Just a heads up for tomorrows update. Granzella is finally updating the NA Southern Island Hideaway to version 1.07 which adds:
Ocean Swim 'activity'. This is located undersea by the net on the right. It allows you past the net and more importantly, it is the first time in NA Home where you can swim under water, and is actually quite fun to do, especially with friends. There are several different fish and coral, and even an under water cave to explore.
Sea Hunt now only generates an under sea sparkle reward every 15 min starting at the top of the hour. So you can no longer simply leave and come back to regenerate a new reward. However it now finally has the 2nd wave of Sea Hunt rewards (which include 3 chest chairs similar to their old IREM rewards).
GZ Tickets will now be for sale in the Granzella Store, and can be used for various activities (like entrance to the new Fossil Dig site, and more activities with upcoming public spaces from Granzella).
New Fossil Dig site (but you must use GZ tickets to access it)
New visuals (more animal life, including sea dragons)
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, the update will add Tropical Points. You can earn TPs by doing various activities in the space and then cash them for various rewards from the girl in the bikini sitting on the swing near the store and the pier.
From my experience with tropical points in Japan and EU, hers what you can expect to get from the different activities:
20pts : Complete a Wedding Ceremony
20pts : Enter and then exit the Ocean Swim (doesn't matter how long you swim)
20pts : Complete a PWC race (makes no difference where you finish or how fast, but you must finish)
10pts : for each dirt clod you get from the Fossil Dig game (possible to get 15 clods a day)
Those points are only given once per day (resets at midnight for the time zone you are in), but you can do the following to earn additional points and bonus points with no daily limit:
10 points : for wearing the Granzella wedding outfits during a ceremony
5-30pts : for each dirt clod you get apparaised (points are based on the rarity of the fossil found, not the size of the clod)
5-30pts : Each sparkle from the Sea Hunt that you find (based on the rarity of the item)
The other exception is the Personal Water Craft Race, which you can still collect bonus points each time you complete a race, but you can only get the initial 20 points for the first race you do:
Possible Bonus Points
Time under:
1:30 40 points (best possible points with the sit down wave runner)
1:35 30 points
1:40 20 points (best possible points with the premium jet skii)
1:45 15 points
1:50 10 points (best possible points with the default jet skii)
1:55 7 points
2:00 5 points
2:02 4 points
2:05 3 points
2:10 2 points
(thanks Redrumblefish)
So you can expect to collect a little less than 100 points a day if you just visit and do each activity, but do not hang out repeating the PWC race and waiting for additional sparkles. If you have access to the Secret Garden dig site, and use GZ tickets for the new dig site, and use the premium tools from the ancient ruins and use them in the correct order, you can then collect 3 clods per dig, thus it's possible to collect 15 clods a day worth 150 points.
A couple important things to also keep in mind, occasionally you'll get 0 points for an activity, although this appears to be a bug, and may or may not get fixed. Also, at least in Japan and EU, this updated space was VERY buggy, and occasionally will wipe out saved tropical points. However, perhaps one of the reasons NA did not get it at the same time it was released in EU was to give them time to trouble shoot the issues before releasing it in NA.
Finally, While some of the rewards, notably the fish chairs, that you can trade in your points for are OK, some are incredibly disappointing, especially considering the amount of points you must collect to get them.
For instance, the plants cost between 3,000 and 6,000 points each, and yet they are not only rather dull, but surprisingly small considering the amount of effort and time it takes to collect that many points. Compare that to the low cost (10-1,000 points) of the various fish chairs, which IMO are much nicer and certainly more useful.