Map Set Information

I was curious what were the Large Bronze Chests that you get when completing one of the maps collection (e.g. the Sacred Mask from the inca destinations).

And hopeful it would contain some maps so you can continue flying more to the same destinations in order to complete the 5 other same collections you need to reach 6 so you have the bonus monument (Pyramid etc.).

Well, of course not. The Chest contains random junk:
- 1 fuel 50
- 1 thing required for a space launch
- 6 silver tokens
- 1 gold token

So to recap here how it goes now if you want to get a Pyramid:

1) You buy 20 maps to the excavation:mesoamerica destination from Duke's airship (40 000 coins)

2) You fly 20 times to that destination, you get nothing. If you're lucky, you get 1 map to one of the real Aztec destination (e.g. Chichen Itza)

3) You turn your whole fleet to the right plane type (e.g. turboprop) and stockpile as much fuel as you possibly can, activate that map, 3, 2, 1, go! For the next 6 hours, you scramble all your planes to that place, accelerate them so they can fly a second time, pray so that they don't break up too much and that the gods of item drop are with you so you can get as many as possible of the item (in this case the Bird Helmet) you'll need from that place to build your pyramid. Reasonably, you'll be able to complete somewhere between 8 and 12 flights, which should get you 0 or 1 of the coveted items (I've got 0 out of 7 and 1 out of 8, posts above mention 5 to 10% drop rate).

4) At this stage, you probably think your best option is to give up and uninstall the game altogether

5) If you do the math, at the rate of one visit of Duke every 2 weeks, assuming 12 flights per map and 10% drop rate, you'll need 5 maps per destination, so 50 weeks minimum. Yes, that's 1 year. Probably 2 given that you'll end up with 7 maps to Chichen Itza and still 0 to Tenochtitlan. Maybe less if you use Spyglass or Dice.

But as a bonus, you'll get 6 fuel barrels, a few gold and silver tokens (which will ultimately give you one special plane "+10% speed"... very useful when you have to change your whole fleet to another type of plane every other month).

This is called planning for the long term.

parking_god wrote:

Falubaz wrote:I have got 2 maps from 20 flights Constantinopel and Carthago. . I have all 9 jet fleet at the moment for the fligts to the Needle quest so I will be trying to get at least 20 flights to those two destinations.

So you're trying to do Puerto Rico/Miami/Sacramento/etc. flights?  I know we've been trading repair parts recently; you want to just start swapping Spare Wires and Additional Radars?

I have made 20 fligts to Constantinopel and Carthago got one Seated Hermes and none Capitoline Wolf.

Less than 5% drop rate.    

Drop rate for the Puerto Rico/Miami/Sacramento/etc. flights is even worse, 20 fligts to Miami and 20 to Puert Rico and nothing droped.

Waiting for the Christmas challage.

airtiggus wrote:This is called planning for the long term.

Since you can buy a chest of Mesoamerica maps for greens when Duke stops by, it's also called 'squeeze more money out of the power players.'

Also, how many planes are you sending? Using Fuel Catalyst &/o Golden Weathervane (I think; it's the one that increases speed fby 35% for a while) and getting just 12 flights per map makes me think you're only using 4 or 5 planes.

airtiggus is pretty much right on. The only thing I would add is don't complete the collection so that you can use the spyglass to get the items for the pyramid quest. Use the golden dice when you fly to the excavation sites to get more maps. All in all, a serious investment.

Backing up/restoring your game data is one way to achieve a result... Definitely backup prior to opening up a map set chest.

My method is with 7 planes doing 14 flights each map usage (using 9 catalysts to minimize using extra fuel barrels usage). Prior to starting I try to have 200/90 fuel, 60 of the extra comes from visiting neighbors, the rest from the fuel station (extra 10per hour). With this I can do 1 map per day. Can usually obtain the 100 flights (3 stars) with 8 flights (i.e 8 maps). I was lucky to start the Stonehenge maps when you were rewarded a map chest upon obtaining achieving 3 stars for a destination so I only had to buy about 3 map sets...

Since the last update I'm finding that I get a drop from a flight about 1 in 20. Often coincides with a plane breaking at the same time.

parking_god wrote:

Since you can buy a chest of Mesoamerica maps for greens when Duke stops by, it's also called 'squeeze more money out of the power players.'

Also, how many planes are you sending?  Using Fuel Catalyst &/o Golden Weathervane (I think; it's the one that increases speed fby 35% for a while) and getting just 12 flights per map makes me think you're only using 4 or 5 planes.  

Right now I'm after Stonehenge and I have a fleet of 5 blue planes. I can't send more because those things are so hungry in passengers, this becomes the limiting factor.

With the smaller planes, it's fuel, so it's worth having more of them (8 or 9 if you can) and send them all out. If you start with ~120 fuel (3 rounds of fuel station in preparation), that gives you a total of 120 + 360 (1 fuel/min for 6 hours) + 60 (fuel station) = 540 fuel = plenty enough to send all 9 planes, use catalysts and send them again, even complete a couple of flights with double fuel (and you can probably score up to 20 flights per map).

With larger planes, 20 * 260 passengers = 5200, that's too much for my city... So the limit is more like 10, and even less with jumbos (haven't tried yet).

Completing this quest is either painfully slow, or takes lots of boosters (catalysts, weathervane, other bonuses to replenish fuel or passengers, dices etc.)... so it's best to use them wisely. The worst thing is I don't think that spending green bucks helps so much, it only gets you half of the way.

I might be missing something completely obvious but could someone tell me how you get maps for the 'Roman Holiday' collection (Constantinople, Carthage, Veii, Ephesus, Merida) and 'Riddles of the Pharaohs' collection (Cairo, Memphis, Luxor, Kom Ombo, Heliopolis)?

GASBS wrote:I might be missing something completely obvious but could someone tell me how you get maps for the 'Roman Holiday' collection (Constantinople, Carthage, Veii, Ephesus, Merida) and 'Riddles of the Pharaohs' collection (Cairo, Memphis, Luxor, Kom Ombo, Heliopolis)?

You should buy the Excavations Ancient Rome Map in airship store by 2000 coins, when you have the Ancient Rome map, you can fly to Ancient Roma to get the map of the destinations of Roman Holiday (the dripping rate should be seldom to very seldom), also you can buy a map set(contain 3 maps) in airship store by 12 green cash, an then you can fly to these destinations to collect this collection (also the dropping rate is seldom to very seldom).

Buy Ancient Roma map --> fly to Ancient Roma --> get Roman Holiday's map from flight --> fly to the destination(s) of Roman Holiday collection --> get the collect.

The Riddles of the Pharaohs' collection is the same way to buy the map.
The chance is seldom x seldom. Good luck

Ok thanks for that Simon Chan

I guess I'll revive this thread. I used golden dice to get 12/65 maps from excavations Mesoamerica of which 3 were to chichen itza. Using 2 maps and 2 sets of golden dice I was able to get 24 bird helms out of ~120 flights. I did have to burn a fair amount of fuel but other then that it's pretty doable. The drop rate seems to be around 20% with the golden dice. Has anyone else seen similar rates? I am now on to ancient rome and will update. So far missing one of the 5 maps. 6/22 (was 5/20) for Furietti Centaurs/Ephesus with golden dice.

Ephesus is 24/80/50 fuel/passengers/speed up.
Are the rest of the roman destinations the same?

Can someone make a thread of all the locations and requirements for the flights? We had that started on this thread but I haven't seen it anywhere else. Safe flights!

Here is the original thread - maybe some information in here will help:

https://airportcity.forumotion.com/t1234-the-sands-of-times-adventure-quests.