Hmm, I'd read the question as he'd already turned off his Tapped Out notifications. Guess I misunderstood.

Hmm, I'm around 17K and am feeling good about getting the prizes. I assume you're tapping neighbors etc., and keeping your cannon and elf hatch available for neighbors to tap on (this one can be tough if you don't have regular access to the game)? I do think it's odd that there are no character tasks to help out, and server access continues to be spotty.

I'll never make it to the island, and might get to the train as I'm at 15000 or so. Leave for out of town on Wednesday and I doubt I'll be able to access phone much or at all by the rest of the week. This second half of the event is pretty impossible, at least for me. Out of elves, not as many helps this time from characters or friends.

Yeah, the tropical island is a bit of a reach for me as well. The caboose I should get though. I don't mind if the next update drops the x-mas motif but I do enjoy the snow covered Springfield's so I hope that aesthetic stays.

According to the calendar TSTO Addicts put out, you're right on schedule.

You can also turn off notifications inside the game's settings, but I gather that it doesn't turn off visitor notifications. Hopefully, the OS settings will take care of them.

Yeah. That's what happened to me.

That's exactly what I needed to fix, too. Thanks for the tip.

Is anyone else finding less and less elves in their towns?

Ah, that makes sense. Obviously I turn off notifications in ios more than I do in-game.

I don't know if I'm producing fewer of them, but when I upgrade my cannon to shoot more of them more frequently, I need more, and I certainly haven't seen any kind of corresponding increase.

In addition to the things I mentioned earlier, the neighbor contributions are a lot more limited than in previous events. Start with the fact that I can only visit 30ish towns and get bells for myself. Then if I want to give someone bells, I can only hope that their cannon and elf hatch are clear. I made 30 visits last night (granted, it was midnight Pacific, but I was booked all day--this event rewards visiting while people are active, while previous ones rewarded taking advantage of others' inactivity), and only about 10 towns had those free. Gone are the days of a for-sure three-item contribution, let alone massive egg dumps.

I'm regularly out of jars to shoot now so definitely less elves. Hope I can make the final prize.

Of course I have 17694 bells. Of course I'm 6 bells shy of the train prize. Of course I've exhausted all options for the night, unless someone taps my cannon and elf door. Will have to earn it with my first cannon shot of the morning.

I visited you like an hour ago.

Plus, I don't think I tapped those. I'm not earning bells at the moment but I figured I'd make some visits, and avoided the cannon and door because I figured someone else could come tap them and get the double-bell benefit. But that doesn't really make sense. Even if I don't get bells, I should tap those so the resident can get the bells, and if they're active at that time, the next visitor will still be able to tap them. Clearly I didn't quite think through this strategy.

Are you sure that's not from upgrading your cannon? When we started out, you could shoot, IIRC, 27 elves every 4 hours. Currently I'm up to 39 elves every 2.5 hours

It probably is the canon upgrade but there aren't more elves to compensate for the upgrade. What's the point in lowering the cool down of the cannon if you run out of elves to shoot? You end up sitting on a final shot until you have enough elves.

I feel like this thread is giving me deja vu.

I think you were supposed to build up enough of a bank in the early part of the event that it would get you through to the end.

How often elves appear?
I guess you would need to play at least every hour, to collect elves, so you don't run out of them.

Well I just dropped eight million on the Krusty Burger oil rig. I only have $14,000 left.

Undoubtedly a new level will appear any moment and it'll be a week before I can afford the new items.

If that was their strategy, the math didn't work at all for me.

Good question. We know that the hatch generates four every, like, eight hours. But they also appear at random intervals. I don't know whether I just play too often or what, but I certainly don't see the "your town is maxed out on elves--please clear them out before you can get more" messaging like in previous events, even when I don't play all day. I suppose they might if I were trying to release them from the hatch.

I'm freaking infested with elves. Can't get rid of 'em. My canon shoots 36 of them every 2.5h but I can only play once in the morning before work, once after dinner and once before bed. That's ~100 a day I can get rid of, I've got 600-700 jarred up, and I keep getting more that I stupidly capture because i 'm trying up upgrade the cannon to shoot 100 of them every 5 minutes. Lol.

If anyone wants my surplus elves, come and get 'em!

I couldn't get into the game till 10 this morning, and when I tried to tap the hatch I got that message.

I kind of like the look of that. I've been spending all my dollars above $6 million on bloodmobiles so I could afford it if I saved up.

If only!

I think its going to be close for me for the last item. I currently have about 17300 and they say by end of day you should be at 17760 to be on track. Hopefully I can manage to get it. If I'm close towards the end and it won't take a considerable amount of donuts, I might use them to finish off the prizes.

The gears really need to drop more or have been able to be gotten by visiting friends downs.

The one task for upgrading the cannon says to get it to level 20.. I think I'm at 12 now and it called for 460 gears to upgrade to the next level.

If available time is not an issue, you should be fine. My cannon is the same level. Try to tap the cannon every 2 1/2 hours. Visit all your friends. If possible, every hour tap elves. Forget about any other tasks.

If you want to go extreme, just store all/most of your buildings, that way is easier to tap in all the elves. So if you don't have a lot of free time, you are sure that you are tapping a lot of elves.

I'm like 10 minutes away from visiting your town. If your cannon and hatch are free, I'll tap them, and that's it. If you are around and tapping, I'll drop by again later to hit one of them again.

I don't know if that cannon-upgrade quest will go anywhere. I don't recall any anything coming out of the previous installments of that quest.

Same thing here. It looks like I'll be a day or two off. So if the event gets a magical extension I might have a shot. Does that ever happen?