🌈 Beating Contest of Elements as a F2P: Guide and Opinion

[RebelForces]

Hello all! Today I’m happy to share my run on Contest of Elements Quest and share my opinion and strategy on it. I’ll talk about my experience, my opinion, my hero deck and strategies used while being a f2p. I do have some premium heroes but I was lucky and organized with my summons.

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✔ Strategy:
My first try included a 1/1 Leonidas, a 4* trainer hero and other 3 maxed no emblems random rares. It didn’t worked. Heroes are so slow and enemies will hit them hard. I have quit because my back was being beaten to death. It is important to say I didn’t let Zandria Fire not even once.

Then, I’ve counted my maxed holy heroes: 33 (6 legendaries, 12 epics)
Then, started first stages using rares. Plus I always carried resurrection items with me, didn’t needed them as much I’ve expected, tho. That lends us to our next topic:

✔ Items:
Didn’t used many of them. Mostly small mana pots. I’ve used around 5 tornadoes but mostly because of my impatience with bad boards. I wasn’t excited for spending 5 or more minutes in one stage. Needed small scrolls for resurrection twice, when rare heroes started to being severely injured by enemies’ hits. Didn’t used timestops but I believe they can be handy.

Meteor and axe attacks are just nice. Will prevent your heroes from being beaten straight away and you can also finish enemies with them.

✔ Heroes:
I’ll make a good list and separate them in 3 categories based on MY EXPERIENCE. I don’t own OP heroes like Zuri, so I believe this “guide” is more useful for small decks like mine, and besides small, cheap ones. I believe you have some hidden gems unused there:

Key heroes:

~ Bertulf: The attack buff will save you life and time. I had a second at 1/1 and now I deffo have a reason to max him. He made stages 3 and 4 so much easier.

~ Rekhetre: Overheal will help you more than you can imagine. Sniper enemies can shut down your heroes with one shot and that won’t happen after you activate Rek once or twice. Deffo a lot useful.

~ Costume Melia: Making your enemies’ miss will save your life MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. In other game modes, blind ailment can be tricky, but in this quest… everytime your enemies misses, you will feel relief. I believe her normal version +Critical % can be useful alongside Bertulf but I didn’t tried it.

~ Piggie piggie: Overheal. Nothing else to be said. His damage is just a bonus here. You will need his overheal. Saved my only copy of him for 2 last stages. I don’t own his costume.

~ Wu Kong: Our old friend came back to shine here. Every matched stone in board is turned into a yellow tile so the damage is legit. He’s fragile but you can simply take him back to life using items if needed. He did an amazing job for me.

~ Motega: One of my few fancy heroes. Obtained with a 300 gem pull when I was seeking Sergei. The 50% blind from the butterfly fiends will save your life and made 2 last stages really easy because hit all enemies (Odin and the new MF) won’t hurt everyone on your team. He will also protect you with the butterfly meat shilds + heal sometimes. S+.

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Really good heroes:

~ Pixie & Gretel: Never used them really before but their mana control will save you life when used correctly.

~ Kvasir aka bee guy: Bee minions meatshields for fast speed - that’s helpful.

~ Costume Kailani: Sharing damage and 50% attack buff. Looks simple but I made stages 4 and 5 really easier. Worth a try. Specially with Bertulf normal damage buff.

~ Poppy & Sally + Jackal: You’ll need firepower and they can lend that to you.

~ Hu Tao: -40% accuracy for 4 turns. Yes please? A LOT more useful than you can expect. Aouda can deal 1500 damage to your heroes, you will want -40% accuracy on her if she fires, believe me. Same for poseidon.

~ Costume Vivica: -44% DEF for enemies is a big deal. Cleanse wasn’t that needed but that big healing of her is always useful. Her Def down ailment will stack with Motega’s butterflies effect.

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Helpful heroes

~ Candy & Lady Wool & D’Andre: you will need some potent healing.

~Mist: slowing your enemies mana + extra damage from speciall skill is honorable. Specially with boosted attack via Wu Kong

~ Drake & Devana: good hit for 3, dispell and blind. They will work decently together, specially with the buffs and ailments like C. Vivicas DEF down mentioned before.

~ Good Boy Leo: Great hit and mana cut . Nice when paired with G. Jackal.

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✔ Rewards:
basically do not exist. the two miserable summons I won I will save for the dark elemental portal. Since it is my weakest element.

✔ Team examples:

Mid Stages

Final Stages

🦋 Butterfly minions making Odin miss his skill:

✔ Opinion:

Click for opinion

I should start by saying no, you won’t lose anything if you can’t complete it. the rewards are totally ignoble and the two summons you get don’t pay the time used for them. The portal sucks, unless you’re extra lucky to catch someone like Gazelle. You can feel blessed if you acquire really good heroes like DAndre, Candy or Jackal if you don’t already have them. But other than that… It really is a trash portal - and expensive. Because you will probably pay 400 gems to summon the legendary Bane. or Dawa. The super grand chest every 10 summons is not as good as the advertisement says, as we can see in youtube videos. Said that, it’s just a harder (long and tedious) challenge to play, don’t expect anything in return. A good experience and challenge, but the event is still easilly forgettable.

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Thanks for reading. Don’t forget the hidden screenshots that requires a click.

Hope it helps

• other helpful links:
  Discussion
  Rant!
  Terrible for new players?

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Extra:

-Sorry, Jequn. I hope not. I dislike you.

[Chadmo]

RF this was a wonderful post! I always get excited about new events and I stay up 'til midnight to complete them without seeking help. I finished it, but it was a chore. To think I have Wu Kong that I didn’t use, and many say he’s the hero of this event. On level 7 I accidentally replaced my Revive scroll for Scrolls of Alteration and had to nuke the team with items because a hero died on one shot and I couldn’t bring them back.

@Dudeious.Maximus , can I suggest giving @RebelForces an emoji for such a post that is very helpful to the community? I noticed they do not have one as yet.

[Chadmo]

@PlayForFun Thank you thank you. This thread is indeed a rainbow of info…even with it only being Yellow.

[Math-Teacher]

Another F2P’er chiming in.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Playing smart (ghosting tiles, taking your time, going into the next stage with full mana and the element bar charged, etc.) made it a breeze.

Titanium shields were an item I heard about using when I was 80% complete, so I tried them and it made some of the bosses easy mode.

Pigs and Stereo (overheal) made things a lot less dangerous.

[Ruskin505]

Great post

I found revive scrolls to be the most helpful. Accept that you’ll die. But know it’s easy to bring yourself back to life.

[JimP]

Greats tips.

I may add, if you don’t have any overheal heroes, bring some bomb attacks (or axes). Their dmg- helps a lot to avoid being one-shot by bosses.

[Draerius]

@Chadmo

To think I have Wu Kong that I didn’t use, and many say he’s the hero of this event.

I used 2 Wu kong, Bertulf, and Ranvir. The first 2 stages I used Melia (crit). Really worked well to speed up the battles and decimate the foes.

[rebelsouljah]

Zhuge Liang was a major help. Too bad I could only use him once. The counterattack killed the 2 OP bosses. Also, Onatel was quite helpful in controlling the mana. And of course, Wolfgang and Lidenbrock were helpful.

I think having 2 healers were key. And I was able to pair a normal healer with and over healer (Deandre & Wang / Gulli & Delilah / Wolfy & Lidenbrock)

[BobTheSnark]

Thank you for sharing!

I… actually went with mostly smallish heal, small mana, and damage/debuff items but there were plenty of times I regretted not bringing antidotes (various blind, attack down, anti-healing, and especially DD debuffs) and especially revive scrolls (most levels I lost at least one hero, and almost invariably my overhealer when I had one).

In particular, I barely had enough heroes to attempt the challenge, even at -800 TP on a number of levels, so no-revive was living too dangerously and grueling. —Having said that, I’m not entirely sure which items I would have preferred to leave out in order to bring antidotes and revives (though I tried not to lean on “all damage item nuke” to win final waves, it was nice to be able to END final waves, especially to prevent a big boss boom or res).

My own overall experience

And yeah, if you want to finish this challenge purely for the challenge, that’s fine as far as it goes, but be aware that that’s the only reward you can expect. Like @RebelForces, I’m banking my summons against another color (and getting two summons of dubious merit months from now, sometime — while not a wholly unfamiliar feeling for folks used to playing the long game — is still really disappointing).

[Andrewbook]

Nicely said! I managed the event with 23 heroes (so I couldn’t lose a match). My 1/1 Pixie was essential to making it through the first two levels. I was very entertained by shutting down the enemy with an unleveled three star

[Gargon]

@Chadmo

To think I have Wu Kong that I didn’t use, and many say he’s the hero of this event.

I used him, but was not impressed, I used him as a filler in a team, which was not a good idea. The team has to be designed for him. One with healers and minion makers and supporters. Hitters are a bad idea, because they start missing and then the mobs don´t get blinded and defdown etc. So if you build a team around tile damage Wu is amazing, but not added to a team of hitters. Bertulf however can be a good filler, he has no downsides.

[Chadmo]

Great points. Yeah, my Bertulf was super useful, used him on the 5-6 levels. I can see Wu perfect for right before you set off the trigger to load the board with yellow tiles. Other than that, the misses can be worrysome.

[Gargon]

@Chadmo

I can see Wu perfect for right before you set off the trigger to load the board with yellow tiles.

Yes just don´t bring any hitters with you, because Wu kills the current wave with yellow tiles, you move to the next wave without tiles and fully charged heroes that miss everything. Not a good combo. In the end I had to choose between my other heroes and Wu, so I nearly never used his special anymore. I needed the mana steal to work and couldn´t just hope it might work…

[Chadmo]

That does make sense. Great discussion, you have a great gaming mind Gargon!

[scbrain]

Can I add one? I know she’s not common, but Inari was awesome. She was dodging left and right.

On the other hand, Kara was not great. When she had her taunt on, she would get one-shotted almost immediately.

[nicos]

Why don’t you keep pulling for jequn he’s useful everywhere and gets 5 attacks per event

[Chadmo]

That’s funny. Inari was the one that got one-shotted when I forgot to bring revive scrolls. Live and learn, hope to actually use her next time!

[Muchacho]

Great write up @RebelForces ! Thanks for sharing such detailed thoughts and experiences.

[BobTheSnark]

@nicos

Why don’t you keep pulling for jequn

At quoted portal odds, there is an 0.2% chance of getting a featured hero. Since there are two featured heroes in this portal, that means the chance of getting Jequn specifically is presumably 0.1%.

Any single pull has a 0.999 probability of not-Jequn.

0.999^700 is about 0.496, i.e. a 700-pull has about a 50-50 shot of getting Jequn

That’s a little rich for my blood, and moreover, I’d imagine that most people with that kind of resources to throw at this event (1) probably don’t find this event all /that/ challenging and (2) don’t care so much about winning two free summons if they are willing to pay for 700+.

Also, since this is a F2P guide to this event….

[NoRecesso]

@RebelForces

Good Boy Leo: Great hit and mana cut . Nice when paired with G. Jackal

Great combine using G Jackal and Leonidas.

Good thing about this quest is that heroes like Pixie and Gretel came out of the bench being very useful