Last Update: Flutterflies quest complete

The flutterflies quest seems to finally be calming down, or slowing down to a crawl. I’ve noticed over the last couple of days that quite a few show up in the morning (for me) and then it’s pretty much a matter of one flutterfly for every lure planted for the rest of the day (although sometimes only one shows up after planting two).

The morning thing seems odd because I know what’s morning for me won’t be morning for the rest of the world. As I said in my last post, however, I suspect that as people succeed at the first two quests more of the rare butterflies are being released and fewer are being captured. This means fewer will be released into your kingdoms by friends.

A number of players also seem to think one player can choose who received his captured flutterflies. This is true only to a limited extent. I can only send captured flutterflies to players from a list ngmoco:) provides. The same names seem to cycle through those lists. As a consequence, Carol can send me captured flutterflies but I can’t send any to her because her name never appears in my lists. I don’t know how those lists are generated so I apologize to any players who don’t receive captured flutterflies from me.

I did finally see the peridot flutterfly (which, if you didn’t know is yellow-green) and captured it to finish the quest and unlock the grand rosy temple. The temple is as underwhelming as the grand azure temple but the payout is slightly higher.

The grand rosy temple is almost indistinguishable from the grand azure temple because the colors are so faded. And while the azure temple came with an azure flutterfly (turquoise anyway) the rosy temple comes with an opal one.

The rosy temple looks almost exactly like the grand azure temple except for the faded rose color. Maybe they will bloom into bright colors when the rental period is up. We can hope. Here are the final numbers for the quest.

Shop	CP	Hourly	Vcp	V Xp
Azure Temple	1875	78	2500	50
Grand Azure	2837	95	3850	68
Grand Rosy	4331	144	5775	102

I know the event has been frustrating for a number of players, but with four days left to go most of you should be able to finish if you keep trying. Several other players earned the final temple long before I did so I don’t think it’s out of reach if you’ve been playing since the event began.

The fact that ngmoco:) gave players a lot more time to catch only three more creatures indicates that they are trying to work the wrinkles out. I think this round showed them a lot of the wrinkles they hadn’t counted on and hopefully the next event will be a lot more fun and a lot less aggravating.

More flutterfly updates

Hopefully this will be the final update before the end of the flutterfly event. But the way things have been going it will all change again tomorrow.

Thanks to Lycopodium we have the list of creatures:

1. Catch the flutterflies
• Garnet
• Amethyste
• Jade
2. Flutterfly expert
• Citrine
• Amber
• Topaz
3. Flutterfly master
• Turquoise
• Peridot
• Opal

The Grand Azure temple, the reward for the second quest, delivers 3850cp for vendors (128 hr) and 3837 (96) for customers. It’s also really unappealing. Yes, we saw the picture in the preview splash screen but I really didn’t realize it would look that way in our kingdoms. Hopefully the last goal with deliver a real payoff.

The Grand Azure Temple may well be the ugliest building ever released into We Rule. I’m sure one of the players reading the blog can tell me what the significance is, but that won’t make it any more pretty.

If we get there, of course.

The rate of butterflies being released into my kingdoms has dwindled to nothing. This could be because players have given up sending butterflies to other players, but I’ve used mojo to accelerate my lure harvests four times and only produced four flutterflies in the process. This is quite different from the first day when the first lures I planted attracted six or seven immediately.

In addition, I’ve seen no garnet or amethyst flutterflies since I completed the expert goal. I never really expected to see the new three right away (even though I spent 10m to catch the opal earlier and got jack for it). This is the most puzzling aspect of all.

My only guess is that a lot of players on the first goal had been sending the common flutterflies to the other players, and when some players reached the expert goal they started sending the more rare ones. Now, however, most players have moved on to the expert goal (or given up altogether) and so there are no more common flutterflies being sent to fellow players.

ngmoco:) may have decided to slow the game down because so many players were succeeding so quickly. Let’s hope they don’t forget what happened last time when a number of players didn’t even get to finish the dragon goal because they never found the crystal dragon.

Sure there are five days to go, but at this point so many players are confused that I wonder how long they will bother to pursue it. If I weren’t writing this blog, I would have given up yesterday.

Let’s hope that if a lot of players are still looking for flutterflies on Monday morning ngmoco:) holds off the next new product release and extends the goal a few days for the sake of player relations.

Early Return Special Event Edition

From dragons to flutterflies

I planned to return from my sabbatical on Monday, but now seemed to be the better time. After all, ngmoco:) kept everybody waiting for a special event, moved it back from Thursday to Friday and then, at 10:30 PST (after midnight for half the country) when most of us had given up waiting and decided to party, they released the flutterflies.

Many of you may have been disappointed. Dragons seem a noble quest, flutterflies slightly less so. Had they been the ferocious turbocharged Mothra style monstrosities depicted in the early press release, players may have felt themselves up to a noble challenge.

Players may have been disappointed by the difference between the mammoth beast promised and the cute creature who finally arrived. I tracked the progress from promotional art to concept art to the final version in the game. I’m fine with it personally, but for many players I imagine it would be like ordering a Porsche online and finding a Kia in your driveway.

Maybe I’m being unkind. The reality of game design is that the more complex the creature the more pixels required to compute and redraw, the more processing power to refresh the screen with each flap of each wing. The more computations, the slower the game. On the other hand, cute butterflies wouldn’t have whipped up as much anticipation.

So the designers, developers and promotion team were faced with a dilemma, and they solved it by promising Mothra and delivering Flutter Fly. Maybe if they had the flutterfly breathe fire out of his ass instead of little butterflies, however, players would have been mollified.

Where are the rare creatures?

A number of players were frustrated on the last quest because they never spotted the crystal or crimson dragon. When those players embark on this quest I can only offer two pieces of advice:

• Plant and harvest those lures at least as often as it takes them to mature.
• Check in every couple of hours and capture every flutterfly that pops up even if you already caught one. You don’t have to use mojo, just keep catching them.

As with the last quest the creatures follow a pattern. The garnets are so easy to catch you don’t need the mojo net (I’m 32-2 with the free net). The amethysts are much harder to catch (I’m 0-7 without the mojo net) and the jades only show up once in every couple of dozen. I haven’t seen any of the rarer creatures but in my experience with the dragons they show up once or twice a day if you keep catching the common ones.

The amethyst temple for the first level is okay, with 1800cp for customers and about 76cp hourly.

Don’t wait to the last minute. Play now and often. Plan on using mojo for every type but the garnets. Multiples you catch in one round will not count for later levels but catch them anyway (but not with mojo).

The amethyst temple for the first level is okay, with 1800cp for customers and about 76cp hourly. This is a great deal for players at lower levels, not much use for players further up the level ladder. But the rewards will definitely improve with each new goal.

Beware of the downside to this event. If you really intend to play, your screen will fill with those little pests, and they will begin to seem like pests quickly. Even worse, all those little pests will really eat into your iPhone and iPad 1 processor, so expect a few more crashes than usual.

I’ve had to do a hard reboot on my iPad every time i wanted to play.

If you’re L65 and have all the cute crap you need, you may want to sit this one out. But if you want to play, and those temples look pretty, I would still go for it.