Embargo until Feb 16, 2025
For the 13th Anniversary the merge mechanic is back.
We'll go over the broad strokes as this is a well-known mechanic at this point.
Gems:
The board is filled with gems locked behind glass and a free gem that can be moved. You can match the free gem with a locked gem of the same color and level.
You can create more free gems by using the spawner button. It takes event currency "energy" to spawn a moveable gem.
Once you match a gem it breaks the glass and levels up. (You can also match free gems to level up and free higher level gems behind glass.)
Unlocking gems advance the prize bar.
Locked gems have a key part. There are only two variables. If you match gems with complementary key parts (color, level and type all match) it creates a full key.
Feed the keys into the converter. The higher level gems provide more keys. Keys are then used to unlock treasure chests. Keys can also be obtained via the daily challenges and incidents.
It all sounds more complicated than it really is. If this is your first time playing this event there is not a big learning curve. Follow the tutorial and you should be fine. There are some strategies though and we'll discuss that as we go.
There are three boosters.
Gem Mines Booster spans free gems so you are not using event currency.
Gem Pickaxe Booster breaks a higher level gem into two lower level pieces. This is very handy when you have a lv4 gem unlocked and two lv3 gems behind glass for example. When you break it in two it retains the key or key fragment it had originally.
Prismatic Essence Booster turns all gems of a single color into colorless gems. These gems can merge with any color. Once they are merged they take on the new color so they then can be put in the converter.
Treasure Chests: I'm just going to interchange treasure chests and boxes so you're just going to have to be ok with it.
Use the keys to unlock the treasure chest. There are always three types on offer and the bottom one is the best of the three. Every day the first chest you unlock gives double rewards so make sure you play daily and setup the next day's double box to maximize your reward. The bottom boxes have two variables. Every time you unlock any box all the boxes reset. So get your double prize daily and keep opening boxes until the better bottom box appears then stop. The strategy here is to prime the boxes for the double reward then don't do any more until the Rival Challenges.
One note. If you are not going for grand prize rewards but instead are after daily special then open the bronze box not the gold box. Gold box boosts grand prize rewards while bronze box has a higher chance of daily special. I imagine people in secondary worlds or diamond worlds will just spend minimal time and target a daily they like.
Do Not work to clear the board unless you have to for a quest. I'm not sure if the regular quest line will ask you to do that this year but the Rival quests will. You do get rewards for clearing the board but it's not worth the cost of event currency to do it.
Resetting the board. You can do this anytime just make sure to put completed keys into the converter. You can reset once per day for free and then it costs escalating amounts of energy for each time after that.
The key balancing act here is how to use energy. You will have to decide for yourself how many gems you spawn and how many boards you refresh. Make a plan and stick to it and don't get suckered into trying to clear a board. Unless you want to buy event currency with diamonds you should be very frugal with how many gems you spawn and how many times you refresh. Remember the Rival Challenges are very demanding in terms of using event currency "energy". A good rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 10 gem spawns on 2 boards a day. But do what you feel is best.
Prizes:
The main event prize is the Viaticum Lighthouse which is a lv 10 building. It makes the silver upgrade fragments for the Celestial Viaticum Lighthouse lv 11 which then makes the golden upgrade fragments for the Astral Viaticum Lighthouse lv 12. Since it makes it's own upgrades we'll only be talking about the lv 12 version.
Astral Viaticum Lighthouse
- lv 12
- 6x5 requires road
- houses rare historical ally
- gives 980 - 65000 population
- gives 4030 - 97500 happiness
- 88 - 130% red attack
- 174 - 195% red attack and defense GE (here comes the GE power creep in time for the new GE Trials)
- gives 890 - 81250 medals
random production:
- 50% 390 goods of your age
- 25% 32 fragments of finish special production
- 25% 12 fragments of radiant relics selection kit
- Helianthus Arboretum
- Octo Orb
Helianthus Arboretum
- 2x3 no road required
- 39 - 60% red defense GbG
- 39 - 60% red defense GE
- costs 180 - 1200 population
- gives 740 - 1800 happiness
- 680 - 120000 gold
- 840 - 60000 supplies
- 45 previous age goods
- 12 random units of your age
Ascended Helianthus Arboretum
- 2x3 no road required
- will decay after 30 days
- 78 - 120% red defense GbG
- 78 - 120% red defense GE
- gives 20,000 coin and supply at start of incursion
- costs 180 - 1200 population
- gives 740 - 1800 happiness
- 1370 - 12000 gold
- 1680 - 60000 supplies
- 90 previous age goods
- 24 random units of your age
Octo Orb
- 2x2 no road required
- costs 1340 - 88888 population
- gives 100 - 8888 medals
- 23 - 44 FP
- 23 - 44 goods
Ascended Octo Orb
- 2x2 no road required
- will decay in 30 days
- 1 - 2% increase in FP production
- 1 - 2% increase in goods production
- costs 1340 - 88888 population
- gives 100 - 8888 medals
- 46 - 88 FP
- 46 - 88 goods
* read the previous post about city collection power creep is making GE and GbG obsolete. This 2x2 building would be worth almost 400 FP/day in my city. Good thing it has a high population cost.
Gold League 1% Reward
Aeternum Hydropool (yes that's one word in the game)
- 3x5 no road required
- 300% attack and defense both red and blue for GE
- 25% attack and defense both red and blue for QI
- 150 previous age goods
- 20 fragments of Astral Viaticum Lighthouse Golden Selection Kit
* It makes sense to have both blue and red QI boosts for this building to provide motivation for both blue and red teams to go for it. The reality is though that many of us have exceeded 2k fight boosts in QI in red or blue so what's really happening is players that can dominate in one color will have the flexibility to fight both which will come in handy for guilds that are not balanced.
The exclusive reward in the world event is
Chamber of Quantum Transcendence
- 6x4 no road required
- 96% red and blue attack and defense
- 144% red and blue attack and defense GbG
- 5% red and blue attack and defense QI
- 120 random special goods from your age or below. As of Feb 5, 2025 we don't know what will replace this for people in FE and below. We'll find out more and try to confirm prior to launch on Beta.
- 10 fragments of the Ascended Octo Orb upgrade kit.
*now this is interesting as it's the first time we can make our own ascended upgrades
As we wrote about previously the long outdated Airship is getting an upgrade. Well three of them to be exact. Silver, gold and platinum upgrades. Now one doesn't make fragments for the other so we'll deal with them individually.
The base airship from the 2020 archeology event has 11 levels.
Zephyr Airship
- lv 12
- 7x3 requires road
- 10% red and blue defense QI
- gives 270 - 18000 population
- gives 1490 - 36000 happiness
- 1920 - 337500 coin
- 270 guild goods
- 3150 - 225000 supplies
- 80 FP
- 140 goods
Celestial Airship
- lv 13
- 7x3 requires road
- 20% red and blue defense QI
- gives 300 - 20250 population
- gives 1670 - 40500 happiness
- 2240 - 393750 coin
- 320 guild goods
- 3940 - 265490 supplies
- 100 FP
- 170 goods
Astral Airship
- lv 13
- 7x3 requires road
- 30% red and blue defense QI
- gives 340 - 22500 population
- gives 1860 - 45000 happiness
- 2560 - 450000 coin
- 370 guild goods
- 4730 - 318590 supplies
- 120 FP
- 200 goods
How do you get these?
Grand prize line but more in silver and gold event pass
world challenge
board completion reward * we asked and did not get a firm answer on if we get a silver, gold or platinum upgrade upon board completion or a number of fragments
daily special *we asked and did not get a direct answer but the impression we got was we can get selection kits for the base airship as a daily reward and not the silver, gold and platinum upgrades. They were very vague on this as well so as of Feb 5, 2025 this goes down as a maybe.
Eternal Market:
We keep hearing people complain that they did not get the 1000 fragments in previous event so I have to ask. Are you doing the Rival Quests? For the anniversary event here is the breakdown.
grand prize lane 100 frag
bronze league and above league rewards 100 frag
questline 100 frag
world challenges 200 frag
rival challenges 500 frag
Inno wants you to play rival. Rival Challenges require player to use lots of event currency and buy more. It's simple. The game is free to play but they do everything they can to get you to pay.
Eternal Market - Urban Horizon
- 6x6 unique building no road required
- 204% red attack and defense
- 36% red attack and defense GE
- 204% blue attack
- 36% blue attack and defense GbG
- 10% red and blue attack and defense QI
- gives 2410 - 160160 population
- 360 FP
- 450 goods of your age
- 450 goods of prev age
There are two new historical allies and to get all their fragments you will need to advance in the grand prize land, world challenge and of course the rival challenges. These rare allies may seem like a downgrade from previous allies but they are lv 1 and can be upgraded later on.
Qin Shi Huang lv1 Rare
- 25% red defense
- 25% red attack and defense GE
Fu Hao lv1 Rare
- 25% blue defense
- 25% blue attack and defense GE
For those that have made it this far I have one very important piece of advice to give. In the world event there are two types of rewards. Global Rewards as your world reaches certain milestones and individual rewards as you unlock gems.
There is a "World Challenge Window" that will show both the world rewards and how close you are to the next milestone and the individual rewards. Here is the important part. The individual rewards have a counter that stops once it's full.
If you do not collect your individual reward you will not get credit for additional gems unlocked!
Now last year after a number of complaints they added a pop-up to inform you that your individual reward was ready to collect. We believe that will be there from the start this year and will confirm on beta but it's user beware. There's no logical reason for this to exist other than to scam players or get them to open up the world challenge window often.
Thank you for getting this far and good luck in the event.