First of all, the new monthly gold subscriptions are ... You get the point.
Super Sale -> 4400 gold per dollar spent
Highest Subscription -> 2500 gold per dollar spent
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We all knew this was coming - they needed some way to validate sheep.
How it works
Your tailor shop is located outside your farm to the left of the cafe. From level 90 onward, you can produce pillows with duck feathers and the at level 100 you can start using wool for other goods (caps, socks and sweaters). At some point (I need a level), you can make dye at the manufactory -> cherries for red at manu level 8, lettuce for green at level 11, lavender for purple at level 12.
The problems
The manu sits empty 20% of the time, and now you needed it maxed to produce all the goods... so it can sit empty 80% of the time.
If you have the manu to produce the dies (level 8 to 12), buying the feathers and wool and selling a contract returns about 13% of the investment.
And you need buckets...
Big Farm has said contracts will be in low demand because they products are hard to produce. The one I have seen this morning would take a level 10 sheep 2 days to produce; for $80k and 3 mallets... We are waiting on exact numbers for contract demand.
Yes, they give mallets... the cafes gives a lot more mallets and is a lot cheaper and less time consuming to run. If you run without buying materials, a level 1 sheep will give you 1-2 mallets per day, and a sheep will fill 1 or less contracts per day. (You may be able to get pillow only contracts and increase that number.)
What that means is from level 90 to 100, this may look OK because you only have pillows, which are easier to make than wool goods and you have a ~35% chance of getting 1 mallet (it doesn't matter is you sell 10 or 60 pillows).
Once you cross level 100 and wool gets thrown into the mix... the contracts are not good for what it requires to make them and what other things you could do with the same resources.
Moving Forward
It is going to take a while to break this one down. Please post pictures of contracts so we can figure out the value of items and return on investment. I have processed 180 contracts so far and I think I have base and adjusted prices and material scheme, but there are a few outliers that are messing things up. Somewhere between 30 to 40% of contracts will give mallets - max of 4.
Big Farm also has a habit of introducing new features and then going back and adjusting the quantities to something reasonable. It happened with both the cafe and fishing cafe. Remember chicken fingers needed 350 corn for 5 conches?
This is going to take some time to figure out, but my gut says don't rush out and spend oodles of time on money upgrading anything till we know it is worth it.
More to come.
Manufactory
It will cost you $42,750,000 to get a manufactory to level 8.
It is $32,400,000 for level 9 and 10 combined.
Level 11 - $22,000,000 40 Mallets, 300 Buckets
Level 12 - $27,000,000 1,200 Mallets, 9000 Buckets
Perspective
Lets take 30 red caps - $44,160 and 1988 market xp, plus your bonus, say ~200 for 2200 xp.
Lets say you are a paying competitive player. Level 12 apple, level 7 sheep, +200 market xp bonus. It will take you 12 hours to make the 30 red caps. What would 12 hours of apples look like? It looks like $184,800 and 6260 market xp...
Not willing to spend? Level 1 sheep, Level 10 apple, Market xp bonus +180 -> an apple looks like $250,800 and 8106 market xp.
For the same amount of space, apples are going to give you a lot more market points, materials when you consider the bonuses of multiple contracts, and more cash... plus they generate nectar and help you co-op.
I will have to work out the value of a cow in the future.
All from today