Play Games! Get paid! Kill Squeletons and Zoumies!

I'm going to take it as a fact that we all agree on one thing: Making free pennies is like, more fun than anything else in the world. I mean, there is just something so satisfying about looking at the ol' Paypal account and seeing money in there that you did nothing to earn. Given all that, most of the actual minutes are pretty dull. There's a whole lot of waiting involved, for one. And so much clicking! What do you do with all that time? As I see it, there are several solutions:

1) Utilize the miracle of tabbed browsing to do them all at once. This is a good idea, but you still end up with the same problem...waiting on 15 tabs to give you pennies is pretty much the same as waiting on one.

2) Actually look at the ads you're clicking on. If you're going to do this, I don't know that there is much I can do to help you. You obviously are against all the things that I support and support all the things I am against. Get off my interblog. I SAID GOOD DAY!

3) Open all the pages, and then while you are waiting close your eyes. Then you can imagine yourself as an internet tycoon...perhaps wearing a fancy suit with tails and a top hat...going to the most exclusive internet restaurants without an e-reservation...being welcomed by a stuffy virtual host who respectfully greets you by your handle...enjoying an iMeal of the choices bits and rarest bytes. Mmmm.

There is one problem with all three of these choices though (even #3, which is sooo nice) is that none of them make you money! You know what's better than having downtime while you make free pennies? Making free pennies while you make free pennies. That's where Dungeons and Treasures comes in.

Come on down the fun hallway with these monsters and me.

This was another one of those things that seemed too good to be true. But to my surprise, the tag line is pretty much it: It's an adventure game that pays you to play it. And it's not one of those 'play a dinky flash game while 10,000 ads try to boil your brains from the margins'. There is actually almost zero advertising on the site.

Basically, it works like this. You play the game for free. The goal is to make as much gold as possible. At the end of the month, your character gets reset, and all the gold you have made 'converted' to DT$. Once you reach DT$10.00, you can cash out to Paypal instantly. Where does the money come from? Well, there are loads of opportunities for you to spend a little green on the site, which in turn gives you options to make more gold. Keep in mind that this is my distilled wisdom....the actual site is translated poorly from french. It also uses about a dozen different systems (star points, fidelity points, bonus points, rank points, DT codes, and on and on and on). Aren't you glad I'm here to help you?

Dungeons

Sweet FX there

The Dungeons are the simplest way to make money and the only way to level your character. You get one free dungeon a day by going to the Tavern and searching for it. The dungeons are all randomly chosen and designed. Each dungeon contains Monsters (kill to get XP or capture to sell in the Shop), Chests of Gold, Gold and Items to be picked up off the ground, and keys (both for the Chest-Room and for locked doors inside the dungeon. The dungeon you get when you search is set at the level of your character. The higher level character you have, the higher level dungeons you get, which contain tougher monsters and more gold.

The monsters range from bizarre:

Phsaw. You don't scare me, weird lumpy thing

To creepy:

Please close your dead eyes, Vege-Man

To downright terrifying:

Squeleton! Holy crap! Pack your shit and run. Leave the kids!

Extras

There is a double handful of things you can do outside of the dungeon to earn more of that sweet sweet Gold. I won't go into all of them here...you'll have plenty of time to explore while you're waiting for your 12 clicks (but more on that later). The best is probably the Treasure Hunt that you get to do one time for free every day, but can win you DT$ if you happen to get the jackpot.

If you're interested in something a little more interactive that can win you Gold, you can try the Joust. Basically, you bet gold on a flash game. If you win, you get more gold than you bet. The in game description:

During the joust, you must take down your adversary by aiming at him. For a novice, you must aim at the centerof the shield, but if you fight a knight of higher level than you, you must aim at the head or at the chest.Before you fight another player you must be training alot if you can !

Which, despite being in Timlish seems simple enough. The only problem is that it's completely untrue. In reality, you take down your adversary by aiming directly at a cloud in the middle of the screen. Every time. Regardless of who you're fighting. Despite knowing where the sweet spot is, I lose more often than I win. It seems like there is just a bare pixel difference between success and failure there.

Stay on target. Stay on target.

Conquest

The last, and most annoying of the extras is called "The 4 Kingdoms". This 'game' involves a lot of steps and rewards you with almost nothing. Here's an excerpt from the official explanation:

In a big contry to nicknames "the happiness plain " to be a rich and properous Kingdom that the name is Vergon. This Country have been lead by the King Bergun, very well-known for his kindness and his justice for his nation. But a day the King has been assassinate by an unknow criminal and the Kingdom begin to collapse... in fact Bergun haven't refer a sucessor and 4 of this vassals are arguing the crown ! After severals mounth of negotiations, they have divise the Kingdom in 4 !

See? Perfectly clear. The bottom line is that while you're doing other stuff, small flashy pictures will pop up along the sides or top of the page. When you click on them, you get a message saying you either succeeded in killing X enemies (anywhere from 1 to 11, in my experience), or you get a Shame message.

Oh those Zoumies...why do they always are be eat through my fingers?!?

You get 12 of these flashy-clicks a day. Except they show up randomly. Oh, and it takes an hour to get 12. Oh, and they show up about 2 seconds after the page loads. Oh, and they disappear immediately after you click on something else. So getting your 12 clicks becomes the bane of your existence sometimes. But you must get something totally sweet for doing it, right?

Deeply Concerned Man in Burger King Hat Lotto

For every enemy that you manage to kill from your clicks. you get to scratch a ticket. These tickets get you points. The more points you get, the more gold you get at the end of the month. If you manage to get in the top 5, you also get 'star points' which can be used to play bonus games that have the chance of winning huge amounts of gold. So that's nice. In the end, it's still barely enough reward to make it worth waiting around to get the clicks.

What's it all about, really?

The money, of course. I started playing on 8/21. The 'adventure' ended on 8/31. In that amount of time, I amassed 91,345 gold. That amount of gold converted to 27 cents. 27 CENTS! In 10 days!

That smiling man? Me. That pile of gold? My 27 cents.

Ok, so it may not sound like a fortune. But it's actually a pretty respectable sum for something that I did just to kill time while I was doing my daily clicks. On top of it, it's actually fun as hell to see how much gold you can get.

Do this. You won't be sorry. 27 CENTS!!!