Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium: Valentine’s Day Disaster Event 2018 Mini Guide

abyssrium valentines 2018 event guide

This is a “mini-guide” for Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium, with only the Valentine’s Day Event (2018) information, split out to be faster & easier to load on mobile devices. Feel free to Add To Homescreen for easy access! See the complete guide for a more comprehensive set of information or to post a comment, or visit the Addendum below for other relevant posts.

If you enjoy my guides, please consider contributing to my Patreon to help me make even more, higher-quality guides & articles! With enough funds I can reduce or even remove ads as well!

If you have complaints about this event, email [email protected], the Cheetah Mobile PR person responsible for abyssrium

A Valentine’s Warning

So this event is basically the shark-jumping moment for AbyssRium. This event is exploitative beyond anything AbyssRium fans have seen before. This seems to be the point where Cheetah Mobile has completely consumed the original dev team’s intent and wants to milk us for every single penny by destroying the core game unless you pay.

I posted a comprehensive list outlining 19 problems with this event on reddit. I am not in the mood to repeat it here, but suffice it to say, the devs think you are both an idiot and gullible. Song of the Moon was disabled for candy gaining, wait times and an illegal (in Japan and China anyway) gachapon were introduced, they wanted to delete all of our stored candies at the end of the event too. And that’s just half of it at most. It’s all garbo.

I strongly recommend a straight-up boycott and I’m only providing this guide to help players get through the event in one day (which the developers don’t want) and without paying one red cent for their abusive practices. I’m a developer myself and I probably know more game developers than I know non-devs; I love developers and I love games. I’m doing this not because I don’t want devs paid, but because I care about gaming as both an industry and an art form, and I cannot let evil like this stand unopposed.

Valentine’s Day Event By The Math

The average human is bad at math and even worse at statistics, which is what the devs are counting on. They didn’t want you to run the math to realize how bad this event is and called it “easier” and “more fair”, even though it’s the hardest event by far, and the most unfair to new players. But don’t worry too bad, see the Exploit section and I’ll get you speeding through even this exploitative garbage; for free!

Valentine’s Day Event without exploits

  • Average of 100 Gachapon pulls (platypus attempts) required
    • This is 300 hours of sheer waiting
      • There is not a single second of gameplay in this event, it is entirely waiting
      • That’s 12 days without sleep, or 24 days sending it 4 times a day (the most that most players can do)
      • At 2 pearls per minute, this costs 108,000 pearls
        • At $5 for 200 pearls, this event costs $2,700 to skip with pearls
  • 50,000 Roses required to send platypus 100 times
    • This requires 42 hours of mindless tapping minimum (20 bubbles per minute)
    • 500 ad watches minimum, which requires paying the devs for an exploitative event which you should not do
  • This is objectively the most difficult event to complete by a factor of 4
  • Cheetah Mobile hates you and wants to treat you as a living wallet

Valentine’s Day Event with exploits

  • Only 2 hours!
    • No really, you can see me complete it in about 2 hours
  • Still 100 gachapon pulls, which is really boring, but at least it’s fast
    • See how gachapon is inherently bad in all contexts?
  • Still 50,000 roses
  • SirTapTap loves you and want to treat you as a human being

Bugs

This event is more bug than feature, so I’ve had to separate the bugs into good and bad ones.

Exploits (Good Bugs)

Don’t forget to turn off Auto-Updates until you finish the event to prevent downloading a fix for these in case they patch it.

This event sucks and is total exploitative garbage, however, a delightful exploit still allows you to complete it within 2 hours.

  • The devs will give you pretty much any amount of Roses you ask for on FaceBook because of damage control and the rose-deletion bug. Remember you need 50A+ minimum to finish this event alone
  • Altering your devices timezone ahead 3 hours and back will reset the Platypus exploration timer and allow you to completely skip the gachapon timer
    • Thanks to /u/tacocat723 for discovering this amazing exploit 
    • This trick does not require the Nimble Platypus, please do not buy the Nimble Platypus. If you already bought it, contact Google Play/Apple for a refund and they will give it to you if it’s a recent purchase. Do not reward the devs for an awful event. Take a stand.
    • This trick works on iOS, Android, absolutely anything. All you’re doing is changing the device’s timezone, no “hacking” or external software is necessary at all
    • I explain and perform the exploit in a video here
      • I also collect all the valentine’s day 2018 fish in that same livestream, took under 2 and a half hours!
    • Step by Step Valentine’s exploit instructions:
      • Send out the platypus on it’s adventure
      • Close AbyssRium all the way (so that next time you launch it, it starts up at the loading screen)
      • Open your device’s Settings app and go to Date and Time
      • Change to a timezone that is 3 hours ahead or backward.
        • Disable automatic timezone if it’s enabled too. Switch it back on when you’re done
        • Almost any timezone actually works, just bounce between two distant timezones
      • Open AbyssRium again and tap the Complete Exploration button on the platypus and get your rewards!
        • When you move the timezone back the timer may be over 4 hours, but if you tap “complete now” after changing timezones, you’ll still get the reward without spending pearls. It’s only a visual bug.
      • Repeat. It’s that easy.
        • If you use Nox App Player, you could probably set up a macro to loop this
  • The Valentine’s Reef can be placed anywhere you want
    • Tap the Reef in the Expand menu to start moving it. Then, move it anywhere you want, even when it’s “red” (disabled), and tap the checkmark a ton of times. Even though it’s disabled, the confirm button will randomly allow you to place it, giving you the item.
  • The Baby Polar Bear doubles roses per tap.
    • Due to being useful, this bug was fixed in the first update since this event, 1.5.9

Bad Bugs

  • Almost everything in the game can randomly delete your entire supply of roses (event currency)
    • What happens is it tells you the event is over and roses are converted to vitality…even though the event is over, and the devs decided to remove this feature from the game
    • If your roses are deleted, message the devs on FaceBook and they’ll return the amount of roses you tell them to.
      • Tell them the amount of roses lost and your usertag.
    • Entering VR mode can delete your entire supply of roses
    • Visiting other player’s AbyssRiums on Facebook can delete your entire supply of roses
    • Switching devices via cloud save can erase all roses
    • Merely opening the game or playing it normally can delete your entire supply of roses at random
  • Sometimes the Platypus doesn’t upgrade even after all coral seeds are aquired and planted. Unknown why.
    • Message the devs if this happens, they’re the only ones who can fix it
  • Sometimes the event tab disappears or the game hangs on startup
    • Close and restart to fix this
  • Switching devices via cloud save resets the Playtpus while destroying all roses you spent sending it out
  • Every player got an inbox reward of 1000 roses and 500 pearls, but no notification was sent.
    • Tap the Gear menu then Inbox to get the free goodies

Valentine’s Day Unlockables

The Valentine’s Day Event would be super confusing even if it weren’t for the exploitative garbage. Basically there are 4 classes of things you can get:

  • Valentine’s Reef Coral
    • These “level up” the platypus when all coral are acquired and “planted”
  • 2018 Fish
    • These require Valentine’s Reef Coral
  • Valentine’s Expand items
    • Once a fish/coral is “maxed” in the Event menu, you can get duplicates that turn into Expand menu items you can place freely
  • 2017 Valentine’s Event fish
    • These are earned at random and leveling the Platypus unlocks “better” fish with lower odds for you to potentially get

The platypus will bring back a single item every time at complete random. “Upgrading” the Platypus and buying the IAP platypus (do not do this) will still only ever yield a single item per 3 hour gachapon pull (see the Exploit below to circumvent this time-wasting garbage) .

The Platypus “level” doesn’t actually mean anything beyond unlocking more coral/fish for it to get.

Unlockable Fish (2018)

There are no hidden fish, and only a paulty 8 fish total, because this event is about screwing you out of real money, not about fun. There’s also no Theme items. As mentioned before, it will take 100 gachapon pulls to get the last fish, even though there’s only 8 fish, and one of them is free.

  • Platypus
    • Free to start off the event
    • Max of 1
    • Required to earn other fish, it’s a Gachapon which you spend 500 roses on then wait 3 hours to get your garbage
    • Levels up by completing coral collection which unlocks higher tier fish/coral
      • You have to plant the seeds to level it up too, just having the last seed won’t do anything
  • Batwing Sea Slug
    • Requires Novice Platypus
    • Max of 10
  • Maroon Clownfish
    • Novice Platypus
    • Max of 9
  • A Pair of Knobby Seahorses
    • Veteran Platypus
    • Max of 5
  • Yeti Crab
    • Expert Platypus
    • Max of 4
  • Mimic Octopus
    • Master Platypus
    • Max of 4
  • A Pair of Pygmy Right Whales
    • Master Platypus
    • Requires all 32 “slots” of all other Valentine’s Day 2018 fish to be filled
    • Max of 1

I refuse to mention the In App Purchase fish for this event because you should be boycotting it and it doesn’t help anyway because of the exploit. If you already bought it before you knew how bad this event was, please refund it with the app store.

Unlockable Valentine’s Reef Items

Valentine’s Day Coral Reef

The event is centered around a new Expand Coral reef you can place. The reef must be placed to unlock and display fish. It would be kind of neat if every other part of this event weren’t terrible.

  • Valentine Coral Reef
    • Costs a few Roses and unlocks the rest of the event
    • The rest of these items are given randomly by the Platypus gachapon
  • Carpet Coral
    • Novice Platypus
    • Max of 5
  • Bubble Tip Anemone
    • Novice Platypus
    • Max of 5
  • Pink Horn Coral
    • Veteran Platypus
    • Max of 5
  • Heart Crater
    • Veteran Platypus
    • Max of 5
  • Barrel Sponge
    • Expert Platypus
    • Max of 5

Expand Items

Confusingly, after completing a fish/coral, you’ll sometimes get a smaller, placeable Expand item version of that fish/coral. It will be in the Coral tab of your Expand menu. This would actually be a super neat feature if it weren’t part of an awful gachapon, but instead it introduces duplicates and delays completion.

Not listing these rn because this event is too garbage to waste that much of my time tbh. If the devs don’t give a damn why should I?

2017 Fish

You can get 2017 fish in this event, which will delay your progress completing the 2018 fish list. You can get any of them other than the Heart Sunfish (you can never get the Premium Fish by any method but paying really money).

Note the 2017 fish unlock in tiers with the Platypus, and the Whale/Whale Shark are extremely rare, likely a 1% drop rate or less. Friends have pulled over 150 fish without getting a whale. Rough stats here, they’re scarcely better than Luck Shell.

This Event Sucks And Only You Can Fix It

As I’m sure you noticed, especially if you’ve played the event yourself, this event is truly abhorrent. Even worse than the usual mobile scams, especially since it’s been added to what was originally such a fantastic game.

The only way we can fix this, together, is my three point plan:

  1. Boycott In App Purchases, and if you can, boycott ads as well, or simply delete the app. Only hurting them through their wallet will truly get through to them.
  2. Tell the devs on Facebook via direct messages what you think of the event. Be polite, but specific in how bad and which aspects of the event are bad.
  3. Spread awareness on your favorite social media or news reporting platforms of how exploitative this is; it’s not getting much talk yet because it’s a mobile game. It’s a real shame the Nintendo Switch version of this game for instance will now be associated with this dreadful “event”.

I know my guides are usually 100% informative and almost never take a stand like this. This is really important. This is the death of a fantastic game I’ve mostly loved for the past year. Cheetah Mobile has pushed too far and we need to let them know it’s unacceptable.

Addendum

Other resources useful for Tap Tap Fish – AbyssRium players:

My Patreon Page – Where you can support me, or use paypal instead.

Full AbyssRium guide – Anything you could ever ask for is in here!

Hidden Fish Mini-Guide – All the non-event Hidden Fish

Event Fish Guide – All info on limited-time events

Fusion Fish Mini-Guide – All Fusion fish and info on using them effectively

Striped Marlin/Bonito/Star Striped Marlin guide – Because these stupid RNG fish generate 10x as many questions as anything else

Video Guides – A YouTube playlist full of my AbyssRium video guides & updates

Other mobile games – Bored? Check out some other mobile games I’ve made guides or reviews for.

Questions? Comments? Leave them here on the main guide! – comments are excluded on mini guides for faster loading.

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Author: SerTapTap

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