Embargo until July 20
Ok Embargo lifted early!
The Fall Event is coming to Beta and there are some twists and changes so stick around to the end as it may change how you play.
Let's start with the Candy Crush mechanic.
There are two targets on the board. Jars and Cups. Cups give you progress on the prize line and jars give you rewards.
Now instead of a daily prize you get this
Jars will give mostly useless prizes but also "Mason Marks" which is the item store special currency for this event. You can then go to the item store and use your accumulated currency on a prize you want. Whether or not this is a good change will depend on the balancing meaning how much does it cost to get the good thing you want. In our view we like the item store currency for events because it allows us to just save for a good thing instead of getting a lot of garbage prizes.
This next part is from testing so may change for Beta server:
You start the game with four wooden spoons and you regenerate another every 10hrs (may switch to 8) as long as there is an open slot in the spoon bar. Once you accumulate four spoons it will no longer accumulate so best to never have that bar full.
You can use 1, 2, or 3 spoons at once. Now they are saying......
You can use 1, 2, or 3 spoons at once. Now they are saying......
"Multi-Spoon Selection (New Feature)
Before starting, you can choose to spend 1, 2, or 3 Wooden Spoons:
1 Spoon – Standard rewards.
2 Spoons – 2× Grand Prize progress, League Points, and Reward Jar contents.
3 Spoons – 3× progress and rewards.
Note: If you use 2 or 3 spoons, booster and extra move costs also scale accordingly.
Consider using 2 or 3 Spoons per level if you want faster Grand Prize or League progress
Please note that both Wooden and Golden Spoons can be multiplied for bigger impact!"
But that was not our experience in testing. Using 2 or 3 spoons at once did give 2x or 3x the progress and that makes sense as we were using 2 or 3 spoons. The way it's worded it seems you will get more progress by using this method or we'll get to milestones faster. In reality all that happened was we saved time playing boards. If we played a 3x board it gave us 3x progress and used 3 spoons. There's no gameplay advantage other than saving time. You should also know that boosters and moves scale as well so if playing a 3 spoon board and you want to use a fork to remove a single tile it will cost 3 forks.
Yes you can use 3 golden spoons at once as a time-saver.
Speaking of boosters:
Fork - removes one tile
spatula - removes a row
rolling pin - removes a column
Golden Spoon is back and it gives you 5 minutes of unlimited boards. Remember to always end up with a new board before time runs out.
There are 16 daily rival challenges. Try to time your daily use of spoons to coincide with the challenge as it will be very demanding of that event currency.
The twist is if you miss a day you can do two the next day. The rivals were not part of the testing so we don't know if you can stack all 16 or if there's a cap of 2.
Main Event Prize:
Breezemill Homestead 9 levels makes a silver upgrade (Breezemill Acres) which then makes a golden upgrade (Breezemill Estate). Since anyone with a lv9 will eventually get the golden version we'll just focus on that.
Breezemill Estate
- lv 11
- 6x5 requires road
- houses Rare Ally
- 4,130 - 100,000 happiness
- 403 - 550 % red attack GE
- 498 - 645 % blue defense GbG
- 820 - 75,000 medals
- 75 - 180 FP
- 15 blue prints (for those not aware the way we will be leveling our GB's are changing and these will be the less valuable BP's)
- 3 fragments of Tranquil Bloom Selection Kit
- 50% 500 goods
- 30% 500 goods previous age
- 20% 500 goods next age
For advanced cities this building will sit in inventory. The building itself and it's chain components are undesirable as it only gives niche fight boosts.
Chains for the main building: Only available from item store
Sternbergia Patch
- 6x2 no road required
- gives 4,130 - 100,000 happiness
- When connected to main building:
- 70% blue defense GbG
- 22 FP
Wheat Patch:
- 6x2 no road required
- gives 4,130 - 100,000 happiness
- When connected to main building:
- 80% red attack GE
- 35 random goods
Lavender Patch
- 6x2 no road required
- gives 4,130 - 100,000 happiness
- When connected to main building:
- 35 random goods age below
- 35 random goods age above
Azalea Arbor
2x2 no road required
500 - 12,000 happiness
40% red defense GbG
35% blue attack GE
costs 180- 12,000 population
30 - 2,500 medals
35 FP
Ascended Azalea Arbor 30 days
- 2x2 no road required
- 500 - 12,000 happiness
- 100% red defense GbG
- 70% blue attack GE
- costs 180- 12,000 population
- 50- 5,000 medals
- 75 FP
- 20% red attack QI
- 20,000 QI coins at incursion start
- 4% QI coin boost
- 5 QI units at incursion start (for testing it was light units so useless)
Amberbill Pond
-gold event pass, leagues and grand prize line
- 3x2 no road required
- 50% red defense GE
- 60% blue defense GbG
- 500 - 12,000 happiness
- costs 210 - 12,000 population
- 2,100 - 150,000 supplies
- 45 goods
Ascended Amberbill Pond
- 3x2 no road required
- 120 % red defense GE
- 120 % blue defense GbG
- 500 - 12,000 happiness
- costs 210 - 12,000 population
- 2,450 - 175,000 supplies
- 105 goods
- 20 % blue attack QI
- 20,000 QI supplies at incursion start
- 20 QI goods at incursion start
Gold league top 1% prize:
Maizepire Labyrinth
- 5x5 no road required
- 175 % red and blue attack and defense GbG and GE
- 20 % red and blue attack and defense QI
- 25 FP
- 20 fragments of Breezemill Estate Golden Selection Kit
Random Production:
- 30% 150 goods
- 30% 150 goods age bellow
- 40% 150 goods age above
Ok here we go let's talk about the Cider Mill.
Originally released in 2016 as a 2x3 production building
In 2017 Fall event it could be upgraded up to five times with a Cider Mill Upgrade Kit.
lv 1 Cider Mill
lv 2 Blooming Cider Mill
lv 3 Fruitful Cider Mill
lv 4 Bountiful Cider Mill
lv 5 Prosperous Cider Mill
lv 6 Flourishing Cider Mill with the 2019 Fall event
The lv 6 version grew to 3x7 and required road. While it was a production building it only made supplies for the 5 min production so it was useless for completing quests and using a hurry supply boost.
Well now we have five more upgrades available and the building shrinks as you upgrade it until it eventually goes back to 3x2, still requiring a street but all the productions are supplies so it can be useful to complete quests. And most importantly it gives fight boosts and a QI boost.
lv 7 Vintage Cider Mill 3x6
lv 8 Heritage Cider Mill 3x5
lv9 Noble Cider Mill 3x4
lv 10 Regal Cider Mill 3x3
and
Supreme Cider Mill
- lv 11
- 3x2 requires road
- all 6 productions are supplies so it can be rushed with hurry supply
- costs 40 - 2,510 population
- 25 % red attack
- 33 - 75 % red and blue attack and defense GE
- +2,000 Quantum Actions Capacity
The QA capacity boost has been coming for a while and it's finally here. For people that have a lot of villas in their settlement and their QA bar fills up in 6 hrs it will increase the capacity to store more actions but does not give any more QA. So if you are on often enough or do not have the housing where this would be useful keep that in mind.
The upgrades to the Cider Mill are only available in the silver and gold event pass and the item store. Frankly this seems like a waste of Mason Marks.
Keep in mind you have a few days after the event ends to use those Mason Marks so don't panic as the event runs out.
Eternal Market - Red Horizon
- 6x6 no road required
- 180 % blue attack and defense GbG
- 212 % red and blue attack and defense
- 180 % red and blue attack and defense GE
- 20% red and blue attack and defense QI
- 4,010 - 266,930 population
- 504 FP
- 570 goods
- 570 goods of previous age
1100 fragments total available
800 grand prize lane
150 questline
150 leagues
Historic Allies
-both should be able to be obtained from grand prize lane and not dependent on rival quests
Bayinnaung
- Lv 1 rare
- 25 % red attack
- 25 % red attack GbG
- 25 % red attack and defense GE
Queen Wisutthithewi
Lv 1
25 % blue attack
25 % blue attack GbG
25 % blue attack and defense GE
Summary:
So that's the event. The only thing worth chasing in this event in my view is the Eternal Market fragments.
The main event prize isn't very good unless a player is just starting out so everything is good or they have wildly unbalanced fight boosts and these niche boosts will balance them out.
The chain buildings aren't very good for the same reasons.
The Azalea Arbor (red QI) and Amberbill Pond (blue QI) in their ascended forms are useful but not a must-have worth chasing.
The Cider Mill upgrades are a complete waste of currency in the item store.
The gold league 1% prize is massively disappointing. Even in just the QI boosts we've gone from a standard 50% red and blue attack and defense QI bonus to 25 % in the last event to 20 % now. This one doesn't even have a base fight boost only GE and GbG.
I asked the other three people who contribute to this site if they will be playing the fall event if it remains as is I got two "no" and a "meh". I'm in the no category. If that remains the case then we will not be posting quests as we normally do. It's just not worth playing if you have an advanced city.
For those who do intend to play I will give some advice..
When a rival starts make sure you have spoons stacked up so you don't have to buy spoons. By stacked up I mean this.
1) time your spoon bar to fill to four as the rival starts
2) already have a board open but no moves played that gives you five complete boards if you need them
3) if a quest rewards you with spoons don't collect on that until you need it. Rush and daily quests can all be completed in just a few hours on the last day if you want so progressing slowly doesn't hurt you.
other hints
4) To tag along to #3 do not rush the rush quests and daily quests just bank them
5) make sure you play everyday so your spoon bar does not fill-up and you collect your daily free currency
6) plan moves in advance. Don't just make jars without a plan to bring them down
7) if you are making move on the board to satisfy quests do not use 2x or 3x spoons at a time. Only use that when rival is done and you need to burn spoons before the next rival
8) if you're going for gold league just focus on cups not jars.
9) if you're after eternal market fragments also just focus on cups
10) the balancing we see on Beta may be a lot different when it comes to live server. We were told balancing is expected to be easier for live server compared to what beta will be testing out. It seems they want to make sure they're not too generous with event currency so they're trying to see what the minimum threshold should be. Normally they're more generous on beta and it's down tuned for live server so this is a change.
Good luck and may the Forge be with you!