Ancient Egypt goals content report

Having just completed the Ancient Egypt goals today, it's about time I cast my thoughts upon the items which were discovered via the goals.

First to be unearthed was the Sphinx Fountain. What with the Infused Water Fountain and Coconut Fountain as well this year, the game's developers do seem to like including a drink maker as the first goal appliance. This is fine by me - drinks are very under-represented in the game in comparison to the mounds of food available.

Appearance-wise the Sphinx Fountain looks nice enough, although the way the head statue on top is designed leads me to question whether the drinks have been diluted with King Tut's spittle! No such debate with the other new appliance, the Ancient Sands Stove. It's a bit more plain with a sandy colour used all over. Some insight into the quality of the recipes on these two appliances is coming later.

 Ancient Egypt theme

 06/08/14 Goals

 06/08/14 Update

The next two pieces you are likely to unlock are the Desert Hound and Egyptian Cat Statue. Both are similar in principle, yet I am impressed with each of them. Like with the Sarcophagus Statue which I covered in last week's update post, there's real depth to the design here, right down to the extensive jewellery adorned by the cat, which includes an earring and 'tail bracelet'. However I'm not sure the hound will be thanking the gamemakers for giving him golden eyeliner.

The last of the unlockables is the final goal prize, the Treasure Room. It measures at 4x4 in size, so make some space for this monster. There's lots going on in the scene with two bots tucking into a meal within the depths of an ancient Egyptian dwelling. I like how a pair sarcophagi (had to look that plural up!) similar to the one available in the market are included - this allows some good continuity if you're making an area dedicated to the theme.

I'm a bit unsure of the naming of this piece as the treasure seems to consist of a chest tucked away behind one of the eaters and there's the usual issue of having a floor which can't be replicated around about because it's not available to buy. Plus I'm always a little on edge about decorations which include two walls. Yes, it allows extra details from the programmers, but it also restricts where I can really place this whopper. However on the whole it's an item worthy of the climax to a goal set, and at some stage this week I'm going to try and add an Egyptian theme to my collection.

Along the route to unlocking the Treasure Room are six new recipes, and this is where my positive outlook is extinguished. Let's see why with the Sphinx Fountain's efforts.

Sphinx Fountain recipes

I've mentioned already how nice it is to get additional drinks to go with the near 400 strong roster of foods in the game. To think we didn't have something as simple as Strawberry Juice before!

On a geeky note, the gamemakers have used two different spellings of the last recipe. On the recipe list we have Karakadey while in the goal windows Karkadey is utilised. Any Egyptian readers feel free to clarify the correct spelling? In the mean time I'll adopt Karkadey as that's Google's favoured option...

Into the nitty-gritty, let's examine the recipe ratings of these drinks:

Cantaloupe Juice
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
4	2	3	10	5	3.9

Strawberry Juice
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
3	1	3	10	5	3.2

Karkadey
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
4	3	3	10	5	4.2

Well there's not a lot to be said. All three are poor, and deserve little further discussion in all honesty. I'll just point out that each has a dish from the last goal set which it mirrors in the stats with the exception of XP gain - this months offerings are much inferior for XP, hence the way lower overall ratings.

Moving swiftly on to the Ancient Sands Stove dishes:

Ancient Sands Stove recipes

It's a welcome change to have these delicacies served up on a different colour of crockery from the usual blue and white plates and bowls. It's a simple alteration but is one that I've really warmed to.

As for the foods? Here's the ratings:

Ful
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
3	2	3	10	5	3.5

Falafel
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
4	3	3	10	5	4.2

Kushari
Profit	XP gain	Portions	Profit per plate	Availability	Rating
3	3	3	9	5	3.7

Once again there's enough orange on the board for me to write off these recipes immediately. The Falafel is actually near identical to the Karkadey in every way. The only difference is that the Falafel earns one more XP. Not exactly enough to bring out the party balloons.

Compared to last month's excellent XP performers, this set of dishes are woeful. Normal service resumed then as far as goal recipes are concerned! One similarity to flag up though is with respect to the duration of the goal dishes. We used to always have short lengths (1-4 hours) for the first appliance's foods, with only the second appliance giving longer lengths (6+ hours). But this is the second consecutive time we've had longer recipes for both appliances. I prefer the old way as at least it means a chance of having six dishes all with different durations.

I'd like to conclude with some comments about the goals themselves. Because there seems to be a lot of confusion about some components of the goals, and rightly so. First up they followed a different path from normal, with no immediate sidestep after completion of the opening goal. This is no issue for me - I actually quite like to see some variety to the structure of the goals and it's something I've championed in the past.

But there were a couple of technical problems too. Take the 'Cracking the Code' goal which required you to request six Hieroglyphics from neighbours.

Cracking the Code goal

I duly sent out a batch of requests and within half an hour had had two accepted according to the news feed. Yet my counter claimed that I was up to four Hieroglyphics! There was definitely something awry there, and others have claimed not to even have seen this goal appear whatsoever - instead it seems to have passed over completely.

And another fault comes with the traditional community visit goal. Usually you are asked to take a trip to a certain number of community members, leaving a number of tips along the way. But in 'Finding the Key' the goal calls for visits to neighbours, not community members. This seemed queer to me at the time, and I've since discovered (with thanks to Laura Beth) that neighbour visits weren't being counted, and that it was actually community members you needed to go to. And once again there have been counter difficulties, with the number showing up seemingly incorrect.

It's not good to see errors popping up in the goals of all places. They are the highlight of the game for many players and should surely be the update most mollycoddled by TeamLava. Yet this month there were issues in multiple places. We'll let them off this once, but if there are such problems next month I'll be disappointed.

That's my rant over - I'll slump back into my tomb until Wednesday's update!