[Guide] Preset Style Arc Swap Group Guide

[DeletedUser32824]

In this guide I will outline, in fine detail, each aspect that went into a swap group I created for leveling the Great Building(GB), The Arc. This strategy would work for any GB, but this guide will focus specifically on getting an Arc from level 10 to 80 using a swap group.

Why use a swap group?

• There are many ways to level a GB. I prefer to use self leveling with a level 80 Arc (hereby called Arc80) for their 1.9 reward bonus on all slots that reward Forge Points (FP). This is the method I used to get to level 10. After level 10 we now face the problem of needing 1 whole set of Blue Prints (BP) for each level. This can be a tedious problem that a swap group solves.

What is a swap group?

• A swap group is a small group of players (anywhere from 2-5) that take different reward slots on one another's GB. For example, Player A would take 1st on player B, 2nd on player C, and 3rd on player D. Player B would take 1st on C, 2nd on D, and 3rd on A. This continues until each member has taken each reward slot. In my group of 4 each member will receive a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place reward for each level our Arcs gain. This helps to offset the loss of any Arc80s who would normally be helping with a self leveled GB.

Setting up the group.

• Send messages to guildies: I sent a message to every person in my guild with an Arc that was sub 40 (there were about 12). Three responded and I deleted everyone else from the group message. You can also find people outside your guild, but that's a little more difficult.
• Take initiative/be a leader: Likely someone else doesn't want to do the legwork of setting up the swap. Don't wait for someone like me to message you, be the person taking charge. I take lead in my group and the 3 others generally listen to me when there is a problem/dispute/weird occurrence (they are rare, more on this later)
• First, lay some ground rules on how the FP swaps will take place. For the Preset Style I wrote an excel spreadsheet with the amount each person would owe another for each level of the GB. Rule 1 was to not deviate on the preset amount unless outside forces influenced it. I also established a rule that this group should be the primary source of their FP spending until the group is disbanded. This prevents someone from slowing down the group because they are leveling a Blue Galaxy to 37 on the side.
• Make sure everyone has a similar FP production. Most of the people in my group make like 120-140 FP on paper every day. 2 of us are active snipers in neighborhood, friends list, and guild so we make 40-80 FP daily on top of that. That means we have 1 person in the group who is the slowest (someone will be) and waiting on FPs to level while I'm sitting on 4.5k FP packs banked. If you all have 75FP/day that's perfect. If you all have 150 and 1 person has 75, I would not include that person unless they could assure you they are a really active sniper and could make it up.
• Don't accept anyone with an Arc whose level is much greater than the rest of the group. It's a math nightmare, trust me.
• Try to set the group up with people who are within 5 levels of your Arc. This might mean finding them at lvl 11 and telling them to stop leveling their Arc until the other people in the group are caught up. Ideally, for math reasons, it's best if you're all the same level. I know that's unlikely, but I'll cover how to handle that best later. For the purpose of this guide I'll assume everyone is the same level.

Starting the Group and levels 10-20

• Now that you have the people in your group together and you are all the same Arc level, it's time to figure out how many FPs you are going to swap for each level. To avoid getting sniped by an Arc80 it's best to put on 3-5x the reward. So if the reward is 90 FP, put on 400+. For 2nd place and 3rd place I just kept the FPs constant for all 10 levels from 10-20. 325 FP for 2nd and 200 FP for 3rd.
• Contributions for levels 11-20 look like this for 1st place (remember, 2nd is always 325 and 3rd is always 200)

11: 450
12: 470
13: 490
14: 520
15: 550
16: 575
17: 600
18: 625
19: 660
20: 690
​

• Each wave I post a new list of who owes who what, so no one messes it up! It looks like this

​

• Now, lets talk about total cost for each level. This is going to be the base amount of FPs it takes to get an arc leveled each wave. Next, we will talk about the actual cost of each level. That's the total cost minus the rewards from the previous level from getting a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd spot.

11: 995-262=713
12: 1020-304=691
13: 1045-333=683
14: 1071-375=670
15: 1098-405-670
16: 1125-449=651
17: 1154-480=646
18: 1182-524=626
19: 1212-556=629
20: 1242-602=613​

**I leave about 30-40 FPs unclaimed by swap members for people in guild who want to take 4th or 5th, then it's up to the GB owner to put on the rest in a timely manner.​

• So you can see that while the cost of leveling the Arc increases, so do the rewards and consequently the actual cost of leveling the Arc decreases with level.
• Levels 10-20 cost more FPs than 20-50, about 6,500 vs 6,000 respectively. So you can see why I call 10-20 a slog.

Levels 21-50

• After everyone in your group hits level 20 (this might take around 2 months) you will start utilizing Arc80 support. One for 1st place and one for 2nd. Hopefully you have some willing to help out.
• Now you complete the same calculations but everyone is now taking 3rd, 4th, 5th. The cost and the rewards are much less than 10-20 and so are the BPs. You will get a max of 17 BPs for lvl 20, and then it drops to 11 for 21. It will continue to increase after that, but as long as you are getting 9 per level, you should be good to go.
• When calculating FPs for 3rd, 4th, 5th from level 21-50 you have make sure the 3rd and 4th place FP cost is greater than the reward*1.9 or else it can be easily sniped. It gets much harder to do this and the margin is a lot smaller than it was in 10-20. In 21-50 the margin is like 2x the reward or sometimes 1.95.

Levels 50 to 70

• I have personally been taking spots on neighbors mid level Arcs to get 8-9 BP for a total loss of around 30-40 FP per reward. It usually consists of me taking 3rd place for ~250 FP and getting about ~210 back. Worth it for a full set of BP and around 10k medals. Doing this has allowed me to accrue 30 sets of BPs beyond level 20. Currently my arc is level 18 and can be unlocked to 50. Once we reach 50 with my swap group, I should be good to go solo until 80. It is at this point I'm going to powerlevel my Arc using 3-4 Arc80s in my guild where we get all 20 levels in about an hour. The total cost of doing this in FPs is around 3732 FP if places 1-5 are all Arc80. I don't expect 4th or 5th to be, so I'll make sure I have enough FPs.
• If you decide to swap group this the cost per person for each level should be really low to the point where you might benefit from saving FPs all week and then powerleveling 3-6 levels in one day to avoid snipes from neighbors.

Levels 70-80

• Hopefully by now you have enough BPs for 70-80. At this point it's probably easiest to self contribute and churn out the last 10 levels. The total cost of doing this is about 8k FPs. By this point your arc is 1.85 and you should be a sniping machine!

_______________________________________________

When someone outside your group jacks up your swap

• Occasionally there will be a rogue neighbor or friend who decides they want to put 450 FP onto someone's building in your swap. This totally wrecks the math and someone ends up getting screwed out of FPs. If this happens there are a couple things you can do. 1: Remove that friend or message them nicely explaining they can get BPs for like 30 FP if they just wait for the Arc to level. 2: Try and pay back whoever didn't get paid FPs by X person. 3: Just roll with it.
• I suggest method 3. We are all in the group to get BPs and level our arcs. This happened yesterday:

• So I was supposed to put 325 FP on Jim's arc. I had already put on 60 and was about to use packs when I noticed it had already leveled. I came back a level and found this. So technically I owed Jim 265 more FP. However, since other people not in our group added 240, 32, and 31 FP and leveled it, I wasn't able to. Now in the grand scheme of things, I got 3 BP and not 4, and Jim's Arc got leveled. I got a smaller reward (21 FP) but I only put on 60. This is what I call getting hooked up. His neighbors or friends saved me 265 FP and Jim is right where we want him--another level. We could say I should pay him back since he put 325 on my Arc and I didn't swap his FPs back. But I've found, if the people in your group are chill, everyone gets hooked up at some point, and not trying to micro manage it is the best way to go about it. I ended up investing 80 FP into 2 friends' Arc and getting like 20 BPs out of it, so everything worked out fine!

Other Tips

• Never unlock the next level of your Arc until you are ready to. It may be tempting to unlock all the way to 50 if you have the BPs, but after level 31 it is profitable for an Arc80 to snipe 1st without any other FP needing to be on the building. I've seen people have to put on hundreds of extra FP because a trusted friend didn't take 1st before a sniper.
• Check your hood daily for snipes. Checking once or twice can get you 0-100 FP per day. It's a lot! Once you get a decent Arc level you will be surprised how many more GBs you can snipe.
• Keep a decent amount of FPs in packs. If you don't have any FP to blow on snipes, then you can't make FPs from them! Keep around 500-1000 FPs in packs for profitable snipes for FPs or BPs (like me "sniping" my arc friends for -40 FP but lots of medals/BPs)

Setting up a swap group for people of unequal Arc level:

• Here is where the math mayhem begins. If you end up in a group with people of 2 different levels. (We had 14, 14, 10, 10) just have the 2 14s trade 1st place and the 2 10s trade 1st place. The 14s will have to contribute more FP per level, but they will be equal to the other 14. The 10s will have to contribute that same amount when they are 14.
• If there are multiple people of unequal level consider the following:

• Have everyone help the lower level people until they reach the higher level. This is the nice approach.
• If people are something like 10, 11, 12, 12, get the 10 person to 11 and then use the method described above.
• If people are something like 10, 11, 11, 19, it gets a lot more difficult. For this I would consider getting the 10 to 11 and those 3 swap using the method described in this guide, and then they would give a static amount swapped with the 19 so he would end up leveling a lot slower.
• Phase people out at lvl 20. Turn your swap group to a 3 person swap and phase someone out. Phase them back in when everyone is lvl 20.
• If you have a specific example of a group setup that is confounding you you can post it and I can help you work it out. There are just too many "what ifs" for me to cover all of them

• Since we started with 2 14s and 2 10s, I decided to run the swap using the preset method for 10 levels for each person. So when we start the Arc80 phase we will have 2 Arc24s and 2 Arc20s.

You can view my spreadsheet here. It's pretty crazy, but if you look at it for a minute I'm sure you can figure it out. It's also not totally done. Feel free to copy it and use it yourself. I've disabled editing on this online copy.

You can view and use my snipe calculator here. Just insert how many FP are on it (you have to subtract how many you have on it in your head), total FP, 2nd place for the reward you're going for and then the reward. Don't forget to use the correct arc bonus

I think that's it. If you have any questions, comments, concerns please post them and I'll amend this guide accordingly.

 

[DeletedUser29623]

When someone needs to put a whole lot of FPs on a partner’s Arc to lock 1st, do they do it all at once, from their FP packs in inventory? Or are they just using their daily collections and hourly FPs incrementally? Do you coordinate the donations so that they happen all at once to prevent sniping?

 

[DeletedUser32824]

When someone needs to put a whole lot of FPs on a partner’s Arc to lock 1st, do they do it all at once, from their FP packs in inventory? Or are they just using their daily collections and hourly FPs incrementally? Do you coordinate the donations so that they happen all at once to prevent sniping?

This depends on the individual. In my group, for about 5 days I put on only FPs from my bar that I generate through buildings and time or quests. Then, on the 4th or 5th day I will finish everyone's GBs with packs.

I used to just immediately re-invest my reward into the 1st person's gb and get it almost locked, and then use bar FP until everyone was done, but I found myself finishing before the slowest person in the group then I had to "waste" FPs by putting them on another GB of mine that I was thinking of leveling.

The slowest guy in our group really needs his 1st place person to level, then he gets about 400 FP, drops 325 on me, gets about 150 FP, then drops 200 on the last guy and then we all level pretty close together.

The only time it would be really beneficial to use packs no matter what would be when GBs get into sniping range in the 30-40 range. Otherwise, from 10-20 no one is going to be able to snipe you (unless it's at a loss, like in my example) if you are putting 4-5x the reward FPs.

 

[DeletedUser29623]

This is really helpful, thanks!

 

[DeletedUser32824]

I'm glad! As an update, a bunch of neighbors ganged up on my arc and leveled it while Jim only put on 50 FP (he didn't get ANY BPs though), so the world reaches a kind of equilibrium. He saved 275 FP like I did on him

 

[DeletedUser22283]

Thank you for posting your guide, it's very clear and helpful.

 

[- KQ -]

Phase people out at lvl 20. Turn your swap group to a 3 person swap and phase someone out. Phase them back in when everyone is lvl 20.

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you supposed to phase them back in at 30, not 20?

 

[DeletedUser32824]

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you supposed to phase them back in at 30, not 20?

I meant 20 (it could be any number, but 20 is good because it's before you start using Arc80). If you have a group of 4 and 1 is 16, and 3 are 10, that 1 person will reach lvl 20 when everyone is 14. You could phase them out of the group until the remaining 3 are lvl 20 and then phase that person back in. Now you would have a group of 4 lvl 20s, making the swaps much easier to manage. The only downside is the lvl 20 person has to wait for the other people to catch up. If they are really nice they could continue contributing and the other members could put FPs on another GB. That is up to the individual group.

 

[yellowdragonslayer]

well written amiar. well thought out. gotta get them Arcs up. thanks for the effort you put into this : )

 

[DeletedUser32824]

well written amiar. well thought out. gotta get them Arcs up. thanks for the effort you put into this : )

your'e welcome!

 

[DeletedUser35195]

Question: For each wave (I'll use the image you uploaded as an example), how do you distribute FPs? Using your example:

AD Owes...
- Jim 775
- Val 325
- Ami 200

Does AD first give 775 to Jim, then 325 to Val, then 200 to Ami, or is it more like every day give 60 to Jim, 25 to Val, and 15 to Ami until done? (assumes 100 FP/day swapped)

 

[DeletedUser32824]

Question: For each wave (I'll use the image you uploaded as an example), how do you distribute FPs? Using your example:

AD Owes...
- Jim 775
- Val 325
- Ami 200

Does AD first give 775 to Jim, then 325 to Val, then 200 to Ami, or is it more like every day give 60 to Jim, 25 to Val, and 15 to Ami until done? (assumes 100 FP/day swapped)

The way we did it to avoid snipes is to contribute to your 1st place person first then 2nd then 3rd. From levels 10-20 you don't really need to worry about snipes since you're putting on like 5x the reward and no one will usually snipe at that big of a loss.

So per the example AD would put all FP on jim and then Val, them Ami. Not everyone is exactly lined up since we each were making different amounts of FP per day so sometimes all the buildings would flip and I would get like 300-600FP all at once which allowed me to pretty much cover most of my 1st place person. Jim had to wait for AD to flip before he could afford his 2nd place person, then for them to flip before he could afford his 3rd place. (gets 300 FP reward for 1st, puts 325 on 2nd, gets 120 reward for 2nd, puts 200 on 3rd--costing around 100 FP[his daily collection]). So sometimes it looked like Jim was taking forever then all the sudden all the arcs were leveled.

It really comes down to trust. If you don't trust the people you're swapping with then do a 25/15/10/5 FP per day swap or something like that (your average daily income divided out between the number of people in the group). After like 3 levels I knew I was able to trust my swap mates and now we will even throw extra FPs on someone who is lagging behind. 30 levels in (x4) there is really no way to track who owes who what while staying sane.

 

[DeletedUser35195]

That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate how well-written your post is. I had felt overwhelmed by others who tried to explain the strategy, but this has helped to make it seem more doable for me to implement and less frightening to undertake. Thanks for sharing!

 

[DeletedUser35195]

One more question. When you get Arc80's involved to take the first few places on your Arc, are they putting in the full 1.9, or are they putting down less and turning a profit from their donations?

 

[DeletedUser32824]

One more question. When you get Arc80's involved to take the first few places on your Arc, are they putting in the full 1.9, or are they putting down less and turning a profit from their donations?

That totally depends on which Arc80s you find! The ones in my guild offer the full 1.9--so they make no profit. I've heard of some guilds who offer 1.85 or 1.8 in order to make a profit.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

A little update: I made it to level 74 (and going). The other 3 members are at 72, 61, and 60. We stopped swapping at 50 and me and the next highest guy powerleveled using about 4k saved FPs from 50 to 70 and the other 2 are just going at their own pace now

Overall, great success.

 

[Deleted User - 15463860]

Okay, just for clarification, how do you determine what amount of FP is given by each player?

For instance, contribution rewards for first 3 positions of 30 Arc is... 420, 210, and 70.

Assuming each person is equal level and their arcs are all equal levels, how much does each person donate to each Arc? Does each person have to profit by the same amount for their contribution? Do the contributors rotate the Arc positions they fill for each level? That's where I'm a little slow on.

 

[DeletedUser35195]

I'll do my best to answer from my understanding of @amiar's post and spreadsheet, but you really ought to check it out to understand the answers to your questions here.

For levels 11-20, 1st is won with between 450 and 690 depending on the level, and 2nd and 3rd are always won with 325 and 200, respectively. That leaves 30-45 or so for friends/guildies/hoodies to take 4th & 5th, or for the owner to finish it off.

For levels 21-80, 1st and 2nd go to people with level 80 Arcs you've found to help you, putting on however much they agree to donate. They could put on 1.9x the reward they will receive, or possibly 1.85x or 1.8 x so they can receive a profit for donating. That leaves 3rd-5th for your leveling partners to take, the amount depending on the level.

You could rotate who takes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (or 3rd, 4th, 5th) on your other partners, but if you have four arcs all at the same level, it really doesn't matter when it comes to rewards--everyone is always going to receive the same rewards no matter who they get it from. The only thing I can see mattering is if there are arcs at different levels, or if one or two partners are slower than the others to level their Arc, then it might affect how easily you can lock your positions between levels 30 and 74 when margins become super thin for 4th and 5th.

So in your example above with a level 30 Arc, positions 1 and 2 are going to helpers with level 80 Arcs. Assuming they put 1.9x rewards on your arc, the spreadsheet Amiar made looks like this:

1st place: Arc80 - 798 FPs donated, 798 rewarded (see column M on the spreadsheet)
2nd place: Arc80 - 399 FPs donated, 399 rewarded (see column N)
3rd place: Partner1 - 278 FPs donated, 105 rewarded (see columns O and U)
4th place: Partner2 - 80 FPs donated, 30 rewarded (see columns P and V)
5th place: Partner3 - 35 FPs donated, 8 rewarded (see columns Q and W)

The spreadsheet ends at level 50, so you will have to extrapolate what the OP has done with it to go beyond this point, but you should also be close to having enough BPs to unlock to 80 level this point. Not that you would, but you also wouldn't need to score more BPs, and therefore you shouldn't care as much about getting rewarded BPs as you would be about leveling your Arc quickly and cheaply.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

Okay, just for clarification, how do you determine what amount of FP is given by each player?

For instance, contribution rewards for first 3 positions of 30 Arc is... 420, 210, and 70.

Assuming each person is equal level and their arcs are all equal levels, how much does each person donate to each Arc? Does each person have to profit by the same amount for their contribution? Do the contributors rotate the Arc positions they fill for each level? That's where I'm a little slow on.

I really made the numbers up, but the important thing is that your partners always contribute greater than 1.9x the reward to prevent snipes from 80 arcs(you can never prevent snipes from crazy neighbors). The idea is to give each swap partner a relatively guaranteed chance of winning that spot. It’s easiest before 30 because you can give 3x the reward amount and no one will snipe that. It gets harder after 30 because the margin is so small, like 1.95-2.3x the reward. And if your partners are contributing to your arc at the same time it becomes snipeable so it’s best to let your top partner lock in first then the next lowest then the lowest. That’s not always possible but that’s the safest. I hope this answered your question. If not please ask again and hopefully me or someone else can clarify.

Danny’s explanation was pretty spot on.

 

[DeletedUser38795]

Hey Amiar - thanks a ton for your guide, it helped 4 of us get from lvl 6 to level 20 - awesome!.

Now I'm invoking Arc80 support. Since we don't have arc80 in our guild, I am asking friends to support and would give them a 10% profit. What's the easiest way to give Arc80 a 10% profit and ensurig their spot is locked?

For example: Let's say we go from lvl 20->lvl 21 (1st place reward is 270fP and total FP needed for this level is 1273) and I have an Arc80 friend with 1.9x Arc bonus. He would need to put in 486 (=270 x 1.8) and will receive 513 reward (280 x 1.9), right? If he puts in 486FP (total FP on the arc is then 486/1273) and his investment is at risk of being sniped by someone with an even higher arc...

How do I prevent this?

One way I can think of is to
a) coordinate time of being online at same time
b) owner then puts in 151 FP (just enough so Arc 80 can lock in 1st)
c) Arc80 then puts in 486 (there are now 637FP total, more than half of 1273 so 1st is secure).
d) repeat for spot 2..

This feels very cumbersome, especially having to coordinate this with 6 ppl (4 in swap group + 2 Arc80s).

What's the easiest way to give Arc80 a 10% profit and ensurig their spot is locked?