Cheats and Bugs

Useful Cheats

G'day and Welcome to the Useful Cheats Section!

This is actually a bit more complicated a section that requires a bit of explaining because there is slightly more to it than just plopping down and saying "Yeah, here we have some useful cheats because..."

Basically useful cheats are not always outright errors in the game that let you do things that you should not be able to do, often they are simply using a mechanism in a way that, while not intended by its creators, is more efficient than it should be.

We wish we could give you Matrix Agent-like powers over the game but they don't exist -- and if they did would you really want to use them? After all it is the little successes that we achieve in this massive struggle that we tend to be the most proud of, right?

So with all of that in mind, welcome to the Cheats Section, may your Game Play be fruitful and fun!

General Cheat Notes

Before we get too far into this subject there are some minor points that need to be addressed...

We believe that one of the important differences between SuperCheats and the rest of the web is that when we tell you about a cheat, Bug, or trick that you can use, we don't try to pretend it is something that is more special or valuable than it really is.

We certainly do not take a rumor and claim it a fact, and you will never see us presenting fake cheats as possible because we try them before we share them.

It is why you come here -- reliability is an important element when you are sharing information.

Fake Cheat Postings -- You have no doubt found yourself on other sites where access to their cheats require that you also share information about tricks or cheats. The pressure to provide new information just to get access to the cheats information there tends to cause younger and more impressionable gamers to decide to make something up, so that they can get access to the information they are sure will make them uber rich in the game.

Of course it never occurs to them that the section they are trying to get access to is basically filled with a bunch of other fake cheats like the one they created, because the fifty young gamers who visited the site BEFORE them had the same idea to make up a cheat so that they could get access to the cheats and... Well... You get the idea.

Here is an example of the sort of made-up cheat that you find on sites like that:

"First you need to click on the Simpson House 10 times, then plant some weeds on the left side of Cletus' Farm, and then click on Homer Simpson 75 times and then quickly buy a Brown House 5 times and send Ned to work. Quickly then you need to make Homer and Lisa shop at the Qiucky Mart (If you use Donuts to try to speed it up this will not work) and then sell all your Krusty Burgers at which point all of your Characters will be given 10 Donuts each. This worked for me and my friends but it may not work for you on later versions of the game!"

If you try to use the "cheat" listed above (which is a "genuine" cheat that was submitted to another site and that the OP swears is real and worked for them) what do you suppose the results will be?

Well off the top of my head I would say that you would come out of the other side with no additional Donuts added to your game, all your Krusty Burger Restaurants gone, and five new Brown Houses you don't really need or want. Oh and you will have spent and wasted a lot of game Money you DO need and want.

Whenever you see that sort of post and that sort of excuse the person is lying, the cheat is not real, and they knew it when they wrote it. How can we be so sure about that?

The reason we are so sure is that unlike games where Updates are strictly voluntary, Tapped Out makes their updates mandatory -- you cannot play the game until you apply the newest Update.

So the idea that THEY have a game where the cheat works and YOU don't because it is your fault for updating your game is utter rubbish.

Our best advice to you is to ignore that sort of thing -- unless you believe that following instructions that are rather twisted makes a certain sense? Do you?

Real Actions that are Not Cheats

Tap Homer Event -- For the record and despite the fact that practically every single web site, Guide, and forum post on cheats mentions it, the Tap Homer x10 for free Donuts and a Status is NOT a cheat. It is actually an Easter Egg that was added to the game by the wizards who made it.

The Tap Homer event was intentionally put into the game as an event that was used in the online video commercials for the game and as such is not a cheat, a trick, or anything other than a working-as-intended-feature in the game.

A Serious Cheating Warning

Time-Skipping Not a Cheat in Tapped Out -- Normally we do not include a section on game cheating for cheats that can actually damage the game or your save in our guides, and we usually will not mention them either, but with The Simpsons: Tapped Out this is a special case.

In some of the other time-based and real-time freemium-grinders that come from EA (Sims FreePlay is a perfect example) there are some well-known time hacks that are widely promoted via YouTube and on some gaming forums.

Basically what the cheats consist of is setting all your Characters to long-term jobs and then advancing the clock forward so that the jobs are instantly completed.

This does not work for most of the quests in Tapped Out primarily because the game is server-centric and the server (not your local client) keeps track of quest times.

This tactic does work with some events though, but before you are tempted to use it, bear in mind that doing so can have very negative consequences for your game.

Just like with that other EA game using the time cheat can corrupt your save and damage the timer system for key Buildings, quests, and events.

The Storage Cheat / Bug -- Another cheat that is widely promoted online is the Storage Cheat (actually it may qualify as a bug too) in which the player sends the Skinner character out to do the 24h Birdwatching Task, and then put the tree that he is using for the task into storage so that they can then send him out on a different tree, repeating this over and over again with a different tree each time.

The effect of this is that each of the new tasks you set in motion runs concurrently so that, when the timer finally does run out on the last one you set him out on, you get paid for all of them!

The problem with this storage cheat is that it can corrupt your game save. What is even worse, it appears that EA has a way to detect when players abuse this Bug, and when it gets seriously abused by players, it has been reported that EA is actually banning players who they feel abused that element of the game...

Gamers who abused the storage cheat have reported being banned -- and the bans are banhammer type bans, not waggy-finger bans!

For the record, a Waggy-Finger Ban is when a player gets their game reset by EA and receives a nasty email warning them that cheating is not allowed. A Banhammer type ban on the other hand is just what it sounds like -- the Policy Enforcement Team (yes Matilda, EA has such a thing) has identified a player who it feels abused that Bug on a much more serious level, and so pulled out the ultimate Tool of punishment in their arsenal, the Banhammer, and used it on the player.

In effect the result of this is that the player's account is terminated, they are out any legitimate Money they spent on the game in the past, and their device has been flagged on the EA servers so that any attempts to play the game again using a different Account or ID fails. They have basically been given a lifetime ban for that device. The End.

That level of ban is really nasty -- it is not a punishment we would want to experience.

Having said that, we also should point out that we have not personally witnessed its application -- we do not know anyone who has. So it may just be a rumor that was started by bored players or even possibly members of EA's Policy Enforcement Team! We just don't know for sure -- and we don't want to know for sure badly enough to commit the sort of violations that would give us first-hand knowledge -- just saying.

So please bear that in mind won't you?

This section is where we honor cheats of the past that no longer work because EA patched the part of the code in the game that allowed them to work. Some of these will be venerable and much-loved, and so we feel deserve to be honored here as now regretfully missed companions.

I. Replaying a Collection Bonus (R.I.P.)

This is more of a Bug than it is a cheat but it does function as a cheat nonetheless... This will very likely get patched soon so use it while you can.

Once you have completed either the Simpson's Character Collection or the Churchy Joes Character Collection, place the respective Building (either Flander's House or Moe's Tavern) into your storage and then visit a neighbor's town.

Return to your town and place the Building back in your town and you will receive the reward for completing that character collection again.

Rinse and repeat as often as you feel the need.

1 Oct 2013 -- Update -- This Cheat has been closed by the Halloween Update. We knew that this would eventually happen - hopefully you got as much of the free Money as you could manage, do you have no regrets... Requiescat in pace you very nifty little cheat you! Sure it was rather boring to use, but then againi it required the

Tips, and Tricks

We found the following Tips and Tricks to be useful and you may find them useful too!

TT1: Better Odds for Donuts

Each day you play the game you increment the Mystery Box Counter, and at the end of the week you get a Mystery Prize. In addition to that there are several Premium Items you can buy that give you Prizes, and there is the Scratch-R-Tickets Mini-Game that also CAN result in Donuts as their prize.

You will notice that you hardly ever get Donut Prizes (like the very desireable one in the image above!) as almost always you end up getting a lesser prize. But what if you could do something that increased the odds of the prize being a Donut Prize? Would you do it? Of course you would! Well, you can!

It works out that if you maintain a balance in the game of more than $100,000 in Cash the odds for getting the Donut Prize increase dramatically.

In fact the increase is noticeable -- so we strongly recommend this tactic.

TT2: Better Tasks

While it may seem so obvious it does not even warrant thinking about, picking the best task or job for the time you have available is actually more significant in terms of earning power than you may think.

While the typical tasks and jobs that apply to the regular Buildings are fairly similar and equal, there are some hidden benefits to Premium Buildings that make them worth spending your hard-saved Donuts on! The following examples apply:

Building-Specific

Springfield Observatory: Stargaze (6h) $350 / 90 XP

Character-Specific

Bumblebee Man: (4h) $300 / 70 XP

Comic Book Guy: Watch and Despise a Movie (6h) $350 / 90 XP

Disco Stu: Boogie Down (6h) $350 / 90 XP

Dr. Nick: Promote Bargain Medical Practice (3h) $200 / 55 XP

Hans Moleman: Provide Security (6h) $350 / 90 XP

Kang: Properly Season Humans (6h) $350 / 90 XP

Squeaky Voice Teen: Usher at the Aztec Theater (4h) $260 / 70 XP

There are surely others that belong to Buildings or Characters that we do not have in our game but the above gives you an idea of what to look for and what is good.

Known Game Bugs

There are a number of known bugs in the game -- but thankfully none of them are game-breaking bugs as that would suck.

I. Update Bug

Of all of the bugs this one will probably be the one you experience more than once and, you should be warned, is the one with the greatest potential to hurt you...

The wizards that produce the game routinely Update it on a set schedule, with Wednesday and Sunday early morning being the preferred times for some reason. When they initiate an update the game servers are taken offline, and you end up getting booted out of the game.

Once the game Update has been completed or the server update whichever the case, when the servers come back online for the first hour or so is when this Bug often happens and you should take care to not allow yourself ot end up fluxed by it.

What happens is this: When you log into the game one of three things happens:

First Possible Event: The game logs you in but the town you are seeing is NOT your town. It may be a higher level town, it may be a lower level town (usually it is lower level), the point is that it is not YOUR town. When this happens you don't want to initiate any action that can cause the game to perform a local save -- specifically you do not want to visit your neighbor's Springfields, since that will do it.

Second Possible Event: The game logs you in but your town is "gone" and the game is restarting as if you chose to start a new game. It will ask you if this is your Springfield. DO NOT say yes, do not continue to play, and do NOT do anything that will cause the wrong town to end up being saved.

Third Possible Event: The game logs you but something is very wrong with your town. Characters and Buildings are missing, you are missing Donuts and Money, or other objects that should be there are not. While this is your town it is not your town as you left it last time you were logged into the game!

In all three instances of this Bug your best action is to close the game without initiating a save and without logging out and in during that session. For iOS devices tap the button to close the game, then double tap it to open the console and force the app closed.

Once you have done that, shut off the device to do a hard Reboot, and then try to log in again. Keep doing that until you are properly logged into the server with your account and your correct town.

II. Graphical Structure Bug

There is a known Bug in the game where the data file is corrupted AFTER the game loads and causes a number of graphical errors to appear in your town.

It is not known if this becomes a permanent Error of you allow your game to save -- so the best advice is to quit out hard and then shut off your device so that the game does not save the corrupted data to the save file on your device just in case.

If you need to know what this but looks like when it happens, look at the image below:

As you can see in the image what should be a pair of Brown Houses ends up appearing as one of the Thanksgiving Event balloons that has been hacked apart by a madman!

While it is amusing to look at, it is not an effect you would want your town to be saved with - right?

III. Harp Freeze Event

There is a known Bug that can happen upon log-in wherein the game locks up with the sound of harps playing after asking the user to log into the Cloud.

The Bug has not been officially recognized by EA, and there does not appear to be anything that the user can do except Reboot and relog. EA is aware of this issue though, and appears to be working on a fix for it.

IV. Content and Event Issues

While the stability of Tapped Out has gotten way better in recent months, whenever there is a new Content Expansion or addition to the game a rash of lock-up or corruption bugs does happen.

That is to say, while it is not a given that it WILL happen, it often does to the extent that EA has issued a set of steps that it says are the recommended "fix" for the issue while they work on correcting it on their end!

The official recommended steps are as follows:

1. Minimize the game

2. Double-click the Home button

3. Press and hold on the Game Icon at the bottom of the screen until the red circle appear.

4. Tap the circle to close the Game.

5. Relaunch the game from the App Icon.

If your device has been upgraded to iOS 7 then substitute the following:

1. Minimize the game.

2. Double-click the Home button.

3. Swipe the windows to get to the game window in your active programs list.

4. Swipe the game window UP (to send it to the sky and thus close the game).

5. Relaunch the game from the App Icon.

They say that this is the best approach to dealing with these new Content and Expansion errors until they can permanently fix whatever is causing them.