Secretive, frustrating, generous... It's a lot of things, but what it ISN'T is easy to fill.
The idea is simple, the faster you click on the little bonus doobers (hearts, coins, XP, food and collectibles) and the more you click the better a bonus of coins you get.For a while most people have considered this a fun but largely useless feature. Although filling the bar was a challenge most people didn't bother worrying about it.
Up to now.
Because now, the Bonus Bar has become intrinsically linked with one of the buildings (The Pony Express) and needs filling to a certain level inside two of it's missions. In addition reaching the Insane Level once a day will prompt a bonus Special Delivery of goodies, so well worth aiming for.
So, what's the trick to getting yourself an Insane Rating? Well, first off let's take a look at what you need to click to get each one...
| Bonus! | 4 | Excellent! | 11 | Amazing! | 21 | Outstanding! | 34 |
| Holy Smokes! | 50 | Extreme! | 69 | OMGeezers! | 90 | Unstoppable! | 114 |
| Insane!!! | 141 |
So, that would suggest we need to click a quite mental 141 items to hit that magic Insane rating and an extra Special Delivery... but it's not that cut and dried, or that bad.
Although single items count as one click, larger items actually count as multiples. So a pile of coins valuing 100+ will tick 5 clicks off the bar, a complete 8XP will knock off 3.
So it's fairly obvious if you're hoping to get that bar raised all the way you need the bigger and better items. Peanuts, for example, drop almost 1500 coins, 13XP and potentially collection items. This means they're excellent for filling up your bar quickly as long as you get lucky and keep yourself fed and away from Jack!
Using an Animal Harvest bonus (got from the Barn Collection) is also an excellent way of boosting your power as long as you have a good number of animals around, although you really do have to be quick to get all the bonuses as they're only on screen for a limited time.
If you're going to do an animal harvest like that it might be worth being in full screen and zoomed out so you can click on the largest area and not worry about scrolling the screen.
As you can probably tell, one of the most vital parts of filling your bar is speed, speed and more speed. not only do the doobers only stay on screen for a limited time, but you also only have a short time, just a few seconds before the Bonus Bar resets.
Things that will kill a Bonus Bar attempt:
- Jack's popups - Be ready at all times to X a Jack popup remind you a neighbour needs a visit.
- Running out of energy - Even if your inventory is on the right page the bar will likely reset in the time it takes you to get in, eat something and drop out again, you might catch it if you're VERY quick though so at least set your inventory to a page with a meal on beforehand.
- Varmints - If possible have a varmint on screen of the most likely type. If you're harvesting crops nothing brings you to a grinding halt like a groundhog.
- Trees - It's possible to make it with trees but the length of the chopping animation makes it hard.
Really that's all there is to it. Make sure you're ready with high value items to harvest or tend, make sure you're at max energy or higher if possible and make sure your fingers are nicely flexed and ready to work.
As long as you've got some good stuff and are lucky when it comes to any of the above problems you should find your way to Insane, but it might take a few goes and a little speed-clicking training to get you there.
Good luck... and God Speed!
