The Friends Tavern is a great way to get some cool boosts to help you with your city along the way, be it for attack power, defense power, or even shielding from attacks; among other great things. Visiting taverns means a chance at silver and sometimes FPs, which are definitely desirable. However, in order to have full access to this, you need a tavern that is fully upgraded. There are many ways to go about this, but once you break down the math there’s definitely a fastest way to do it, and this is the ticket.

Now, if you listen to most, they will say that the first thing you need to get is a tablecloth, because that way people are motivated to sit in your tavern because they might earn a FP. If anyone actually cares about your city growth and development being streamlined though, they will understand when you unlock the tray first, and then the floor, before you do the tablecloth. It’s simply more efficient to boost your silver income before anything else. Besides honestly, it won’t take that long to get a tablecloth so your friends can have a little patience with you while you do things the smart way.

There are four things you can upgrade in the tavern:

  • Number of Chairs (and table size): The more chairs you have, the more silver you get. Also, as you upgrade table size to get more chairs, the amount of silver each chair produces goes up.
  • Tray: The tray adds a percentage of extra silver to every collection, based on what level is unlocked.
  • Floor: The floor always has the same percentage chance of what you might randomly collect in silver from visiting a tavern, but the higher you level it, the more silver you get in that random collection.
  • Tablecloth: The tablecloth gives a chance at your visitors receiving 1FP when they sit at your tavern. The higher the level of the tablecloth, the higher that percentage chance is.

For this strategy to work most efficiently, your upgrade order (excluding chairs) will be tray first, then floor, and finally tablecloth. The tray gives you guaranteed extra silver, the floor offers a chance at extra silver, and the tablecloth is just a nice gesture to your guests. So it makes sense to increase your income, to maximize your potential to do more upgrades.

You’ll also want to make sure you add as many people to your friends list as you can, and visit as many taverns as you can, so that you can get a few full collections each day. A full collection is when you collect your tavern silver only after all the seats are filled.

Based on the math, it will take no more than 277 full collections to max out your tavern. Here are the steps:

  1. Unlock the fourth and fifth chairs.  [Takes 5 full collections]
  2. Unlock level one of your Tray, Floor, and Tablecloth; each one costs 1,000 silver.  [Takes 12 full collections]
  3. Unlock the sixth chair. [Takes 3 full collections]
  4. Unlock level two of your Tray, Floor, and Tablecloth; each one costs 2,000 silver.  [Takes 18 full collections]
  5. Unlock the seventh and eighth chairs.  [Takes 10 full collections]
  6. Unlock level three of your Tray, Floor, and Tablecloth; each one costs 4,000 silver  [Takes 24 full collections]
  7. Unlock the ninth and tenth chairs.  [Takes 13 full collections]
  8. Unlock level four of your Tray, Floor, and Tablecloth; each one costs 8,000 silver  [Takes 36 full collections]
  9. Unlock level five of your Tray, Floor, and Tablecloth; each one costs 16,000 silver  [Takes 69 full collections]
  10. Unlock chairs until you max out your table.  [Takes 87 full collections]

Your number of actual collections needed is going to vary a bit depending on how lucky you are obtaining silver from visiting other taverns, and on if you chose to spend any tavern silver for boosts before you have maxed your tavern out. If you spend no silver on boosts, it will take you 277 full collections max. If you get lucky with silver from visiting and don’t use boosts, it will take less than 277. And if you use boosts, regardless of if you earn silver from visiting, it will take more than 277 collections.

The timing of it all will ultimately depend on how often you can pop in to kick out the drunks that have filled all your seats, and let in some fresh, sober folks to fill the chairs again. The more often you can do this, the faster it will go.

And thankfully, once you get that first tablecloth down (which doesn’t take long, I can honestly say I did it within three days of starting a city), no one will complain about visiting your tavern. 😉