OPINION: Relics and Amber Island are the most unbalanced thing I have seen in the game since I started playing in 2015 and need reconsidered! Let me explain!
The main problems I see:
- Getting Relics from anything other than Amber Island is too inconsistent. Getting 10/week through daily rewards? Great. Trading diamonds for relics in the store with a price increase each time? Keep it. Earning relics through spinning the daily wheel: This is *okay,* but while I don’t particularly believe in some people being naturally luckier than others, I feel like I should just because of this. If I compare what I earn from the wheel to what my brother earns from the wheel, he gets WAY MORE relics and diamonds than I do. I very rarely get anything besides food or coins. And I play more often than him, and I always do the watch a video to spin the wheel again. This is unfair to me and is completely luck based. Considering that relics are so difficult to get, my brother considers the wheel as “reliable income” for relics. Well it’s not for me! Maybe it’d be worth it if you upped the chances of getting relics and diamonds after watching a video, but for now, it just rewards the lucky.
- Getting Relics from Amber Island Monsters takes way too long to ever pay off. You spend 5 to 40 relics to get a container to fill. Once placed, the monster makes 1-3 relics PER MONTH. A Kayna, who now costs 5, can only ever earn 1/month. So you spend 5 relics, and it takes her 5 months just to pay herself off. Even if you consider the quest reward for getting her, it still takes 2 months to pay off. Every other monster costs way more than that and therefore takes way longer. If Amber island is meant to be a reliable method for earning relics, it takes literally forever to even make a profit and Amber Island rewards players who don’t play every day, but play once a month. With this being the case, why would you even start working on amber island if you haven’t gotten the 10 werdos and a kayna on each fire/magical island yet? It’s such a waste of resources and is barely rewarding!
- Getting Relics from Quests is a tease. Picture this: You work and wait and spend and finally get 100 or just 50 relics for your first werdo on an island. Congrats, you get 3 relics from completely the quest to get you started on the next one. Really? What a tease. It’s almost not even worth it at that point.
- Werdos being expensive is fine, but putting them 50% off occasionally is unfair. Why? When werdos came out I saved up forever and bought my first werdo at 100 relics. And literally 2 days later they went on sale for 50. I was so mad and upset at the game I stopped playing for a few months. I spent forever saving up and could’ve gotten them both had I known they were going on sale for literally half off. That’s a huge sale. Werdos should either always be 100 relics or always be 50 relics, or should only go on sale during the anniversary but not for 50%!! Again, that’s rewarding people who play less but at the right time!
- The way timers are for Amber Island Pedestals is unfair. Say you’re playing, earning relics, and buying things with them. Now the monster you want on amber island comes out, FINALLY, but you don’t have enough relics for it. Because the timer doesn’t start when you put an egg in it or when you get the pedestal, like other egg-zapping containers, but it starts when it’s put in the market, you try to save up as fast as you can (inconsistently, mind you) watching that timer tick down and down. Once you finally have enough relics, do you risk buying it and having less time to fill it? If you fail, you either have to pay a butt-load to fill the rest or you only get half the relics back and wasted all that time, all that effort, all those eggs, and half your relics. But if you don’t risk it, you have to wait sometimes a whole year before it comes back into market because sometimes the waves last that long! How ridiculous is that? Why not just make them available for a limited time but have the timer start when you get it? This rewards people who are way further in the game and don’t spend relics or diamonds on other things, or who have the ability to spend real-world $$ to get more diamonds.
- Getting rid of obstacles on Amber Island is ridiculous. I have 3 points to make: (1) Amber Island is on the higher plane, like gold island. Gold island had 0 obstacles. Mind you, it doesn’t earn profit, either, but to have the same amount of obstacles on Amber Island as any normal island seems like a lot. (2) I counted how many obstacles I could see on my uncleared amber island and did some math. It costs 11 relics to get rid of all the small trees, 14 for medium trees, 16 for large trees, 36 for small rocks, 48 for medium rocks, and 40 for large rocks. That’s 165 relics total (or more, considering some obstacles might be hidden)… that’s a werdo, all 6 kaynas on the fire/magic island, and 5 (or more) relics! Why are they that expensive!? (3) People clear obstacles both to have more room for more monsters but also to have creative freedom with decorations and placements. And I remind you, AMBER ISLAND TAKES FOREVER TO ACTUALLY EARN ANYTHING. So these obstacles are literally way more expensive and way more of a hassle on this island when they shouldn’t even be on the higher plane to begin with.
- Rebuilding the castle is cool, but with how slow it is and how expensive it is, it severely slows down how fast you can build Amber Island when it’s already difficult to get monsters.
- While My Singing Monsters has a rep for adding new ways to spend currencies way after the initial introduction, I can’t tell if Amber Island was meant to help earn relics more steadily for everything else, or if it was just meant to be bragging rights and a pain in the butt.
Issue Summary VS My Suggestions
| Current Issue | My Suggestion | Desired Outcome |
| Without income from monsters, relics are pretty inconsistent to get, with the exception of the daily prizes and being able to exchange diamonds for them. | Make the memory game be able to give maybe like 2, 3, or 5 relics. The memory game is pretty long and unrewarding right now as it is if you’re really far in the game (I like the memory game, and I like the new style of doing it where each level gives rewards not just a random reward at the end, but it’s not really worthy it for me to do it right now.) | Make a way to earn relics every day by working for it not just hoping for it (from the wheel spin) |
| Amber island monster waves & timers are unfair, as individual monsters don’t come around for a year or so and the timers start when the wave starts. | Make the waves shorter. Instead of 2-3 months, maybe just 1 month at a time. But change the pedestal timer to start when you Buy the pedestal, or when you put your first egg in it. The pedestal timer could be 1-2 weeks, like all other egg-zapping monsters. | The timer will then be based off of you and your efforts, not when the wave starts and whether you had enough relics or were there in time to buy it as soon as possible. Also, monsters could come around more often than 1 year or more. |
| Amber island’s castle extremely limits how much you can do initially. Amber island should not be treated like it’s a normal island with a normal castle. | Up the initial / base tier to have maybe 10 beds instead of 4. | You can actually get amber-earning monsters before having to spend amber to allow you more beds. |
| Amber island monsters don’t actually start earning profit for a long time because they have to “pay themselves off” first, which takes months. | Make the goals for getting your first monster of each species on amber island be almost if not equal to the cost of the monster. For example, you get your first Stogg for 10, fill it, awaken it, and are rewarded immediately with 10 relics. | This still requires you to have the relics to buy the monster, but then you don’t have to wait for the monster to “pay themselves off” and they can just start earning profit immediately. This would only be done with the first individual of each species. |
| Amber island monsters do not give daily players a feeling of satisfaction, as they don’t produce but once a month. This rewards people that only play once a month instead of daily players. | Instead of upping how much a monster earns per month when you raise their level or happiness, up how often they earn 1 relic. For example, instead of upping 1/month to 2/month, up 1/month to 1 per 2 weeks, etc. | This gives quicker gratification and encourages people to get on MSM more often to collect their relics instead of just saying “I’ll check it once a month since there’s not point in coming any sooner.” |
| Amber island’s obstacles are stupid expensive and there’s way too many of them. | Multiple suggestions: Option 1 – Remove them completely since amber island is on the “higher plane” and obstacles are for lowly islands. Option 2 – Make it possible to move the obstacles around like regular decorations. At least you could move them out of the way if you don’t want to waste your relics on them yet. Option 3 – Make them waaayyyy cheaper, or change which currency you use to get rid of them. Coins are still adequate. Option 4- Make them less plentiful so that it’s not freaking 165 relics to clear your island. | Do I need to explain this one? |
Game Board 