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| Notification for New Year 2018 goals and sale |
Unsurprisingly New Year is the theme, with a short goal set lasting five days giving players the opportunity to unlock three new recipes on an existing appliance - the Food Replicator. This is very much like the recent quests that involved the Popcorn Maker and Turkey Cooker in that they are centred upon the one appliance, with batches of both the old and new dishes needing to be cooked.
Somehow I suspect that there will be lots of groaning going on at the timing of this mini quest. It's that funny week between Christmas and New Year when nobody is quite sure whether they're coming or going and may not have time to dedicate themselves to completing these goals. However it's quite the opposite situation for me - I've been off work all this week and am ready as I'll ever be for goals!
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| Introduction to Food Replicator goals |
The difficulty with a New Year themed event is that there's not really any other suitable time to run it. Before Christmas and everyone complains because it's too early; into 2018 and everyone complains because it's too late. It's probably for this reason that New Year has been grossly underrepresented down the years in Restaurant Story - we got a dedicated and full-blown update last year, but otherwise the rare occasions when the bubbly has been opened have tended to be lacking and underwhelming.
This is only the second time there have ever been goals to go with any New Year goodies, with the last being as we saw in 2012. Of course with this being a flash goal set there's not a huge amount to get excited about - the only completely new content are the three unlockable recipes:
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| New recipes on Food Replicator - to be updated with details |
In terms of appearance, this trio are very disappointing. They are just a re-colouring and renaming of the three existing entries on the Food Replicator - the appliance lives up to the name! This is definitely something I'd prefer Storm8 steered away from - it feels cheap and gives the impression that they don't really care about their game all that much.
And that feeling is only furthered by the numbers for these foods. In each case all of the statistics are identical to those of the matching dish. So that means we have the following ratings:
| Red Dwarf Star Pizza | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit | XP gain | Portions | Profit per plate | Availability | Rating |
| 3 | 2 | 2 | 10 | 5 | 3.3 |
| Lunar Cake | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit | XP gain | Portions | Profit per plate | Availability | Rating |
| 4 | 5 | 3 | 10 | 5 | 4.8 |
| Atomic Cookies | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profit | XP gain | Portions | Profit per plate | Availability | Rating |
| 1 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 3.1 |
The only factor which differentiates these efforts from the existing trio is the availability - the originals net a nine for this since the Food Replicator unlocks at level 13, whereas the new entries get the standard score of five that is assigned to goal recipes.
Looking past the duplication there's not much to get excited about with these numbers. The profit, portion and XP yields are fairly average for each food, with the exception of profit for the Atomic Cookies which ties for the second worst in the 10 hour duration. Only the Torch Ice Cream (Ice Cream Machine) provides a poorer profit.
One positive is that these new additions bring us up to 800 recipes in Restaurant Story. That's quite the achievement really, and leads me to ponder whether we may ever make it to the magical 1,000.
As well as the new dishes, there's also a final prize to consider before deciding whether to embark on the goals. When all is said and done you can obtain the New Year Party, a 3x3 sized floor decoration which was originally available as a limited time offer in 2014. Given that this piece came with a 34 gem asking price when initially released, the opportunity to get hold of it for free shouldn't be squandered!
I already own the New Year Party and am rather put out by the copied recipes, yet still find myself clearing my stoves and ovens to partake in this quest. The six bonus mastery gems are the reason I'm still motivated, although the novelty of getting involved in a New Year themed goal set is also a contributing factor, even if the final prize is really the only genuine New Year related link.
Fortunately the five day sale very much taps into the New Year side of things:
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| New Year 2018 sale items |
There are 15 items included, some of which are from what you might call the 'olden days'. The original New Year related update came at the end of 2011, which was even before I started playing. I don't believe the likes of the Clock Table, Clock chair and Spotlight have been made available since, so this is undoubtedly a great opportunity six years on to bag some vintage content.
The Black and Shiny floor tiles may be of particular interest to many players - I've found both to be incredibly useful throughout the years, and so strongly urge anyone who hasn't had access to them previously to stock up. Remember that iOS users need only purchase one copy of each to then have the ability to buy more for all of time - sadly no such trick exists for Android players.
This may only be a 15 item sale, but it's still a refreshing one in my book and is pivotal to making this update a success given the recycled nature of the accompanying goals.
So presumably that does it for another year in Restaurant Story! We've survived the rollercoaster and can now reflect. And that's exactly what I'll be doing when I release my annual year in review post in a few days time. Expect a lengthy but thrilling read!
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