The Keys to Leveling up

Its one of the big questions we hear as experienced players. How do we get MORE keys?  How do we level up FASTER???  

Well there are only three ways of getting your keys, buying, finding, leveling.  If you are wondering WHY I am discussing this now when I have already covered this, in two weeks we will have a double whammy of awesomeness. The carnival quest AND the masters of fruit.  Three dishes all in the top 10 dishes of this game.  Its 28 keys for Masters of Fruit and 26 keys per side on Carnival. And you do need both sides of carnival to cook the top dish. Its like Easter where the best dish takes supers from both columns.  And I have some neighbors who have few to no keys.  They need a way to make a LOT of keys in a relatively short amount of time.

First you can buy them. Like with real money. I don't recommend this because Gourmet Ranch is not being updated by the developers.  So really there is no rush. The quests come back around every year, regular ingredients don't go anywhere. 

Second - Treasure Hunting.  Keys aren't guaranteed but they do pop up.  

So if you look at your boathouse. This is the one with the older captain.  When you send him off you get a little magnifying glass. Click on that to do a search,

When you do a search its on a grid like this. The bigger your boathouse the bigger your search area. Make sure if you find stuff to click on it to add it to your boat. If it doesn't have a orange box you won't get that item. 

And of course once it returns make sure you click on COLLECT. 

Keys usually pop up in 1.2 5 or 10 increments. That is the most I have seen in the two years I have been playing. 

The last and obviously most consistent way to get keys is to level up. 

The awesome thing about GR is that there are SO many ways you can level up faster its crazy. Its a matter of what you have available.  

My personal favorite method of leveling up is to sell dishes. Not just any dishes. You need dishes with a high coin value. 200 coins or higher. 

This is Nian Gao the TOP dish in the game. Dishes that are over 500 coins are ROUGHLY 10K XP to every 100k servings you sell.  It goes up or down depending on the value. Nian Gao is actually closer to 15k per 100k servings. Most stoves are roughly 4k servings each. If you have 53 stoves its over 200k servings every 6 hours. That is 30k XP every six hours.   This is if you SELL it to neighbors. Not serve it to your counters. You don't get that XP if you keep the dish to yourself.  If you have neighbors who are awesome then team up and each of you sell dishes to each other. If each person cooks 50 stoves worth of a high dish like nian gao . Not only do you get the benefit from selling but you get the benefit from buying. Its the same either way. Roughly 30k XP to buy 100k of the Nian Gao dish. 

So another quick method BUT NOT CHEAP is the buying of decor. Specifically buildings or balloons.

I am just gonna discuss balloons for now but buildings is the same concept essentially.  If you look below you can see that the ROO Balloon is 430K coins.  For everyone you purchase its 1k XP. ALL of the big balloons are the same value. 

And this is the last page of balloons, it has a smaller set of balloons for 12k coins, which gives a measly 41xp.

This is a fine option for players who have billions of coins. This is NOT ideal for any player struggling with coins. 

Lets look at the math on this

1 Turkey Blimp 4.3 million and 3666 XP

OR 

3 Kangaroo Balloons or whatever for 430,000 =1.29 million for 3099 XP

OR

88 Red and White Balloons for 12 K each =1.056 million for 3608 XP

So the smaller balloons are technically the best deal. cheaper, more XP.  The problem here is when it comes to resale value you will only get 10%.  So on the turkey blimp you will get 430k back. On the Kangaroos, 43k back for each one and for the Red and white balloons 1200 back for each one. 

If this was the only way to get XP quickly I would say just eat the cost and move on. BUT we have another option. 

BIG MART. 

This guy should be your favorite neighbor when you hit the wall on needing keys. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A BROKE OR NEWER PLAYER!!!

First you can buy multiple items from him for coins if and when you need them

Eggs, pork, chicken, apples, cherries, COCONUTS, Raspberries, Watermelons, grapes, Corn, Hops, Tea, Tomatoes, Carrots, and Potatoes.

Now you may have noticed I have done coconuts in big letters. Just like balloons ANY of the above ingredients will work for this but the return on the coconuts is the best. 

So when you click on big mart this is what you see. A box of 10 is just 12250

But if you buy 100 you get a discount of 30 percent. 

So why do we want coconuts? Well we don't we want the xp. 

Before we bought 100 Coconuts

After we bought 100 Coconuts

If your math is fuzzy thats 1226 XP. 

BAM your welcome!

And now we have coconuts what to do with them ? Sell them to neighbors of course. 

And look you MAKE money instead of losing money. 

AND you get XP from selling to your neighbors. Though this is limited according to your level. Right now my cap is like 125k, I believe coconuts are like 1-2 xp for each one you sell. Its not a lot but if all adds up. 

So lets go back and look at the math AGAIN with the balloons and NOW add the coconuts in. 

Lets look at the math on this

1 Turkey Blimp 4.3 million and 3666 XP

OR 

3 Kangaroo Balloons or whatever for 430,000 =1.29 million for 3099 XP

OR

88 Red and White Balloons for 12 K each =1.056 million for 3608 XP

OR

300 Coconuts for 85750 = 257,250 for 3678 XP sold for a profit of 76k and an additional 300 xp.

I can understand why experienced players will suggest balloons. Its faster. In about 3 minutes you can have bought 50 balloons. Where as it takes longer with the coconuts. I think at most you will have just a few thousand coconuts. But you aren't wasting as many coins, and you are getting more value overall.

I hope this helps those of you with key shortages. 

Have a great holiday weekend.!