I had hoped to get this post out a lot earlier, but between being completely exhausted after playing through everything for so long while dealing with various bugs and testing (which some was all for naught as the last few recipes require event items which aren’t out yet -_-) and a lot of things happening personally, I just didn’t have a chance to sit down and talk about it really.
Unsurprisingly, there was a lot to unpack in this update between Tiana’s arrival and the final part of the Expansion which ended with a teaser for, what I’m assuming anyway, another expansion that seems like it will feature Maleficent and Hades. Like with the first expansion, I still have really mixed feelings about it all. It’s not that I have an issue paying for additional story content, but I don’t think locking popular characters behind a paid DLC for a game that is for these characters feels right. At least they haven’t been advertised/teased ahead of time like with Rapunzel and EVE :/ But I know a lot of people have been anticipating both of these villains. I’m curious who else could be a part of it though. Hopefully Hercules and Sleeping Beauty characters won’t be completely locked to the expansion, but maybe we’ll be seeing some characters from each of them soon then. I adore Megara and Aurora, so I’d love to see them show up… once we have more room, anyway.
Regardless, before I started popping into all the new stuff, my first stop was actually the mailbox. Besides getting mail from Remy teasing how to start getting Tiana unlocked, we also received a letter from the Forgotten further teasing the whole Skull Rock/Cave situation that we’re still waiting to continue.
After, I checked out the Premium Shop and new Star Path. While I’m not necessarily much for green furniture, I genuinely liked a lot of the items in the Star Path and as usual, picked up the Companion first. I also couldn’t resist picking up a certain other friend in the Premium Shop…
…But it is another where I really feel it should not be a Premium Shop item due to Sultan (even if they refer to him as “The Footstool”) being an existing character. I wonder if we’ll get the non-transformed version of Sultan some point too. Maybe when we can transform Beast back I guess. Still, it’s disappointing to see this happen yet again between Sultan, Heihei, and Figaro at this point. At least with Zero, it’s just a Fox wearing a costume, but it hasn’t been the case with anything else. I really feel like any in-universe pet should be some kind of quest reward.
I also ended up picking up the Little Mermaid Pack. While I don’t know if I’ll switch Ariel’s outfit as I actually really love the Winter outfit they made her, I was quickly enamored with two items specifically…
…Unfortunately, the Fountain doesn’t actually flow and the Bathtub was too big for me to fit into my first-floor bathroom, so I ended up throwing together something on the 6th floor, but I don’t know if I’ll actually keep it like that. I just genuinely don’t have any ideas on what to do with it exactly just yet.
With my Premium Store and Star Path browsing/shopping done, I finally headed off to work on Tiana’s questline finding the book in the Glade of Trust like Remy had mentioned.
The quest involved talking to the Villagers involved in the memory found through the Cookbook for the ingredients to remake it. I had tried a few different times to guess, but the recipe required a one-time ingredient from Merlin so uh, no way to make it early after all. Once that was done, Tiana was freed and showed up successfully. We were also able to place her house which is very cute.
Having taken the time to grind up her friendship, I was also ready to get her restaurant going. I ended up shuffling a few things around and moving the Cottage over to the Forest of Valor to get everything to fit in properly.
That said, her restaurant is really pretty.
Some of my all-time favorite items from the Star Path, besides the Companion, are the Fireflies and Gazebo. I also adore the new Waterlilies as well. I’ll definitely be placing all of these in more places.
I had fun getting the Stall all set up, though, I don’t know how much I’ll use it. It could be helpful with finding out recipes though if we can learn them by buying the meals from her stall.
I ended up replacing Mulan’s training area with the garden I needed to set up, but I still have no clue if this will be sticking around or not.
The final quests for Tiana ended up being a Cooking Class/Contest where I ended up picking Kristoff to win and having a Parade which was, uh, a bit glitchy due to how full my Valley is but we made it.
I really love the Pearls and Frog you get from the final gifts.
With Tiana’s friendship quests finished and everything all set up, it was finally time to go to Eternity Isle and finish the plot there. After talking to Merlin, it was time to head to the very suspicious trap door I noticed from the start. Alas, it was blocked by a mysterious portal.
From there, we had to do side quests for Rapunzel, Gaston, EVE, and Mickey to help close the various smaller portals to get rid of the big one blocking the way.
With that done, we were finally able to go confront Jafar. I honestly really liked the puzzles in the palace.
Alas, Jafar had another plan up his sleeve and so we were sent to a black and white world. I get that they probably couldn’t make a “cartoony” version of our character, but I feel like it would have added to it.
We then headed back, trapped Jafar in a lamp, and saved the Shard of Imagination once again and also used some of it to help restore Mickey back to normal.
Of course, after finding some mysterious 2D items around, it seemed the time to free [and slowly befriend] Jafar came sooner than expected.
Jafar’s friendship questline was essentially working with him to solve issues, giving him some community service, and even giving him a trial at the end followed by some decorations as a reward for his good behavior. It was… certainly an interesting questline.
Since finishing the quests, I’ve mainly been checking Scrooge’s shop each day for new items. There’s already been quite a few nice new things.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the event that will let me make the new marshmallow recipes…