I’ve actually been thinking about this for the past five days, trying to figure out who to give my books to before the “New Year Journey” sub event is over. 😫😫😫 I was originally planning to give them all to Mozi, but with how many I have saved up I’m second guessing if I should stick with that or distribute them more evenly among some other partners in need of them. Annnd I’ve decided to evenly distribute. 😅

With that, I’m going to take you day by day through the drop. So here we go:

Night 1:

Dropped all my books on Duke Zhi, Xue Yuan, Mi Yue and Dugu Meng, leveled up Prince Yi by 10 levels, and performed 20 marriages (for the ingots. 🤭) Oh and used 41 of those fish biscuits bags from the “Fun in the Garden” game. 😅

Look at all those books I dropped! 🤩

Total power before I went to bed: 67.6M

Day 1:

Five more marriages, promoted Shen Linghua to “Oath of Love” affection level (4 levels to be exact) and Murong Chong to “Everlasting Love” affection level (to be brief, I only did this in the hopes of attaining a higher level Cabinet Scholar 🙈, since he’s the only one who gives me Balanced children.) Clothing upgrades and brocade exchanges. Finished up two regalia stories, and activated the respective precious collection cards. Distributed all my skill packs to partners in need. And gifted all my knowledge packs to Mozi. Activated all my frames and chat boxes (I had about 7 of each, two of them had the potential bonuses for my partners.)

And then I just decided to clear all the red dots on my partners, save for Prince Yi. 😅 So you know all the comprehension points, knowledge points, growth points, etc. Why am I doing all this now? Well, I sort of had the time available and it took about 3 hours of game play to accomplish all that. 😅 And this is why all of us seasoned players say to drop your hoard over the course of the five days of Dominant. It allows you time to remember to drop EVERYTHING.

And since I had some more time I went ahead and dropped all my cabinet scholar tokens and applied all my Land warehouse goodies to my partners. It’s been a full day. 🤪

Some of what remains for the rest of the quick rank event.

Current power increase: 362.4M

Day 2:

I decided to partially update Prince Yi by taking him to level 450 (which is when I ran out of EXP to gift), and then applied his accumulated gift points. And then I decided to gift all my growth point packs to Mozi, since I REALLY wanted to update Mozi further this round. Buuuuut, I think I’m going to give the remainder of my stuff to Prince Yi. 🙈 Only because of the power boost I can get off of him!

Current power increase: 545.4M

I also decided to activate some Ministry of Works bonuses for marriage, authority attribute % and potential increases and wisdom attribute % increase. And at the last minute activated a Mandate of Heaven bonus too. 😅

Power increase at the end of day: 558.1M

Day 3:

I decided to level up Prince Yi as far as I could with what I had left in my EXP bank, getting him all the way to level 457. 😱 And since I was feeling frisky, I decided to apply all my bond points and devotion packs that I had. Once I was done with that I activated one more Mandate of Heaven level, and did some more updating in the Ministry of Works area. (Thanks to all the Jade packs I acquired in “New Year Journey.” 😏) On that note, I’ve found that the MoW attribute % bonus has been giving me a nice payout for jades used. Specifically in the authority department. My overall partner momentum has increased significantly in the past three days, and I’m loving every second of it. ☺️

I also acquired a full new outfit, chat frame and avatar frame from the New Year Journey, adding their respective power increases to my total.

Power increase before calling it a night: 703.3M

During the day, I upgraded clothes, did some more MoW bonuses, and then dropped all my non-potential fruit items.

Power at the end of the day: 737.6M

Day 4

I applied my accumulated comprehension points and cultivation books to Prince Yi. Gave some cultivation books to Katniss, my Cabinet Scholar. And then decided to drop 741 of my potential fruit on Prince Yi. 😅

Power at the end of the day: 895.2M

Day 5

The BIG ONE! 😂

Alright, so I started by dropping a lot of my potential fruit hoard on… Duke Zhi! 😉 And that’s because his numbers were close enough to Prince Yi’s I thought I’d give him some love and attention. Next I took Prince Yi to level 459 and then brought his potential fruit total up to 6000. I chose to wait until the end of the event to finish the drop and activate my lone Mozi Regalia card. Until then I cleared out some red dots I had acquired since I cleared them a couple days back and did one more Ministry of Works upgrade.

And I almost made second for both power and potential fruit, buuut I’m kind of being gained up on. 🙃 Oh well... I guess we’ll see what happens here in the next five days. I can be happy with 3rd the nerd in CS Dominant and Favored. 🤓

Overall power increase for CS Dominant: 1.2B!! 🤩🥳

I far exceeded my own expectations in Dominant, and I can’t wait to what I do in Favored.

Day 6-8

For the first three days of Favored I’ve dropped 100+ stamina pills each day, and individually set my pigeon letters out to make sure I get the intimacy points on them, also making sure to utilize my food bonuses. I’ve also used the mailboxes twice on day 1 & 2 since I was busy outside the game over the weekend. 😅

(My birthday was great, BTW. 😉)

And on Day 8 of CS, day 3 of Favored, I decided to drop my “unknown” intimacy amount items, such as the blessing intimacy bags and my land warehouse upgrades. In addition to that I also dropped those little trinkets I picked up from the “Fun in the Garden Tour” game. I know it won’t last, but I had to screen shot this for fun. 🙈

Total intimacy increase so far: 189,089

Day 9

Dropped another 100+ stamina pills. All pigeon mail intimacy letters. ANNND I TOOK FIRST IN POTENTIAL FRUIT IN THE LAST 15 SECONDS!!!

🤪🤪🤩🤩

I’m on cloud nine, cause I really did not think I’d pull that one off. Anyway, I know I released the kraken so we’ll see how this thing ends tomorrow night! 😁😁😁

Day 10

Whelp I finished in second, but it was a well earned second place. And I’m glad first place went all out for it too. 😁🤣 I was hoping she would.

There’s my final score for CS Favored, and I couldn’t be happier.

Anyway, not sure if I’ll ever try this again, but it was sort of worth the hassle and nerves. Maybe. 😅

Alright, moving unto some old news!

Hunting Competition Strategy Update

So this last round I decided to change up my hunting groups for the first 8 hours, and I think that actually benefited me fairly well.

I decided to break up my strongest partners and it gave me three balanced hunting teams. This allowed me to accumulate more search points altogether, even while having to pass up on attacking other players hunting teams. 😅 I forgot where I finally placed for the event, though I’m sure it was in the top twenty for the first time. Actually, I stayed in the top ten for most of the event all thanks to the partner switch up. 🤭 I didn’t have any camp upgrades in my inventory, no scout tokens, and didn’t purchase any upgrades either. Aside from timing and knowing your competition, I think switching up your hunting teams could be a fun strategy to try if you’re looking to place a little better in the ranks.

Oh! I almost forgot. I also tested out the timing for sending out your search party! This one I kept as my top four partners, but I only released them when I came on for Matron Rong toward the end of the day, and I took minimal damage. Honestly, I think that’s really where I retained a lot of my rank points. Every previous event I’ve deployed my search team first thing in the morning and lost everything I gained from my initial search. It may not work for everyone, but if you have the time, I think it’s definitely worth testing this out too.

I’m still trying to figure out when’s the best time to use scout tokens though. 🤔 Perhaps that will vary by day and who’s hunting/whose search teams are currently out and about. Like, if you know there are tons of “pions” available while out on your main hunt, perhaps making the most of the scout tokens then is best. Or if you/your opponent have the premium camp upgrade and you’re powerful enough to overtake them, then using your scout tokens at that time will give you a better point boost too. The choice is up to you. Go forth and experiment. 😜

All Star Literary Gathering

That was a very humbling experience this time around. 😅

I did successfully make into the 64th finals, but wow to go from “Leader Academia” to “Learned and Talented”… Let’s just say I learned a valuable lesson about the cost of hoarding. 🤪

The new outfit is kind of interesting, what with the attribute boost and Literary Gathering bonus, buuut 15 books?! To be fair I was saving ingots for CNY, but still for an event that happens twice a year, I’m not sure betting all those ingots is worth it to me. Kudos to everyone who got it though! 😅

It will be nice to see how I place later this year after I spend some more time leveling up my Cabinet Scholar. To which I will say this, despite my previous comments, I think there is something to be said for making your Cabinet Scholar a powerful partner. I think it compensates for your overall lower power/weaker partner stack. Just food for thought.

And with that, I bid you adieu.