Got it. Thank you. 

I'm a midgame low spender (occasional daily gem pack). Some observations:

Winning tournaments:

It is indeed incredibly difficult. It's counterintuitive, but it's actually better to keep your account level as low as possible. On my FTP account, I log in about once a week and get disproportionate rewards compared to the time I spend. I picked up a Shemnath just by throwing 1-2k points into a champ chase (this was the event right after pythion, don't remember which leggo it was for the top bracket). And just yesterday I got a 6* leggo relentless set from champion training, again basically for free.

Souls: 

there is a FTP / low spend way to get these, but you have to not get baited. There are basically 2 completely different ways of getting souls: 1-2*, and 4*+. You should mostly ignore the latter category. But the former is pretty easy to get. I farm stage 11 of iron twins. Haven't built dedicated teams yet, so that's as far as I get with my regular dungeon builds.

This is 756 energy per week. And it gives you about 13 essence, so a 1* soul on a leggo of your choice every 1.5 weeks. That's better account progression than any other way of spending the same energy outside of fusions. Another 3 weeks lets you upgrade the soul to 2*, getting 500 attack or 5000 hp for some of your best champs.

In case you don't believe me, here's the math: You get a minimum of 25 gold coins from each mortal soulstone (1/10 towards filling the bar and getting 200, plus selling a 1* rare for 5 coins). You get an essence drop from iron twins about every 2 days, for 2-3 essence. Sunday is double, so we actually have 8 days per week. That means we get 4 drops of 2-3 essence (10 essence total), and 44 drops of 150 coins which yields 6.6 mortal soulstones (another 3.3 essence). That's the bare minimum even if all your pulls are complete trash.

How long does it take for your desired champ to show up at the merchant? This can be something like 1-2 months. It sucks. But if you have multiple champs you're wanting to upgrade, it's not too bad. I have 40 essence saved up and currently waiting for either Teo or Michinaki 2* split soul.

Artifact Ascension:

I farm sand devil 7. It's about 200 energy to get an artifact to 2*. I just consider this like a "glyph" that goes on a 5th substat slot. Not even thinking about higher levels yet. With the amount of stats you get, that's like a max roll on a 4* glyph, give or take. This is definitely worth spending energy on, at least for your good pieces. Again, where else can you get that kind of return on investment outside of fusions?

Ya that's the brutal reality of online gaming in 2023. We're not in 1986 anymore where everyone bought Mario Bros and Zelda for 19.99 and the best player in the world was the best because he was the best and no other reason.

In today's video game world, you are the best because you paid your way to the top. And this is not only here, all the f2p games are like this. Maybe this one is more extreme than others, but the same nonetheless.

Yes the game is p2win and has gone more that way in recent years.

But thats what f2p mobile games do, and i dare say the company do not care if a bunch of f2p players quit, they are interested in retaining spenders. 

I was completely unconvinced about sand devil when it came out.

But it probably is the best use for my energy, i used 8k energy on the recent dragon tournament (the x3 speed) kept 1 piece from it.

lol, nobody listens to me...

hydra -- not worth it after mith frags

IT - too expensive, maybe do on Sundays otherwise I could be running DRAGON (lmao)

Sand Devil -- waste of energy, hate the daily quest lol, "my 6star speed boots are ruined if they dont roll spend" smh

I know this wasn't you Mr. Wilson, just the general consensus... 

Sir, rioting is more fun than listening to you. Nuff said. 😂

I did not notice a shift, seems to me it has always been so. 

With all the wierd sounding names they have been giving newer champs lately I think they have resorted to speaking in tongues.

Dont forget the last Ice Golem rewards. :DDD

i

I think I'm the only person who thought the Ice Golem rewards looked decent - everything listed there is useful to me - especially as bonus rewards simply for farming. :)

Makes a change from a trickle of energy, a handful of gems, and yet another epic book to go on the pile. :)

i agree with everything you said the game was fun when i started playing it but when you got to use everything to level one warrior itis not worth playing anymore you see all these players on utube with all their players at level 60 with all the blessings on all of them and all the shards in the world and even when you buy some packages to get shards you get the same trash over and over again if you are not rich it is no sense in playing this game as you are not going no where in plain english this game sucks

I haven't ever bought a single shard and I'm doing okay. But to be fair, I have played a long time and worked on my account fairly consistently. :)

See thats my point, you guys even tried live arena?  I need those rewards, but tough luck, I am getting wrecked on bronze 4, and getting to silver is taking forever.  When I do get to silver, i fear ima just get whacked back down to bronze.

Not enough free energy to Sand Devils and Iron Twins, all my free energy between fusions has gone towards building faction wars champs and masteries, so maybe after i get lydia i will have extra energy for those two.

Arena in general... i don't just fight +2 - +4 champions, now i fight +2 - +4 Champs with 4-6 star ascensions, and likely decently ascended gear... like WTF?   If I wasn't going to win before, i definitly am not going to win now.... Maybe in like 2 more years when my accounts around 3-4 years old ill be able to compete with 50% of arena teams i face, but for the immediate future, i am straight up screwed.

All but given up on relentless gear unless i get super lucky.

Live Arena is a system that is gonna take a long time to fully populate.

I think folks that started after the HUGE Classic Arena nerfs don't understand how long it took to progress in Classic Arena. Everyone was hard stuck in Bronze for months. You had to seriously commit to farming Dragon 20 for a couple months to get enough speed on your speed lead to even compete with the speeds in Silver 1. To get into Gold Arena you needed 300 speed on your speed lead, coupled with a well built and strong team that included a fully booked AoE Dec Def and a very strongly built nuker. The stay in Gold you needed 330 speed.

Now, with the loss caps in Classic Arena, a level 50 account using the starter gear and only two level 60 champs can get to Gold. I know it cause I did it here with that silly UDK Is Beatable thread I made. It has certainly set up unrealistic expectations about where people need to be in Live Arena right now right now right now!!

Ghostwind, do what I did and focus only on Faction Wars until you get Lydia done. Do your basic daily bounties/quest things to get the energy and such, and keep full steam ahead until you get Lydia. It is such a big accomplishment, and it CAN be done F2P, I know this for a personal fact. Don't try and do everything at once. I even took off a fusion, and then only did a couple of the epics for the next one, just to make sure I could focus on finishing Lydia once I knew it was close.

Basically, you've got this... just focus and stop stressing about the endgame mode that is Live Arena. Get your Lydia. Get your Hard Doom Towers down.

Just as an FYI for when you do focus on Live Arena: You can't get bounced out of Silver. You will lose points on your lost fights, but you won't go below 1300 points/Silver 1. 

That said, please do consider Quinn's advice. This is going to be the path to exponential account growth, which coincidentally will get you to the places in the game you want to be and in a much shorter, less painful timeframe. It's precisely the strategy I followed from her advice and has lead me to be able to do pretty much everything in the game that I've wanted to, save for Hard FK 10. 

I think there's just a lot to be said for staying focused in the game rather than trying to do all the things at once.

"Just as an FYI for when you do focus on Live Arena: You can't get
bounced out of Silver. You will lose points on your lost fights, but you
won't go below 1300 points/Silver 1.  "

And everyone happy, when see the same numbers of the required upgrade resources...

i

doesn't really have much to do with my post, but this has been passed along as feedback already FWIW.

You only need to do sand devil 7. I'm fairly late game by my definition, and haven't bothered past that (though should be #1 priority).  But you can get by just doing 7 for a while (and should do so immediately).

Artifact ascension should play a critical role in your inventory management/upgrade decision rules. 

While you are correct that any accounts not endgame should be fine with SD7, You really really need to get on SD24/25 like right now, Trips. 

It has made all the difference in my Arena builds to get pieces with 20% attack extra or 20 extra CD. Speed on Perception and Speed boots has been great. I know it can't completely keep up with Empowerments and FG advantage, but at least it closes the gap some, a little.

My ukko stun boots with double accuracy just rolled speed... I don't have enough to 2star lol

And yes, I stated I know it should be #1 priority... damn game use to be so f2p friendly... haha 😄