Guidelines for future Events

A few things on this new Event and Marathon
- There is an uneven chance for players because a lot of people got unlimited resources for the reason I explained below this paragraph. If you are one of them, this Event is just about clicking a lot. If you are not, there is hope the total amount of players that have unlimited resources is less then 500.

- Some cards are very good to use against the Guardians: Combat Master and Farmer. They activate their spell every turn. many times. So Combat Master and Farmer will not die die slower. Depending on when you draw them (could be 6th and 7th card) you can kill the guardians faster EDIT: apparently the Devs realized this and nerved the chances of the spell to trigger from 100% to 60-80%. Still those cards are good. It only might cost twice the amount of energy now to finish a guardian. Best way to deal with it is stop at the guardian that you can handle with one try (or 2,3 etc full tries). It's irritating if you are left with a guardian of 400 health left or even 20k. In that case put some extra stones on or a different way to make your deck stronger. Keep in mind that probably after around 19 energy, this can be cut again to maybe 8 or 10. So then it doesn't matter if you use an extra try.

- For the moment the Passion-deck is strongest, that is if you fully upgraded it, you can still do the last first week guardian (for 320 bronze lamps) in one try. Fireball could be on Undead Queen, but doesn't really do a lot in the fight against the Guardians. I would recommend using the third week artifact (Dark Heal) with 5 star = 60% heal with Undead Queen. Very good if it draws when Temptress is low on health. It might be better thoug if you use your artifacts on the mystical deck, firstly during this event and secondly if you like to have a strong dark dungeon deck.

- If you seduced a lot of cards to 5 star, keep your new event cards 1 star and don't level them. Let's hope the questladder doesn't involve seducing and levelling cards a lot.

- Don't bother to open Golden Dragon Coffers the first week if you allready got your artifact up to level 5. YOU WILL NOT GET MORE ARTIFACTS. That is a fact. It will only slow more Fire Balls in your image in the artifacts tab in inventory. So even when this goes up to 500, don't bother. Be wise to use this artifact on the card you like. Removing it will cost 150k for 5 star.

The very good change about this Event, is that you can get more Golden Lamps form Silver Dragon Coffer and Silver Lamps from Copper Dragon Coffer. Stil to get to 100 Golden Lamps means you need to open a lot of Coffers. Again no problem with unilimited resources, but for a lot of you it might me costly both and time consuming.

I don't know yet what will happen next week, if the Silver and Golden Lamps keep their worth. I count on some 500% inflation, but that might be different know. So there is nothing to say yet about the decision to either keep or use your Lamps.

Will add some things next week.

Things you have to know when playing Smutstone
For a lot of people this game already ended. Either by getting tired of the repeated mistakes of the developers or by their effort to make things harder and harder, in an attempt to make you spend more money. Or just because you reached the end deck and there is nothing new.

There is a dead end to this game, since after you get your cards powered up there is nothing left to do. Still if you didn't do all events, you might enjoy to read this manual and go for it.

There is no real PvP competition except a bit for the daily tournaments and the events, but as turned out, a lot of bots were playing too. Bots manipulated by Smutstone. In the Marathons only real players compete.

In the beginning getting the cards was easy. First Events gave you the Mythics (5 star) almost for free, later ones were harder and the last ones (1 star mythic only getting higher when you succeed in seducing all event cards) were actually too hard.

Map 4, Rivers, significantly favoured more experienced players. The Dungeons seemed a step forward, but were actually making everything about this game harder.

Then the 'Wheel of Fortune (WoF)' killed the game. That probably was an act of mercy.

I created this manual, since there wasn't one before, just to help new players getting started and preventing them from spending too much on this game. If you play smart and if you are patient, you can have fun collecting the cards you want and playing with them. A lot of people joined in this effort:

Kyle discoverd the fixed order of Duel Chests,

JRich found out that you can get all items you like from your prefered star by opening boxes (Bronze, Silver, Gold) if you select your first deck carefully (low level deck gives 1 star items, higher level deck gives higher level items)

Loldingdongs made a very useful Excel to keep track of your card progress,

Pana133 did some usefull research on Box probabilities,

Starwater helped adjusting the games' font (for ill sighted people) amongst other things, and really put some effort in it.

together with a bunch of other people, like Frantic3000, Guardiandragon, WTFMyNameIsTaken, Rookie, Mordulec, Peter1964, KleineMorkelMade, EarlofBug who all contributed repeatedly in the forum helping people with questions and the like. Further reverred to as 'the team '. Sorry if I forgot anybody. There were a lot of people helping. To me these guys are all heros. I have some nostalgic feelings, because like I said, this game is actually over for a lot of us.

So 'the team' was working together having fun and chatting on the discord app, and figuring things out about this game. One of the discoveries was the glitch on the WoF giving you 14 times more dust then you actually would have without glitch. It was not a great discovery, you might found out that yourself, but it had a big impact. That was another mistake of the Devs, who apparently never test themselves what they make.

So very soon ppl found out that you can perpetually harvest resources through the Wheel of Fortune. By opening the silver and gold boxes you got, you would get enormous amounts of cards to dust again. It was time consuming to do so even with a 'mouse recorder', so for obvious reasons a script was made to save time. This resulted in crazy daily tournament wins of >1 million mojo, and so much rubies, gold and stones that we all felt this was really the end of Smutstone.

It seriously killed all efforts of before, saving rubies, gold and boxes. I myself was trying to get 100 Gold Boxes, already at 93 then the WoF happened. Furthermore all your effort and spending to get real good dungeon decks was obliverated. The WoF was bad news on all fronts.

Then all my friends got banned for exploiting the glitch. That was a cheap way out of the Devs. With no efffect if you ask me, since ppl already got tired of the game and still it's game over for Smutstone: The economy is broken. Let me state again that the glitch was a mistake from the developers who never test anything. You cannot open a cookie jar and expect nobody to put the hand inside.

I was on a short vacation to Rome when this happened, so 'luckily' I didn't participate in exploiting the glitch except for the dusting, so still I got about 16 million dust. That is just stark staring mad. Most players that dusted all the cards must have gotten millions. That will put your chances in winning daily tournaments, Events and Marathons way above new players, or people that missed out on the glitch for some reason (taking a longer vacation than I did).

Don't spend money!

If you still are playing, this manual will help to get through the game without spending money. Most things didn't change. Even though the Wheel of Fortune messed things up a lot. I got nr. 14 in first XXX-mas Marathon, then nr. 1 in both Valentine and Lucky Marathons, just to validate this manual (and because I could and wanted the full decks). In the last Marathon I did not spend any money, just ended with about 800 rubies less then what I started with. A lot of other members of the team ended top 20/30 with no spending. It can be done. So follow the guidelines and you cannot miss your top 500 win. Play smart, with the Wheel of Fortune helping, the Renew of Duels and the daily 100 rubies win, you can get resources very fast. Never buy rubies, it's not necessairy!

If you have any questions or discoveries that were not covered in this manual just drop me (Knepal) a line, I am still playing once in a while when I have nothing better to do ;)

New Events?
There is no way to put it in red so capitals:

YOU ONLY GET THE EVENTS ONCE. If you already did it, you won't have a second chance.

There could still be 21 day Marathon Events for Dark and Light for everybody, together with other Events that spam for the first time.

Keep in mind that we have 2 different kind of decks today: One for the Dungeons that focusses on `one color only` and one that focusses on a combination of your strongest cards, at least to do River 16 and maybe for a 5th world map to come. And boy was that 4th map a disappointment. Not only did it not offer new possibilities for items and maybe new levels on cards, but it seriously favored experienced players: if you can win Rivers 16 for 8729 gold each win, you can open more Silver boxes (SB), get more gold and energy from those SB, play more Rivers 16 to get up to 2400-2700 mojo each day. And that with only the resources you get daily (if you win each tournament and take into account the spoils of the Duels renew every 10 days). Sure it's good to have more gold, but we need more and more gold for the dungeons, so our life hasn't exactly become easier in respect to digging gold.

All know facts for now give way to new strategies:

The more Events we have, the more different cards of the same color you will have in the future. It's very likely that all your one-colored decks will be made of Mythic cards in the future. Investing in Normal, Rare, Epic and Legendary cards will be less interesting. With 'investing' I mean, seducing, levelling and putting stones on it. In case of the Legendary cards, that goes especially for the cards that don't own a good spell.

Selection of cards will be based on:

a. The Kind of Spell that is on the card. I.e. a spell that affects 3 cards is mostly stronger than a spell that only affects one card. The present Mythic deck I use is: Temptress, Zariel, Blade Master, Storm Walker, Lady Butterfly, Bone Walker, XMas Elf. Simply because those cards have a spell that affects 3 cards. Moreover there are cards that have spells that only work once and that work every single turn (as long as the card lives). Spells that work every turn are on: Temptress, Blade Master, Bone Walker, Spells that might work more than one time are on: Vengeance Spirit, Officer. Then you have spells that might instantly kill your opponent. Storm Walker has such a spell. If the spell kills the opposing card (even in a strong opposing deck it can come when the opposing cards is almost dead), and your opponent has less health than the AT of SW, bingo!

b. The combination of the cards/spells. There are full sets that get 75% bonus like the 'Nature Set' and have potentially a stronger Deck Power (but not neccesarily a stonger Effect Power when you take the spells into account). But you can also think about combinations of cards that work strong together. For instance Vengeance Spirit (doubles AT every time a friendly card dies) together with Warlock and Xmas Spirit that both have 'Resurrect' is a powerful combination. Together with 2 Healer cards (including Lady Butterfly) in your deck and maybe some other Tank card like Mjandash, it could become a pretty decent deck.

c. The right mix of card color. For the advanced player: if you have enough cards from different colors that have about the same strenght, you can design your deck based on your opponent's deck and aim to get 1.5x attack (AT) bonus. Sometimes in the events chapters, there are some opposing cards that easily get a 1.5x bonus against your cards. If you can change your deck that might be worth it. Suppose you are opposed to a fire deck and you have many green cards (Lady Butterfly, XXX-mas Spirit, Venus) you might loose. But if you change those cards for Water Cards (like Storm Walker, Krampus, Oglodi) even if those cards are less strong, you might have a better chance. Its two times 1.5x AT bonus in your favor!

d. The level of the card (Mythic/Legendary/Epic/Rare/Normal). As more cards become available you pick the best ones for your deck. When you use full sets you still can use your lower cards till some point.

A very important question:

Must we persue full sets? Is a full set (with 75% set bonus) stronger than a deck made up of all Mythic cards? It's an important question, because you have to decide which cards to get and which ones to develop. My full and 5 star Valentine Deck is stronger in power then my Mythic Deck, BUT.... The deckpower does not include the power of spells. A Healer card can get 3 cards up 40%, that's a pretty strong effect, Zariel gives your cards divine shield, that is one free blow for up to 3 cards. So my Mythic deck can beat an enemy deck that has +2000 power. My Valentine Deck cannot. It has only one spell. It's a bit better for the Nature, Fairy and Passion Decks. Those decks have both the 75% bonus and 2 spells. But still my Mythic Deck that has less power, is more powerfull in effect.

The same will go for the full sets of events (that consist of only one color). The effect of both Krampus and Venus are pretty decent (but unfortunately only affect one card), but it's only one spell card. Suppose it's the last card you draw in a duel, that's not fortunate. And if you play River 16, you don't want to get your 3 weakest cards opposed to the enemy's 1.5x power. In the end a deck made up of only spell cards will be stronger.

'''You can forget about all logic gamewise and look at the developers perspective: If a full set is the strongest possibility, then are you going to play more events for weaker cards? Of course not. '''They want us to keep playing, so there will always be better cards to add in the future.

So my advise is to collect the cards that you need. You need not invest many rubies, gold and sleepless nights in cards that you will never use anymore. Check what spells you allready have, what you need for specific decks and look at the bigger picture: what deck will you have in one year? I am favoring the lazy approach, put the least effort in it to get the maximum effect. This is why I wrote this manual.

How to prepare for a next event?
There is a difference between the 7-day Events and the 21-day Events. If you are able to get all 7 relevant cards of the 21-days Events, I would recommend to emphasize on the 21-day events, especially if there will be full sets of all colours, since a full set is much stronger (75% bonus) than combined single cards. Then you might even forget about all single cards including the mythic ones at the beginning (Bone Walker, Temptress And Lady Butterfly). That contradicts what I wrote above. But in the beginning this might be the case. In the long run you probably had better focus on single mythic cards.

The colours that didn't have a 21-day event yet are: Dark and White.

The preparation for a 7-day and 21-day event is similar. Yet for the 21-day event (with the chapters) I would recomment to save Life Dildo's to level the Mythic cards you get during the weeks. And save more gold to win the tournaments in the 3rd week.

1. Start to collect items. Keeping in mind the next quests (which are probable but not certain):

10 - Level up a event colour card

60 - Level up event colour cards 5 times

170 - Level up event colour cards 10 times

280 - Level up Epic event colour cards 10 times

460 - Level up event colour cards 15 times.

So collect items for normal and epic Event's colour cards. Maybe the 460 quest is not that neccesairy and can be done if you have enough time.

Thanks to JRich we know now that the deckpower you have equipped in your first deck (of 3) determines what star items you get from Bronze, Silver and Gold boxes. So if you equip a low level deck (the exact deckpower seems to be changing) you get 1 star items, if you equip a deck with about 4000+ power you get 5 star items. So instead of stacking only 5-star items, like most of us did before JRich made the discovery, we can choose the level of the items. Just change your deck a bit before you open a box to see the result. Normally you get about 2.4 times a slot with items from a Silver Box and there is a chance those items are 1 star higher then you expect (in case your deck's power gives you 2 star items, sometimes you get 3 star items (mostly 4 or 6 pieces). It also seems that you either get gold/energy or a higher amount of items. In any case I had 10 pieces of an item, I didn't have a slot with gold/energy. Pana133 is figuring out the chances of the Silver Boxes, you can check the Discord Chat for that.

So check what cards you have and what level they are. If you got Mythic cards that you don't need in your deck's keep them at level 1. For a 7-days Event that's a good option (not so much for a 21 days event because you want to hang on to your life dildo's). Legendary cards like Owl, Harlequin and Oglodi are very good to keep at low level if you expect an event in that color. Normally to have a big amount of gold would be advisable. You can convert the gold into Silver Boxes that give you all the items you need.

2. Don´t seduce any cards unless you need them for a specific deck!

40 - Seduce ... cards 3 times (they can be three different cards)

250 - Seduce ... cards 5 times

There is plenty cards to seduce, and you don't need to seduce most cards for your deck. For the normal tournament don't level nor seduce any card. I know that in the first stages of your game you can win a tournament if you seduce all your 1 and 2 star cards, so if you really need to do it, just save some cards. Otherwise opening Silver boxes with the bonus of 25/50 energy or up to 8000 gold, will be a much better option then seducing/levelling cards.

Only level or secude a card if you are planning to win a tournament. If you just started your game, do it before you open silver boxes, because you might be able to win more of your map and get a lot of extra points. This way you can (depending on other variables like other players) get to 5 star Temptress in 3 weeks, but you need to save your items and choose them strategically, and save your silver boxes and map as much as possible (only talking about the first weeks after you begun the game). In the beginning the silver boxes don't give 8000 gold but far less, also the energy doesn't give you too much gold, so the focus in the beginning of your game should be to reach a higher place on the map asap. Sands 16 will be a bridge too far, but Sands 6 is doable. Make your advance on the map also part of winning your tournaments. Make sure you have extra resources (aim at 2200 points at least), if you don't get to the 1-3 spot in the early stages of your game it will trow you back weeks.

3. Stack your legendary and epic chests. Leave them for the duplicate quests

100 - Get 10 Rare ...card duplicates

130 - Get 20 Common ... card duplicates

160 - Get 2 Epic ... Card duplicates

230 - Get 2 Legendary ...card duplicates

240 - Get 20 Rare ... card duplicates

320 - get 5 epic ... card duplicates

360 - Get 7 Legendary ... card duplicates

470 - Get 10 Legendary green card Duplicates

For the Legendary Duplicate quests, it might be better to just open the small coffers of the event. If you decide to leave the legendary chests for the 2 legendary green card duplicates, it can be chests from Champions league 1 or 2, since otherwise you get a white (CL3) or either dark or light (LL1) legendary. But beware that the higher league you are in, the more duplicates all boxes give (also Bronze, Silver and Gold boxes). For the epic duplicate quests it's always better to have a LL3 chest also because you get more Rare and Common cards that might finish that quests in one shot.

With many thanks to Kyle who posted it first and took a lot of time to figure out a pattern in chests you get. It seems that the pattern keeps repeating itself. So the table will be reverred to as Kyle's Table. I made a table in Word and also pfd, and posted it in the Accord Chat. You just put a cross every time you play. And see the box you get, it works. I include the original text of Kyle, and editted it a bit:

"A little help for the chests be advised that most efficient way to locate yourself is the legendary chest! The numbers are from your very first round everybody has this but if you dont like them change it to whatever you want it to the pattern will still be the same." "Silver Chests - 1,3,7,19,24,26,31,39,44,47,55,59,66,71,79,87,92,95,99,104,107""Gold Chests - 15,36,52,64""Legendary Chests - 12,84,112""All not numbered Chests are Bronze and the best way to get additional energy points !""Once you done your first round 112 becomes 12 and you can go with this till you are fat on every single card you need. The league you are in has no effect on this so choose wisely which one you take ! IMPORTANT !!! Always win with at least 3 cards intact ( 9 point ) and if you reached a league where you cant win with 9 points forfeit the match at the beginning do not go to battle! My deck power is 7829 so not important which league I take but if YOU bite off more then you can chew then the game can teleport you somewhere and need to relocate yourself ! Given the numbers the easiest way is on a legendary Chestt. After you get it fight 2 more and if the next one is gold then you are 15 if silver then 87. Can do it with gold boxes as well but its more difficult !""Hope this will be helpful for many players !"

To make your lives easier in locating your spot, Starwater made this tool to locate yourself.

https://smutstonechestcalculator.netlify.com/

It turns out you don't need to win with 3 stars, but it's important to do so anyway because that will give you an extra way to check your spot. You just take your total score and divide it by 9 to see where you are. After you have worked some time with the table you can easily just look at the Legendary Chests. I only use the table now when I need Bronze Chests. Recently it has become harder to be in LL3. So if you want to farm Legendary Chests you have to forfeit as soon as you are in LL3. If you are working with the scores in combination with the table you can do as follow:

Use the table with 50 cells in one row and determine your spot in the table. Every win is 9 points, so every 10 wins is a total that ends with a '0'. put vertical lines every 10 cells (giving the last 2 numbers of your total score, you can write down 50/00, 40/90, 30/80, 20/70 and 10/60 at those lines). Now you can easily check your place at the table only looking at the last two digits of your total score. To stay in LL2 and avoid being in LL3: Forfeit as soon as you are at 3000-3008 points and continue in the table. After one forfeit you go back to 2750-2758. Suppose the next line in the table was 50/00 and it was 50, then after the forfeit it becomes 00, so you cannot get lost (250 devided by 5 is unequal, so you change from one line of 50 to the other. Since the pattern repeats every 100 cells you can just continue in your table, only the total sum changes). Unless you acccidentally got the wrong deck selected, you loose 4 points, go back 4 places or win with 7 or 8 instead of 9, you also go back one or 2 cells. If you both keep track of your place in the table and your total score it hardly goes wrong.

Seems more guys are getting creative. Here is another tool:

A little tool for you guys: (Needs .NET Framework to run, google to download it if you need it) http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=04512776692376695706

I implemented this for a lazy approach to stack up legendary chests, since i can't win all fights in LL3.

How to use:

1.) Left side: Enter current position

2.) Click "calculate": It will show you the number of fights you have to do to get to the next legendary chest

3.) Right side: Enter the number of points BEFORE you did the fights of 2.)

4.) Do your fights as calculated in 1.)

5.) Right side: Enter the number of points AFTER your fights

6.) Click "calculate": It will show you all the probabilites of how many fights you lost

7.) Use "Constraints" to get a better result: If you know you have more 3 star wins than 2 star wins use "A>B" as an example. For my deck "A>B" and "A>C" works perfectly

8.) Now you know how many fights you have lost. Do the number of fights you lost (now observe if you won or not by checking if you gained points or lost points after browser refresh)

Background: I implemented this assuming the following:(LL3, not sure if its different in other leagues)

3-Star-Win: +9 2-Star-Win: +8 1-Star-Win: +7 Loss: -4

Note that it only makes sense if you already have a decent deck (i have 7300). Otherwise there too many possibilites to keep track of current position.

Besides that there is a position calculator that helps to your current position based on chest history. So if you dont like the "lazy" approach you might still find the position calculator helpful.

 And how about getting more slots for Chests? It is good to have a headstart with more chests if you can afford it.

I believe the table for the extra slots is:

1-4: free (everybody has 4 slots at the beginning)

5: 150 rubies

6: 250 rubies

7: 450 rubies

8: 800 rubies

9: 1500 rubies

10: 2500 rubies

11: 4000 rubies

I think till 7 slots it's really worth the rubies. On my free accounts I stopped there. In the first few Events it was a great advantage to have many slots. In the previous 2 (exept for the first week XXX-mas) it was a bit dissappointing. Yet more slots is always an advantage. Suppose you have 11 Legendary chests at the beginning. That is 352 points.

'''4. Get gold, gold and more gold. '''Once you got your inventory stacked with items for levelling up cards, you just save gold. River 16 gives 8729 gold for 18 energy. That's the best rate you get for your energy.

5. Save your Rubies. If there is a promotion (2x rubies) maybe in advance buy some, that is if you like to spend real money.

6. Thanks to Pana133, we could prepaire to have a 4-star Epic card, or even a 1 star epic card with enough duplicates and gold in stock to seduce to 4 stars. In the last event this was the 210 quest (before 320).

7. If it is a 21-day event: safe Life Dildo's. If you want to do all the chapters you need high level Mythic's from the event. Keeping 12 Life Dildo's will make it possible to level the first two mythics to level 14 (2+4 per card). Then in the 3rd week you need to win the tournament a few times, so you can have some more Life Dildo's. Also during the Event you might win a tournament or two just by finishing the quests. So those you can use to level your 3rd Mythic card. In the XXX-mas event I had 25 Life Dildo's and used them all. It got me to chapter 89.

During the 7 day Event (added a bit for 21-day Events)
1. Don't start running. The sooner and faster you get points, the more fake players are added and the more points they have. Start to play later on the day and hope the real ppl in your group act likewise.

2. Be patient and open Heavenly Coffers not right away in the first days. Wait also for the quests in which you need duplicates. The 2nd exclusive card out the Heavenly Coffer is the one that counts. It's usually only available and more available later on in the Event.

3. Check all the quests before you decide what to level and what to open. Probably the questline will be the same as before.

You can avoid getting stuck on specific quests if you carefully apply your resources. Some important quests:

Level quests: keep in mind these quests require you to level specific cards. Keep the levelling of the Epic cards for later, unless in a 21-day event you really need it to progress on the chapters, but even then you don't want to get stuck having levelled them in the beginning.

Same goes for the seduction quests: check if you have enough resources and cards left especially in the 3rd week of the 21-day event there is still a 'seduce 10 cards' quest. Also you actually want to seduce specific cards, because '''sometimes there is a 'have a event colour card at 3/4/5 star' quest. If there is a quest like 'have a 3 star card of this' and you have already seduced it to 4 stars, don't worry, it will pass automatically.'''

Duplicate quests: You need some luck to get the right duplicates. Especially the Legendary duplicates can be a hold up on your ladder. The best way to get duplicates is listed below. Keep in mind that if you are in a high league, you get more duplicates, be carefull with the 'Renew' button.

- Common duplicates: Common chests, Rare chests, Epic, legendary LL3 chests. The fastest and cheapest way is opening Common chests. Event Coffers (check the unique cards that should be in it), Silver/bronze boxes are also a way to get common duplicates.

- Rare duplicates: Rare chests, Epic, Legendary LL3 chests. Opening Rare Chests is the cheapest way (it takes 3 hours to open one, if you are in a hurry you should go for silver boxes (they give rare duplicates in amounts of 3 if you are in a high enough league). Epic chests take too much time. Event Coffers (check the unique cards that should be in it), Silver/bronze boxes or even Gold boxes can be an option if you want to keep your Hearts/Snowflakes etc.

- Epic duplicates: Epic chests and Legendary LL3 chests (I found a lot of Forest Spirit inside. In case of a green event these chests are the best, keep them for the epic duplicate quests). Opening Epic chests is the fastest and cheapest way (unless you have Legendary chests). Event Coffers (check the unique cards that should be in it), Silver/gold boxes can be an option if you have a lot of gold/rubies.

- Legendary duplicates: Blessed Coffers, Small coffers (one may give 1-2 duplicates, best option if you need just 1-3 duplicates), Medium Coffers (may give 4-6 duplicates). Legendary chests up to CL2 (20% chance, not a very good option), Gold box (worst option, if you are in LL3 you may get possibly 2 dulplicates).

"Spend xxxx Hearts" quests: (Thanks EarlOfBug for this contribution)

Before spending your hearts, keep in mind that these tasks will probably be in the quests path: 

505 - Spend 4000 Hearts

750 - Spend 12000 Hearts

In the XXX-Mas event, the count of the spent hearts for these quests started from the 2nd phase (2nd week) of the event. The quests in the path before them yields less hearts than the ammount needed to spend in the task. So in order to pass these tasks, you have a couple of options:

a. Have a very strong deck that can reach Valentine Chapter 30+ in order to get hearts.

b. This is the recommended option for most players - Save some (at least 2000) hearts from the first week to the 2nd phase. After you already got all of the 7 cards, Don't waste your hearts! Save them for the quests path.

c. Convert rubies to hearts. If you have a lot of rubies, you will be able to convert rubies to hearts, in order to pass these quests. This option is for players who have a lot of rubies, or that are willing to spend money on this game.

4. Opening chests gives you extra points. 4 for Bronze Chests, 8 for Silver, 16 for Epic and 32 for Legendary Chest. Since the more expensive Chests also take proportionally much more time to open, it's best to save Legendary Chests before the Event and Bronze Chests during the Event. Except when you got to sleep, it's better to have a Silver or Epic chests. You choose your Chests by using the above table. In the first 2 Events having more slots and hence opening more chests was a big advantage. I got to 20-50 place a couple of times at the end of the Event just because I had 7 slots at the time. But today it's not a very big advantage. That might change ofcourse.

What benefit is there to gain from opening Chests? In the next table I put the points that you might get, depending on how many slots you have. Each slot could get you 128 points (24 hours devided by 0.75 multiplied by 4 points). The Bronze Chests gives 4 points in 45 minutes, that's the best rate. So 128 points, that is if you need no time to win a duel and get the next chest (and skip the duels that give you silver/epic/legendary chests) and if you pay somebody that will keep doing this while you sleep (or sleep 15 minutes every 45 minutes, which will make you either suicidal or psychotic, so I advice against it). The actual limit would be 124 points, since losing only 45 minutes in a day between opening the chest, skip fights that you don't want and selecting the fight you do want, would be a world record anyway. If you take into account that you need some sleep, say 8 hours. The 16 hours you are awake could give you 84 points. At night you can have a silver chest or an epic chest. In case of the silver chests you get 8 points, in case of the epic chests, you get 16 points, but you loose 4 hours which is a potential 20 points. Besides getting to the epic chests takes a lot of time (my record to move through the list to get 4 Legendary chests is 32 minutes for the 129 duels, so depending on your place on the list it takes up to 14 minutes if you are at spot 65, to get to the next Epic chest. If you got a slow computer or connection it could take longer). So stay with the silver chests, unless you sleep 12 hours or go to work 12 hours. Maximum would be 92 points a slot. Let's make that for sanity's sake 70 points. And if you need to work or do other things, I suppose 52 points is very good already (I am aware this is totally fictive). During the last Event I was able to get about 300-500 points for 10 slots, depending on if I had to work or do a lot of social things.

So during the Event: if you get 105 cups from 200 rubies and you are still with 4, 5 or maybe even 6 slots, then you should always invest your rubies into slots. Unless you really need that cups in the last seconds of the day. That one extra slot will give you about 52 cups extra every day. If you really put your time in it maybe 70 or even more. Besides if you have more slots, you can stack more chests. As I wrote before: 11 legendary chests equals 352 points. Imagine you get >1000 points on the first day only from opening chests! (but then you have to open all your chests at the beginning, the fake accounts go crazy and you need 7700 points for place 50, not a good idea...)

5. Avoid the first day. This is possible. You need 2 accounts, or you check the forums all days before you open your browsergame. The first 2 Events had a counter in hours from the start. When you devide that by 24 you can check whether your event is over before or after 1 am (West-European winter time) or 2 am (West-European summer time). What you want is that it's after the reset time (with an extra hour or so for playing). So you will have an extra day at the end. Ofcourse you loose the first day, but that's mostly a crazy day. In the X-mas event this was not the case, it was fixed. When I saw '6 days till end' in the Light Event I assumed they abandoned this but in the end it turned up that my 3 accounts all had diffferent ending times (depending on when I started). So you can change the beginning and thus end. It depends on when you open your browser. Probably the last day is much better then the first day, maybe you can even wait a few days, but I haven't tested that. The later you start, the less players are running (not taken into account the bots).

To do so you either park an account when you expect the Event to start and check with another account if it's opened. Then you open your parked account after the reset at 1 or 2 am, but make sure you wait another hour just so you have a chance to open your coffers before the tournament is really over. If you have only one account, just check if the forum talk about the event. It's a bit tricky because you need to park an account so only do it if you got enough resources, or do it if you want some weaker accounts to get the mythic cards.

6. Be prepaired or pay. You can have all cards without investing real money if you play smart and are well prepaired, and you need a little luck. In the first 2 Events my 2nd and 3rd account were still in forest and without Temptress. They never had any Mythic Event cards. Only now one of them got Zariel. The account where I pay a litte every now and then gets all cards. I even got the Bone Talker on my first account that was just in the 2nd week of playing. That makes you wonder, doesn't it? In the X-mas event I could stay in top 20 overall with the account I pay for, but the other 2 didn't make top 500 and couldn't have done so even with 1m gold and about 800 rubies. Even though our deck level is also important, in the X-mas event even more because of the chapters, I still think that unpaid accounts are somehow discriminated.

So if you are a beginner and don't have a high deck level, probably the only way to get the Mythics is to pay a little.

During the 21 day Event (only)
All points from above (7-day event) count. Yet now you also have chapters to win, and in the 3rd week a tournament.

7. Keep your Life Dildo's for only levelling the new Mythics you get in the 1st and 2nd week. If you level cards with 200% bonus, the Attack and Health gain of the cards by levelling also has 200% bonus (only during the Event).

8. The points are earned in the 3rd week. It will be very unwise to spend more resources or advance high in the chapters after you allready got the Mythic of that week. In the last week you need to win the normal tournament. The difference is that you now get a Legendary and Epic (so not a Mythic) card from the tournament as a reward for ending in place 1-3. So use your ladder and chapters wisely. The points in the last week will count to get into the top 500 of the marathon, you can get them in the last week.

first week: only advance on the chapters if you still need to get the Mythic card.

second week: use only resources you need and advance on the chapters as far as you need to get your Mythic card. Save gold and resources for the 3rd week.

Very important: after you get your mythic card in that specific week, there is no point getting more wins in the daily Event. The Heavenly cups or Blessed hearts you collect will be less valuable. In the first week a Blessed Coffer costs 20 BH. In the second week it's 100 BH. If you collect a lot, you just wasted a lot of good resources for 1/5 of the value. So you can keep 25 or 50 (75 or even 100) BH's to the second week, so it will match the amounts you get then (top 50: 50 bh's, top 20: 100 bh's, top 3: 175 bh's). It you have 35 bh's at the end of the first week, you are throwing away the surplus. You can never use that 10 bh's that are left anymore.

third week:
In the Valentine's Event we had the Magic Apparatus. This was new and probably they planned it for the XXX-mas Event already, but then something went wrong and we had a 'hold' for 2 days followed by a new verson of the normal tournament. That clearly was a fix. It's probably that the Magic Apparatus will come to play again.

What does 'Magic' stand for?

Money

Absorbing

Giving

Instant

Crap

To say it in simple words: This is an Apparatus that will eat all your Rubies like it's a black hole, and give you in return all cards that you already have and don't need. For the Devs this was the real $$$ magic and they went on a big fat holiday to the Bahama's for 21 days, drunk champaign and ate many cows till their bellies couldn't handle anymore and so came up with the new Farmer card. And since on the Bahama's there is no time to work, they mostly repeated the same formula, because there is always another holiday coming.

Then the new Lucky Spring Event started (and tell me guys: DO you allready feel Lucky?). I bet the Devs do.

EDIT Lucky Spring Event: now besides Rubies you can use your Event Cups for extra spins, this is actually a big step forward. Use it wisely, stay as long as you can at level 6.

This is the plan:

1. Stack all legendary chests in the beginning. They can be opened for free in 2 days. If you like to start earlier you can also stack epic chests. The legendary chests are the best ones, because you can just leave them working for you while you sleep. The Bronze chests give a little bit better rate but are much more work.

If you are paying with rubies for chests, you can work with Bronze chests: you can do a lot the same time, and wait 5 minutes to open them, that makes a difference of 20% (4 instead of 5 rubies per chest).

You can use the table (picture above) to keep track of your score: win = 9 points, your score should be dividable by 90 every 10th cell. Make a line downwards from this 10th cell and you can easily keep track.

With this extra way to keep track, you can do duels, watch the formula 1 recaps, poke your nose and whatnot, play guitar and talk to your girlfriend the same time without losing track! I would recommend talking to your girlfriend or wife, since they don't naturally understand the necessity of playing cardgames till 2am at night, especially and let me stress that, especially if that cardgame evolves around pictures of nude girls. No matter if they are BBW or not.

I have uploaded this table as a Word file in the discord chat: https://discord.gg/5F6U7rs

To have a lot of slots really helps. If you got 11 slots (maximum) it's possible to stay at level 6 of the MA for a long time. At the higher level you need 2 legendary chests for gears and a bit more. Level 6 is the level you want to aim for, since it gives more dupes and loads of points that you might need to end in the top 500.

If you begin your run to advance in levels, it's good if one of the chests is within 20 hours of opening. You can make good use of the cooldown time to let the other chests be ready. Level 1 cooldown time is 20 hours. You need 300 gears for level 2, so 50 more then the 250 you get from the legendary chest. If you have 50 or more gears you need only one Legendary Chest, Level 2 is 18 hours. Together with level 1 that is 38 hours, almost the time a legendary chest needs (with level 3, 15 hours, you allready pass that time). Keep as much legendary chests working for you. If a chest is ready, you're loosing points! Sometimes it's better to open a legendary chest for a bit rubies, so you keep them all ticking.

2. Be careful to open the chests in an interval that will get you to a higher level and prepare for the next level. The slots you have available can be filled with different chests to get to the amount of Gears that you need (level 1; 260, level 2:300, level 3:350, level 4: 410, level 5: 480, level 6: 560. Beware that the time that the MA cools down is a bit shorter the higher the level (20 hours level 1 till; 8 hours level 6).

3. Spend your rubies on the highest possible level of the MA, not on the first. Keep 100+125+150 (375) rubies for 3 extra chances. Or 550 rubies for 4 extra chances.

If you really want the top 500 win, you can actually buy yourself into it, in the 3rd week you get 25 times the normal cups from rubies. I personally think that's a sad concept for everybody that just invests a lot of time getting a decent rank at the end of week 2. At the XXX-mas event, the amount of points of the nr. 1 at the end of the 2nd week was not enough to get into the top 500 at the end of the Marathon. Keep in mind that the points are earned in the last week! If you buy 2 Legendary Chests that is another 41500 points. Depending how many rubies that is (if you just start it could be 290 each). That is better then buying the 25x times promotion for 3200 rubies, besides you get an extra chance to get the wrong card.

How about the bots?
The sad thing about this game is there seem not enough players to fill the groups. That is both sad but also good. They are adding a lot of fake players to fill the group.

Why is it good? If all players were real, you wouldn't stand a chance to win the daily tournament. So no need to complain since we are actually having a better chance to win.

Why is it bad? There is some bad algorithm in this adding of fake players. They seem to match your score but sometimes a bit higher. This was the biggest problem in the Blonde Pussy Week (BPW). Sometimes the bots got a score so high, that playing for a good rank was totally impossible. 

How to deal with the bots

There is a way to keep them small. If you open your account late at the day and if you don't collect a lot of points from the start (but say you start at 9 am), they will be small and don't bother you. Take this advice to good use, it's a way to beat the system. The bots are still there (which is good, they are much better then real players) but they don't bite anymore. For me it works in the Events to open my account at 10 am. I don't want to open it too late, since firstly I want to sleep at night and wake up a bit before 2 am when the reset is, secondly there is a lot to do and part of the fun is doing that. So my trade of point is 10 am. Then most ppl are already assigned to a group. Every now and then you are unlucky to enter a group that has ppl with the same thoughts as you. In daily Events there are a lot of ppl that like to 'snipe' the victory. Like I already wrote in the comments, it's not possible to 'Snipe' since everybody sees you coming, but anyway there are some guys that like to get a few hunderds of points in the last minutes. Those guys are there till the end, so big chance they are there till and after the refresh. Good luck for you if you sign in later and miss them.

@MyNameIsTakenWTF has done some decent testing on normal tournaments and Events and I'll just put his comment here:

As Example ( i did all 3 of those multiple times to test ). you have 3 Different Ways. 1. You log in instandly after the day is over and Refresh 2. you log in 4-8 hours befor the day ends 3. you log in 1-3 hours befor the day ends, and here is what happens :

1. you asigne instandlybots to your account and people that log in get stacked in a group, means you will have a 90-100 people group at the end, with ending points of 2-4K since the bots gain points % of the people asigned to the group and ther Point gains. ( bad move if you wanna win )

2. you sign up in a 50-80 people group since you get to " fill " an existand group that isnt full, and you then asign the bots onto you into the group but the % point gain of them isnt that much since ther are less people, means less competition and no reason to " sprint " for a high point counter so the bots wont do that eather points gona be bout 1,4-2,5K

3. you sign up in a group with 40-60 people, and can win this thing ( not working everytime since other player may get asigned to your group too since it has so low amount of players when they log in ) , but you can win it with 700-1,2K points, and since ther isnt that much time the % gain of the bots is so low that they cant rival your point gain if you go for the win.

So, the Bots gain Points % on time, on the amount of players, and the % of points players have and get, if you understand all that and work around winning an Tournament is kinda easy.

What are your thoughts?
If you can add anything, please contribute. The devs are plotting against us and planning all nasty tricks. But we are human beings, we can outsmart them because human beings adapt. We just need to know the rules.

It's possible that I am wrong and that the devs come up with something new and something very enjoyable. We can never be sure. I just wrote this article observing how the game functions now and everything I  wrote is what I expect to happen. There are no guarantees but it's good to be prepaired.