I have never spent a dime on this game. Hard to advance? Of course it was, but after a few years I am often the highest attacker in wars and titans. I can, mostly, maintain a diamond disposition in raids, and I have more refills than I can use.
I still love this game and pay at least a little every day. Son in my opinion FTP is the way to go. It did take awhile to get relatively powerful, but I do get a lot of satisfaction from the fact that s didn’t spend my hard earned cash at all.
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How’s the project coming along? Not sure I could have spent the gems to start an alliance, rather than jumping into a dead one for free but kudos to your bold ingenuity.
Looking forward to your upcoming progress post’s
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As a proud owner of 18 semi-developed F2P alts which are 22 months old only, and one of these alts is probably almost as powerful as my main account, I could give some tips here:
First of all, creating several owned by you alt alliances can help a ton, if you use them accordingly not only to kill baby titans, but also to fill titan chests fast. One titan chest can be filled effectively every 40 hours or so if you use these alt alliances correctly.
Second, alt alliances can be created with the gems of a 4-lvl alt account which is created in a matter of an hour of playing. So no need to waste your main account’s precious gems.
Third, it’s a good idea to bring 20 alt accounts to level 10 and use that free ViP sparingly whenever needed. It will boost your base upgrade and gem income by a lot. Plus it gives you free emblems. Also, you can use those alt accounts as means to kill baby titans early on and to spread a network of 8-10 alt alliances. That is what I did 22 months ago…and it paid off pretty well, although I needed to play a few months with blinders on before realizing the full potential of my alt accounts and the alt alliances. Heck, if managed correctly, those alts can help you win every war which for a new account means 2x 3* Aethers every week, which will help you LB your initial 3* and 4* for quicker map/quest progression.
I could share some of my past videos how to bring an alt account to level 10 fast if you are interested (it can happen in less than a day if you are dedicated enough).
If you have problems filling your raid chest fast, I can offer a solution which is in no way perfect but it helps a lot for a beginner F2P since it also lowers your cups by a lot. Go to an end of any S1 province and don’t progress any further, using the Outpost as easy raid chest harvest, killing 4 out of 5 heroes guarding that outpost, then running away. Game is made in such a way that an Outpost team is always a lot weaker compared to what you can muster on offense, so it should be easy enough. Just be careful not to kill all…sometimes a bad chain occurs.
Edit: If you hadn’t already started, there is another very important thing which a F2P can do for an easy progression, and that is…get invited into the game by another of your alt accounts. This insures your main account getting its first ViP 10-day pass at level 5.
Edit: It may sound counterintuitive, but I suggest pulling from the Blue, Green and Red elemental portals to get at least a 3* in these colours (if you didn’t pull one already by chance) to complete at least a 3* starting team with Layla as your only 2*. This will boost your initial quest/map completion by a lot while preserving a lot of battle items at the same time. Most importantly, it will allow you to complete any Rare quest up to the last stage, guaranteeing you an early flow of 3* ascension mats.
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18? Ain’t nobody got time for that!!
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So progress after a week (well, almost 8 days)
Higher level loot
Roster
Horghall came on day 7 when I was aiming for a 3* or 4* morlovia hero. He is actually really good for PVE at this stage of progress.
Troops: 2 3* troops, the rest 2*. Sadly one of the 3* troops is useless to me at the moment due to lack of heroes in that color.
Gems earned: 573 (used up most of the easier mission gems, and the 50 gems for facebook linking). Aqueela was well worth the 350 gems I spent in that portal.
Making good progress. Morlovia is really helping as at this stage I get excited to even see common herbs! 5/5 in the raid tourney so far which only gives me top 50% (!). Ended up joining an alliance as was only able to take down 1 titan in my self alliance (could have had 2 more but mistimed one flag, and had to abandon one flag due to RL) so that should lead to some better loot and also an interesting war experience doing cleans.
Observations: Mystic vision is an absolute goldmine. In my main account I barely open these but here I loiter outside until a new one is available.
Grey summon tokens are really valuable at this stage!
Juggling resources is absolutely key - time, iron, food, crafting resources. Kind of fun but also kind of annoying at the same time. But translates to a real sense of progress and accomplishment as you build everything up that you just don’t feel at end-game.
I think that being an FTP now is actually a lot easier than it was previously. There is a starter pass, the free side of the valour pass, a started quest, 2-hourly mystic visions and every day of the first week you get a free gift of some resources (last one was 2 grey tokens, which can be impactful).
I am just cruising on my main account as I am finding this a lot more fun and fulfilling
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Thank you! Some super clever and inventive semi-hacks here. I am amazed at the effort and time you put into managing so many accounts.
I personally am trying to emulate a “standard” account run through as a FTP, but with the knowledge that I built up from playing the game before. So that - plus the fact that I don’t really even have time to run 2 accounts properly - means that I won’t be able to really utlise any of those tips.
I struggle with the pve progress at times but filling raid chests is not an issue so far
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Hi!
I stumbled onto this game on my tablet with my granddaughter about a year ago. All we knew was go to the map and fight the enemies. She liked the way the enemies looked. The red dragon and the green dragon at the end of province 1 and province 2 were some of her favorites.
We would see a message about no room for iron, you need to build storage, without really understanding.
A few months later I started playing on my own some. Had some questions, so I found this forum and researched strategy.
All strictly FTP. I don’t want my granddaughter playing on a device with access to my credit card. And I prefer FTP games anyway.
I joined a casual alliance after a while so we could hit titans. Then recently I moved to an alliance that uses all war flags and kills mostly 11 and 12 star titans.
Now I play daily. My granddaughter plays very rarely but I save the map progression for her. I only farm as far as she has progressed.
My highest team power is around 3500. I raid in low platinum, adapting offense team to the opponent. My nicest heroes are some 4 stars (Hansel, Merlin, Sun Shangxiang, G Falcon, G Jackal, Grimm/cGrimm) and LB emblemed costumed 3 star healers. I have only a couple 5 stars but will not max any 5 stars until I have more 4 star depth.
It is fun. Just takes a lot of patience.
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Wow, pretty awesome that you were able to get a team of 3 stars (and one lucky 5-star!) so quickly, leveling only ShaJi partially, out of all the 2-stars.
I put resources into 1-star healer Sharan, ShaJi, Layla, and Needler (also Silthus, Olaf, and Ragnhild) when starting out. They got a lot of play for many months, but yes, obviously they don’t really have a shelf life past team power +/- 2500 (hard to recall exact numbers). Except maybe for W3K, Tavern of Legends, and other events that tap deep into your roster. Of those 2-stars, the ones who are still the most useful are Olaf and Silthus, because of their special skills. Occasionally I need a defense down or an attack up where I can’t use Gunnar, Kailani, Phoenicus, cHawkmoon, et al.
Some unleveled 2-stars of certain classes can be helpful for emblem Trials until you have enough higher rarity heroes in those classes.
Doing a gem pull from Season 5 / Dunes served you well, and summoning advice I have seen on the forum wouldn’t necessarily flag that as important for a new F2P player. It was only very recently I realized myself that the most likely pull from a season portal is one of that season’s 3 star heroes. I have focused my resources on portals where there is NO chance of a season 1 hero, so missed out on the Season portals to a large extent.
Thanks, I am enjoying following this more than I anticipated. Have you considered putting something up on u-tube channel for the newbies who don’t participate here? Good luck and may the portals show you kindness.
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My aim was to minimise levelling of 2s. At this stage anyone can have a team of at least 4 3s given the EHT that you get in the starter quest and the gems you earn in the first week. I pulled 2 3s from about a large number of grey token summons (40ish?) so that is a bonus. But yeah entirely possible and even probably that if you know what you are doing you will end up with a full team of 3s at the end of your first week as a FTP now.
I am having some weird luck now though - Horghall yesterday and Obakan today. It is nice - but also not so much. I wanted that green goopy guy or a 4* from the season summons. A (relatively) poor S1 5* will help me initially but not in the long run as I will avoid putting resources into him and he will start to fall behind. Even a S1 4* or 5* healer would have been so much better for my long game. But at least it is a starting point to getting multiple teams going.
I did something very siimlar in my first run through 4 years ago. Sharan was my only healer for quite a long time.
At just under 2k TP I would say it would be very difficult to field them and to keep a consistent win rate in both PVE and PTP.
I need to put aside some feeders for non feeding purposes for just this reason - that, and to be able to field multiple war teams (at least for cleans).
I think until you field a team of 3s you will struggle to make any kind of meaningful progress in the game. So I very quickly decided to make some pulls as soon as humany possible, thinking that a S1 3 dropping would still be a significant improvement in my team. I did wait to use the EHT until Morlovia though.
So far so good…
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Nice thread. I also have a F2P alt account, but well that was long time ago when I created it, like somewhen in mid-2019 and last time I logged in, it was I believe in oct 2020. So no, I don’t play it anymore and I created it when there weren’t as many heroes in the game.
Cool that you got your first 5* before 4*, I think I got 1st 5* before 1st 4* too actually on that account.
I remember I got C Quintus, Miki and Mitsuko there from non-s1/costume 5* heroes. I never got Miki on my main, also C Quintus, but I have Mitsuko on main acc.
I also got C Kiril pretty much right after release there, while I only got C Kiril on main acc last chamber.
That’s all I remember.
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send yourself invitation from first account
Some excellent pointers, which you appropriately italicized, to be saved for the best practices and helpful hints list.
I agree that fits for Horghall at this point. But if you get both of Obakan’s costumes later on I think you may find he has staying power. The double costume bonus gives him pretty good stats, and upcoming superior talents for S1s with 20 emblems will vastly improve his revive talent, as well as giving the costumed versions superior talents for their classes (specifics of which I don’t have handy at the moment).
Funny though that your good luck on early 5-stars is not necessarily optimal.
Congrats on the idea and motivation to do this! I will certainly be following along as I have always wondered how it would feel and what I would do different. You have an E&P mind I generally appreciate, so my interest is certainly piqued.
I am a 4 year FTP, but didn’t wander onto the forum until 2 years in, did a lot of weird stuff prior.
I vividly remember some wild and intense moments at that time. I do miss them. Beating things like emblem quests were huge too.
Anyways, good luck and thanks for sharing.
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Here are my pointers from developing my f2p alts:
A 3/60 4* is more powerful than fully ascended 3* , unemblemed, non-limit broken of course. Has slightly more stats and usually far better special abilities. A 2/60 5*, although with a more powerful (usually) special ability is lacking in stats at this level. I suggest using your 5* without leveling them at all, just for their specials, and divert your attention to the 3* and especially 4* heroes you pull. The resources you need to fully max a 5* will in general be far more useful if spent on three 4*. In the start you need an army, not a single powerful soldier without anyone by his side.
The vast majority of useful heroes you are bound to get are S1 4*. All the DD 4* S1, all the healers S1, Wu Kong (of course), and even some of the counterattack S1 heroes should be primary targets for maxing. On my alts, I see almost the same heroes on each alt, with very very few exceptions. If you happen to get a couple 4* healers + a counterattack hero early on, focus immediately on these, they will immensely increase your map/quest progress, but if you happen get a counterattack hero later - you may consider that hero a secondary project.
Use your gems at three locations: Challenge Festival 1, Costume Chamber, Season 3. Those locations have probably the best quality and quantity of useful 3* and 4*. A F2P should aim at these heroes rather than hoping to get a great 5*, because the latter simply won’t happen in the vast majority of cases. Next in line in consideration should be the Alliance Quest portal and of course, Challenge Festival 2, although in CF 2 the quality of heroes especially considering map/quest progression is far worse compared to CF 1.
Edit: Also a very important places to spend your F2P gems outside of summoning portals are:
Speed up your chests, especially Monster chest: Use 1 gem when there are 53 minutes 59 seconds left on your Monster/Raid chests. This may seem counterintuitive, but will improve your resource gain at a very minimal gem cost and will increase the rate at which Elemental chests appear.
Speed up some of your buildings: Leveling up Houses, Food or Iron Storages from level 3 to 4 takes 15 minutes, which can be skipped by spending only 1 gem. As far as skipping with gems goes, this is the best building skip option there is.
Expand your Maximum Roster capacity: This is very important since it starts saving you food early on, and also giving you the ability to keep more heroes (even feeder 1* and 2* heroes in the very beginning) for various purposes.
Sharan can be emblemed cheaply on the defense path in order to become semi-compatible with a maxed 3* team.
Edit: You should be able to complete stage 1 and 2 of any Limit Breaker quest, if you utilize the few powerful items like Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Harpoons and Time Freezes you could get from either the free part of the path of Valor or from the free rewards from a Seasonal event.
Edit: As others have mentioned, it’s a good idea to keep a number of feeder heroes especially for Trials quests. Here is why:
Of course, the big player here is the 8th level Forge.
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Great…you do what I dont have the time to do!!! 
I am really looking forward to how this is working out!
@FrenziedEye and @Ian487
I expect him to be in diamond at end of 2023.
Is that to long?
If yes you are mot very patient. 
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Hmm we can have a poll about when i will first reach diamond.
After 1 week i am solidly in silver.
My guess… 6 months?
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If I remember correctely Sha Ji and Layla are candidates to max. 
That’s super optimistic!!
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