I'd echo this for second place as well. Getting 5* epic artifacts is just as bad as 5* rare ones.

Any tournaments with 6* gear is even more P2W than the others, and I've given up all hope of ever winning those since there's always a couple of whales in every group. In the tournaments I actually can win with some effort, it's always 5* gear, and I take care to actively avoid getting the top spots (at least 2nd and 3rd, sometimes I accept a 1st place if it happens to be an easy tournament) so that I can get gems instead.

I can understand not wanting to spread 6* gear around too much for the plebs who don't throw money at Plarium, but 5* borders on useless pretty quickly and serves no purpose for motivating people to win a tournament. Instead of reducing the quality, reduce the quanity. 6x5* is arguably useless. 1x6* (potentially) isn't.

I'm completely F2P (11th day) and recently won 6* legendary (4 items) and 6* epic (6 items) for 2 first places. I think there were Champions Training Tornament and Tag Team Arena Tournament (i won them both with a pretty large margin). So it is definitely possible (at least in the beggining).

But you need some commitment...

It's indeed possible at the beginning, as players are grouped by their player level (or something similar) and it's very likely that low level accounts are non-whale accounts.

But that's not the topic of this thread. I didn't say they should let me get the 1st place in every tournament. I said, the reward for the 3rd place is sh***. Even if I win the tournament, the reward for the 3rd place is still sh*** - just somebody else get's it.

Yeah on day 11 it's very possible to finish in first place. But just to give you an example of what the higher level players face - the last champ training tournament had the person in 1st place in my bracket finish with 7178 points. How many did you finish with? Not as an insult, but my guess is significantly less than that.

I have some 6* gear from my early days too. I think I've even managed to get more of it a couple of times since. But it's exceedingly rare, and most of the tournaments don't even have it no matter where you place.

I've finished Champions Training with something like 7400+ points. 6800 was a level for an Ancient Shard (top-prize in "right" column) - and i raised next "food" a whole day after that...

But i had many 3* (level 30) and 2* (level 20) "chickens" ready for the tournament. And also had to raise my Kael to 6* (what i also did) - thus many points...

Edit: I found this tournament (it is still present as finished) - my score was 6755 (top-prize was at 6400 i think), 2nd best scorer made 6335 points. But actually i could go over 7k if i continued to raise rest of my 3* "chikens" to 4* and my playful 4* champs to 5* - but i created next 3* "food" instead...

FTP, 11th day, many 3* 30s and 2* 20s for the tournament, Kael on 60....somehow I have the impression that this is not your first account.

Yeah, i have alreafy started twice before - somewhere in summer 2020 and in december 2020. The longest time i continuously played was 30 days or so (just enough to get Khatun). But was enough to understand basics - raise Kael to 6* asap, prepare resources for events/tournaments, etc...

Actually, now Arena got surprisingly mild. Last time i could scratch Silver 1 after 30 days.  Yesterday (on my day 11) I even was in Silver 3 with my team of Kael, Warpriest, Ninja and Warmaiden. :)

Agreed, particularly frustrating are tournaments where i 'win' a 5 star piece of vendor gear, but the spot below me is gems that actually have a use.

I do not even bother as the only ones i have a chance to place in are the weird ones like Dragon only use lizards, undead, deamons kind of thing