User blog:Fairingrey/Thoughts 5-30-14: Event prep, trading-backsending, tips.

''Today's motto of the day includes cute girls and love. Make it up.''

Intro
You know, I like writing my thoughts down. Even if nobody gets around to reading them, it makes me happy that I have at least some compilation of thoughts I can refer back to anytime someone has a question. Today I felt as if with the coming of the new event it'd be important to go over some things that some of us who try to rank don't know about, might not know about, or need clarification on.

So that being said, let's dive in. This post is going to concern the very couple things I've listed as the subject in this blog: Event prep, trading-backsending, and tips.

Event Prep
I love the word alacrity. It has such a nice, pretty ring to it. People who have alacrity are the best. Ready to kick stuff up the ass. You can be totally baka and stuff but as long as you got alacrity you'll hang in there.

That being said, however, alacrity isn't the only thing you need in yourself. Instead, let's call this thing I'll talk about COLLECTIVE alacrity, or whatever pretty name you want to call it because I personally love calling things things and other fun things other fun things.

Or call it ACTIVITY, like a normal person does. baka

Anyways, maintaining the activity of your list is an important thing to do, and at times it might seem rather daunting how to prep for new events when they come, and who to decide to prune. It's tough, letting go. I know, because there are people I so badly want to readd that keep visiting my kingdom. Especially レイン. I feel so bad for deleting him and stuff, I just wanna give him a nice big hug and pad him with FAWs all over for our long lost reunion. DONT YOU UNDERSTAND, MAI BURNING LOVE ;_; Hmf, Japanese... if he sees this he better readd me, I will spoil him.

But that's another thing. Great thing to know if you don't have access to senders is that before and at the start of every new event there are tons of senders looking for new people to add. This doesn't happen just in the game, but in the communities as well. Wikia's an OK source. So is TCGAPP. Ultimately it's up to you to find people within the community. Although I am a little bit upset at how the wiki spread is organized, it's a source, and I guess that's what matters.

Ultimately, however, you're going to have to prune some people. Your comrades list isn't endless like facebook, so you're going to have to pick and choose who you want to keep or let go.

The things to keep in mind when you're pruning: Those are the tips I can think of when pruning. Now let's talk about finding senders or traders. If I'm missing something, just tell me in the comments. I don't look to cover everything but it's nice to know if I did miss something important.
 * Depending on your activity, if you plan to SERIOUSLY rank, 4 days is probably the limit for any one comrade in your list. If they don't happen to log in by the start of the new event or before, they should be gone. No exceptions.
 * And let's get this clear. It's not like your ID is 'private' so you don't have any reason to regret a person not 'finding' it if you're tied to a community. If it comes down to it, just stick your ID in your comment in your collections page. People look at that more than some might think.
 * At least SOME interaction. When I say interaction, I mean sending/receiving/assisting AWs, or town visiting. If they aren't doing ANY of that junk, they aren't interacting with you.
 * And for God's sake, let's remember this isn't personal. Maybe the person that just doesn't interact with you just logs on everyday to donate and to get rewards and that's it. If they make it personal, that's their problem. None of this "Sorry I'm not part of you FAW machine" bullshit that's been mentioned in some discussion threads I've participated in.
 * If you have a problem with them
 * Consistently low HP FAW backsender/trader? Lies about online status? Sends AW but no FAW? Something like that? DELETE THEM! You don't need someone that frustrates you!
 * If you're popular, and you're somewhere in the top 100 or something, you'll get town visitors. Go through them and gauge them, whatever. Though if you rank enough to get attention, you probably don't need tips do you!
 * I talked about finding senders and stuff in the community. Whatever your source is, keep in mind these different aspects when you consider adding them:
 * Peak rank. For SUPER NEW PEOPLE that start in the middle of an event, it can be different, but for people that have been around for a couple events, you should be looking at somewhere around a peak rank of tops ~700 - ~6000 at the lowest, unless they show a LOT of promise.
 * Level. Be skeptic about this. People shoot down a lot about level but honestly it's not such a big deal. It's just something that can tell you about their ability and activity. Lower level people get less comrade slots and less of a vit cap, and might lack the unitcost to build a kickass team. That, and they might be building their castle, you know?
 * Yggdrasil. Even just 1 is good. 2 is better. 3 is the gold.
 * Magic School. Decent MS level is lv 3. For newbies, lv 2, since they're using their starting jewels wisely. The higher, the better. Lv 6 is the usual standard for a dedicated player, however.
 * Once they're added, keep track of their trading activity. If they don't send back after a couple initial friendship FAW sends, say goodbye to them.

Trading/Backsending
Ok, so it's clear that trading FAWs has definitely become a thing since FAWs have come out. People like other people who send back, and you can definitely refer to that back in my old blog post about ranker mechanics.

But let's make it clear. There's something I feel some of us might be missing when we say "trading". Let's see.

If you're a backsender or trader that wants good drops, just secure the ace at 1/2 HP on your own FAW. Any more and you're just making trouble for your other senders. 1/3rd is acceptable. If the HP of the FAW you're sending is lower than 1 mil HP, it's going to make some people anxious. Worse if it's less than 500k HP.

Why is that? Answer's pretty obvious, right? Put yourself in the receiver's shoes. Nobody likes having to "barely" make it to another FAW that the sender leaves at lower than 1 mil HP on a regular basis. We can kill it, so just chill out. The point difference between 1/2 HP and the excess is negligible considering the better impression you give off when you often send healthy FAWs.

However, on occasion it's fine, often the case when some senders like me even forget we're in our own FAW until the last minute. Acceptable.

The other thing is ratios and activity. Given, some of us can't always be on, but being picky about numbers is such a wrong way to go about it and doesn't foster friendship at all. There's a big difference between not getting sends at all, and getting a couple from a person that just happens to be in a different timezone as you are.

That's all, just something short to brush up on.

Tips
Probably what most people want to know. These tips I'm listing concern FAW battle speed and FAW notifications. Some might be obvious. Others might be totally new to you.

FAW Notifications

 * Some people will often say that the only way you'll be aware of FAWs the fastest is if you constantly refresh the AW page. But there are different ways of doing this.
 * Refreshing through menu. Some claim this is the slowest. I think it's an acceptable speed.
 * Refreshing through Ranking button and pressing the back button. Might be faster.
 * Refreshing through viewing a current AW's status and pressing back button right after. Runs the risk of pulling you back to the kingdom screen, but this doesn't happen if you haven't refreshed from the menu. That is, the page you viewed before the AW page (excluding any AW/FAW status pages) was the campaign page. Decent speed. Probably as fast as refreshing through Ranking, but you have to be able to view a FAW or AW in the first place.
 * Opening boxes? Upgrading cards? Checking the menu for the red exclamation mark next to the AW button every once in a while gives you slightly slower notifications than having to interrupt your actions to refresh the page manually. Can be somewhat reliable. Especially if you're opening boxes.

FAW Battle Speed
Might throw more out, but that's all I can think of right now.
 * If you're not running increased battle speed from the options, you's a dummy.
 * Turning on the option "disable auto battle when skill is activated" is great for relying on the auto button to get your procs up if you don't have any of the skills that you want proc'd yet.
 * The auto button speeds up animations.
 * Reliable for getting your procs up if you don't have a event MAJOR DAMAGE card right out of the gate. Otherwise, damage is negligible. Note previous tip.
 * At times, long tapping (or holding) can be a better option.
 * If you got the ninja fingers, you can shave off a couple fractions of a second by pressing the auto button RIGHT after your last soft tap or skill use. This will speed up the victory animation, allowing you to get to the loading flower after.
 * Long tapping is a thing. If at any time you want to continuously attack with a selected card, just hold your finger on the AW or FAW until you want to stop.

Closing
Thanks for reading if you've read through everything! I actually have to do something so I'm cutting my closing short. Driving home tomorrow, after all, and it's like a 2 hour drive from where I am down to South Bay again, woo.

Hope you guys have a great time ranking if you are, and if you have any questions just leave them in the comments or post on my message wall, and definitely if it concerns more general things.

Peeeeace.