First, the citizens of Springfield were tasked with fending off a zombie invasion, some even succumbing to the virus themselves. Next, from a slighty related but not related at all page from the Poltergeist, our town people faced becoming possessed by ghosts. This time our virtual realities are being thrown into the middle of an alien invasion. Rigellian invasion that is. Actually, a juvenile Rigellian invasion (teenagers, nothing but trouble!)
For the Treehouse of Horrors 2014 event Kang and Kodos have unleashed a frenzied army of teenage Rigellian aliens to wreak havoc in our towns and make the citizens slave laborers. It’s up to you to stop the invasion, oh mighty Sky Finger. Time to break out the hand sanitizer, clip those nails and get tapping. These aliens aren’t gonna tap themselves. And you might want to hurry before all of Springfield falls victim to this fierce prey.
Like every event we here at Topix like to give you a basic rundown of what it entails, how to navigate the menu’s, changes with the base game and any new content that comes. I’m here to hopefully answer your questions about the basics of the update. So follow me and find out how to battle the coming invasion.
As usual there is a LOT happening all at once with this new event. Couple that with a few changes to the base game and it can get pretty confusing for you to progress or navigate around the game. Bear with me as I myself am just a friendly tapper and am still figuring things out as I go along but I will give it my best shot to inform you.
Basics / Release Info
Update: Treehouse of Horrors 2014 / Halloween 2014
Release Date: October 7, 2014
Projected End Date: November 12, 2014
Type of Update: App Store update
Version: 4.11.0
Splash Screen:
Initiating Quest(s) / Task(s): The following are required to be completed to activate the event.**
Free Hugs Pt. 1 – Watch House Fly Drone Camera Footage – Kang – 8 hours – Brown House
Treat Yourself – Go Trick or Treating – Lisa – 8 hours – Visible
Free Hugs Pt. 2 – Question Kang’s Motives – Lisa – 45 seconds – Simpson House (Alien army appears)
Free Hugs Pt. 3 – Squish A Rigellian Invader – Kang / Sky Finger – Alien X 1 (Crafting activates / Make-a-Thing Workshop activates)
Free Hugs Pt.4 – Use the Make-a-Thing Workshop to Open a Treat Bag & Use the Make-a-Thing Workshop to Craft a Weapon (event activates)
Free Hugs Pt. 5 – Squish Rigellian Invaders X 20 – Sky Finger (Prize Menu activates / Friend Actions activate)
**Note: Once you reach Free Hugs Pt. 3 some event content will unlock i.e Rigellian aliens, Craft Store, etc. Between part 3-5 more and more will activate. If you think something is wrong because you can’t tap on anything in your friend’s town, relax, it may mean they have not reached Part 5 above and activated the option. In such a case use the Other Springfield to complete the initial quest.
Navigation / Base Game Changes
Along with the enormous update came some much-needed improvements to the base game and some of its options. Mrfy touched on them with his always superb “What Changed…” post which can be found here. I just want to delve a tiny bit deeper to help you all navigate throughout your games. On the surface from the main Play screen everything seems like normal aside from the fall-colored and leafless trees, the darkened edges of the screen and the leaves blowing around. It’s after you tap the Build Menu that the biggest and most notable change appears.
Instead of the standard sliding menu we now have a more interactive and organized menu. Once you tap the Build Menu icon (hammer/saw) you will see this:
The pop-up menu is now broken down into tiles. There’s a “main” tile which will display the main update, obviously, and a Go To button that will take you directly to the event’s content menu. What will appear in this tile when there isn’t an event is unknown at this time but for now this is what you will see.
To the left of the “main” tile are 3 smaller tiles, these are 3 of the new categories that the menu has been separated into. To access the full selection of the menu tap the yellow arrow and this will open up:
Every single item in the game has been separated into 15 categories, there’s 16 now because one is the Halloween event menu. Many of the items that are available for purchase appear in more than one of these categories as well. I have numbered them to tell you what each tile is:
Characters – Only characters you do not already own will appear here if added or unlocked for purchase.
Premium Stuff – Items that cost donuts, Homer Buddhas, Mystery Boxes, etc.
Currency – Donut packages for real money and cash packages for donuts as it always has been.
Squidport
Treehouse of Horrors XXV – The current event. I’m assuming this tile will be whichever update is taking place at any given time that has content for sale.
Buildings
Businessess – NOT the same as Buildings. Has all items that represent any type of business i.e. Peanut Cart, Fleet-a-Pita, etc.
Houses
Civic – All items relating to town administration, municipal items i.e. weather station, City Hall, etc.
Aspirational
Decorations
Land & Roads – This tile combines the texture options with the option to purchase any available land and is also available in the Move menu.
Nature – Self explanatory
Walls – Any and all walls and fences
Leisure - Tetherball, Monkey bars, etc.
Miscellany – Odds and ends i.e. Jet-engine bike, Shiva statue, etc.
Also your personal inventory is also separated into categories as well, almost the exact same as the above menu with a few differences such as Krustyland items:
The best way to find out exactly what each Inventory tile is to just explore for yourself. Hopefully, the summary of the main Build Menu has given you a footing to start navigating on your own. Now getting back to the event.
Currency
As with any event, the normal cash currency takes a backseat to a temporary special currency which is required to win prizes, unlock quests, etc. There are a number of main currencies with this event, 3 to be exact. Each one will be the main collected currency with corresponding prizes for a set amount of time and then the next currency as well as a new set of prizes will activate negating the previous currency and set of prizes. What this means is you have a certain number of days to collect each set of prizes or you risk not winning them at all because they will be swapped out for new prizes when the time is up. The 3 currencies are:
Probes: October 7 – October 20
Ray Guns: October 20 – October 31
Long Protein Strings: October 31 – November 12
Each currency has 10 Personal Prizes to be won by either obtaining enough of said currency or by purchasing the rush to get them with donuts.
Probes
Probes are the first main currency of the event, they are what you collect when you squish Rigellians. There are a number of Personal Prizes to be obtained during this event and they are acquired by reaching certain increments of Probes. Much like the Gold with the Clash of Clones event, you do not “spend” probes in exchange for prizes but rather you reach a certain amount to unlock the prizes.
Ray Guns
Ray Guns will be the event’s second currency as stated above. Obtain them using the same method as the probes by squishing aliens, grem-aliens, UFO’s, etc.
Long Protein Strings
Same as above, the Long Protein Strings will be the third and final event currency.
Gift Bags / Crafting
Another means to win prizes and essentially “build” items comes in the form of Gift Bags. There are three types of Gift Bags, bronze, silver and gold. You can obtain Gift Bags by sending the kids of Springfield on task to Trick-Or-Treat. Each child set on this task is guaranteed to be awarded 1 Gift Bag. Each bag is guaranteed to contain a certain amount of ingredients. Gather enough of these ingredients and you can craft or brew special prizes aside from the Personal Prizes.
There are 7 ingredients:
Broken Fence
Rotten Egg
Candy Corn
Gummy Bear
Chocolate Bar
Pumpkin
*Bronze Bags are guaranteed to contain at least 1 Broken Fence and 1 Rotten Egg.
*Silver Bags are guaranteed to contain at least one Gummy Bear and one Candy Corn.
*Gold Bags are guaranteed to contain at least 1 Chocolate Bar and 1 Pumpkin
Aside from the guaranteed contents, Gift Bags can and will also contain:
Nails
Nails are used to craft upgrades to your weapon. Your weapon is what is required to squish Rigellians.
Event Currency (Probes, Ray Guns, Long Protein Strings, depending on what is activated at the time)
UFO Ammo
Ammo is required to shoot down Flying Saucers in your friend’s towns. Once activated UFO’s will appear in your friend’s towns and as long as you have ammo you can tap them to shoot them down and win Gift Bags and other goodies.
Rigellian Shrub
A new decoration that improves Vanity. Will automatically be placed in your Inventory.
Human Test Subject
Another new decoration, aside from being won in Gift Bags, these can also be crafted using the ingredients above.
Spooky Wall
Brought back from the 2013 event these also can be crafted as well as found in Gift Bags.
Donuts X 2
Grem-Alien Eggs
These eggs can be dropped in a friend’s town to spawn Grem-Aliens.
Each Gift Bag has 4 possible prize/ingredient combinations and will contain 6 items, 2 of which are guaranteed as stated above.
How To Craft
There are 2 ways to arrive at the Crafting Menu. One is the Craft Icon on the top right corner of the screen:
The second is by tapping the events main building, the Make-a-Thing Workshop
I will cover this and all buildings along with decorations, characters and skins that have or will arrive with this event in the next part of the Overview.
Tapping either option above will open the Craft Menu:
This menu contains every bit of info you need to craft weapon upgrades and prizes. Going from top to bottom the menu tells you:
How many of each Treat Bag you currently have. Tapping the bag icons will open them. There is also a direct-connect button to buy more bags with donuts through the Get More button.
What level your weapon is at, how many nails you have out of 5 to reach the next upgrade and a Get It Now! button to rush the upgrade with donuts.
A list of unlocked prizes that you can craft using the ingredients found in the Gift bags, how many of each ingredient you have and how many more you need to reach the crafting option and a Get It Now! button to rush the build with donuts. This list can and will change throughout the event depending on with prize you have unlocked, which ones you have already obtained, etc. Some prizes are unique and will be removed as a craft option once you’ve built it and acquired it. The remainder of the prizes are non-unique and you can build as many as you want or can depending on how many ingredients you acquire for each.
Your ingredient inventory is at the very bottom of the menu. It tells you how many of each of 7 main ingredients you have. It is important to note that unlike the main event currency ingredients WILL deplete as you use them to build items.
Daily Bonus
The normal payouts of the Daily Bonus has been put on the back burner for this event and instead of 4 cash payouts and 1 Mystery Box, it is now:
Day 1 – Bronze Treat Bag
Day 2 – Bronze Treat Bag
Day 3 – Silver Treat Bag
Day 4 – Silver Treat Bag
Day 5 – Gold Treat Bag
Rigellians / Grem-Aliens
Rigellians
Spawn time: Every 5 minutes
Max Amount: 50
Activating Quest: Free Hugs Pt. 2
Much like the zombies and ghosts of previous events, the Rigellians are what has been unleashed this year. They are spawned every 5 minutes and your town has a limit of 50 before you get the “Too Many Aliens” warning.
Unlike the ghosts, however, there are no quirky Frink devices to wipe all of them out at once. These pesky little guys have to be tapped one at a time. Although I have noticed in my game that more than one will squish at the same time if I tap in between them.
Squishing Rigellian teenagers oddly enough will yield you currency, whichever is the current one, as well as some other goodies. One of those goodies brings us to the next event “pest”, the Grem-Aliens.
Grem-Aliens / Eggs
A new and improved take on the gremlins of the 2013 Halloween event, the Grem-Aliens are a hybrid of the 2 species, aliens and gremlins. By way of the eggs dropped by players in their neighbors towns, the Grem-Aliens can bring you some much-needed currency and help you obtain the Personal Prizes faster.
Eggs can be awarded from Gift Bags, tapping aliens and are for purchase in the event store in different increments for donuts. A total of 10 eggs can be left in a neighbors town. If you are trying to drop eggs in a friend’s town and cannot after a certain amount, it is because someone else has also left eggs and the friend has reached their max of 10.
If a Grem-Alien has not been caught or tapped by the receiving neighbor in 4 hours, you will receive 4 Probes, Ray Guns or Long Protein Strings, whichever is active. However, if your friend catches the creature within 4 hours you both will share the bounty and receive 2 each of the active currency.
Attacking Citizens
The invading alines in your town if left to wander can attack the citizens of Springfield. You’ll know this has happened if you see one of your characters walking around with what appears to be an alien hat or mask on. This is because the alien has attached itself to the face of the character. A character being attacked does not affect any rewards or payouts, you will receive the same amount with the same chances by tapping the character and clearing the alien as if you tapped the alien alone. But it does make for some really funny graphics.
The characters that can be attacked are:
Homer
Lisa
Grampa Simpson
Apu
Bart
Bumblebee Man
Cletus
Comic Book Guy
Hans Moleman
Kent Brockman
Luigi
Marge
Ned Flanders
Patty and Selma
Rev. Lovejoy
Sea Captain
Skinner
Smithers
Snake
Chief Wiggum
Willy
Wolfcastle
Mr. Burns
Krusty
Well my friends, I believe I have covered pretty much all of the basics of the event and have given you enough to get going to stop the alien invasion in your towns. Stay tuned right here at Topix for much more coverage of the Treehouse of Horrors 2014 event. We sincerely hope you are enjoying it as much as we are. Part 2 of the Overview will be published soon and will cover all of the content that has been introduced or re-introduced.
Happy Tapping!
Mike S.