The Rival Quest during Wildlife Event is wildly difficult and costs too many diamonds.

[xivarmy]

What is that old quote? "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me." I'll add the following, Fool me three times, will never happen. Tried the first Rivals minigame and didn't get very far. Read comments about how easy it was, no diamonds used, just had to be prepared for it. For the 2nd appearance, decided to get as far as possible, ideally to the golden ticket rewards. Only got to Alligator Swamp reward, by using event coins and diamonds. Too costly for me.

My takeaway of the Rival questline: It's the Bronze Age, build a Longhouse Quest on Steroids! To refresh everyone's memory, There is(was, in case removed) a quest that rewarded the player 100 diamonds. A Fantastic Reward for a new player! However, the next quest was to build a Longhouse at the cost of 100 diamonds. INNO giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. Rivals takes that one step further, and has multiple rewards (1 Hammer, etc) that are REQUIRED to be used to complete the next Rivals quest, rather than being able to save and use when the player wants to.

To those players who can complete easily, have fun with Rival. To Inno, I will not be spending any more purchased diamonds on Rival! For me, Rival joins settlements, GVG, PVP and and non event daily challenges as things to ignore. Am I missing rewards, etc, Yes, but that does not bother me.

You didn't really get the diamonds for the bronze age tutorial quest, just the appearance of them. They wouldn't actually show up on another world like real diamonds - it was just trickery to go "look what you can buy with diamonds! please spend some more!" while giving you 1 free longhouse.

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Rivals are a different animal.

I have finished the two in this event comfortably on both worlds I'm playing it. I had better luck with the 2nd one than the first - only needed a couple extra tickets from questline this time. So there's a decent chance I'll get all 3 done without issue.

But beware the upcoming St Patricks ones which, as they stand, truly do ask you to sabotage your own event progress way more than they help you and are probably wrong for almost anyone to complete whether you're willing to spend or not (if you're willing/interested in spending on the event, there's much better ways). The outside exception might be someone who's not interested in the event prizes but is interested in the rival prizes. Still some portion of the rival quests *is* just free stuff, so you do what you would've done anyway and get a few extra rewards and decline to finish the stupid tasks.

So I'd say they are at minimum something you have to think long and hard about before you do the first thing you wouldn't have done without them. Weighing the inconvenience against the immediate reward - because that shiny reward at the end of the tunnel is probably going to request you to complete even bigger inconveniences before you get to it.

 

[UBERhelp1]

But beware the upcoming St Patricks ones which, as they stand, truly do ask you to sabotage your own event progress way more than they help you and are probably wrong for almost anyone to complete whether you're willing to spend or not (if you're willing/interested in spending on the event, there's much better ways). The outside exception might be someone who's not interested in the event prizes but is interested in the rival prizes. Still some portion of the rival quests *is* just free stuff, so you do what you would've done anyway and get a few extra rewards and decline to finish the stupid tasks.

The second one after being rebalanced is actually quite nice. You can get 8 Time Warps, 4x SwiftSham Savings, 3x Celtic Glassworks Kits, 2x Pagan Harvest Selection Kits, 3x Druid Hut Selection Kits, 3x Archdruid Hut Selection Kits, 1 ea Druid Tree (+ upgrades), 3x Epic St. Pat's Kits, 1x Finish All Special Productions Item, 1x Druid Hut Golden Upgrade, and still come out ~700 pots of gold ahead. However, that's only if you complete 30/32 quests. Completing more than that costs too much.

 

[Big Daddy Bertucci]

For one more data point, I like these rivals quests and got 31/32 on the first one while buying two extra tickets, but I didn’t realize at the start that you can exit the board mid ticket, letting you complete several quests at once. On this second one im not spending any diamonds and I might get to 24 or so. I’ve had 2-3 boards that didn’t have the color I needed. That felt somewhat lame and is the one thing I would say they should change.

 

[JJ597]

You didn't really get the diamonds for the bronze age tutorial quest, just the appearance of them. They wouldn't actually show up on another world like real diamonds - it was just trickery to go "look what you can buy with diamonds! please spend some more!" while giving you 1 free longhouse.

Let me check that out. I'll start in a new world and see what happens. I did check out and you are right. However, the principle of Inno giveth and Inno taketh still remains the same.

 

[Wwwoodchuck]

The second one after being rebalanced is actually quite nice. You can get 8 Time Warps, 4x SwiftSham Savings, 3x Celtic Glassworks Kits, 2x Pagan Harvest Selection Kits, 3x Druid Hut Selection Kits, 3x Archdruid Hut Selection Kits, 1 ea Druid Tree (+ upgrades), 3x Epic St. Pat's Kits, 1x Finish All Special Productions Item, 1x Druid Hut Golden Upgrade, and still come out ~700 pots of gold ahead. However, that's only if you complete 30/32 quests. Completing more than that costs too much.

Not to get too Off Topic, but since it was brought up…

I did not complete all the Rivals on St. Patrick’s day event and I still received a pretty good haul of ‘extras’. One potential issue I am seeing is with all the Swift Shams and Time warps. If I use them to speed up cities, I will not have enough Pots of Gold to hire mangers in the next city. Certainly not enough to purchase more than the free chest at the end of the first one. I am stuck on the city I ‘fast forwarded’ to waiting on daily quests to provide me with enough Pots of Gold to hire managers.

Doing cities using the Pots of Gold I receive for each day’s Event Quest is enough to keep cities rolling along with the occasional buying of chests. Changing the rhythm I have used for the past several years will cause me to not have enough Pots of Gold now. For me, those Swift Shams and Time Warps are liabilities unless I purchase Pots of Gold to keep up with the demand from speeding things up. Not completing the last two Rival quests does put me 700 Pots of Gold ahead, but that is not enough to do a city with. And if I can manage to squeeze by with those extra 700 Pots of Gold, if I use another ‘fast forward’ for a city, I am stuck waiting on Pots of Gold for managers again. Unless I purchase them. These Rivals seem to be a Gotcha waiting to Getcha.

It seems a user would have to plan on rushing cities from the first day, to conservatively use Pots of Gold, planning on rushing many cities using Fast Forwards and Swift Shams. Or am I missing an important step to help Pots of Gold keep up with using Swift Shams and Time Warps? It could be me, I have lost a lot of mental dexterity in the past few years

 

[xivarmy]

Not to get too Off Topic, but since it was brought up…

I did not complete all the Rivals on St. Patrick’s day event and I still received a pretty good haul of ‘extras’. One potential issue I am seeing is with all the Swift Shams and Time warps. If I use them to speed up cities, I will not have enough Pots of Gold to hire mangers in the next city. Certainly not enough to purchase more than the free chest at the end of the first one. I am stuck on the city I ‘fast forwarded’ to waiting on daily quests to provide me with enough Pots of Gold to hire managers.

Doing cities using the Pots of Gold I receive for each day’s Event Quest is enough to keep cities rolling along with the occasional buying of chests. Changing the rhythm I have used for the past several years will cause me to not have enough Pots of Gold now. For me, those Swift Shams and Time Warps are liabilities unless I purchase Pots of Gold to keep up with the demand from speeding things up. Not completing the last two Rival quests does put me 700 Pots of Gold ahead, but that is not enough to do a city with. And if I can manage to squeeze by with those extra 700 Pots of Gold, if I use another ‘fast forward’ for a city, I am stuck waiting on Pots of Gold for managers again. Unless I purchase them. These Rivals seem to be a Gotcha waiting to Getcha.

It seems a user would have to plan on rushing cities from the first day, to conservatively use Pots of Gold, planning on rushing many cities using Fast Forwards and Swift Shams. Or am I missing an important step to help Pots of Gold keep up with using Swift Shams and Time Warps? It could be me, I have lost a lot of mental dexterity in the past few years

700 extra pots of gold is enough for 1 extra medium-speed city where you skip the 2 most outlandish manager tasks, generally speaking (3/3 festival & ship).

You could also go even lighter on festival/ship managers for a few runs, use the time items to make up the time you lose from less managers, and thus have more pots of gold to do more cities or buy chests or whatever it is you want more pots of gold for.

You ultimately could treat the swiftshams and time warps as "worthless conveniences" though if you just don't want to do "more". Use them when the game's scheduling does not line up right with your real life scheduling and make the game easier rather than aiming to win more with them. Have an hour of free time to setup the next city if you can do it now, but it doesn't finish for an hour or two? Swiftsham and hate the event a little less lol. If you had a rhythm you were perfectly ok with, this might not be a big deal - but I did have some inconveniences and if I don't need them to do more (I have no idea if I'm playing this event on live or to what extent yet - haven't thought about it), I'll use them to make the times more convenient. Shorten runs that will run late so I have time to comfortably setup the next city for its big overnight wait and sleep properly.

 

[Wwwoodchuck]

700 extra pots of gold is enough for 1 extra medium-speed city where you skip the 2 most outlandish manager tasks, generally speaking (3/3 festival & ship).

You could also go even lighter on festival/ship managers for a few runs, use the time items to make up the time you lose from less managers, and thus have more pots of gold to do more cities or buy chests or whatever it is you want more pots of gold for.

You ultimately could treat the swiftshams and time warps as "worthless conveniences" though if you just don't want to do "more". Use them when the game's scheduling does not line up right with your real life scheduling and make the game easier rather than aiming to win more with them. Have an hour of free time to setup the next city if you can do it now, but it doesn't finish for an hour or two? Swiftsham and hate the event a little less lol. If you had a rhythm you were perfectly ok with, this might not be a big deal - but I did have some inconveniences and if I don't need them to do more (I have no idea if I'm playing this event on live or to what extent yet - haven't thought about it), I'll use them to make the times more convenient. Shorten runs that will run late so I have time to comfortably setup the next city for its big overnight wait and sleep properly.

Thank you for those suggestions.

They will all take more than I have to give. It took me two St Pat's events to come up with my one city a day thing, and I am pretty comfortable with it. 4 hours of occasional dickering to hit my numbers, then walk away and let it run. The next morning, finish some quests and start a new one over coffee. I think throwing the new tools into the mix would just ruin that morning coffee time

I will leave the Rival and the new implements to the more agile minds in the group!