Coming Soon to GR! Quest Calendar Updated

It has been a while since I last updated our Quest Calendar. I had a feeling many of you would like to have an idea of what to grow or maybe what would be best to unlock. 

And also I wanted to answer a frequently asked question.

Will we see the Gourmet Ranch Olympics?

The answer is PROBABLY not. If you have not noticed GR is repeating quests. Not only that but they are repeating the quest dishes, amounts, order etc. Even the mini quests are repeats from last year.   The most likely answer to this is they don't have a programmer at their disposal at the moment to redo all these quests so they are just plugging in last year's stuff.  This was NOT a quest last year though I do believe we will see it in August just not as a quest,  I believe we will see it either with Jack the Giant or on the back of Masters of Fruit.  The olympics dates overlap those two quests. 

Don't get upset though this was a very very low paying quest from the early years of GR. 2012 to be exact. 

So lets look at what we have to look forward to this year. 

Carnival! Which is next is at the list, is very much a quest you should unlock. 

Jack and The Giant is ALL regular items. There is no unlocking needed on this quest.

Masters of Fruit is after that and this is another must unlock quest if you can. 

Peggy's Bake off is the last quest of the summer and its a bummer. Top dish is 234 coins. And you need both seasonal sides to cook it. It is CHEAP on the keys though. So that is nice. 

Mad Hatter's Tea Party. This is funny enough, an Easter quest.  But GR decided Tea parties are okay all year round. Its in my opinion an OK quest. Top dish is 344 coins. It is a ENTIRELY seasonal quest. So you need BOTH sides to be able to cook that dish. 

Hunting Season comes next. This one is again decent. The Top dish is 401 coins and you only need the animal side for that. The next dish is 373 and takes items from both sides and Asparagus. Ugh Have I mentioned how I hate long growing items?

Spirit of Halloween is next. Nightshade. I love nightshade. Its my favorite. 

Day of the Dead - Has those bugs. They pay well so we will disregard that they are creepy.

Arctic Chill is ALL regulars and some crappy ones at that. Quinoa, Banana Peppers and Nutmeg. Ugh

Thanksgiving is pretty lackluster. The top dish is 232 coins and the main ingredients are 18 hours and 1 day to grow.  

Then we end the year with two christmas quests.  Both are very high value and worth unlocking.

Click on the Quest Calendar above to find out what you have to grow for any upcoming quests. 

Have a great day !

Independence Day Mini Quest

So I am fortunate to have some awesome neighbors who are helping out with the mini quest steps. I am NOT personally doing this so there are NO screenshots. Just the steps. A Big Thank you to Patti for her help!

Step 1 - For 10k Coins 

Plant 20 Buckwheat

Grow 20 NYC Pigs 

Unlock the NYC Cow

Step 2 - For 500 XP.  

Unlock Soya

 Place 20 NYC Cow

Plant 20 Soya

Step 3 - For 600 XP

Cook 20 China Town Won Ton Noodle Soup

Cook 20 Central Park Yankee Donuts

Co 20 Hells Kitchen - Ham Champ

Step 4 - 800 XP

Cook 20 East Village Chocolate Egg
Unlock NYC Chicken
Cook 20 Harlem - Mofango

Step 5 - 1000 XP

Unlock Tarragon
Unlock NYC Lobster
Cook 20 Midtown Pastrami Chicken Bagel

Step 6 - 50 Speedups

Unlock NYC Octopus
Unlock Bay Leaf
Cook 20 West Village Lobster Roll

Step 7 - 10 GR Cash

Place 20 NYC Octopus
Cook 20 Little Italy - Fusilli Octopus
Cook 20 Greenwich Village - Sardinian Stew


So your shopping list for cooking is as follows:

40 Buckwheat
20 Shrimp
20 Soya
20 Sugar
60 NYC Pig
40 Garlic Cloves
20 Plaintain
20 Bunching Onions
20 Sweet Potatoes
20 Soda Water
20 Chocolate
20 NYC Cow
20 NYC Chicken
20 Rye
40 Tarragon
40 NYC Lobster
20 Goose Egg
40 NYC Octopus
20 Bay Leaf

And that is all I have. Big shout out to Patti Brown who gave me the steps so I could put them here.

Have a good weekend all!

Quest Prediction: Party Like its Carnivale!

I loved carnivals as a kid and GR's version does not disappoint. Its very bright and colorful and best of all PAYS WELL. 

This quest also brings with it an ADDED bonus I will discuss at the bottom. 

I hope you saved your keys this summer. If not you have just a bit less than a week to gain a few. IF you need help leveling I have a whole POST on ways to get those awesome keys.  Just check out the tips and tricks section. 

So I am doing the Quest prediction a bit early for two reasons. One I skipped the fourth of july quests. So I can't help you with the mini quest steps on this particular quest. 

And two because we have a couple of long growing ingredients you MIGHT want to plop down in advance. 

So our THREE dishes are 

Dish 1 Feijoada  PRICE 481.84, You will need as regulars, Kidney beans (6 Hr) and Rice (1 Day)

Dish 2 Quindim PRICE 213.78. You will need Eggs (Buy in big mart with Coins) and Vanilla (2 days)

Dish 3 Tacaca PRICE 604.32. There are NO regulars for this dish. 

A couple other points I will make. The Carnival Shrimp is a FREE ingredient. And don't forget you can buy your eggs in Big Mart. So there is no reason to have 

Besides the free shrimp, the Braham Cow is the ONLY animal used in this quest. And its a super.  Everything else is on the CROP side. So if you have limited keys.  The side that is in your best interest is CROPS. 

As always we have a spreadsheet of what dishes this quest entails. As you can LOTS of higher value stuff.  This one also has an abundance in my opinion of EASY regulars. That is ones most of your smaller / newer players are likely to have unlocked. Such as Kidney beans, rice, eggs, onions, hops, barley, coconuts, peanuts, beef and tomatoes.  

SO this quest LAST year brought with it an added bonus. 

That bonus was MASTERS of FRUIT. 

Why do we love Masters of Fruit? Well because anything that pays well and is quick to cook is AMAZING. 

The ONLY downside is some of the ingredients that accompany these supers are likely to be troublesome for smaller / newer players. By the way this will be 28 keys to unlock the Fruits. AND this will be its OWN quest roughly 5-6 weeks from now.  

The first dish isn't too terrible. Cranberries are easy enough and ginger is only at about the half way mark in the row. 

But then we look at the Lychee dish and we see Vanilla again which is a 2 day ingredient and Elderberries. Which are almost to the bottom of the Fruit category.  However I will say Lychees are just FOUR hours to grow, so you can grow a massive amount in a 2 week stretch. 

Tamarinds are a quick dish to cook at just 4 hours and Chickpeas aren't bad at 4 hours to grow. But Tumeric is 18 hours and is near the bottom of the herbs. 

Then we have the last dish which is the pigeon and juniper berry.  These take pigeons which is near the bottom of your animal category. Rosemary is an easy ingredient at 30 minutes but again its about half way down the herb section so newer players may not have access to it. 

I didn't do these in order but the order of unlock should be Tamarind, juniper berries, Lychees and then persimmons.  The first two items will be six keys each and the second two will be 8 keys each. 

Since this bonus will pop up again later in its own right, it certainly would not hurt to unlock if you have the keys. But if you don't, DON'T Fret. This will come back in just a few short weeks.

Well there ya go. Have a great weekend and Happy Ranching to all!  

Maximum Ranch Space : More Ways to Expand Your Ranch

A few months ago I showed many of you a step by step instruction on doubling up your ranch. Since then I have learned a few things.

First off you are NOT limited to just double plots. I personally have quadruple plots on my ranch and I love it. I have triple plots for animals.

And beyond that I have learned a few better methods for enhancing your ranch. Ones that are quicker and allow for less mistakes. Even people who struggle with carpal tunnel like my self will appreciate it.

So take a quick look at what a ranch that has 1000+ plots looks like. It is so awesome. Honestly.

And while it took me awhile to figure out what works and what doesn't I have got to say you are gonna probably love these methods more than the method I presented. 

This is what quads looks like CLOSE up. 

So how did I get it so neat and pretty?

Well go back into your shop tab and under the Christmas tree  / Hay block in the GARDEN section, go to the tiles.

This was the tile I told you to use at first. But turns out you can use ANY of the tiles. 

You also have ALL these options. I am actually only gonna point out the benefits of TWO. 

So we will start with the straight road above. WHY? 

Well remember what I said to those who were having issues since lining up four itty bitty tiny plots can get tedious and cause you serious pains in your wrists. Well this takes the plot count from 4 to 1. 

Here is your visual. Its the size of ONE crop plot. 

For those of you like me who need a bit more help with lining it up, flip that sucker around! 

So the basics of this one is pretty much you want to put those double yellow lines in the middle of a plot.  So literally DIRECTLY ON TOP OF THE FIRST SET OF PLOTS NOT STAGGERED!!!!.   Now when you put down a 2nd piece of road, you just go down the line and put the NEW plots in between the yellow lines. Kindergarten easy folks.  It is THAT easy to now get doubles. 

I read that and it sounded confusing lol so I thought VISUAL!!!. 

Now you can go back and do more plots but its a bit trickier with these roads to get your lines right. Or at least I think so.  But you have two options. 

Long option: Pick up those roads, store them and put them down again in a way so that you can do the plots between the lines deal. 

Faster Option : Hit refresh. Now just put new plots down. As long as the roads are down already just hit refresh and GR will let you place more tiles over the top. You do NOT want them to be directly on top of the first or 2nd set of plots. You want them to be 1/4 way over the yellow line. Otherwise you bury a plot and you have to delete the one on top of it to get access to it. 

'

Remember I said I second option you will love. 

These mowed grass tiles are my absolute favorite for quad planting. 

Okay let me say first off this is 4 itty bitty plots so this might not be friendly to some of you. 

When you put 4 of them down together they look like this:

STRIPED!!!

And how awesome is this? Now you can do quadruple plots and you only have to stay in the lines. 

Plant them directly on top of the first row.

Option 1

You can do the 1st yellow to the third green (Note : This is 8 itty bitty tiles. )

Option 2

2nd green to 3rd Yellow

Option 3

2nd Yellow to 4th green.

Remember you can do a row of one option above, hit refresh and go thru and do another option then hit refresh again and go back and do the last option.  

When you are done with the crops go back and STORE all your little plots. Sell them all at once. Its so much easier and a whole lot less clicking. 

Animals are for the MOST part exactly the same. The only thing is the last step. You don't do it. Its a pain to remove those tiles so don't. Your animals can sleep on the road or the sand or mowed grass. Doesn't matter. 

There is an added benefit to NOT removing them from the animal pens. 

TREES!!!!

As you can see I did NOT remove the tiles below my animals. They are triple plots and the animals harvest and plant just fine. I do trees along my back row and I can see my animals just fine. 

 I also do the refresh trick but just ONCE for trees. 3 / 4 times it tends to bury your trees. Its not fun to be staring at a tree you can't harvest or do anything with. It messes with my OCD something awful. 

Here you can see the walnut trees and the turkeys getting along fine in a nice tight space. 

I would make a small suggestion that if you do intend to put trees in your animals' space put it out of the way. IE along the Top of the ranch or along the left most side.  Otherwise on the bottom or right side it will obscure other items.  That is not fun either. 

If you didn't already see them I also have TWO videos, one for animals and one for crops that show how to get this started. Remember you can use ANY of the tiles above. 

Video Walk Thru for Animals

Video Walk Thru for Crops

And of course I have the ORIGINAL walk thru linked here if this post above was confusing or still not much help.

I am very much a visual person so I prefer to show others as I would want to be shown. 

Maximizing Your Ranch Space

I hope this helps.

Have a great day ranchers!

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.!

Quest Prediction : Independence Day Celebrations

So this past week has been interesting. I can only assume GR has started their party a week early as we did NOT get a mini-quest for our current contract.  As it is now Tuesday, I do believe it UNLIKELY we will see the miniquest for the Wizard. Poor guy. He probably didn't want to go back to Montana anyway. 

So Thursday we SHOULD see the return of the 4th of July quests. There are ACTUALLY three of them. The first one is so crappy you don't want to know about it. Just trust me. 

The second part is called the Mega BBQ.  This is the GR version of BBQ type taco bar. Pick your meat, pick your toppings etc. I don't have a spreadsheet for this one BUT I can tell you its not very good paying and frankly its RIDICULOUSLY confusing.  I can not tell you what the top dish is exactly but I believe they are all in the 150-200 coin range. Of the ingredients I have, the top one is 149 coins. And its 18 hours to cook.  Have I mentioned how much I hate long cooking, low paying stuff recently?  

Alright so that brings us to the ACTUAL quest. We will thankfully be going back to 106 of these dishes. 

First Dish has one of my least favorite ingredients. The scotch bonnet. 2 days to grow. And your return is a measly 78 coin dish. If you were fortunate enough to grow water beetles this quest, it is a MUCH better use of those peppers. 

 Aside from that I do believe the Chicken was the free ingredient. 

And the 2nd dish . This one takes the lobster, tarragon and goose eggs. Which are 1 day to grow but they take up space on your ranch for 14 days unless you either speed them up or kick them to the curb. 

The Last dish is entirely seasonal. The Octopus and Tarragon are BOTH the bottom ingredients in their respective rows and you need TWICE as many Tarragon since its in TWO dishes, as is the lobster.  This is one of the top dishes of the quest. 

If you take a quick glimpse at this quest you will see that the top dish doesn't even get to 300 coins. 

My PERSONAL opinion is this quest is a good excuse to take a vacation. And I am. I will be gone Thursday to Monday for the holiday.  (Hubby and Father in Law share a birthday on the 8th so we are going home so we can have some family time).

Have a good week.

Quest Prediction: Follow the Yellow Brick Road!!!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Gourmet Ranch!

 Next Thursday June 16th we should get a new quest and I am pretty sure we are gonna see a return of the Wizard. 

This isn't a bad quest. Certainly above the Rock the Ranch quest in  my opinion. Could be because I am an avid book reader and I really enjoyed the Wizard of Oz in its original form. 

Like the Rock the Ranch quest, we are gonna be cooking up a storm. For the top level players, 149 of each dish. That could be a lot given that two of the suspected quest dishes are gonna be 12 hours. But  what everyone is REALLY waiting for is not the quest, but the surprise the wizards at GR might give us. 

More on that in a minute, but back to quest talk. 

The first dish last year was the wicked witch's emerald lamb reduction. Yum. 

Found on the Animal Side of the unlocks.

The second dish is the Ruby Tartlets. I left out the middle word on purpose. I misspell it all the time. This dish is just 8 hours.  This is available on the CROP side of the unlocks. And it is the TOP item. 

3rd quest dish was the Tornado Beest Pie. Made with rubbery Flying Wildebeest. This is the top dish available for this quest. Its available on the ANIMAL side for the unlock.  And its a 12 hour dish.  

Here is the spreadsheet for the Wizard.  Red is the supers. Yellow is anything you can grow year round. Blue is just basic information.

But what you really want to know is what the surprise might be?

Well I THINK we might see the exotic animals. If we do they are VERY good dishes. Better than anything the quest has to offer. They are also pretty pricey at 28 keys for just four items. 

But the good stuff always costs more doesn't it?

So our first dish, the flamingos is nearly 600 coins. Only downside is the long term animal the  Dairy Sheep. It takes 2 days to give you Feta Cheese.  Only 8 hours to cook. Not bad though.

So the 2nd dish is the Fried Water beetle. GR is fond of making our imaginary people eat bugs.  But for what they are charging we can claim they are a delicacy I suppose.  Yes you probably noticed that it ALSO takes a long growing ingredient the Scotch bonnet.  So not only are we feeding our people bugs we are giving them peppers that are some of the HOTTEST on the entire planet. And we are still charging a fortune.  Just six hours to cook. I like short dishes. 

The 3rd dish from the Exotic animals is the Wolverine. Oh look ANOTHER long growing item. The pineapple. Three days. Just four hours to cook. I really really like short cooking dishes. 

Snails are bugs in my book. Sorry for those who disagree. And look ANOTHER 3 day crop for this dish. Garlic. But just 4 hours to cook. 

If you need an idea, the snails and wolverine are just 6 keys each to unlock and the flamingo and fried water beetle are 8. Of course you have to go in order of lowest paying (snail) to highest paying (flamingo.).

Have a great day ranchers!