[ Poll ] ✿ ✿ BOOTY GRAB GUIDE ☛ ☛ ☛ MOVED ✿ ✿

Have any suggestions for my booty grab guide? Oh, and I'm moving soon!!!

Please PM me suggestions or post here		12.2%	[ 109 ]
Want to help me design/graphics for the new one?		10.8%	[ 96 ]
I've got nothing		77.0%	[ 685 ]

Total Votes: 890

[Societal Downfall]

I AM ABANDONING THIS THREAD AND WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE UPDATES FOR IT. Please check out my new thread with all the same great information and even more! Click on the image below to go there biggrin

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Fish Spotlight - Dark Knight Fish

The dark counterpart to the Knight Fish, this shadowy defender is known to operate outside the law.

With it's great low price (20k) and high gold drop rate (150g/m), the dark knight fish is a strong booty grab option when in packs. A tank with many of these guys will bring riches to your tank without breaking the bank. Hey, maybe they are even giving them out in booty grab games again! (that would explain the low low price) If you're looking to make some gold and show off your dark side, this guy is a perfect guardian to keep your tank secure from goodie tooshoes.

High Scorers! Send me a picture of your high score to have it posted (+1000 only)

** NOTE: if your image is not a 'safe image' by default, I will not add it to the list.**

[Magic~Spell]:˛2418.... Societal˛Downfall:˛2163. Victoria˛of˛Aragon:˛1831 Erepo:˛1518 ................. lonestarrae:˛1405........... Magus:˛1312.............. Haviv˛Oltalon:˛1234..... Suirax:˛1192................ The˛Broken˛Ace:˛1096...

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CONTEST:
If people would like to donate more prize (or to me biggrin ) that would be appreciated!

CONTEST 1: Make me a sign!
Miss Mayena won the 5k biggrin

Just PM me your sign when you complete it. Don't worry, if you make one and have a cool idea later, you can resubmit it.

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Societal Downfall]

POWER UPS/DOWNS

Extra 'Drops'

This is a temporary place for me to list some information about extra items being dropped during booty grab.

When playing booty grab, it is possible to have items dropped along with the gold! You may see a floating picture that looks like a fish, a giftbox, or some other item. I HIGHLY suggest to go out of your way to grab these. Some are worth a few hundred gold and some are worth thousands! It is random as to if and when you will get these extra items, it is also random if gaia decides to add them to booty grab games. They have a limit as to how much they will give out.

PSP RAFFLE TICKETS: How do they work? If you pick up a ticket in a game of booty grab (or DC), you keep that ticket in your inventory until the event is over. Every day they will 'draw a ticket' and if one of the ones in your inventory matches, you win! That simple. All you have to do is collect the ticket and then you can forget about it.

This section is all about the power ups and how to use them to your advantage. All power ups and power downs last for 10 seconds EXCEPT time, which is +/-4 seconds.

Avoiding power downs:

Order to avoid power downs and reason:

1. Time - Self explanatory, if the fish in the tank are generating 10g per second, you lose out on 40 gold.
   
2. Size - Very hard to collect, also your overseer shrinks both horizontally and vertically.
   
3. Speed - Gold is usually 'clumped,' therefore little effect
   
4. Gold - No effect if you have no gold power ups

It is important to note that this order fits most games, but not all scenarios (as in if you have to take one, take one lower on the list). There are times that you will avoid a power down further down the list before one above it. ALWAYS avoid power downs in the last 5-10 seconds of the game, even if this keeps you away from lots of gold!!!


When to take a power down:

Sometimes it is better to take a power down, here are some general guidelines:

• Take a size or speed power down when you can collect the same power up afterwards: The reason is that if you collect the power down and then the respective power up, the power up will be active and there will be no power down on the screen to worry about.
  
• When to take a speed power down: If you have no real way of avoiding a size power down without keeping yourself from lots of gold, take it if a) the gold is clumped, b) you can follow it with a size power up.
  
• In the last 4-5 seconds, if there are too many power downs for you to avoid, consider taking a time power down to end the clock and remove all remaining power downs. Otherwise it is [almost] NEVER worth taking a time power down.
  
• Watch where the power down is going! Try to slip 'under' it when it goes up so you don't get trapped! It is easy to try to avoid it, and miss a lot of gold in the process, just to end up taking it because it trapped you!. Usually they travel in the shape of a 'w' across the screen, but sometimes they travel in more of a 'n' shape.

Pace your power ups:

When you have a power up 'in effect,' avoid collecting the same power up until your time is almost out or the power up is about to leave the screen. Note: When the timer is at 3/4 finished, you have about 1 second left for that power up. Also, sometimes it is advantageous to wait to collect a power up until it will be more useful (i.e. there is a big clump of gold that will fall in 4 seconds).


Gold power up/down:

The gold power up and down is unique, so it gets its own section.

• First off, if you do not have a gold power up in effect, taking a gold power down has NO effect, so don't worry about avoiding it.
  
• Second, if you do not have a gold power up in effect, wait as long as possible to collect it if you don't have a gold power up in effect.
  
• If you do have a gold power up in effect and another one is on the screen, wait until you are almost done your first one to collect the one on screen.
  
• You can only have a maximum of +3 (two gold power ups), but collecting a gold power up when at +3 will keep you there and reset your time limit (for the power up).

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Societal Downfall]

GAMES TO PLAY & GENERAL TIPS

Basics of how to play:

If you see a tank in a person's signature that looks like this ---&


1. Click on it (note: the fish will be swimming around it it will 'glow more' when your mouse moves over it. This will bring up the aquarium and start the game.
2. You then move your mouse within the window to 'catch' gold!
3. Sometimes items get dropped in booty grab. You catch them the same way as gold
4. Close the window when the game ends and saves.


Selecting your tank to play:

By now everyone should know that you NEVER want to play a game with a single fish that has a low gold/min generation rate (see section on fish statistics). If you want to ensure that you make the most gold while playing booty grab, it is important to asses the tank before you start playing.

• If you cannot see any 'high trigger fish' behind the "BOOTY GRAB" obscuring most of the tank, wait for a few seconds to see if you can see what fish is glowing. Use my guide (coming soon) of gold/min generation to decide if it is worth it.
  
• If you do see 'high trigger fish' in the tank, chances are the glowing one is too. So play this game.
  
• If there are multiple fish (even cuttlefish), play it!

Once you click "PLAY," finish that game!!! If it turns out to be a cuttlefish, however tempted you are, DO NOT close that tank before finishing as you will get a fatal error and not be able to play ANY tank for a while.

To make this 'tank selection easier,' it is a good idea to go to a thread full of high trigger fish. This one being a good one to visit. Also, you can just play booty grab right here in my guide! The first 10 pages have lots of good tanks biggrin


Lag = EPIC FAIL!

The worst possible thing to have when playing booty grab is lag! It will make you do worse. Here are some things you can do to avoid lag:

• Turn down the quality setting in the top left corner of the tank.
  
• Close other open programs that may be using up your computer's resources.
  
• Minimize any other open windows that may be impacting your performance (or close them out)
  
• Making the booty grab window small reduces lag! (I can play memphis tanks lag free when I make the tank small enough).

Flash Player:

• Make sure you are running Flash 10. If not, go download it!
  
• CPU v. GPU: If you are running a discreet graphics card, (this option only seems to be available on windows), you can right click on an aquarium and get a variety of options for flash. Here you should see if flash is set to utilize your GPU or software render (CPU). Since you have a GPU, you want to make sure flash is NOT set to only software render, this way it will use your GPU as much as possible. (I think this is only available in flash 10)

Secret to better movement:

Movement: 1 - use your mouse, your 'guy' will follow it unless it leaves the screen. 2 - Use the arrow keys (I have not been able to achieve this) to move your guy.

If your mouse leaves the game window, flash will no longer know where you want your avatar to move! OH NO! To avoid this we can do something very simple! Resize (full screen) the game window so it takes up the entire width of the screen, this way you can't hit the 'dead zones.' You can also move your guy faster now as the further your mouse is from him, the faster he moves towards it. So far in windows, I cannot manually drag the size of the window to change it (the game just freezes if I try), but on my mac, I can resize the window and let me tell you, stretching it side to side allows you to move your character SUPER fast, collecting more gold smile (full screen doesn't give you the extra speed boost as there is not enough black on the sides of the tank).

Be careful with speed power ups! If you are too overzealous with your speed power up, you may accidentally run into a power down!


Play to the fish:

Change your strategy to fit the game! If you are playing with a starfish, all of the gold will come down in a small portion of the screen. Because of this, you will lose lots of gold if you have to run out of that area to avoid a power down. Don't be afraid to take the odd slow down to keep collecting gold...

Well, I really won't say much more on tips as you should develop your own strategies! Have fun and make lots of gold!

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Societal Downfall]

FISH STATISTICS

Everything from gold per minute generation to general habits/play styles. **Please note that MP prices may or may not be accurate and are just a quick reference to provide you with a general idea. Thanks goes to feystorm for providing me with more recent gold generation stats.**

Glowing Gold:

Some of the fish have a very unique gold ability! They generate glowing gold [blue or green] that has a special property of multiplying the gold's value [x3 or x2 respectively]. It gets real interesting when you get gold power ups though! The double bonus is applied AFTER the gold power up bonus, so if you have 2 power ups (+3 gold), collecting a green piece of gold would mean you collect 3x2 = 6 gold, NOT 1x2 + 2 = 4. COOL!

Trigger & Gold Generation rate:

Certain fish glow, and therefore trigger booty grab, more often than others. As a general rule, the high chance a fish has of triggering a game, the more gold it generates. The 'chances' of a fish triggering booty grab is provided by gaia. The rate of gold generation is obtained through careful procedures to ensure accurate data! ^_^ (and with some help from you guys)

(no real order as of yet, I will organize later!)
Fish - ↓[Gold / min generation rate] - Trigger frequency - [~MP Cost] - Life Expectancy

Aquarium Watermeat [75 'x3 gold'] UNK [115k] 25 weeks
Lila the Mermaid [120g/m]+[20 'x3 gold'] VERY HIGH [63k] 40 weeks
Memphis the Mermaid [120g/m]+[30 'x2 gold'] VERY HIGH [110k] 40 weeks
Blue Starfish [120g/m]+[15 'x2 gold'] UNK [55k] 17weeks
Piranha [180g/m] UNK [80k] 24 weeks
Turtle [150g/m] VERY HIGH [80k] 42 weeks
Killer Whale [150g/m] UNK [33k] 32 weeks
Irrawaddy Dolphin [120g/m] UNK [22k] 24 weeks
Dark Knight [150g/m] VERY HIGH [25k] 20 weeks
Ninja Fish [120g/m] VERY HIGH [45k] 20 weeks
Green Starfish [120g/m] UNK [45k] 18 weeks
Starfish [120g/m] HIGH [24k] 18 weeks
Red Starfish [120g/m] UNK [46k] 18 weeks
Streamer Fish [120g/m] MED [36k] 12 weeks
Hamuhamu [90g/m] HIGH [20k] 24 weeks
Knight Fish [90g/m] VERY HIGH [34k] 20 weeks
Narwhal [90g/m] UNK [19k] 18 weeks
Aquarium Squid [90g/m] HIGH [15k] 15 weeks
Jellyfish [90g/m] HIGH [19k] 15 weeks
Octopii [90g/m] HIGH [35k] 14 weeks
Hermit Cat [90g/m] MED [450g] 13 weeks
Coco Catfish [90g/m] MED [42k] 12 weeks
Kiki Catfish [90g/m] MED [19k] 12 weeks
Submarine Ticket [90g/m] UNK [8.5k] 4 weeks
Diving Suit Ticket [90g/m] UNK [8k] 4 weeks
Candycorn Fish [75g/m] HIGH [21k] 20 weeks
Scooter Blenny [75g/m] MED [48k] 18 weeks
Lazor Fish [75g/m] HIGH [55k] 18 weeks
Seaslug [75g/m] HIGH [50k] 18 weeks
Penguin [75g/m] UNK [20k] 12 weeks
Gold Nugget Pleco [60g/m] UNK [45k] 17 weeks
Seahorse [60g/m] MED [42k] 16 weeks
Lime Snail [60g/m] UNK [43k] 13 weeks
Gray Snail [60g/m] UNK [46k] 13 weeks
Orange Snail [60g/m] UNK [ 35k] 13 weeks
Banggai Cardinal [60g/m] MED [42k] 12 weeks
Winter Snow Crystal [60g/m] UNK [950g] 4 weeks
Easter Egg [60g/m] UNK [1.3k] 4 weeks
Mimi Kitty [40g/m] UNK [17k] 17 weeks
Sharktooth Fish [40g/m] LOW [5.4k] 8 weeks
Arrow Fish [40g/m] LOW [3.2k] 6 weeks
Nautilus [40g/m] UNK [16k] 6 weeks
Cuttlefish [30g/m] LOW [1.6k] 12 weeks
Spikey [30g/m] LOW [30k] 9 weeks


Note: Trigger frequency is based on information provided by gaia. UNK. means it is not provided by gaia for that fish and therefore unknown.

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Societal Downfall]

INTERESTING FACTS & TROUBLESHOOTING

Booty Grab Screenies! This is where I post neat screenshots of BG

Here are some general facts that I have observed so far. They may or may not be true.

Users do not 'trigger' booty grab, rather, the tank is triggered for all users. This means that when you see a tank with "BOOTY GRAB" on it, every other user on gaia would see the same thing if they saw that tank.

You cannot play a tank twice in a period of time. Sometimes you will play a tank and see it not long after with "BOOTY GRAB" still on it. This is because of the above, the tank is triggered, not you, and therefore, you will not be able to play that tank again until it triggers again.

Once you open a game, you are considered in that game until the message "Saving Score" shows up at the bottom of the tank (at the end of the game). If you close the game before then, it will take a long time before you will be automatically 'booted' from the game. Also, you can check the page the tank was on, if the fish appear in that tank, it means that your game has ended and been saved (i.e. if it's stuck on the "now saving" screen" wink

Guess at minimum system requirements to play: 2.0 GHz processor core, 1 GB RAM, discreet graphics card. These settings would be the bare minimum and potential provide lag free games with >5 fish.

Do taps influence frequency of the booty grab game activation? : No

Does the booty grab graphic disappear when the game is no longer playable on the tank?: It will disappear on its own (and appear), but it disappears about 30-60 seconds AFTER the game is no longer 'joinable.' I don't know if it appears as soon as the game is ready to play or after a short delay.


Here are some reasons you might not be able to participate in Booty Grab.

Problem: Nothing happens when you click on "Play" or "visit my tank"
Solution: Your pop-up blocker is probably keeping you from opening the aquarium. Disable your pop-up blocker or make an exception for www.gaiaonline.com

Problem: Your tank is not in your signature.
Solution: Go to "My Gaia" > "Aquariums" In the top right corner of your tank is a button for settings, in there you can select "display in my signature."

Problem: You do not see other people's tanks in their signature.
Solution: Go to "My Gaia" > "Account Settings" > "Preferences" and make sure "Show all users' signatures" is checked. If you still don't see signature, make sure you have latest version of flash installed Adobe Flash Player.

Problem: The game ends but does not display final results.
Solution: As long as the bottom has a box with the words "Now Saving" or "Generating Results" it is safe to close the window if nothing is happening. The game has been saved and the gold granted. IF your next game tells you "Error already in another game" then the progress was not saved, nor gold granted, and you need to wait for the game to 'auto kick' you from the last game.

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Societal Downfall]

MAKING GOLD FROM BOOTY GRAB

So, obviously, other than just having fun, you want to make gold off of booty grab! Why else would you be here? Well, listen up. I don't have lots to say, but I have a bit of information to pass along.

For the Player:

If you are playing booty grab to win gold, it is important to find the right location! This is key! In an earlier post I linked to my favourite place to play. If you have lots of high trigger tanks on every page, you are in the right place. I can usually pull in 3k in 30 minutes or less! Since they changed the resizing option in the booty grab, I usually make 400g per game. Also, they now make less games appear, so it is a little harder to find games (not much) The key here is to play only tanks with lots of fish. This is made easier by finding the best hunting grounds. Also, when playing the high yield tanks, lag may become a serious issue and lag = less gold.

Summary: Find a place with lots of good tanks, never play less than 3 fish, make +2k in 10 minutes. Here is a great place:


For the Owner:

Now, some of you might want to try and earn gold from other people grabbing your tank. While most people cannot make enough gold to 'recover' the cost of their fish, it is possible to actually make a profit! If you have a lot of 'high yield' fish in your tank (high gold/min generation is more important than high trigger), and advertise enough, you will make up that gold easy! I've seen tanks where the owner has made over 3 000 000 gold.

There are some obvious traps that people fall into though that will cause them to lose gold! Watch out for this and keep these tips in mind if you want to make a profit.
-Most important rule, only a few high trigger fish will NOT pay off! People want to play tanks where 4-5 high trigger fish are glowing and this takes 8-12 high trigger fish for 4-5 glow regularly. YOU CANNOT 'slowly upgrade' your tank! You need to buy a whole bunch of good fish at once and put them all in at the same time.
-17 fish in your tank is a must unless all of them are high trigger fish with high gold generation (you can get away with 13 at this point).
-To really be successful, you need to get on the first few pages of a popular booty grab thread! People will most often go to places with very good first pages and RARELY play tanks past the first few pages!
-Also, it is important to look at the 'cost of recovery.' What is this? When you buy a fish, you pay [x] gold and it lives for [y] weeks. Take [x] (divide) [y] and you get a number, this is how much gold your tank needs to make every week (on average) just to break even! Now do this for all your fish [cost] / [life] and add it together, you want to get the lowest number possible to make back your gold quicker (use only on fish with +110g/m). Another factor is gold per minute generation rate [G] in a game. Take [G] (divide) [x] and you get another number, the higher this number, the cheaper your investment (initial cost of fish).
-Take into account the total life of your fish! If your fish lives a long time, you can't replace it with new fish when they come out but you have a longer period of time to make your gold back.

Summary: Lots of high yield fish and lots of publicity make lots of gold.



BANNER CONTEST ENTRIES:

Miss Mayena

http://i28.tinypic.com/2z6573t.jpg

2 - Power ups/downs | 3 - Games to play & general tips | 4 - Fish statistics | 5 - Interesting facts and troubleshooting | 6 - Making gold from booty grab

[Luke_Ryo]

so it's safe to post now?

[Dnelle]

Cool! It will be nice to have a really awesome Booty Grab guide!

[Societal Downfall]

Don't worry.. I am working very hard on this! I'm even getting ACTUAL statistics on gold/min generation of different fish

[I demand a shrubbery]

That is very good, I wish you the best of luck with it!

[My Enlightment]

iam looking forward to this^^

[Societal Downfall]

Thanks smile

[Societal Downfall]

hmmm... what sections am I missing?

I feel like I need to cover something else....

[Takuto_Girl]

This is awesome! Brilliant idea for a guide. mrgreen

[Societal Downfall]

Well, that is enough to get everyone started on playing booty grab!!! ^_^