In the comments on a previous post, Chivy asks if there is a way to play this game with just your friends. She is upset about being bought around by other people, and bought back every time one of her friends comes to the rescue.
There are a couple things here...
First, if you have installed the game, then you are choosing to participate in this game. Everybody can buy you, from friends to coworkers to strangers. If that upsets you, then remove and block the application. One day, maybe, Siqi and Alex will add some controls to allow you to play just amongst your friends, but I seriously doubt it. One of their goals is to help people make new connections.
Second, the people buying Chivy back every time is a basic strategy for making money (though eventually, they'll have to not buy her back to realize that gain), or maybe they simply like her profile picture and truly want to keep her. To stop them, she could change her profile picture to something awful (see The Hamster Problem), have a friend buy her away, and then (later) change the profile picture back in hopes the traders have forgotten about her.
The simple fact is that FFS is a game. If you install it, then you're placing yourself at the mercy of the rules of the game. People will buy pets you want to keep, they may buy you and apply terrible nicknames, and total strangers may buy you from your friends. Don't get upset at them, and don't leave nasty messages on their FFS wall. It is all part of the game, so just go with it and enjoy playing!
This is a Game
Finding Inexpensive Pets
There are two primary times when you want to buy an inexpensive pet:
* use up remaining cash
* grow your total count of pets
The cheapest pet is valued at $500, and with taxes and the value uptick, you will buy that pet for $571.
So how to best find them?
You can find a cheap pet via the "On Sale" tab under the "Pets" menu option. The biggest problem with this approach is that everybody else is looking there, too. When you see a listing for a pet valued at $500, it occurs all-too-often that when you go and try to buy that pet, they are now valued higher. Or the pet is immediately bought from you, leaving with cash to dispose (again!).
The best way is to choose the "Pets" menu option, then select one of your networks. In my case, I choose the "San Francisco, CA" network. It will show you a list of all the most expensive pets in that network. Narrow it down by selecting (say) "Show Girls", and then switch from sorting by cost to sorting by recent activity. You are now looking at (female) pets who are currently active. Invariably, the values of these pets are high or they are climbing as you look at the page.
Here is the key: scroll to the bottom, and hit the link to bring you to page 100. Go to the end of the list. These pets' values are stable, and they are typically very low. These are the people who installed the application, but haven't done much, and/or other people have not bought them. You will be able to find plenty of inexpensive pets here.
Use this technique to find cheap pets and build up your list. Or use your remaining cash.
More, More, More!
The other day, I hinted that there is sometimes a reason to not buy the most expensive pet possible. Let me explain further...
So far, I've explained that you want to invest in pets. They give you a four percent return when somebody buys them. "When" is the key word.
You might buy a pet, only to have it bought back a minute later. Or you might buy a pet and hold it for five weeks. The best way to deal with this unpredictability is to have a lot of pets. I'm talking like a minimum of thirty. The more, the better. Sixty? Seventy? Go wild.
It comes down to basic statistics. If an average pet is bought once per week, and you have 35 pets, then five pets will be purchased from you every day. Once a week isn't typical, but I'm trying to show a point... the more pets you have, the more pets will be purchased each day. And each purchase represents profit!
Back to the original point. If you're "low" on the pet count, then it might actually be more advisable to stock up on a bunch of inexpensive pets, before worrying about upscaling your existing pets. This is definitely a strategy to use if you don't have a desirable expensive pet in mind. Just bail, and by three or four inexpensive pets instead, to get your count up.
Oh, and don't go buy all of your friends to get your count up. Many of your friends might not have the application installed. Thus, non-friends cannot buy them. Thus, they do you no good when it comes to your pet count. Buy pets that people can, in turn, buy from you. That is the goal!
In my next post, I'll talk about how to find inexpensive pets. They are crucial to building your stable of pets!
The Hamster Problem
A cautionary tale...
Once, a few weeks after I had discovered FFS, I had acquired a beautiful expensive pet. I was quite excited. My pets' values were going up... things were going great.
And then...
This is practically criminal, mind you.
She changed her profile picture to one of her pet hamster. A frickin' hamster, for crying out loud! There was no way I'd ever sell her as a hamster. Even if I put her on sale (mind you, this was before I truly discovered that fallacy), there was no way somebody would buy her. And I now had a hamster for my second- or third-best pet.
She eventually changed it back to her beautiful self, and was bought off me. I may buy her in the future, though I just checked... she's quite expensive at this point, so who knows when I ever could.
But lesson learned. Be wary out there. You have no control over your pets' profile picture. They can and do change over time.
Upscaling
In my last post, I mentioned how I always try to buy the most expensive pet possible, given the cash that I have on hand. What happens a lot (especially if you don't log in maniacally) is that a pet or three will have been purchased from you, and then throw in an allowance. You now have the means to convert many less-expensive pets into one more-expensive pet.
Why would you do this? Simple: the more-expensive pets are typically more desirable. If you want to have the most beautiful pets, then you need to start spending more on them. I call this "upscaling your pets".
Earlier today, I was purchased and made about $10k. Throw in the $10k bonus for today, plus a $2k pet and a $2k allowance, and I had a bunch of cash. That allowed me to buy a pet for nearly $24k. That $2k pet that I lost can easily be purchased again in the future, once I get another allowance, but it is much harder to have $20k on hand, so you take the opportunity as soon as possible.
There are some minor exceptions for going with the most expensive pet, based on a strategy of having many pets. I'll detail that later.
For now, just know one thing: buy the best you can!
Free $10,000 bonus today
Login to your FFS Dashboard today and locate this bonus cash in the top left corner of the screen. Is it an April Fools Joke? Click it to find out!
Spending Cash
One cardinal rule that I try and maintain is to spend all of my cash when I can. The reasoning here is very simple: when you hold cash, you get zero return on it. If you buy a pet, then you'll get about four percent when the pet is purchased from you.
Make no money, or make some money. Easy choice.
Choosing which pet to buy is a subject for many more blog posts, but in general I will buy the most expensive pet possible. Then if I still have a little bit of cash, then I'll find an inexpensive pet to use up the remainder of my cash (the cheapest pet is just $571 to purchase).
Just now, I had $23,995 and bought a $23,994 pet. Yup. I'm sitting on a single dollar now. Andrew has actually managed to spend all of his cash once.
