Striiv: Creating an Island of Animals

Thanks to the readers who commented on my post about keeping animals.  I have verified the following:

• Animals that appear when you finish a plant or fixture will disappear if you sell that plant or fixture (with the exception of the large green dragon)
• Animals that are rewards in Myland scroll challenges remain even if you sell the corresponding plant or fixture
• Animals that are rewards from mystery boxes always remain

So if you wanted to have a land of just animals, here's what you do:

1. Buy Turtle Island
2. When you are about to open a mystery box, travel over to Turtle Island first, then open the box.  This way the animals remain over there.
3. For more animals, spin a Myland challenge that produces an animal, like a tiger orchid, fire maple, or grandfather trees.  When you complete the challenge, and the animal is released, you can sell the plant if you like.

It would be interesting to see how many animals the island can handle!

Striiv: Can you create an Animal Farm?

One reader thought it might be cool to populate (overpopulate) the islands with animals by selling plants and then rebuilding them to attract more animals.

Bad news, I'm afraid.  When you sell a plant, the Striiv will sometimes randomly remove an animal as well.  So in the same way that building things attracts animals, sell them repels them.

I decided to sell every plant and fixture I had built on Turtle Island.   When the land was empty almost all the animals were gone.  The ones that remained were the ones that were "gifted" to me by the mystery boxes, plus the giant green dragon from my Acropolis.

So it appears that it would be almost impossible to overpopulate your island.  You'd have to buy A LOT of mystery boxes:  I'd do bronze if you're so inclined.

By the way, in a future post I will go through the statistical analysis of when to buy mystery boxes and which kind... stay tuned.

Keep Striiving!

How fast can you build all of the Striiv Myland?

As you can see from these two pictures, I managed to plant on every lot on every island:

So how long does that take?  Well, if you average close to 10 miles and 2800 stairs per day, and if you buy plants that yield 4000 gold per day or more, you can do it in...

15 days.  Maybe you can do it faster, but with the 1 million energy-per-day limit it will be difficult.

So much for my 15-day experiment.  I think I will take a break for awhile and do more swimming and weightlifting, activities I have neglected for months since they don't earn Striiv energy :)

Applying Break-Even Analysis to Striiv MyLand

When you scroll through the various plants and fixtures that you can buy, Striiv shows you the price and the payoff.  The price is a one-time cost, and the payoff is anywhere from several times an hour to two days.

If you are buying the plants that are the prettiest, or that give you a cool animal, then you don't need to worry about payoff.  However, if you want to yield the most gold then you should look at it as a business investment.

In the business world, the break-even analysis is a process that determines the volume of goods that must be sold to cover both fixed and variable costs.  In the Striiv world, we can use break-even analysis to determine how many days of generating gold does the plant or fixture pay for itself.

Let's run through an example.  Suppose you are debating between the Cyclops' Revenge and the Lemur Tree House.  The tree house is certainly more visually appealing so maybe you are leaning that way.  The payoffs are pretty close:  Cyclops pays 4,500 every 9 hours, and Lemur Tree House pays 4,000 every 10 hours.  However, the cost differences are staggering.  The Cyclops costs 16,000 gold, so it will "break even" in less than 2 days.  The Lemur Tree House costs 175,000!  This means it will take almost 22 days to generate enough gold to overtake its cost.

What's the worst plant in terms of break-even?  The Fairy Forest, which takes 1,754 days, or 4.8 YEARS to cover its 50 million price tag.  If you buy a gold mystery box and get half-price, then it will only take 2.4 years.

What is the best plant in terms of pure break-even?  Well if you click the Myland scroll and spin for the right challenge, the Celestial Observatory is the best buy in terms of break-even.  The "build 3 observatories" challenge pays a 50,000 bonus.  However, each Observatory only costs 10,000.  When you build 3 with the challenge you break even (better actually) the moment it is built.  So why not build all observatories?  Well because you also have to look long-term.  The payout of the Observatory is only 750 every 2hrs 40 minutes, and it takes up 4 lots.

So what is the best plant in terms of break-even and long-term payoff?   For me it's the Bougainvillea.  It costs 3,000 gold, but with a challenge you can get 1,500 back.  If you have a Plant Sale mystery box you can get the cost down to almost nothing.  And it pays 2,000 gold every ten hours, and only takes up 1 lot.
 

Striiv: Is it possible to earn a million energy in one workout?

In Striiv 1.0, before there were races, it was nearly impossible to earn more than 200,000 energy in a day.  Now that Walkatron is around, it is much easier to earn energy.

To see how much bonus energy you have earned in a day, go to the Trophies page and look at the top of the screen.  It might say something like "297k in bonuses."  The creators of Striiv have capped daily bonuses at a million, presumably to prevent cheaters from, well from cheating.

Today I found a nice big, steep hill that was more than 300 equivalent stairs.  I spun for one of my favorite challenges, like Do 15 minutes in 25 or Run 250 steps in 20.  Then I selected the Walkatron Tower race and ran up the hill.  I earned close to 100,000 energy with the time bonus.  I selected the Downtown race and jogged back down the hill.  That cycle took about 6 minutes.  I did 8 of those cycles, and with all the challenges I completed, I hit the 1,000,000 energy.

At that point you may not realize that you are no longer earning bonus energy.  You still earn the standard energy points for steps, running, and stairs, but no more donations and no more bonus energy.  Unfortunately challenges will still pop up, and you can still do races, but the energy does not accumulate.  Hopefully in a future release Striiv will at least give you a warning.

Exercising to Maximize Donations

The challenges and races you choose will have different impacts on the energy you add and the donations you earn.  Suppose you get to the base of a hill and you decide you want to climb up and down it a few times.  If it's a 300-stair (equivalent stairs) hill, you would maximize energy gain by choosing the Tower stair race on the way up and the Downtown step race on the way down.  Depending on your speed, you would get anywhere from 68,000 to 90,000 energy.  But you wouldn't have earned even one water or rain forest donation.
Why?  Because only the first 4,000 of a bonus (or 6,000 for polio) are used to apply to donations.  (Remember to keep your eye on the lightning bolt and click Apply Bonus, otherwise you won't even get that much.)

To maximize donations, you need to do the smaller races.  If I am at the base of that same 300-stair hill, I might do the following steps:
1.  Start a challenge, so that I'm doubling up (see my previous post).
2.  Choose the Apartment Race (40 stairs).
3.  Climb the hill until I've won the race.
4.  TURN BACK DOWN the hill, and walk down while I go over to the donations page and Apply Bonus.
5.  Go back to the Race page and choose the Apartment Race.  This may take you 10 steps/stairs going down, so you've made the hill longer.
6.  Turn back up and start climbing again.

Repeat these steps until you get to the top of the hill, and then do the Downtown step race down to the bottom.  Depending on your speed, you would get anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 energy.  (You did more work because you walked partway down the hill 9 times and had to retrace those steps.)  BUT, you would earn more than 2 days of water, or 2 lots of rainforest, or 2 polio vaccines at the same time.

Hopefully that's clear.... have fun Striiving!

What are the best MyLand Challenges?

The scroll in the upper right corner of the MyLand screen is for MyLand challenges.  Some of these challenges are just to show you that you can zoom in/out, scroll, etc.  Many challenges offer gold or an animal for building a particular plant or fixture.  So if you want your land to have a  warrior poet, for instance, you might spin for the "build a warrior poet" challenge, which gives you a 1000 gold as a prize.  So you end up getting a 25% discount, or more if you do it during a sale.  (By the way, I don't usually pay attention to the names of the challenges, but the name Chiseled Abs for the warrior poet is great.)

The challenges that give you gold for collecting your gold are no brainers.  The percent return can vary from 20% to 34.3%.  The best percentages are for 35,000 and 50,000.  However, it can be very time consuming to contantly spin for these once you have many lands full of plants and buildings.  So I usually go for 250,000 or 500,000 which give you a 30% bonus.  If I am in the middle of a treasure chest like "earn 4x gold" then I might do the 1,000,000, and live with the 27.5% bonus.  The 2.5M challenge yields the worst return.

But the best challenges are the ones for "Have xx complete plants" and "Attract xx Animals".   They are one-time challenges.  You don't have to count the plants and animals.  Just spin for the challenge, and then click on the scroll and you will see your progress.  If you have a ways to go, then abandon the challenge and spin for it later.  Here are the challenge values:

8 plants:  300
16 plants:  yellow ostrich
30 plants:  30,000
50 plants:  green dragon
75 plants:  150,000
100 plants:  500,000

10 animals: 25,000
15 animals: ostrich
25 animals: 100,000
35 animals: 150,000
50 animals: 250,000

Striiv Challenges and Races: Double Up!

Is it possible to complete a challenge and race Walkatron at the same time?  Absolutely!  When you accept a challenge, click Start but don't start moving just yet.  Don't worry; in 99% of challenges you won't run out of time.  Instead, go back to the home page (twice), click on race, then Walkatron.  Ignore the others -- all three are much slower than you are, so may as well go for the triple points.  If you accepted a stair challenge, then do a stair race that is a little longer.  If you accepted a time (minutes of activity) or steps challenge, then do stair races, if you can, during the entire time.  If you're legs need a break, switch to a step race.

By the way, if you run up the stairs, Striiv will give you the 10x points for the stairs, but not the 5x points for the running at the same time.  So if you can (carefully) run DOWN the stairs, you will get running credits going down and stair credits going up.

For instance, today I decided to work out at a 6-story parking garage, which allows me to do the Hotel 80-stair race as quickly as I can.  When I spun the Run (+650) Steps in 10 minutes I started it at the top of the stairs, and gained 80 running steps on the way down, then did another 80-stair race, then ran down... I did it 8 times in less then the 10 minutes, which gave me 7500 energy for the challenge, plus around 175,000 for winning the 8 races by an average of 28 stairs.  Then I rested.... and spun for the next challenge.

Can you "Win" the Striiv MyLand game?

There are obvious intermediate goals in the MyLand game:  open up the highlands and lowlands, buy Turtle Island, and then open up the remaining parts of Turtle Island.

However, it is somewhat demoralizing to complete all of those intermediate tasks and then not have another goal.  For me personally this is a deficiency for the Striiv.  Many of us addicts are motivated by the challenges and goals.  When I buy a game online, whether it's a "match 3" or "strategy" or "hidden object", it always has an end.  You get a message like "Congratuations you have reach the end!"  (or you've saved the kingdom, or the child, or whatever).   The better games will add "Try again in the more difficult mode" where you get less time, or fewer hints, or something of that nature.

So until Striiv creates an end game, I have decided on one:  The final goal is to have open every land, plus build a Fairy Forest, plus plant something on every single lot, plus earn 100 million gold.  I completed that goal last week, and at least earned the satisfaction of meeting me my goal.  I then recorded how long it took me (from the statistics page).  The next morning I reset my Striiv and started over.  I am taking what I've learned and will try to reach this final goal in fewer days than it took me last time.

Have you come up with something similar?

What are all the Striiv animals?

Animals can be "attracted" to the MyLand Striiv game in several different ways.  First, you can spin a MyLand challenge, such as Grow 2 Grandfather Trees.  Second, you can open a treasure chest.  Third, an animal can just appear when you finish growing a plant or fixture.  Each plant/fixture will always attract the same animal.  For instance, the Greek Villa will always attract a purple lemur, and never anything else.

The odds of getting an animal are about 1 in 5 unless you have the Honey Pot, where the odds grow to 2 in 5 (from the bronze treasure chest) or 3 in 5 (from the silver treasure chest) or 4 in 5 (from the gold treasure chest).  The very expensive plants and fixture seem to attract an animal.
There are eight species of animals in MyLand:  lemurs, tigers, turtles, ostriches, parrots, centaurs, dragons, and fairies.  Within each species there are often color variations, and one size variation.  Here is a complete list:

Lemur:  brown, yellow, purple
Tiger:  orange, white, black
Turtle:  brown
Ostrich:  black, yellow
Parrot:  multicolor
Centaur:  blond, brunette, redhead
Dragon:  green, red, and Large Green
Fairy:  purple with monarch wings

Send a comment if you are looking to attract a specific animal, and I can tell you all the different ways you can get it.