Board Thread:Question and Answer/@comment-27263060-20160331093943/@comment-27783730-20160403094409

I'd say lv 86 is still early to start ranking while you're still a free player, especially if you're not in an active alliance. Snowballing IS real and more you can overkill, more cards you'll get. Or you can play the whole time blowing everything you have on ranking and achieve the same result, which is not a sustainable behavior for a free player and very frustrating, since other people who have the cards to overkill more have an advantage.

AUB should be easier as long as your alliance is active and you can participate in the rounds yourself. Last time I was ranking there were 4-5 others ranking with me and some more hitting casually, so the alliance points were also good and we had plenty of fever times. I was able to join in half the rounds myself and so was the case for most of the other people, so in the end we barely had 10 people hitting. I needed 6000 jewels to compensate for the lack of participation, but I'd been saving them up for a while because I literally had nothing else to spend the jewels on anyways. Summons are just not worth when you're a free player, guaranteeing GUR from AUB is better :p (Ended rank 270 or so btw)