 |
| Notification for Summer update |
The notification above is for a new box, the Bonfire Crate, which is available for 24 gems. This isn't something which sets the pulse racing, but the remainder of the update should make up for that. Here's the full list of new stuff:
Floor decorations:
- Giant Snowman - 20 gems (LTO)
- Blue Tree - 4 gems (LTO)
- Pink Tree - 4 gems (LTO)
- Snowman Waiter - 24 gems (LTO)
- Holiday Fireplace - 10 gems (LTO)
- Dreidel - 8 gems (LTO)
- Nutcracker Chef - 14 gems (LTO)
- Holiday Bear - 10,000 coins (LTO)
- Festival of Lights - 25,000 coins (LTO)
Boxes:
- Bonfire Crate - 24 gems
Remarkably, TeamLava have brought back a selection of Christmas items from yesteryear for six days only!
This is an unprecedented move. but one I'm delighted with! Here we have an early opportunity to grab some decorations which will come in handy next month for the festive period. To add to the ecstasy, all of the items on offer are originally from Christmas 2011 (perhaps with the exception of the Holiday Fireplace?), with some of them even limited time offers back then. So the vast majority of players won't have seen much of this content before, myself included!
I bought the Holiday Fireplace when it was brought back last year, not least because it's an absolute steal at 10 gems. No indoor Christmas scene is truly complete without a fireplace covered in stockings and festive decorations, so this is a piece well worth investing in.
The Blue Tree and Pink Tree are also excellent value in my opinion, especially if this is your first Christmas playing the game and you don't currently have a Christmas tree for the occasion. The Pink Tree was among the deals for Black Friday in 2013 (for 7 gems!) so is clearly popular at TeamLava Towers! On the other hand I had never seen the Blue Tree before!
Jewish players celebrating Hanukkah in December are catered for too, with the Dreidel and Festival of Lights available. It's nice to see religions other than Christianity getting included - it's not something we see too often.
The Holiday Bear is a cute little piece which is worth spending the 10,000 coins on considering that you may never have another opportunity to purchase it. In contrast you'll have to think carefully about the Giant Snowman and Snowman Waiter as they're both much more expensive. I actually listed the Giant Snowman as one of the 10 items I'd most like too see return a couple of months ago, so should really be at the front of the queue.
But there's something holding me back. And that something is Black Friday. If past years are anything to go by, in two days time we'll be getting a mega sale on various items, including old LTOs and box prizes. And considering some of the deals the game's developers have been offering recently (including today) we could be in for something very special! It will be a gem heavy sale, so I strongly suggest that you don't splurge on this Christmas sale just yet, but instead wait until after Black Friday. After all, this festive sale runs until Tuesday so will still be there after this weekend's proceedings are over.
I'm applying this policy at The Garlic Tree. If I've got a sizeable number of gems leftover after Black Friday, then the Giant Snowman and Blue Tree could well be taking up a few squares at my place.
The floor decorations are not the only reunions we're cherishing this evening, because there are also two Basic Oven recipes have been unlocked!
The Prime Rib and Stuffing were goal dishes at Christmas in 2011, and have sat locked in so many players' recipe lists in the time since! I've wanted to see these activated in both of the Christmases I've been playing Restaurant Story, so it's great to finally be able to cook them. It's a shame we've only been granted access to two of the four locked recipes aboard the Basic Oven, although this might be because there are plans to release the others in the coming weeks.
Unfortunately the notification claims the Prime Rib and Stuffing will only be around until 'Sunday night'. In some respects this is fair enough - after all back in the day you needed to work through goals to get them, and moreover those goals infamously required the spending of gems.
But I'm unhappy, and it's due to the length of the Prime Rib. Being a 1 day recipe, the best case scenario is that you could cook four full batches of the rib by Sunday evening. But even with a full compliment of 18 appliances, this falls short of the 83 editions of the rib you'd need to serve to get to level four mastery. So I'm focusing on mastering the Stuffing over the next few days and hoping the expiry time of these dishes is revised to at least the same time as the rest of the Christmas re-releases are due to go.
Recipe rating wise, neither of these foods is a world beater:
I've not got anything further to say about these recipes really - it's all about the mastery gems here, not the yields.
Now we should really take a brief (and I mean brief) look at the Bonfire Crate. There's an image on the TeamLava Blog showing most of its mystery prizes:
We got a couple of Summer updates last month, so it's only fair we get another this month! In all seriousness, it's another clanger by the gamemakers, with this box being completely out of place at this time of year. I understand that players in the southern hemisphere are entering Summer now, but ultimately this is a US game, and usually provides updates skewed towards American players anyway.
The lack of enthusiasm for Summer stuff, as well as the looming gem hoover that is Black Friday, mean it's not exactly surprising that I've not been able to gather any information on the distribution of the prizes for the box, nor the identity of the two items not shown in the above picture. I do urge you not to open the box before Thanksgiving weekend is over, but if you do, feel free to drop a comment with any findings!
We're almost finished, but there is one piece of housekeeping that needs to be done. The Soccer Gnome is being removed from the market.
It's on the same timer as the Christmas returnees, so it should be gone on Tuesday. This continues TeamLava's recent run of removing a floor decoration every now and again, and is getting more and more random. This gnome has been around for two-and-a-half years, so to throw it out after all this time is very strange. I can only assume that this is an attempt to cut down on the number of items in the floor decorations tab, although at the current rate there won't be any noticeable reduction for a long while!
The notification window for the Soccer Gnome's removal mentions that you get 10,000 coins for each one you sell. This is a bizarre thing to do, all the more considering that they cost 8 gems each anyway! Does anybody want to suggest what the thinking is here?!
So that's it. We've had our final pre-Black Friday update. I'm going to be pretty busy on Friday, so the full analysis of the big day (including my buys as I'll definitely be making time for that!) won't be posted until Saturday. I leave you with three nuggets of advice to get you through the madness:
See you all on the other side!
 |
| Notification for limited time Christmas decoration re-release |
This is an unprecedented move. but one I'm delighted with! Here we have an early opportunity to grab some decorations which will come in handy next month for the festive period. To add to the ecstasy, all of the items on offer are originally from Christmas 2011 (perhaps with the exception of the Holiday Fireplace?), with some of them even limited time offers back then. So the vast majority of players won't have seen much of this content before, myself included!
I bought the Holiday Fireplace when it was brought back last year, not least because it's an absolute steal at 10 gems. No indoor Christmas scene is truly complete without a fireplace covered in stockings and festive decorations, so this is a piece well worth investing in.
The Blue Tree and Pink Tree are also excellent value in my opinion, especially if this is your first Christmas playing the game and you don't currently have a Christmas tree for the occasion. The Pink Tree was among the deals for Black Friday in 2013 (for 7 gems!) so is clearly popular at TeamLava Towers! On the other hand I had never seen the Blue Tree before!
Jewish players celebrating Hanukkah in December are catered for too, with the Dreidel and Festival of Lights available. It's nice to see religions other than Christianity getting included - it's not something we see too often.
The Holiday Bear is a cute little piece which is worth spending the 10,000 coins on considering that you may never have another opportunity to purchase it. In contrast you'll have to think carefully about the Giant Snowman and Snowman Waiter as they're both much more expensive. I actually listed the Giant Snowman as one of the 10 items I'd most like too see return a couple of months ago, so should really be at the front of the queue.
But there's something holding me back. And that something is Black Friday. If past years are anything to go by, in two days time we'll be getting a mega sale on various items, including old LTOs and box prizes. And considering some of the deals the game's developers have been offering recently (including today) we could be in for something very special! It will be a gem heavy sale, so I strongly suggest that you don't splurge on this Christmas sale just yet, but instead wait until after Black Friday. After all, this festive sale runs until Tuesday so will still be there after this weekend's proceedings are over.
I'm applying this policy at The Garlic Tree. If I've got a sizeable number of gems leftover after Black Friday, then the Giant Snowman and Blue Tree could well be taking up a few squares at my place.
The floor decorations are not the only reunions we're cherishing this evening, because there are also two Basic Oven recipes have been unlocked!
 |
| Notification for limited time Christmas recipe re-release |
The Prime Rib and Stuffing were goal dishes at Christmas in 2011, and have sat locked in so many players' recipe lists in the time since! I've wanted to see these activated in both of the Christmases I've been playing Restaurant Story, so it's great to finally be able to cook them. It's a shame we've only been granted access to two of the four locked recipes aboard the Basic Oven, although this might be because there are plans to release the others in the coming weeks.
Unfortunately the notification claims the Prime Rib and Stuffing will only be around until 'Sunday night'. In some respects this is fair enough - after all back in the day you needed to work through goals to get them, and moreover those goals infamously required the spending of gems.
 |
| Limited time recipes on Basic Oven |
But I'm unhappy, and it's due to the length of the Prime Rib. Being a 1 day recipe, the best case scenario is that you could cook four full batches of the rib by Sunday evening. But even with a full compliment of 18 appliances, this falls short of the 83 editions of the rib you'd need to serve to get to level four mastery. So I'm focusing on mastering the Stuffing over the next few days and hoping the expiry time of these dishes is revised to at least the same time as the rest of the Christmas re-releases are due to go.
Recipe rating wise, neither of these foods is a world beater:
| Prime Rib | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit | XP gain | Portions | Profit per plate | Availability | Rating |
| 4 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 3.4 |
| Stuffing | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit | XP gain | Portions | Profit per plate | Availability | Rating |
| 4 | 2 | 3 | 10 | 5 | 3.9 |
I've not got anything further to say about these recipes really - it's all about the mastery gems here, not the yields.
Now we should really take a brief (and I mean brief) look at the Bonfire Crate. There's an image on the TeamLava Blog showing most of its mystery prizes:
 |
| Items from Bonfire Crate as shown on TeamLava Blog |
We got a couple of Summer updates last month, so it's only fair we get another this month! In all seriousness, it's another clanger by the gamemakers, with this box being completely out of place at this time of year. I understand that players in the southern hemisphere are entering Summer now, but ultimately this is a US game, and usually provides updates skewed towards American players anyway.
The lack of enthusiasm for Summer stuff, as well as the looming gem hoover that is Black Friday, mean it's not exactly surprising that I've not been able to gather any information on the distribution of the prizes for the box, nor the identity of the two items not shown in the above picture. I do urge you not to open the box before Thanksgiving weekend is over, but if you do, feel free to drop a comment with any findings!
We're almost finished, but there is one piece of housekeeping that needs to be done. The Soccer Gnome is being removed from the market.
 |
| Notification for removal of Soccer Gnome |
It's on the same timer as the Christmas returnees, so it should be gone on Tuesday. This continues TeamLava's recent run of removing a floor decoration every now and again, and is getting more and more random. This gnome has been around for two-and-a-half years, so to throw it out after all this time is very strange. I can only assume that this is an attempt to cut down on the number of items in the floor decorations tab, although at the current rate there won't be any noticeable reduction for a long while!
The notification window for the Soccer Gnome's removal mentions that you get 10,000 coins for each one you sell. This is a bizarre thing to do, all the more considering that they cost 8 gems each anyway! Does anybody want to suggest what the thinking is here?!
So that's it. We've had our final pre-Black Friday update. I'm going to be pretty busy on Friday, so the full analysis of the big day (including my buys as I'll definitely be making time for that!) won't be posted until Saturday. I leave you with three nuggets of advice to get you through the madness:
- Do not buy gems with real money tonight or tomorrow in anticipation of Black Friday. TeamLava have always offered a 40% off gems sale to all players on Black Friday, so you'll get a better deal on the day.
- Take your time with making your purchases (in other words don't take on the bull in a china shop approach!) The offers will be there all day long, so take your budget into account and work out how to make the most of it.
- Don't take too much time with making your purchases (a paradox if there ever was one!) Usually selected items from the Black Friday sale return on the Saturday and Sunday, but at inflated prices. Whatever you're going to buy, buy it on Friday!
See you all on the other side!
Restaurant Story's updates this month have just been getting better and better! Sales on three boxes, LTOs each week, and now a slew of old Xmas content?! If TL goes all-in and brings back previous goal items for Black Friday, I'll be happier than a clam in chowder!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the offering period for these older festive items extends through the Black Friday sale period, but I'm sad to see the Leaf Pile isn't on the list :( I was very much hoping to see that this week. Fingers crossed that it might be brought back for BF.
That said, though, there are quite a few things on the list that are very enticing! I'm also leaning toward the fireplace, for very similar reasons to what you mentioned, and perhaps a few blue trees to scatter around my restaurant. But, of course, these come second to the gem-eating monsters set to be released this weekend ;)
I actually really like the Bonfire Crate, despite the season. Aside from the line of surfboards, which I think is a bit too similar to the surfboard decoration already in the market, and maybe even the radio, which I don't think is worth 24 gems, the prizes look well-detailed and very nice overall. If I go back to having a beach area like I did in the summer, I might just take a gamble.
Fantastic update for RS this week. Bakery's seems a bit lackluster in comparison, but hopefully the coming weeks will make up for it :)
I've probably been a bit unfair with the Bonfire Crate - it's the timing rather than the content itself where the frustration lies. After all I'm in exactly the same boat - I fully expect to re-introduce my beach theme next summer and this stuff would fit in perfectly.
DeleteEnjoy Black Friday! :)