low-yielding rooms right now, it simply doesn't make sense to splurge on unnecessary items. 

I know there's one school of thought that states that a low-yielding room is better than empty space ... I disagree, when I can spend that same money towards a higher paying, non-specialty room, it makes no sense to me to buy the specialty rooms in those properties. And I can't yet afford the few worthwhile special rooms: Neanderthal, Volcanoes, Golden Treasure ...

My average rent right now (about 500 Thimbles, and 16 Golden Oaks) is just over M$2,000,000 per day, and 60 guaranteed gold from the Golden Cauldrons, maybe a few more gold and M$ from the trains as they arrive and depart.

I am still hoping to purchase a couple more gold rooms before this current sale ends - it all depends, as you may guess, on the trains coming in, and on my ability to pluck more gold from falling Community Chest cards, as well as the 60 gold every day from the two Golden Cauldrons.

I anticipate that I should be able to purchase at least one more Harvest Pumpkin room, maybe also my first Volcanoes. If not quite enough for a Volcanoes, I'll probably settle for a couple of Neanderthals, maybe even my very first Barbell! 

I won't buy those yet, though - I'll keep saving up until Wednesday morning and decide based on what I've saved up whether to buy one or more Harvest Pumpkins, Volcanoes, or, if I have enough, yet another Golden Cauldron. 

By that time, the current Harvest Pumpkins will have started producing nice rents, so I should be able to build several more  Tiny Pilgrim Hats, or, if they disappear after this week (Thanksgiving is now over), then some Microphone rooms instead. 

My plan is to get back to the M$100,000,000+ daily income range by the end of this year. 

Wish me luck!

Black Friday disaster ... or is this a challenge?

You know how, sometimes, in the middle of a perfectly clear afternoon, there's a sudden thunderstorm that just takes you completely by surprise?

That was today with me and the Monopoly Hotels game from EA.

This morning, I had almost M$300,000,000 saved, and a few hundred gold.

During the day, I collected rent from my three Harvest Pumpkins, 3 of my 5 Microphones, my one and only Tiny Pilgrim Hat, and several other rooms ... enough that I splurged on 2 more Tiny Pilgrim Hat rooms and still had M$116,000,000+ remaining ... was planning to pick up more of those Tiny Pilgrim Hats over the next couple of days from the ongoing M$100,000,000+ daily rent collections.

Plus, I'd finally got all 5 Golden Cauldrons and the brand new Golden Treasure to start producing, so, together with my Golden Goose, I was on target to collect an additional 160 gold every single day.

And then, of course, disaster struck.

Yes, you guessed it.

When I logged in this evening, the game churned for a moment, claiming "Downloading new items for your game" or something like that, then went through its usual rigmarole of "Readying your properties for business", "Dusting off the welcome mats", etc. ... and I saw a flash of the Baltic hotel, with the "Buy Now" banner on it.

Thinking it was an origin glitch, I exited the game and re-entered ...

Nope.

No mistake.

This time, the "Buy Now" banner was gone, but Baltic was resoundingly empty.

So was Mediterranean.

And Oriental.

And the Vermont Aquarium.

And ... 

Need I go on?

Checked my stickers: they are all still there.

Checked the Guest Book - all the guests I've unlocked are still in there, even peek-a-boo Abigail who appears and disappears at will.

Fired off a message to Electronic Arts / Monopoly Hotels via their FaceBook page.

Hopefully, they will be able to restore my progress, especially as I gave them the link to this blog, which has tons of pictures of my hotels and the rooms within. 

Hopefully.

I've got my fingers crossed.

But now, I have a dilemma.

Do I just sit and wait until they respond? Which will be Monday at the earliest, given that I don't believe anyone will be monitoring their support messages over the weekend? Especially given that this happens to be the Thanksgiving weekend?

I think I'll be exceptionally lucky if they respond any time next week - they are swamped with people complaining about this exact problem.

So, I have another option.

I can use my saved up cash and gold to buy some rooms and get a fresh start on the game.

In a way, this is kinda neat.

I have some cash. Enough to buy a Tiny Pilgrim Hat room, but not enough to build it.

And some gold ... enough for ONE Golden Cauldron and one Harvest Pumpkin.

I think I'm going to splurge ... and see how far I can get starting from this very promising beginning. After all, when I first started playing this game back in July, there was NO way to earn 30 gold in a single day, and I was terribly far from hoping to purchase a million-plus-producing room.

One Golden Cauldron will give me 30 gold ... I can purchase another Golden Cauldron the next time they go on sale. In the meantime, my one Harvest Pumpkin alone will help me buy a heck of a lot more rooms in very little time.

I think I have a plan.

One Golden Cauldron, plus one Harvest Pumpkin, and actually, 200 more gold coming up real soon as soon as the 3 green properties finish building (yes, that was something else I started yesterday ... I should earn that 200 more gold in about 2 more days), so maybe one more Harvest Pumpkin, or perhaps a Golden Treasure by the time this sale ends.

Plus, I can still send and receive trains.

And there's always the option of rolling doubles on the Community Chest cards ...

Things are looking promising! I'm off to buy and build ...

Happy Thanksgiving to our American Friends!

It's that day again: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! to all our American friends, no matter where in the world they live!

It's a day when a lot of families will be eating turkey as part of the main Thanksgiving meal. And pumpkins.

We will just have to hope that Ben manages to escape that tree stump ...

"Ben who?", you ask?

"Ben HUR!"

Er, sorry, wrong story.

Well, you know: BEN! Our very own turkey from EA, of Monopoly Hotels' fame:

He hides pretty well behind that bush, though, so he's probably safe. 

He's doing a great job of being inconspicuous, don't you think? (Now, if only he'd lose that Tiny Pilgrim Hat he wears ...)

And of course, Scarecrow is keeping watch over the pumpkins - well, over any that are left after dessert ... typically a pumpkin pie. 

I would suspect that, other than Hallowe'en [everyone carves up pumpkins for their spooky decorations, right?] and Christmas [more pumpkin pie] and Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte, no one actually uses pumpkins in the USA. 

Well, no, I lie. 

I've had pumpkin-based dishes from many cultures and many cuisines, so I suspect pumpkins do get used quite a bit, even in America. But not as much as in the countries where people cook with them on a regular basis.

I have many fond memories of Thanksgiving dinners with my friends in the U.S. - those were some amazing times!

I have even more memories of the one time I made Thanksgiving dinner myself. 

You see, I made a huge turkey. 

And there weren't *that* many guests. 

Yep, I was eating turkey for days on end. 

Turkey curry. Turkey sandwiches. Turkey stir-fries. Turkeyed turkey. Turkey tagine. Turkey soup. And that's just the tip of that old turkey iceberg ...

I think I'll stick to watching Ben play hide-'n'- seek behind that big bush of his. And maybe I'll go earn myself that Incognito Turkey sticker today to join the celebrations!

Once again: Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

My favourite rooms - redux

I wrote a post a while ago about my favourite rooms to fill the properties in EA's Monopoly Hotels game.

That was, as I said, a while ago.

Not just in time, but really in experience with the game, and buying capacity as well: at that time, I was halfway through level 35.

Today, I am at level 43. And I have used the time in between to purchase a few high-paying rooms. Really high paying.

Which means it's time to review my favourite rooms - they are rather different now.

At level 35, I was still in lust-after-high-end-rooms mode. Mostly, I had Top Hat rooms in all my hotels, with one each of the Golden Oaks, Dragon Breath and Sweet Apple rooms in each hotel to ensure the maximum return in terms of XP and M$. (Well, Thimble rooms would have brought in more M$ than Top Hat rooms, but I would have to collect every 45 minutes - something I was not willing to do, as it would mean mostly putting my entire life on hold for the game!)

Back then, I was excited when I got some Key rooms and a handful of Campsite rooms (with good reason - those are high-producing single-square rooms!):

Since then, the game landscape has changed significantly. EA has made gold-producing rooms a reality, so my focus has definitely expanded to saving up enough gold to buy some of those lovely rooms: I now have just one Golden Goose (Golden Egg, officially, but I dislike that name), five Golden Cauldron rooms (2 built a while ago when they were at 30% off, 3 more being built because I just purchased them during the current half-off sale), and just one of the Golden Treasure rooms - also a build-in-progress, because I just bought it.

The Golden Goose, I will admit, is not one of my favourite properties, but that is simply my personal bias: I prefer a room that takes up 4 squares to give me a much better yield!

The Golden Cauldron, on the other hand, is probably my current absolute favourite, just because it gives me 10 gold every 7 hours ... (yes, I'm a gold-digging, money-grubbing capitalist, can't you tell?)

(The two in-process-of-painting rooms are my brand new Golden Cauldrons, in case you were wondering; the in-process-of-building is a Rake room, and the empty space will hold a Basket room just as soon as I save up enough gold - I'm working on earning the Incognito Turkey sticker for this hotel. Yes, it's negative ROI because the sticker will only pay me 200 gold for an outlay of 288 gold, but I figure those Golden Cauldrons give me the scope to have some fun as well as just invest for the highest returns!)

(This is currently my highest yielding property with all those Campsites, Microphones, Harvest Pumpkins and Volcanoes: over M$66,000,000 per day on average.)

Another of my favourite properties is the Ventnor Museum, where I am slowly replacing the empty spaces and then the lower-yielding rooms with Neanderthals and Volcanoes for their truly exceptional rent and XP returns, given the low outlay for these two rooms. Okay, the Volcanoes is pricey, but given that it spits out M$1,250,000 and 312,500 XP every 3 hours, it's actually quite unbeatable value right now at 375 gold.

For the Aquarium, there are really no high-yield rooms except that Golden Treasure, so I anticipate that will be my first choice to build each time I have enough gold saved up and want to build something in the Aquarium. Right now, I'm building my very first Golden Treasure, as you can see:

For sheer whimsy, I like the Bamboo Habitat in the Tennessee Zoo (or rather, as I prefer to call it: the Panda room!) ... the animations of the Pandas are every bit as endearing as Pandas are in real life:

Having all those gold-producing rooms brings my gold-earning capacity to ... about 160 gold bars per day from all the gold-producing rooms, assuming I collect as frequently as possible: 4 times a day for the Golden Goose room, twice a day for the Golden Treasure, and 3 times a day for the Golden Cauldrons.

This, in turn, makes it possible to buy other high-producing rooms.

So far, I've picked up several Microphone rooms, a couple of Harvest Pumpkin rooms, a Rake room (currently being built) and a Tiny Pilgrim Hat room. 

All of those combine to bring up my daily M$ rent averages, too: I anticipate more than M$100,000,000 per day on average, because I have 5 of the Microphone rooms (average daily payout: M$5,000,000), 3 Harvest Pumpkins (average daily payout: M$16,000,000 per room for a total of M$48,000,000 per day), a single Tiny Pilgrim Hat (average daily payout: M$6,000,000), 4 Volcanoes (maximum daily payout per room: M$10,000,000 for a maximum of M$40,000,000 per day) and 7 Neanderthal rooms (maximum daily payout per room: M$1,250,000 for a total maximum daily payout of M$8,750,000).

Note that I list the Volcanoes and Neanderthals with maximum payouts: I don't always collect them on time because I may miss a mid-day collection or a late night collection (yes, the day job and sleep times interfere with rent collection!)

By the way, all of these ultra-high-payout rooms take up barely 2 full hotels ... the rest are still mostly filled with Top Hats, and several Key rooms, Campsites and Rock Walls!

Which means I have a long way to go before I have primped out my hotels and specialty properties to be the highest possible yield ... I am looking forward to several more months of interesting room-building and upgrading activities.

Right now, I am pleasantly anticipating having enough gold by the end of the week (the sale week, I mean: next Wednesday) to pick up at least one of the Flute rooms ... it's still my most-lusted-after room, even though I've taken detours to buy Golden Cauldrons instead of the Flute so far.

Adding a single Flute will increase my daily rent by M$30,000,00, so I can see loads of opportunities to pick up even more high-yield rooms once I get to that point ... my daily average rent will be close to M$150,000,000!

As you can see, the list of favourite rooms really depends on your current level and earning capacity. One room that I will pick up several more of as soon as I can is the Volcanoes: it's the best bet for XP right now (312,500 XP every 3 hours is currently unbeatable by any other room, even the ones you pay mega-bucks for) ... which means that the more of these I have, the quicker I advance to higher levels.

NOT that higher levels mean much any more ... once you're past about level 35, I don't think there are any more rooms to unlock, it's simply about wanting to be at a higher level because those higher levels are there. It's a very non-zen sort of thing, really.

Here's me, rubbing my greedy little paws together, off to do another rent collection now ...

New Stickers: 'Adventure on the High Seas' and 'Visit to Mount Rushmore'

If it wasn't enough that we have a nice 50% off sale on the gold rooms, and there's a new hotel to buy and fill, EA has added even MORE in today's update: 2 new stickers.

The first one, Adventure on the High Seas, finally requires one of the rooms I've been wondering about: the Pirate Parrot room. Of course, even at half off, it costs 42 gold, so it's not exactly a good ROI to collect for this sticker which pays out 10 gold. Plus, you'd have to buy the flags ... also half off, but they also cost gold!

And then we have the Visit to Mount Rushmore:

This one may be more appealing - at least you can re-use the Cowboy Hat room that you picked up for the YeeHaw sticker. If you still have it ... I deleted my Cowboy Hat room ages ago because it was just such a poor producer. :) But even so, I could pick up one for just 10 gold with today's sale ... so, even if I had to buy both the flag and the Cowboy Hat again, I'd still come out with a net profit of gold for this sticker. 

Okay, I guess I will at least be collecting the Visit to Mount Rushmore sticker this week - and maybe I will even pick up the Adventure on the High Seas sticker if my gold-producing rooms make me feel extra-flush with gold!

A new hotel is released: Park Place is now here!

Oooh, I missed a couple of items in the update:

EA has finally (people have been begging for MONTHS now!) released a new hotel: Park Place.

It is, of course, pricey.

M$99,000,000 to be precise. And probably takes a few days to build.

And given that it's a new colour (Blue) ... I suppose that means that there will be at least two more properties at some time in the future with the same colour - and yet another sticker to collect for buying all 3.

I am still sloooooowly replacing my Top Hat rooms with better rooms, so I am in no hurry to buy this hotel myself.

But it's here for those who have already filled all their existing hotels with high-end rooms and really needed more real estate. 

Go wild! :) (Yes, I like bad puns - the GO WILD sale is now finished, over, kaput, GONE!)

Unexpected update: Go Wild! Sale is over. Plus: All gold rooms are now half-price!

I just logged in to Monopoly Hotels to do my mid-day check for rent ... imagine my surprise when I noticed that instead of just signing in to the game, it actually did a download of several megabytes!

Expecting changes, I quickly checked:

The Golden Goose (Golden Egg) room is gone again.

The animals are no longer roaming the streets. I guess that means the Go Wild! sale is over. And yes, the specialty rooms have moved back to their normal locations in the Zoo, the Aquarium and the Museum.

BUT:

All the rooms you buy with gold are now half price. Yes, that includes the rooms that produce gold! (Yes, that includes the gold rooms in the Zoo, the Aquarium and the Museum - even the Golden Treasure room, which wasn't on sale during the Go Wild! event.)

And yes, the Attractions and Decorations you purchase with gold are also half price!

There is even a new Attraction: The Easter Island room. Or, as EA is advertising it: The Moai Room.

At 125 gold, it's not too pricey (I wonder if that is a 50% off price, though ...), but it takes up a LOT of room: 8 squares in your hotel. Smaller than the Arc de Triomphe room, though ... so I guess it's not that terrible. :)

Anyway, with the 50% off sale going on now, you can finally pick up some of those rooms/attractions/decorations you had your eye on ...

I think I'll be grabbing a couple of Golden Cauldron rooms and maybe another Harvest Pumpkin. Or maybe ... just maybe ...a Flute room. Maybe one or more additional Volcanoes, too ... I just love the predictability of picking up 200,000 XP every 3 hours!

Of course, this early update (normally, the game is only updated on Thursdays ...) makes me wonder ... is this an indication that this week we will indeed see an update on Friday - a Black Friday sale, to be precise? (Black Friday, for those not in the U.S., is possibly the biggest retail sale day in the USA ... almost every store offers steep discounts the day after American Thanksgiving, and some stores have already been blaring about their Black Friday sales - and starting the sales - a week in advance!)

So ... I am torn: do I splurge and spend all the gold I've painstakingly saved up to buy gold rooms at half off? Or should I save up a little longer, just wait until Friday to see if there will be another, deeper discount?

I have to remember, though, that Thursday and Friday are federal holidays in the U.S.: I doubt anyone is going to come in to work at EA on the Friday just because I'd like to see a sale! So ... won't be holding my breath - I guess today's update is the Black Friday sale. 

Or is it?

What a dilemma.

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that Patience is not my middle name.

I guess I'll be buying my Golden Cauldron and Harvest Pumpkin and keep my fingers crossed that I'll make up at least some of that expenditure by the time a Black Friday sale comes around. If a Black Friday sale comes around at all, of course!

Sad - I really, really wanted a Flute room at the next "All rooms you buy with gold" sale. Oh, well. Maybe next time!

ALL-NEW Thanksgiving Rooms: the Tiny Pilgrim Hat Room and the Harvest Pumpkin Room are here!

In all the excitement about the GO WILD! sale, I might've forgotten to mention the arrival of two lovely new rooms: the Tiny Pilgrim Hat room (don't ask me what that means! - I have no clue what a tiny pilgrim's hat did to the turkey!) and the Harvest Pumpkin room (which, as I mentioned before, does remind me of Charles Schulz's Linus waiting devotedly for the Giant Pumpkin every Hallowe'en - more of a Hallowe'en theme to my mind than a Thanksgiving one!)

This ad, I have to say, is a little gruesome ... that poor turkey looks as though it know exactly the fate awaiting it if it gets any closer to that stump of wood - the chopping block, I presume?

But I digress. You really don't care about the ad, you want to know about the rooms!

Well, let's see: Both of these rooms are 2-square occupiers. Which means that whatever the yield is for the room, it's half that for each square.

The Tiny Pilgrim Hat room costs a LOT.  M$110,000,000, to be precise. Even more (10% more) than the Microphone room, which I'd pegged as the priciest ever, and almost as much as the Hockey Stick room that costs M$130,000,000.

For that much outlay, what do you get? You get to collect rent every 36 hours. To the tune of M$12,000,000 and 175,000 XP each time.

Which works out to M$166,666.667 per square per hour and 2430.56 XP per square per hour.

That actually beats out the Microphone room for cash (about 50k more per square per hour with the TPH room) and is a little bit less productive for XP than the Microphone room.

NICE! It's great to finally have something other than the Microphone room to aspire to! Thanks, EA!

And then, of course, we need to look at the other new room, the Harvest Pumpkin room. (I have to say, I giggle every time I look at the ad: that scarecrow/farmer guy is just so hilarious!).

Anyway, back to the job at hand: the Harvest Pumpkin room.

This one is actually reasonably priced. 

Okay. 

"Reasonably?" Really? At 450 gold? 

Yes, really. These days, with the easier-to-achieve stickers, and the trains where you can be sure of some gold every single day even if you do not catch a single falling gold-yielding Community Chest card, and the availability of gold-producing rooms ... well, I'd say everyone can aspire to save up 450 gold for a room. At least easier than saving up 2,000 gold for a Flute room, or 2,800 for a Boxing Gloves room!

Anyway. Yes, it costs 450 gold for the 2-square room. And it produces rent at the rate of M$24,000,000 and 210,000 XP every 36 hours.

Which works out to a fabulous M$333,333.33 and 2916.67 XP per square, per hour. 

That's nowhere near the output of a Flute room, agreed. Nor even close to that of a Boxing Gloves room. But for a room that costs SO much less gold to purchase, this one goes down a definite must-have in my book ... I can pick up 4 of these at full-price compared to a single Flute room at full price. 

Right now, my hotels are still mostly full of Top Hat rooms - I'd been slowly replacing them with "better" rooms, and I am pretty sure that the two new Thanksgiving rooms will be part of my new decor after the renovations are complete.

Okay, I'll admit it - I'd been saving up for my first Flute room and I no longer have nearly enough even for one at half-price: I bought the Harvest Pumpkin room and am impatiently waiting for it to be completed as I work towards saving up enough for that Flute room again.

The bottom line?

Both the new rooms are well worth investing in. The Harvest Pumpkin is more affordable than a Flute room, and yet yields a really nice return every day and a half, while the Tiny Pilgrim Hat is just an all-out winner.

A word of warning: given the recent trend at EA, I'd start saving up aggressively if you want these rooms - with such a seasonal theme, I wouldn't be surprised if these also became "Limited Time" rooms like the Hallowe'en rooms, and ultimately disappeared from the regular purchase list.

So you're going to be torn between buying these Thanksgiving rooms and stocking up on some Volcanoes rooms because of the fabulous XP yield on those. 

Well, you may not experience that dilemma. But I love XP, so it's a tough choice for me ...