Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24642411-20140324191554/@comment-25087059-20140802042819

It's even worse with Earth. :)

Starting new islands is frustrating when you don't have sufficient income to upgrade reasonably quick.

I have a few recomendations:

1. If you collect three or more times per day, then load up on 3-element monsters. If you collect less than three times per day, try to get at least four 4-element monsters on all your islands. You need the money makers.

2. Only upgrade the 3 and 4-element monsters to 10 or 11, unless you're trying to get them to Gold. There's a diminishing rate of return on your investment the higher you go. For example, it will take you most of a year to recoop the cost of leveling a 4-element from 14 to 15. When you're trying to expand, that's a wast of money that could be spent on castle upgrades.

3. Put as many 1 and 2-element monsters in the hotel as you feel comfortable with. I find the songs are boring if I send too many away, so I try to pick and choose just a few of the ones I like best so I'm not wasting beds on monsters that don't make money. Also, don't bother feeding 1 and 2 element monsters past level 4.

4. Don't stop baking in order to save up, until you have maxed out beds on all islands and have no 3 and 4-element monsters under level 10.

5. Upgrade the castles on the other islands to at least Luxurious (and to Extravagant, using diamonds, if you can) before trying to upgrade the castles on Water and Earth.

6. If you wait to start leveling up monsters for Gold until after you've fully populated Water and started with Earth, it will take less time in the long run to accomplish both expansion and monsters on Gold, because you'll be making a lot more money and baking a lot more food when you have all islands rolling.

The goal is to have a healthy economy with lots of money-makers before expanding. If you do that, you'll never need more than a week or so of saving (without having to stop feeding) to get each castle upgrade.