February 2017 - Lion King is Coming!!

Lion King has arrived to International Tsum Tsum!! Here are the details and pictures!

• Feb 1st to Feb 4th: Lucky Time for Simba and Nala! 

• (UPDATE) Feb 5th to Feb 8th: Lucky Time for Scar only!! If you notice, the "Lucky Time" stamp is only with Scar, and not with Simba nor Nala! This means this is a great time to use your coins to skill up Scar only if you want!

• (UPDATE - AGAIN FEB 5) Feb 9th  5th to Feb 23rd: Lion King Event: Savana Rescue!! UPDATE - Feb 2: As it turns out, the Lion King event would be starting next Thursday. I just saw the revision done in Reddit after someone else pointed it out. Sorry! In the meanwhile, keep on coin farming!! =D

Tidbit: Using Simba, Nala, and Scar will give you character bonuses to help you clear the missions more easily! This event looks to be similar to the Star Wars Part II event last year where even if you can't complete the challenge, you'll still inflict some damage to the hyenas. The goal for the event is to rescue all the animals trapped by the hyenas. Rewards would be Zazu and a Silver Lion King Pin!!

Tidbit: Get Scar for sure! Try to skill him up as much as you can during the lucky time because he's a great coin farmer too! This is a video from Seiji comparing Scar Skill 3 vs Beast Skill 4 without using any bonuses during the game. Scar Skill 3 is comparable to Beast Skill 4, and requires less to fill up his skill meter to activate his skill. Here's another video comparing Scar Skill 1 and Skill 6 by Seiji and Skill 6 Scar is amazing!! Definitely can see this one be one of the top coin farmers if you're looking for another one that you can use!

Tidbit: There are 23 cards to clear in this Lion King Event PLUS apparently there's a Bonus Challenging Card afterwards if you wish to try it, just like the Little Mermaid event!! Clear this bonus challenging card and you get a GOLD Lion King Pin!! My advice is to give it a try. =) I will go through the event and any tidbits I can give for this bonus challenging card, I will definitely note in a new blogpost.

• Feb 10th to 14th: Pick up Capsule!! There will be 5 days given to you to get all 15 capsules, which include:

• Valentine Minnie x 2
• Valentine Daisy x 2
• Aladdin x 1
• Jasmine x 1
• Thumper x 1
• Angel x 1
• Stitch x 1
• Miss Bunny x 1
• Buzz Lightyear x 2
• Jessie x 2

• Feb 13th to Feb 14th: Happy Valentine's Day gift! Simply log into the game only and collect 14 hearts!

• Feb 16th to Feb 19th: Lion King Lucky Time!

• Feb 20th to Feb 23rd: PLAYER SURVEY LUCKY TIME!! Guess what? It's Beast, Belle, Birthday Anna, and Surprise Elsa!! These were the voted picks for this Select Lucky Time done by the players on the International Tsum Tsum game back in Nov 2016. 

This is shaping up to be a very exciting February for International Tsum Tsum players!

Happy Tsuming!! =D

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UPDATE: FEB 4, 2017

Mowgli is coming!! He is a time limited tsum and his lucky time will be from Feb 24th to Feb 27th. Thereafter, he is available for one more day until Feb 28th before you won't be able to get him from the premium box until the next time the developers make him available again.

I know this is a very jam-packed month, especially since it's a short month. How to spend your coins?

Spending tidbit #1: Accumulate your coins and spend it on Scar at the very least, and Simba and Nala if you want them too (though Simba and Nala are not time limited so you can still get them after this month from the premium box).

Spending tidbit #2: Get Scar to at least Skill 3 through the upcoming lucky time. Note: you do need at least 1 Lion King tsum for the event as some of the missions needed to clear the event requires a Lion King tsum. Apparently Zazu would count as a Lion King tsum, though I'm not sure if he would provide any character bonuses as Simba, Nala, and Scar would.

Spending tidbit #3: You will get 2 skill tickets apparently during the Lion King event. IF you want a 3rd skill ticket, please have 450,000 coins ready for the pickup capsule.

Spending tidbit #4: Coin farm as best as you can until Beast/Belle/B.Anna/S.Elsa comes up during the Selected Lucky Time. Try and save up at least 600,000 coins (over 1 million coins ideally if possible) to use for this lucky time as it'd be in your best interest to try and get any one of these tsums up to skill 3 if you don't have them already, or to at least skill 5 if you do have these tsums already. Why? Beast, Belle and Birthday Anna are great coin farmers, especially Beast. Birthday Anna and Surprised Elsa are excellent for high scores. So definitely try to get one of them to Skill 5 if you can if you already have these tsums, and if you don't have them yet, try getting them to at least Skill 3 if you can.

Spending tidbit #5: Try to have around 300,000 coins left by the end of the month to get Mowgli. He's not a particularly powerful tsum, even at Skill 6, but it'd be a nice one to add to your collection nonetheless since he's time limited. Try to just get 1 box of Mowgli since it'd be asking for too much to try and skill him up. Remember, we don't know what March will bring and how fast the next set of new tsums will have so try to save as many coins as you can now.

Hopefully this helped a bit. I understand it's a bit tougher this month with less days at our disposal before March comes, but just keep at it and you'll be able to reap your rewards very soon.

Happy Tsuming! =D

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UPDATE: FEB 5, 2017 

The event starts now! So, the original date was correct then!

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UPDATE: FEB 17, 2017

Turns out there is an Item Sale this month! Starts today and ends on Feb 23rd at 11:59PM (PST).

This is a great time to coin farm to try and get as many coins as you can before the Beast/Belle/B.Anna/S.Elsa lucky time coming up on Mon, Feb 20th!! Go go go!! =D

Some Tidbits for New Players

I've noticed that a lot of new players have started joining the game. Welcome!! =)

I decided to put together a few tidbits on what I believe will help you get onto the fast track faster and therefore be able to catch up alongside those of us who have been playing for over two and a bit years now.

Tidbit #1: Coins matter more than score at the beginning. Don't worry, after playing for a while and leveling up your tsums, you will also reach the millions in score like your colleagues. It just takes time.

Tidbit #2: Join the Reddit Tsum Tsum group and be a contributor to/follower in the community, so you can get updates or hints or advice on various Tsum Tsum issues e.g. how to complete a bingo mission, what tsums to use for coins or score, how to use specific tsums, etc.

Tidbit #3: Add friends! In the Reddit Tsum Tsum group, at the beginning of the month, at the top of the page, there is a thread titled "Monthly Link Megathread" with the current month listed e.g. Monthly /r/TsumTsum Link Megathread - January 2017. Inside this thread is a link to the "Line ID Thread" for the current month. Add maybe up to 20 friends at the beginning so that you can send hearts to them, and in return, receive hearts from them as well. This thread will have active players that are still playing the game. Add 20 of them randomly, OR add your Line ID and info of which timezone you're in into the thread and wait for people to add you.

Tidbit #4: Once you have friends, send them hearts every day! I know this may seem tedious, especially since there is no way to send hearts to everyone in your list (you can only receive all the hearts sent to you), but it's worth it! You can easily make over 30,000 coins in one day just by sending and receiving hearts. How often to send hearts? I'd say minimum 2x a day if you can, 3x to 4x a day if you have lots of time to do so. This is why I suggested to add only 20 people at the beginning because this can easily get time-consuming if you have too many people on your list. I have heard of ways to automatically have systems send hearts for you but I'm not very tech savvy so I've always been a manual heart-sender. Please don't ask me how these systems work. Please refer to Reddit. =) There are lot more tech savvy people there that can explain what works for which phones.

Tidbit #5: You can reward those who send you hearts often! How? By going into your inbox and receiving their hearts manually one by one, not by receiving all at once. Why? By receiving each heart one by one, the system automatically sends out a heart back to the person who sent you that heart. How do I know that? I noticed each time I receive a heart manually one by one in my inbox, the heart next to the person in my ranking list will disappear, meaning I had automatically sent a heart back to that person. This is important! This manual sending of hearts via your inbox will reward those who repeatedly send you hearts, and in return, they will send you more hearts over time because they can count on you to reciprocate!

Tidbit #6: This is a very important point. People who have added you and that you haven't added back will appear as Unknown in your inbox. If you receive all your hearts manually, you send back a heart back to the Unknown friend when you receive their heart! How to find out who added you?

• Go to your Line account.
• Go to the ellipses on the right side, and click on it.
• Click on Add Friends.
• In the list that follows will show friends and below each of their names, it will say which method these friends added you. If you displayed your Line ID in Reddit, they will show up as "friends [who] added you by your Line ID" will show up. Click the add icon to the right of their name to add them back if you wish. Otherwise they just continue to show up as Unknown in your inbox.

Tidbit #7: If you go away on vacation or have periods of time when you're not going to be able to play the game or send hearts to your friends, put "AWAY" or "VACAY" in front of your name in Line! This notifies people that you're away and thus why you haven't been reciprocating in heart-sending. Why is this important? This makes sure your friends doesn't block and remove you from their list, and thus when you can come back to the game, you will still be able to receive hearts from them.

Tidbit #8 (UPDATED): If you have a friend on your list that is no longer playing Tsum Tsum anymore, or are not sending you hearts anymore and you want to remove them from your friend's list,

As Alvin Yuen stated below in the comments: "Hide and remove is much better than blocking" because you can get messages from them and can re-add them back to the game if they're actively playing Tsum Tsum again. This was further confirmed when I searched this on Reddit and came across a comment that kytala said in the Reddit thread (at the very bottom of the discussion), to HIDE the contact, rather than blocking, to remove someone. The difference is whether the person can send you Line Messages or not. If you hide the person and they started sending you a lot of hearts, then their hearts will generate Line messages for you so you can find and re-add them. If you block them, you will not get Line messages so you will never be able to figure out who they are.

Sorry for the misinformation given earlier. I only learned this now (January 20, 2017).  

Tidbit #9: Get a Premium Box Tsum!! Coin farming is very important in this game! More importantly, Saving your coins that you farm is absolutely crucial to stay afloat in this game. Every month there have been new tsums that come out. When you first start, you will only have a Happiness Tsum. Play as much as you can and save up 30,000 coins - it will be difficult at the very beginning but save up 30,000 coins and then spend it on 1 premium tsum. Then use that Premium Tsum to save up more coins, and indeed, save up the coins for the time being, as much as you can. It will be tempting to spend it on another tsum but at the beginning, just save up the coins you're getting.

Tidbit #10: Use your coins only during Lucky Times! You will get a better chance of getting the new tsums if you use your coins only during Lucky Time. At the beginning, because you have less tsums in your collection, you'll have a higher chance of getting the new tsums, whereas for me since I've been playing for over 2 years, it takes a lot more coins for me to get the new tsums since I have a lot in my collection, well, 116 tsums to be exact.

Tidbit #11: There is a difference between Select Lucky Times and standard Lucky Times. Standard Lucky Times usually features new tsums for the month. For example, during this month's standard Lucky Time, we got Cinderella and Fairy Godmother as new tsums. Select Lucky Times features existing tsums that are already in the Premium Box that you can get, but during that period that the Select Lucky Time happens, the selected/chosen tsums will have a higher chance of being obtained via the Premium Box. For example, for Jan 2017, we got Triton, Marie, and Baymax as the tsums for the Select Lucky Time. We have already received these tsums in the past as new tsums, but not everyone has these tsums so the developers of the game have decided to release them again with a higher drop rate (meaning higher chance of obtaining them via the Premium Box than during not lucky time).

Tidbit #12: When you accumulate coins to use during the Lucky Times to try and get the new tsums, you will usually get the new tsums between 25% to 35% depending on how lucky you are. It's all probability. Don't fret or get frustrated or mad if you get a whole bunch of other tsums instead of the new tsums you're aiming for. There are a lot of tsums you can possibly get in the premium box at any time, maybe close to 60 if not more?

So let's say the number of regular tsums is just 60, then to get 1 tsum out of the possible 60 is a 1.67% chance, thus why Lucky Times are so useful because you can at least get 10% success rate via the Select Lucky Times up to 35% success rate during standard Lucky Times. The reason why I say not to fret is because you will eventually have to skill up all your tsums to Skill 3 (Happiness tsums) or Skill 6 (Premium box tsums) before you can stop getting these tsums in the boxes you buy. So until then, coin farming will increase your odds of getting the new tsums. At the beginning, if you can coin farm 300,000 coins before the lucky time comes, it helps. As you accumulate more and more tsums, you may find yourself needing to coin farm 600,000 coins before you can get the new tsums.

Tidbit #13: Skill up your tsums will help you get a high score! Once you get to the point where you're getting duplications, you're on your way to getting a higher score and breaking that first million high score! Do note that to get a high score, you still need to level up all your tsums, including the Happiness tsums, by playing with them more frequently. Each time you level them up, the score they add to your total increases.

Skilling up a tsum is different than leveling them up. Skilling up a tsum is strictly by getting a tsum multiple times from the premium box. For example if you got Cinderella as a new tsum, she would be at Skill 1. If you buy another premium box and get Cinderella again, you skill her up to Skill 2! Each tsum's skill is different, and thus skilling them up will have different results. For example, Jessie from Toy Story, her skill is a clearance of the tsums in the middle. The more you skill her up, the larger the clearance in the middle becomes! However, Birthday Anna is a different type of tsum. She calls Surprise Elsa. So as you skill her up, more Surprise Elsa's will materialize that you can connect to Birthday Anna and thus can chain up. The higher the skill Birthday Anna becomes, the number of Surprise Elsa that materializes increases, and the longer the chains you can possibly create with her and Surprise Elsa together thereafter. This adds to the high score that you'll probably want to try and get to. =)

I think those are the top 13 tidbits I can think of right now. It was a bit longer than expected but it will definitely help you gear up and kickstart your Tsum Tsum journey. Hopefully it shed some insight and if you have any questions, feel free to ask away in the comments and I will try my best to answer them. For the questions I don't have an answer to, I will definitely refer you to a thread in Reddit if I can find the answer there, or ask you to post the question on the Reddit forum so that others more knowledgeable than me can answer your question. =)

Happy Tsuming and Welcome to the Community! =D

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UPDATE: JANUARY 12, 2017

I just realized there are a few more tidbits that would be useful to know!

Tidbit #14: When you're trying to get a high combo, the trick is to get back into Fever Time ASAP! Why? When you're in Fever Time, the combo will not break even when you pause for a bit longer than usual, thus you can keep increasing the combo # amount. When you're not in Fever Time, you can lose your combo within a couple of seconds of inactivity e.g. not clearing another chain within that short time etc. So to get a high combo, keep going back into Fever Time ASAP!

Tidbit #15: Holiday Donald is a required tsum for the ridiculous high combo missions that you'll find in Bingo cards. To get these high combos e.g. 250, quickly fill up Holiday Donald's skill meter, and once you have activated his ability, start swiping left and right quickly to clear as many tsums (and thus increase your combo #) as you can! I've hit over 300 combos just by doing this alone with Holiday Donald. Unfortunately I was unable to perform this trick with regular Donald...just a FYI.

Thanks for reading!!

Happy Tsuming! =D

Cinderella Event

I have to say the Cinderella Event was one of the prettiest events the International Version of Tsum Tsum has received to date. This one, although similar to the Halloween Event, was actually a lot easier to complete as each magical bottle attained was already 5 magical points, and with the Magical Party Invitations, it helped speed up the game as well. Details of what each card required for completion and the prizes found here: January 2017 Event Info and Help Thread - Cinderella [Int'l].

Just a small breakdown of the event:

Cards 1 to 6 helps you create Dress #1, which is the dress that Cinderella had inherited from her mother and which her animal pals helped her pretty it up for the ball, before it was ruined by her stepsisters and stepmother. Completion of this card gave you the prize of a Premium Ticket, along with the usual hearts, coins, and bonus tickets e.g. EXP+ tickets, Bubble Tickets, 5>4 Tickets.

Cards 7 to 13 helped you create Dress #2, which was the dress magically given to Cinderella by her Fairy Godmother so that she can meet the Prince. Aside from the usual prizes, you also got Prince Charming, twice! 

Tidbit: Notice that you didn't get Prince Charming in the previous dress? Because Cinderella didn't meet Prince Charming until the Ball! The developers and event designer(s) really noted the details in this event.

Cards 14 to 20 helped you create Dress #3, which is the wedding dress that Cinderella wore when she married Prince Charming, her veil of course lifted by two of her birdie friends! For this dress, you got 4 more Prince Charming tsums, effectively maxing out his tsum's skill to clear XXL area.

Tidbit: Did you notice that each time you start on a new dress, the number of magical points required to clear the first card goes back to 200 to 250 magical points? Furthermore, the transition through the game maximizes the number of required magical points at 650 on the 6th or 7th card. Thus why the event was a lot easier than the Halloween event as the number of candies (essentially points) required kept increasing with each consecutive pumpkin, maximizing at 1200 with the Mickey Pumpkin.

For this event, it was found that the maximum number of magical points you can get in one game is 45.

Tidbit: As you can see in the above screenshot, the points attained during the Magical Party is added on top of the existing number of magical points attained from the original game.

Tidbit: When the Magical Party is about to start, did you notice that they gave you 12 seconds, as a slight reference to how Cinderella had until the stroke of midnight to be at the Ball? Thus they gave you 12 seconds to get all the magical points you can get before time is up. Please see the screenshot below. Do you see where the large "12" is? Can you see the "+12 sec" hovering underneath it? =)
(don't mind the green tinge on the bottom and right side - it was just my phone telling me it's charging - oops! Forgot to unplug when I took this screenshot.)

Sorry, these two screenshots were taken at different times, as I was trying to get a screenshot of the "+12 seconds" given during the Magical Party, as shown on the right screenshot.

I absolutely loved the artwork and thought that was put into this event!! It was quite fun, partially because I was using my newly acquired Skill 5 Beast to get more coins while simultaneously attaining the Magical Points during the game. If you have him, I highly suggest using his skill to get the magical bottles! I had better luck with him than I did with Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, where I would usually get 3 bottles and thus 15 magical points only. Whereas with Beast, I got between 35 to 45 magical points per game, and more if I was lucky enough to get a Magical Party Invitation.

Did you like the event? Did you notice anything else I may have missed that relates to Cinderella's story? Leave your comments and notes below!

Happy Tsuming!! =)