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
**********************************************
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