Today we finally got our Valentine’s event, well, mini-event. It started today, two days prior to the big event, and ends on the 17th, 3 days after the big event.

The questline starts off with Lisa preparing to send Valentine’s cards to some humanist and environmentalist causes, and then – to Fallout Boy. Hmm…

Anyway, all the Valentine’s items are back – and this year, no dreaded Wheel of Friendship! – which means that all the items that were available JUST last year in the Wheel of Friendship have not been made available again. This event’s basically 2013 with 2014’s buildings and characters and this year’s new decorations and costume.

EA have also been kind and given us the long-awaited Fallout Boy costume, or “Sidekick” costume for Milhouse. And, we’ve got a cute teddy bear called Sir Love-A Lot unlocked to place in our town as a decoration – FREE on the day.

EA also have another V-Day surprise… the real Fallout Boy!

You can read all about the event here. That’s it for now! Happy early Valentine’s Day!

P.S. The fact that we’ve had mini-events like Stonecutters Black Market Sale and Valentine’s suggests EA might have a big ‘un up their sleeves…

That’s right, as you may have guessed from the title, it appears EA might not be bothering with Valentine’s Day this year and have treated us to the Stonecutters – back for one week only!

EA have given us a welcome return to many of the Numbers – including Number 36 – Krusty’s costume, which is free, but only has one quest if you don’t want to fork out 140 Donuts for the Stonecutter Lodge – which unlocks all of his other jobs.

Number 51 is also back, having a brief return from last Halloween also, for 100 Donuts. Number 12 and Number 14, that’s Lenny & Carl, cost 50 Donuts, with Arnie Pye’s Number 67 on for 60. Homer’s Number 908 is also back, free with the Stonecutter Lodge questline.

The Stonecutter Daycare Center costs a measly $250k for you players with millions of cash – but as it’s unlocked at Level 5 – those all the way down there will be heavily disappointed. The Abandoned Store is back for 30 Donuts, and so is the All Seeing Eye for 100, the Stonecutter Table for 150 and the… why not just pop over to the article itself to see what else has come back?!

However, this is only WAVE 1, with 13 items. Waves 2 and 3 are set to spring up over the weekend and into next week, so Homer will be happy to let you prize open your wallets and fork out for some jaunty goodness – if you happened to miss the event last June.

When you log on, you are greeted with a message from Homer, Lisa and Number 1, detailing how the Stonecutters rigged the Super Bowl.

And that it for now – see you this weekend when Wave Two is coming – hopefully the Sea Captain is ready and bracing!

And, here we go, our first tie-in post of this blog! An episode tie-in for Tapped Out for the episode “The Musk Who Fell To Earth“, set to air in the States on Sunday, has just been released about an hour and a half ago – and on a Wednesday! Usually tie-ins come out on a Thursday.

Now, down to brass tacks, and the questline opens with Homer thinking he’s watching some fat guy on the TV, but it turns out to be his own reflection, as the power’s been out. It then moves onto Lisa organizing a mob and a committee to try to change Mr. Burns’ mind – who’s set on a “VIP access” to his power.

Hey, Dad, come quick! Mr. Burns still has power! – Lisa
Literally or figuratively? – Homer
Don’t answer, just get me my angry mob pants. – Homer
You lost your angry mob pants during yesterday’s angry mob. – Lisa
Then get me my church pants. I’m usually pretty angry there too. – Homer

You then get a prompt to purchase the Manual Power Generator, only $2000, which allows you to unlock Slave Labor Willie, a new costume for Willie which opens up a whole new questline – but his first task is to power the Manual Power Generator for 24 hours. Ironic how his costume is called “Slave Labor Willie” yet he isn’t forced into it. Whatever.

There’s three new premium decorations as well, with the Red Electric Car, the Yellow Electric Car and the Blue Electric car, costing 35, 40 and 45 Donuts respectively.

Some new info as well – the Friends screen graphical glitch has been fixed and the Red Brick Wall is back to normal size but there’s no news on the others I reported!

All this is available until until January 28, 2015 at 8am (GMT)! For more information and to read (some of) the questline, check out our wiki page!

What is Queen Helvetica up to? Has she become the evil prince from Frozen or something?! It appears there’s a major issue in Tapped Out at the moment with characters, buildings and decorations disappearing. I haven’t personally experienced anything like this (apart from during Clash of Clones where I never received a Recycled Wall for a prize and EA said they’d put it in my Inventory and they hadn’t) so it appears to just be certain players.

Some of the issues include characters sent on tasks never appearing again, including in the Town Hall census and the Character Locator icon, buildings becoming available for purchase again in the Store, “$” signs appearing over non-existent buildings, buildings not earning rewards, tasks of certain lengths of time becoming locked, buildings becoming transparent after The Castle of Equalia was placed and graphical glitches appearing in the Friends menu. It also appears to be maybe something to do with corrupted downloads and game saves. EA have recently been overhauling folder structures within the DLC files (downloadable content) and compacting them, so maybe code has been messed up there. Another reported cause may be the changes in item sizes, like the Red Brick Wall.

There’s a big forum on EA Answers here if you wanna sound off to those in charge. If you want to make a complaint straight to EA, click here but login with your Origin account to get somewhere.

Researching this I found that TSTO Addicts recommend trying to clear the area where the glitches are occurring most frequently.

In the meantime, don’t fret. EA’s probably on it.

Well, this wasn’t something they promised in the poem during the Christmas takedown, was it?

And that’s it for this Glitch Patrol! Sorry it’s a bit succinct, but there’s really nothing else we can report about this major glitch, there’s no fix yet. See you next time something’s up in the world of Tapped Out!

(But we always like to credit our sources, so thanks to TSTOTopix, TSTO Forum and Reddit)