I’m in the same boat, I usually only fill 2 chests and tend to skip the chest once my flags are full around 2pm (although that depends on how busy I am during the workday too).
but I’d be curious to know too, for those weekend days
Well my sleep schedule sucks, which is a big help in games that rely so heavily on timers. That’s a pretty big difference. That said, you’re not wrong either. I just went back and looked at my records, and it looks like I’ve been alternating pretty consistently between filling three raid chests one day, then two the next, then three, then two, etc. There are even a few instances where I “only” filled two for two days in a row.
(There were also a couple of four-raid-chest days sprinkled in there, which obviously must have involved flasks - sometimes when I decide I’m going to make a push for a high ranking, I’ll pop a flask or two, and of course I spend the 20 gems for a fresh raid chest to open, because the last thing I’m going to do is waste flags!)
ETA: I do win most of my raids. Probably 75% - 80%? In my watchtower right now, I won 20 and lost 4.
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haha…fair enough. I was hoping there was a trick, but I guess I’ll just keep filling my two a day and be happy with that.
Another addition, exactly 4 days from the last as well. The 4 day space between the last is becoming a little more common than rare at this point.
I think it’s slowed down. I’ve only started tracking in the last few months and i fast forward monsters to an average of 2.5 per day and raids are generally less than 2 a day. Never miss filling at least the minimum and I’m going way over a month per chest. This last one is over 35 days now.
I think it’s horrible that there is no official standard for getting them. Why does this have to be random too? Titan and war chests have counters why not elementals?
I think i’m going to stop fast forwarding unless it serves my time frame to play.
Is skipping the timer even affordable now where the loot rarely exceeds 3 gems, but skipping the wait costs 20? If there is some kind of genius that you are hiding by buying 1 x oil, 1 x small mana potion and a sturdy jacket or knife scabbard, 30,000 iron and 20,000 ham for 20 gems could you please let me know the secret? Serious question.
I can’t pay, but I would be grateful. TIA
I time my skips when my energies are full and the timers are below costing 10 gems myself.
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20 gems is to skip the whole timer. you can do that only once or twice before the limit kicks in and you have to wait around 7 hours before you can skip. then you skip only around 4 hours and it costs 6-7 gems only.
when your storages are max level, you get around 100k food and iron per chest.
and of course nobody skips them for crafting mats and battle items - people skip them for non-farmable ascension mats. what gem price would you put on those? elemental chests also give you 20-50 gems and 10-50 emblems. plus loot tickets, trainer heroes, atlantis coins and a chance at epic summon tokens. it is totally worth it.
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The cost is proportional to the length of time remaining on the chest. Since there’s a cooldown timer that limits you to an average of 5 chests a day at max skip rate, if you skip right after the chest fills, you’re just wasting gems. Try waiting until the cooldown timer is 8h or less. It’s far cheaper for the same overall rate of chest completion.
The objective of skipping chests to get to elemental chests is nonfarmable ascension materials. Skipping chests is one of the few ways you can increase your acquisition rate of nonfarmable AM. The fact that they’re not guaranteed to be in a chest doesn’t make the strategy unwise.
Finally, I’m not sure what you think gregschen has done to warrant your heavy sarcasm here, but it seems pretty inappropriate given the circumstances.
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there is a thread on this very forum with a formula for gem cost dependence on the time left. someone figured it out.
briefly, it starts at 20 gems, then drops to 19 at 11:41 time left, then drops by 1 gem every 36 minutes.
I try to time my skipping soon after the cost drop, so that I dont pay an extra gem for just several minutes.
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Here is one thread, not sure if the answer is in there somewhere
EDIT: this is why I didn’t go through the posts looking for the answer … I wouldn’t understand it even if I found it 
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This looks like it:
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To try to state the cost for skipping chests in a simpler fashion, thinking of it like a parking meter:
It’s 1 gem for the first 53 minutes, and an additional gem for each 36 minutes thereafter.
It becomes 10 gems at 6:17 time remaining.
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Thank you all for taking the time to respond. Given the time frame that the forum covers, it might be reasonable to expect change and as such, what applied 15 months ago does not always mean it does now. Some things are the same, while other things are notably different. I’ve followed a couple of shocking tips that I was directed to follow and I’ve neglected others that I probably should have. I’m sure all of us with just the one account wishes they could just start over with the benefit of hindsight.
Farming materials (to fill chests, get recruits etc.), I have determined, is not quite as precise a practice as those public spread sheets suggest and frankly; some of the things I have read about particular 3* and 4* items, where can you find them and I have like 200 and some people are struggling, I don’t understand. I have, however, taken up filling the monster chest more reliably regularly, but the one I filled just earlier gave me just 1 (one) piece of 1 star loot and 2 gems, an emblem and an ordinary summon token (long term range 2-5 gems, 1-2 emblems and the other stuff). I wondered… Clearly, the answer is, it seems, that now, it really doesn’t pay for people like me (I can’t speak for any others) unless you have some kind of use for the extra recruits you will pick up as a byproduct. Oh well.
Then those dang elusive ascension materials; I have no idea why they need to be quite so rare; it’s not like you can buy them as an alternative. I’ve compared my statistics to those available for public scrutiny and I’m bewildered by the evidence of both abundance and famine.
Cheers and thank you very much again.
G, After re-reading your T&C’s, I’m yet to be convinced my sin was heinous, when it was moderate in context and in comparison IMO. I’m not going to debate it with you. Being a moderator is a pretty thankless task in my experience (I wouldn’t do it again) so I’m totally cool with you taking a public shot that I can’t take down.; let’s leave it at that okay?
Take care. Have a wonderful day.
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I skip chests whenever I can, but will wait until either raid or world energy is full (or almost) to pay the least possible gem cost. I tend to skip the raid chest more often, because of the better rewards, so I tend to get more elemental chests in that spot.
I started keeping track almost 3 months ago, but didn’t pay attention to the gem cost…it seems in line with what has been reported by previous posters here.
FWIW here are my results so far:
Date Position Color
2-11-19 raid fire
2-23-19 raid fire
3-3-19 raid nature
3-16-19 monster holy
3-28-19 raid fire
4-5-19 monster ice
4-14-19 monster ice
4-19-19 monster ice
5-1-19 raid dark
5-6-19 raid holy
That is awesome! I have only gotten 2 in 3-4 months, one in the first week and another 2 days ago (yellow and red). The loot, however, was excellent the other day. I was stoked.
You’ve already gotten enough replies on this, but since your reply was to me directly, and since space on this forum is free, I figure it can’t hurt to throw my two cents in too:
I’m guessing you’re referring to Mai’s farming guide (which is super old, and probably largely defunct) and Barry Farms Here (which is new, and which I contributed to heavily, but which I think is also unfortunately a little too hard to parse for most, and which I think is also overly ambitious given the data collection constraints), but correct me if I’m wrong. My personal take on farming the map for mats is that the distribution is truly random, with modifications for item rarity and specific frequencies in each province. I think the data collection efforts to try to pinpoint specific levels to farm for specific mats is futile. I arrived at that conclusion via my own extensive data collection efforts, as well as my contribution to (and discussion in the course of contributing to) Barry’s project.
On the other hand, farming for other resources (monsters to fill chests, recruits, ham, iron, XP) are much more predictable, and Barry’s spreadsheet does a good job of reflecting same.
You probably have built up large quantities of 3-star and 4-star mats because you’re not yet at the point where all your buildings are maxed, and your primary use for iron shifts to crafting. (Correct me I’m wrong on that, too!) Those of us who have reached that point, ran out of crafting mats quite quickly, and many of us have used up all our tornadoes and time stops fighting 11-star and 12-star titans, so trying to find a good level to farm nuggets or dragon bones has become a bit of a Holy Grail, hence all the effort going into those spreadsheets you’re talking about.
Similarly, for recruits, you DO eventually run out, if you use optimal TC strategies. But it’s a very long-run/endgame sort of problem.
Finally, to answer your original question (even though several others already have), the main reason to skip raid chest timers is to get to the next elemental chest more quickly. It’s a gem-negative strategy, to be sure, but the purpose is to get more chances at non-farmable ascension materials, which you can’t buy with gems straight up.
And I skip raid chest timers rather than monster chest timers because raid chests (especially in Diamond) are way more likely (although still unlikely overall - about 7% or 8% chance?) to contain non-farmable AMs themselves, in addition to speeding up the next elemental chest appearance.
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Just to help you understand moderation standards: if I thought it was a heinous violation of the forum rules, I’d have exercised my powers as a moderator and flagged the post (which would have hidden it).
Since it was heavy but incidental sarcasm in an otherwise useful question, I answered you, but commented on the fact that I considered it inappropriate. But I’ll make you a deal: I’m happy to edit out my comment if you edit out the sarcasm. Fair enough?