Hearts

Hearts are the social currency in the MLP Gameloft Game, these can be used for the following: Hearts can only be obtained through Social actions such as: Chests are found on the ground in your town (Ponyville or Canterlot, depending on where you were when you played last or the visit occurred). You may need to zoom in to tap some of them. Gifts are found in your inbox under social. Both actions have their own 24 hour cooldown which is displayed on the respective button. In order to send a chest, you have to visit the friends town and then tap the chest icon on the lower half of the screen.
 * Purchasing certain characters from the store ( depending on character)
 * Completing certain quests
 * Playing the second-tier Balloon Pop game
 * Choosing to "share" each level you gain
 * Choosing to "share" each time you dance in the Equestria Girls mini-game
 * Opening a chest sent by a friend (you may send chests as well!) (contains )
 * Received through a gift sent by a friend (you may also send gifts as well) (contains )
 * Friends picking you as dance partner in the Equestria Girls minigames

Since hearts can be used to obtain special characters, it is recommended that you take every action possible to obtain them. This can be as simple as choosing to share each level you gain or as difficult as making tons of friends (but be ready to give in order to receive!)

Recent updates have added some new heart rewards to the Equestria Girl dances, but you have to make sure that you are connected to the social network before dancing to make use of these.

Once all characters available this way have been obtained, these hearts can be used with at the Balloon Pop minigame to obtain free decor items, as well as coins, element shards, experience and even gems.

You will require over 1080 in order to unlock all characters available as of July 2013 (future updates may alter prices or add new ponies). You only need 250 for quest-related characters however.

Ponyville

 * Zecora -
 * Scootaloo* -
 * Uncle Orange -
 * Apple Cobbler -
 * Hoity Toity -
 * Flim -
 * Twist -
 * Jeff Letrotski -
 * Mayor Mare -
 * Sapphire Shores -

Canterlot

 * Minuette* - 60
 * Twilight's Dad*

(*) Required for certain quests

<!--Move to Tips and Guides or some other, similar page. The following "cheat" works for me in the new version of the game as of 25 Oct 2013 on iPad/iPhone:

Cheats
You will need another iPad or iPhone with MLP installed on it and the game activated. You will need a second Gameloft signon, which of course means you will need a second email address.

Set yourself up as friends, so you can send a heart from your secondary device to the main one you're playing the game on. At this point, you can send yourself two hearts per day, of course, as if the secondary device was being used by a friend.

You're now going to change the date on the secondary device. (I'm using an old iPhone 4 with no SIM card.) Because this can interfere with things like shared calendars, I advise you to disconnect any such things, or take the risk and don't blame me!

Change the date on the secondary device, back say one year. (this is done in Settings, General, Date & Time, turn off 'Set Automatically', then use 'Set Date and Time'. Advance by one day.

At this point, 'turn off' the main device. I don't mean power-off, just press the turn-off button, or close the cover, or whatever, so the game isn't actually playing.

1) Now return to the game on the secondary device. Use 'Social' to send youself a gift, and also use the 'enter someone else's game' option to go into the game on the main device and drop a chest. Return to the 'Friends' social screen.

2) Now, go to Settings and advance the date by on day. Since you'll be doing his a lot, it may be useful to put MLP and Settings in the 'Commonly used Applications' section ot the bottom of the home screen, at least temporarily.

Return to MLP, and repeat the previous two paragraphs. Do NOT go into the game on your main device yet!

This is a tedious process, and might not be worth the effort if it was not for a bug on Gameloft's servers. If you do this say 10 times, you have sent your main device 10 gifts and 10 chests. Now, go into the game on your main device, go into Social, then Inbox, and receive your 10 gifts (You may have to press refresh). Go back out to the game, and you should see 10 chests. Open them, and grab your hearts. But don't stop now!

Go back into Social, go to your inbox, press Refresh. (That's the thing looking like two arrows in a circle.) Back out to the game, and you should see 9 chests. Open them too! Repeat, and you should see 8, then 7, 6 and so on.

The number of hearts you can get this way depends on how often you're prepared to do 1) and 2). The formula is left as an exercise for the reader (oh, alright, it's ((n+1)/2)*n, i.e. if you did it 10 times you should get 10 + 9 + 8 + 7 .... = 55 hearts total (plus 10 hearts as gifts). If you do it 50 times you'll get 50 + 49 + 48 ... = 1,275 hearts which should be enough for the whole game. It will take you about a minute per go, though, plus hearts gathering time.

A word of caution: don't go overboard and do hundreds. People have reported game failures when there are too many chests waiting to be opened, and Hasbro has limited you to 100 chests per day in the new game anyway.

Good luck! Of course, Gameloft will probably fix this bug one day, but in the meantime, make hearts while the sun shines! -->