Best of Facebook Apps - D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter - Full Review

Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter is a fantastic game playable on Facebook. It has enough features to keep the gameplay simple and fun and feed those D&D addicts. You create a character and play through the game in a classic dungeon crawl theme. If you're new to the D&D scene, be sure to check out my introductory post for Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter here.

Heroes of Neverwinter Rundown

This particular Facebook game doesn't necessarily require a lot of friends, although it does help. Heroes of Neverwinter breaks off from the traditional theme of requiring you to have a boat load of friends. In fact, the entire game can be played and you can progress through it just fine without needing a single friend. You start by creating your character. You choose between one of 4 races and 1 of four classes. After that's out of the way, you can begin doing adventures, killing mobs, killing bosses, collecting loot and outfitting your house with all your achievements. The majority of gameplay lies solely in dungeons. You move your party, room by room, killing everything in your way to complete the small storyline that is specific to the dungeons you are in.

D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter - How to Dungeon Crawl
Once you set up your character, recruit a few friends (or AI controlled characters) and stock up on consumables, you're ready to set off into dungeons. There are hundreds of dungeons to play through, however, most have level restrictions and energy costs associated with them. If you have the energy and meet the level requirements, you can join the dungeon.

Heroes of Neverwinter is a turned based game. Which means that each of your players will make their move and/or attack and then its the bad guys turn to do the same. Attacking an enemy is as simply as clicking on them and picking the skill/ability you want to use on them and assuming you are in range, the action will be done. Using abilities on yourself, such as healing, require you to simply click on the character and then the skill/ability you want to use. This continues until you complete the quest and clear the dungeon.

Heroes of Neverwinter - Tips and Tricks
Watch out for traps and try to always bring a rogue to disarm them and help with unlocking locked doors and treasure chests. While you can purchase items that will unlock them for you, it will cost you Astral crystals, which in turn cost real life money and we don't want to spending real money on a game. You also run out of energy fairly quick in Heroes of Neverwinter. One or two dungeons will quickly expend all of your energy. Energy automatically refills per 1 point every 6 minutes, which means you could use a full energy bar doing dungeons every 1.5 hours.

Aside from purchasing energy refills and the unlimited energy bar (that will set you back about $50!) you can add some friends and get them to use you in dungeons. This opens you up to being able to enter a spectator mode where you can watch your friends dungeon and see how they did with your character. During that time, your energy is regained faster.

Recruit either computer AI companions or real players. There is no benefit over one another aside from the fact that you have to purchase computer AI companions with gold. Try to have an even party with at least a rogue and a cleric in every party so you can have a healer and someone to help disarm those pesky traps and unlock doors and treasure chests.

Best Of Facebook Apps - Zombie Lane: Yet Another Zombie Game

Zombies are fun no matter how you slice it. Whether or not they are overly aggressive type of zombie or the lazy, stupid and slow zombie you're used to. In case of this game, Zombie Lane, the zombies are slow and relatively stupid. Zombie Lane is a combination of a time management game, quick reflexes and a quazy strategy game. All these elements combine to make one hell of an addicting facebook game that will have you playing for hours.

Zombie Lane Rundown

First and foremost, to get most out of this game you're going to need a lot of friends to play with. By having a lot of friends in Zombie Lane you can visit them for energy and you can send items that will really help progress your game experience. You start out making your avatar. Your initial variations of the way your avatar looks is slim but you unlock more features to equip your avatar with as you play the game. After making your avatar you are brought to your yard that happens to be swarming with zombies. The zombies have trashed your yard and its up to you to restore your house, find your dog and get things back into order before your wife returns from.....well, wherever she went.

How To Play Zombie Lane

Throughout the game you will find yourself killing zombies, repairing your house, harvesting crops, visiting neighbors, sending gifts, decorating your yard and equipping your avatar with all sorts of equipment. Perhaps the most fun thing to do in any zombie game is to kill zombies. Zombie Lane does a great job of filling your every need for zombie slaying. You have a huge variety of ways to kill zombies with hundreds of different weapons to do it with. By killing Zombies you are rewarded coins, experience and an occasional random item. You spend your coins at the market which sells everything from farming plots, buildings that open up different crafting options, weapons, more energy and decorations. That’s right, Zombie Lane has crafting!

Crafting in Zombie Lane

Crafting is a very simple process that has almost no depth. With that said, you will be required to craft certain items if you plan on progressing the storyline at all. Some zombies that you need to disperse of for certain quests require you to kill them with a crafted item. To craft you simple have to find the required items needed for an item and click a “craft item” button once you are in the building that allows some sort of crafting to take place. As simple as it sounds, its still a feature that pretty much every other facebook game completely ignores.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Zombie Lane is simply an addictive and fun game to play on facebook. While the first few levels go by painfully slow, once you start getting friends and are able to start planting your own crops the gameplay really starts to speed up. When you're low on energy, simply visit a neighbor and earn 1 energy and expend energy that is neighbor specific. Or, buy energy drinks with real life cash, coins or from chicken wings you harvest from your crops. With enough friends, a large enough farm and the right know how, you could play Zombie Lane for hours on end!

Best Facebook Apps – CityVille: Building the Ultimate City Tips

CityVille Game

So I have bee getting a lot of questions about my city and why I built it the way I have. In this post I will spill the beans and let everyone in on my secrets. My city has a max population of just over 12,700, I have just over 40 million in coin. I am currently level 62 and my population is so low because I am trying to staff more observatories. Appster's Town is just about out of room and I really need to focus on getting more permits really soon. However, waiting for permits isn't a bad thing, it's actually a good thing.

Tip #1: Less is more, smaller is bigger

I've seen so many players rush to expand their city as much as possible. While this is the eventual goal all players should work towards, it isn't something everyone should immediately strive for. When you purchase all expansions for your city, there is no possible way you could get enough energy to do all the things you need to do in your city. You can only do a maximum of about 110 action if take into consideration neighbor visits, energy packs, energy bonus from community buildings and the amount of harvesting you need to do. Unless you have a group of neighbors who harvest for you, collect your house rents when they are up, it's just impossible.

CityVille Game

Its for this reason that it becomes necessary to destroy older homes and businesses. For example, when Atrium Lofts unlocks for your city, there is no need for all houses before atrium lofts. Get rid of all homes that don't match the population of your highest population home. Your entire city should only consist of homes that have the highest population. This keeps your population high, saves you energy to do other things and gives a huge boon to your businesses. Instead of buying expansions to place more country homes and bike shops, get rid of older buildings and replace them with newer ones.

Appster currently uses Atrium Lofts and when the next highest population home opens up (parkside villas) I will destroy all atrium lofts and replace them with the villas.

Tip #2: 270% Payout Bonus increase layout

CityVille Game

The key to making more money with less is through decorations. The plan used in Appster's town is a 4x4 business surrounded by two layers of 1x1 flowers and then surrounded by either 11 arboretums or rocky hills and 1 3x3 playground. My highest payout bonus is 277%. You can go much higher than that if you use cash shop items. Its important to use this design for your highest paying business. Appster currently has tower eats as the highest paying business so its used. Simply build these layouts and surround the businesses with your homes. Closer homes will make your businesses cash out faster!

Tip #3: Stagger your crops, shipments

Don't build 40 plots of the same plant and don't send all your ships to the same place. If you do, crops will wither because you will run out of energy collecting crops. Stagger them! Plant 5 of each plant that takes more than 1 hour. Replant immediately after harvesting.

The whole idea of playing Cityville comes to being able to play and getting as much done as possible. Players should strive to keep the city as small as possible. There is no need to purchase all expansions to have 40,000+ population, you can do it just fine with a third of the size. If you're going down the wrong road, stop now and reorganize your city before it is to late.

Do you have any more tips? Post them as a comment! Help out your neighbors!

Best of Facebook Apps - Age of Champions: Armies and Supplies

Age of Champions can be a confusing game if you don't know what you're looking for. While it is a facebook game, it still qualifies an an MMORPG. In this post we take a look at building an army and supplying it with the gear you need to be successful in all of your battles to come. For a detailed look at army specifics be sure to check out a previous post Age of Champions: Building An Army for additional information.

Army Basics

Navigating to your army is done by clicking the Army button on your main bar. Doing so will bring up a window that displays information about your army. It shows you how many troops you have and how many of those troops are equipped with items. Typically, you need to always have a full army. Each time you level up your champion, the amount of troops you can have in your army increases. It would be a good idea to focus on quests that grant gold rewards, while leveling up. That way, each time you level you will be able to purchase more troops and be able to gear them. It's a good idea to pick one race and stick with them. This is because stronger troops require certain buildings that you need to construct. There are a limited amount of those buildings you can purchase. If you went with a variety you wouldn't be able to get the strongest human, minotaur and elves for your level as you wouldn't have the space to build the technology buildings needed. Since this is an MMORPG with a lot of players, there are going to be a huge variety of troops compositions that you will eventually have issues with if you don't keep up. 

Supplies and Buildings

Age of Champions is party about gearing up your troops and pitting them up against other players. It can be both a PvP centric game as well as a PvE centric game. Either way you decide to play, you're going to need to invest in troops, equipment and buildings. As you progress through levels in Age of Champions you will be rewarded with vacant lots on which you build a type of building. Thankfully, since this is an MMORPG with thousands of players, adding more allies is easy and it increases the number of lots you have. Farms grant food which increases the amount of troops you can support. Businesses grant you a certain amount of gold. Military buildings unlocks a larger variety of troops for certain races. Technology buildings allow you to purchase more efficient weaponry for your troops. You have a limit amount of lots on which to build. This is why it's a good idea to pick one race for your troops and stick with it. If you reach level 100 or higher and you have a mixed army, you wouldn't have the lots to build all the buildings required for the strongest troops for each race. This would leave your army weak and you would find yourself having a hard time when you do battles.

Depending on the size of your army, you are going to need a healthy mix of farms, businesses, military buildings and technology buildings. As you progress through the levels in Age of Champions you will need to build more farms to increase the amount of troops you can support. Military and technology buildings should be purchased as necessary. Keep an eye on those two as they can be switched out as you play. Businesses are situational and can be used to help you earn more gold to purchase more troops and supplies. While you can earn gold through quests, you eventually run out of energy to do quests. Your businesses are constantly generating you income so long as you check them when they are completed earning you the maximum amount they can earn.

Best Facebook Apps - Age of Champions: First Impressions

The Best RPG on Facebook, enough said

I just cant get over how amazing this game is. It gets its roots from first generation rpg apps in as such where you click the “Do Quest” button to complete quests but it adds its own insane graphical flare and a load of extra goodies that would choke a billy goat! Age of Champions has it all; questing, crafting, guilds, pvp, raids, army building, empire building, army management and outfitting and leveling your very own character is just the tip of the iceberg. The only time you will run out of things to do is when you're out of stamina and/or energy. Even then, the amount of information you need to process and the learning curve has spawned its very own forum! If you're an RPG fan, stop wasting your time with other Facebook apps, start playing Age of Champions now!

Age of Champions – RPG you say?

You start the game by setting up your champion. In Age of Champions you have 3 races to choose from; Human, Elf or Minotaur. Each race has their own benefits and you can change your race at whim. After you've picked your hero you can begin outfitting him with clothing and gear. All gear and clothing will either cost you gold or crystals. You gain gold by doing quests, crafting, raids or battling other players. Hell, getting gold can even be done by claiming rewards from achievements!

Your champion has stats that effect your gameplay. Power, Life, Damage and Protection are the 4 stats that drive the strength of your champion. The higher they are, the better all around champion you become. Once you gain enough experience you can level up each of the 4 stats however you like. Each level up gives you 4 points to spend on any of the four stats.

2d/3d Animated battles and raids

When you battle another player you have the choice of playing an animation sequence that varies depending on your army composition. With a huge selection of different units you can stock your army with, the animated sequences can be pretty entertaining. But watching them over and over can become tedious. Thankfully Age of Champions allows you to skip the battle sequence. It's a bloody display of an epic battle going on and very enjoyable to watch how it changes based on your armies progression.

Raiding is done in a 3dish type animation setting. Once you summon a creature you are brought to a window with you standing before the towering beast. Full animation sequences take place when you attack or cast spells or abilities. Raids also come with a chat box so you can talk with others who join your raid group. It's even equipped with a combat log! Simply insane goodness. Call to Arms a recruit other Age of Champion players to help you bring down summoned beasts for loot!

Questing, not so boring anymore

While Age of Champions tends to follow the tried and true quest design of button clicking quest objectives, it does so with such stylish grace and captivating storyline that it breaths new life into questing. The art effort put forth in Age of Champions make you want to read the quests. The only draw back is that some of the quests are not repeatable. No need to fear as there are hundreds of zones to visit for questing.

Age of Champions is truly an amazing app that shouldn't be missed by any RPG fan who loves facebook apps.

Best Facebook Apps - Backyard Monsters

Backyard Monsters on Facebook is a pretty unique app. It's actually one of the few that doesn't depend on how many other friends you have. I guess you can say that it's a social game in an anti-social way. You actually benefit from fighting with others more than becoming their ally. While friends can help you speed up the production on your buildings, it's really not needed if you have a strong enough defense. So here are a few tips and tricks to get you started in the right direction.

Tips and Tricks on How To Play BackyardMonsters

I'll be honest, Backyard Monsters has a pretty big learning curve. If you've never played a Facebook game like it before, it might initially overwhelm you. However, once you get the hang of it, it is actually pretty simple.

The jest of Backyard Monsters is that you gather resources to build buildings that protect your yard, build your army and boost your collection rate and hoarding capacity. There are 4 different resources in Backyard Monsters; Twigs, Pebbles, Goo and Putty. Each resource is used for certain objects. Over time you will eventually want to build up stockpiles of these resources. You can spend the resources on troops to fuel your army, upgrading buildings and defensive structures.

So if you're playing for the first time or thinking of playing, you're going to need to complete the tutorial that teaches you to play. After that just do what needs to be done to upgrade your Town Hall so you can build more defensive towers. Place enough defensive towers in your yard and spread them out and do not forget to upgrade them. Occasionally you will be attacked by both a computer player or an actual player. The defensive towers are what will hold off the attacks. But don't worry if you town gets destroyed as you can always repair.

Backyard Monsters - Tips and Tricks on How to Gain Resources

The four different types of resources in Backyard Monsters are used as currency to do pretty much everything. Without enough resources you won't be doing a whole lot. So it's important to be gathering and collecting as many as you can. There are 3 different ways to gather the four types of resources. The first, and most common, is by building the gathering buildings. Twig Snappers, Pebble Shiners, Putty Squishers and Goo Factories that you build in your yard will generate a small amount of resources every 10 seconds or so. They gather more faster the higher level you have the buildings at. So build as many as you can and upgrade them as often as possible.

The second way to gather resources is by sending your army to others yard and attacking their city. Depending on how well the attack goes will determine just how many resources you can loot from their yard. The more damage you do, the more you loot. You can fight anyone as many times as you want, so long as you have the army to do it. If you run out of troops, just go back to your yard and produce more.

And finally, the last way to gather resources is just to outright pay for them with shiny. Shiny is an in-game currency that you can pay for with real cash. You also have a small chance to gain shiny while harvesting mushrooms in and around your yard. Spending shiny to get resources is always the fastest way to get them, but they do cost you.

Backyard Monsters is a competitive game available on Facebook. You can find all sorts of tips and trick all across the net. So if you have any tips and tricks of your own, please come back and post them here to help everyone else!