Overview[]
Bonuses are the money awarded to the player at the end of each in-game day. Achieving a higher score in a category will provide more money. They are split into five categories:
- Distance: How far the penguin reached horizontally (left or right), in feet
- Altitude: How far the penguin reached vertically (up), in feet
- Duration: The length of time spent flying, in seconds
- Max Speed: The highest speed reached in flight, in miles per hour (verify)
- Destruction: The destruction score of Obstacles (only in Learn 2 Fly)
Maximizing & Notes[]
Duration provides the least about of money relative to the impact of the score, as 253.6 Duration gets turned into $296 (with LtF2's Bonus Shop maxed, making 15% more money). Distance is the easiest to get money with, as an almost one-to-one ratio of feet to cash makes it easy to grind.
Speed, on the other hand, provides roughly 6x the value in cash (with tier 3 money book), with the caveat that it's extremely difficult to go above 500MPH and not end the day. The notable exception is a Ramp Length 10 upgrade with the SuperSlide sleigh, always providing maximum speed (and therefore about 10 grand) at the beginning of the run.
Altitude is not worth maxing out for money. At 5000 altitude and the tier 3 money book, it only provides about $2.7K. As such, going up at most half as high to set a record distance is more effective than setting a record height.
Destruction is the oddest one, as it only appears in Story Mode. Every Obstacle provides more points than the sum of the ones before it. Unlike most scores, maximizing destruction for cash can be done without actually breaking all five Obstacles. The last three obstacles are huge, hard to miss, and collectively provide a ton of money. If the player wants to sacrifice some distance and duration for approximately $10K every run, it isn't a large loss and might actually be a giant gain. The snowman and snow mound obstacles can be safely ignored, as their minimal payout and difficulty to hit with a near-maxed player make them unviable.
To summarize, Distance and Destruction scores should be minmaxed to get the most money. Speed will be taken care of by the initial launch, Duration does almost nothing, and Altitude should only be raised to gain more Distance. The Bonus Shop upgrade that makes the Obstacles weaker does not affect their score.
