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The Oregon Trail Guide

John Sherriff's Guide to The Oregon Trail on Facebook

 

Using the Discussion Board

All Change!

At the end of October 2011 Facebook closed the discussion boards of online games so the discussion board referred to here no longer exists. A great shame since this was a major part of the game for serious 'TOT'ers. The alternative, the support pages at The Learning Company, leave a lot to be desired. The solution would be for someone to produce a game forum to re-create the discussion board. I doubt if I would have the time to create it and moderate it. Any volunteers?

Well seems someone has done it, and it's far better than the original discussion board. Find it at http://fbtot.proboards.com/index.cgi

 

You'll have much more success if you use the discussion board to help you play and take part in the TOT community.

You can find the discussion board here. There's also a second, not so well used board, here.

  1. Use the discussion board to get help if you are stuck. Got a question which isn't answered on this site? Ask it on the discussion board. You'll find lots of nice people go there who will be happy to help you.
  2. Use the discussion board to get stamina / food / wagon repairs / coins / Experience Points
  3. Use the discussion board to help unlock those items which need unlocking by friends
  4. Use the discussion board to help get the 'Miss Popular' achievement.
  5. Use it to make suggestions for game improvements

To add your own posts to the threads use the instructions below:

When you get one of the above messages:

  1. Click on the newspaper.
  2. Post the message to your wall. You can do i and ii repeatedly but you MUST click the newspaper to get a fresh post each time.
  3. Open your facebook wall page, find the post/s you just made and right click the link at the bottom right of the post.
  4. Choose to copy the link address.
  5. Post that link address to the latest stamina, food, wagon repair, coin or experience point thread.
  6. Repeat steps i - v for each separate post you made to your wall.

The process for posting XP boosts is slightly different. You can only make one post from each destination, worth 5 or 6 XP. At Oregon City you can make multiple posts. These posts on your wall give no indication that there is a reward for following them.

For Stamina

Gravestones give stamina boostsLook for the latest dated Stamina thread. Click the links there. Each will give you 5 stamina. The links are only good for 5 clicks though. You can also look on your facebook wall for TOT posts offering Stamina boosts. The following posts give one:

Food

Food boost postYou'll get 10 lb food boosts from:

Wagon Repair

You'll get wagon repair boosts worth $10 from:

Coin Boosts

Coin boost postYou'll get these from:

Coin boosts are not worth collecting unless you are at a trading post and short of coins or stopped and out of stamina. If you are free to move you can probably pick them up from the trail faster.

Experience Point Boosts

Experience point boostYou'll get these from:

There is no clue from the 'Explore the Oregon Trail' link that it gives you an XP boost. 5 XP or 6 if you have a teacher in your team / have the officer's coat.

Health boosts

Health boost postYou'll get these from:

The health boost only applies to the wagon master so it is at its most useful if all your team have died.

Speed boosts

Native American TraderYou'll get these promised from:

The Native american Trader post is downright confusing. It offers a repair boost and a speed boost from the link. Clicking it gives a message that you got a boost but I don't see any evidence of one.

Unlock Posts

At various points in the game you'll come across trails, items or inventory slots which need unlocking.

Friend locked item

The one above is for unlocking the Naturalist profession. You can use trail notes to do this but it's better to use the discussion board to do this instead. Usually this doesn't take long. Here's the instructions from an Unlock thread:

Unlock Thread
   ======================
   How to use this thread
   ======================
   When you find a 'Friend-Locked' event:
   1. Ignore the '3 per slot' area - that will cost you Trail Notes
   2. Click the newspaper icon at the bottom
   3. Publish the message which appears
   4. Go to your Profile page (Ctrl click the link at the top of the screen)
   5. Right click the 'Help and get...' link in the post you just made.
   6. Choose 'Copy link address' or its equivalent (depends on browser)
   7. Go back to the discussion board at 
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=127903187268657&sk=app_2373072738 8. Find the most recent 'Unlock thread...' and select it 9. Click 'Reply to topic' and paste in your link DO NOT POST MULTIPLE COPIES! - only one will work and other copies just waste other people's time! 10. This thread won't work unless we all click each other's links! 11. IMPORTANT - Rewards are not given if the item is unlocked (you'll see a screen message) so to prevent people wasting their time, once your item is unlocked - PLEASE come back and DELETE your post.
 When this thread gets to a second page it can be re-posted as Unlock Thread [Day] [Month] Update [X]
 If you repost please copy and post the instructions first, then copy the last 5 posts
 from the previous thread.

Once the item is unlocked you'll see a message like this:

Item unlocked message

Please - make use of the 'Unlock Thread's. Don't make new, separate posts on the board just for your unlock. They rapidly clutter up the board and many people won't click them because of that. People who click your link get a small reward for helping unlock the item but they won't get a reward if it's already unlocked. This discourages them from clicking other links. To avoid this come back and click the 'Delete' next to your post if it is unlocked.

The Miss Popular Achievement

The Miss Popular Achievement

The Miss Popular achievement is one of the hardest to achieve but offers one of the greatest rewards - 10 Trail Notes, 1,000 Experience Points (at least 1 level up) and 5,000 coins.

To get the reward you need to be on the teams of 25 people all at the same time. It's something you are not likely to obtain unless you involve the discussion board.

If someone has deleted the instructions from the discussion board here they are again:

   ======================
   How to use this thread
   ======================
  a) Scroll to the END of the thread to make sure you are using the most recent list. If it gets
     too long and goes onto a second page it will be re-posted by someone.
  b) Add the first 10 people in the current list to your friends. Put 'TOT/Miss Popular' in the
     friend request personal message.
  c) On your next TOT trip select the top 4 people on the list as your team members. You can make
     sure you have the correct people by looking at their profile picture.
  d) Copy the list and re-post it with your details added to the bottom. You can remove from the
     top anyone who has achieved the Miss Popular award.
  e) Make sure you accept friend requests stating 'TOT/Miss Popular'
  f) When your name gets to the top four you should quickly get the Miss Popular achievement.
     Come back and let us know you got it so the list can move up.
  g) The list will move faster if you always travel as a teacher when your name gets in the 
     top 7 slots. That way people adding the top 4 get the reward of extra XP.
  h) If you repost the list and someone else re-posts it after you; please delete your earlier post
     to keep the thread short. 

Found an error? let me know in the comments and I'll fix it

 

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