Factions, good deed points, and Luck Coins

The developers have now added a way for us to earn old pets, buildings and upgrades to buildings that we may have missed from previous 15 day events. This sounds complicated, but really isn't once you get the hang of it.

FACTIONS

"Faction" just means group. Each players is randomly assigned to one group at the beginning of the event, and you will stay with that faction for the remainder of the event. Look at your name in the top left corner on the main regular island OR at the color of the points counter. Whatever color is showing is the color group that you have been assigned to. When you are on the main event island, you will see a percentage bar like this:



This is from the beginning of the event, so all teams are equal at this point.

GOOD DEED POINTS

Every action you take on the event islands will earn you good deed points. These are light blue, dark blue, and white, and sort of look like a yin-yang symbol except they have 3 parts rather than 2. You can see the point counter in the picture above as well. You do not have to do anything special to earn these points... they will be collected as you go along as normal in the event.



Each time you clear an item on the ground, or when you finish the quest that's on the left side of your screen, you will earn good deed points. The counter in the top left of your screen will automatically update once per hour, or you can refresh your game to make it update if you like. Points are NOT immediately added to the counter.



If you click that point counter in the top left, it will show you the points that have been collected by the other members of your faction, and what "place" you are on your team. You will see the top members of the team, then it skips down and shows you your own stats:



You will notice that the top players have a multiple number next to their names. The better you do each day, the higher of a multiplier you can earn for THAT DAY'S points. Unfortunately, the average player will NOT receive a daily multiplier for their points, unless the whole team does well.

The faction that does the best EACH DAY will receive a 2X multiplier for EVERY member of the team for THAT DAY'S points. (Only your own points will be multiplied.) Then the next day, the race to earn a multiplier starts all over again. The points will be added to the Karma Machine at the end of every day, you don't have to do anything to move them over. I am not sure of the precise time that the points will be moved over.

KARMA MACHINE

After your good deed points have been added to the Karma Machine, you can exchange them for Luck Coins. It takes 400 of the good deed points to exchange for 1 Luck Coin. Your Karma Machine can be found on the main event island, but you will also get one that can be placed on your regular island as well, so you can make exchanges without having to go to the event island.

HOW DO I EXCHANGE GOOD DEED POINTS FOR LUCK COINS?

Once a day at about 4 PM Central Time (USA), all of your points from the last 24 hours will be automatically transferred over to your karma machine. Your points counter at the top will reset to 0, and all factions will go back to being equal 20% of the daily competition.

You can access the karma machine either on the main event island OR through the one that you were given to place on your own regular island. Once your points transfer over (and this MAY take as much as an hour to fully transfer, PLEASE be patient), you can open your karma machine and hit the green Exchange button. It will exchange in multiples of 400, and whatever is left over will be left on the left side of the machine, to be added to your next batch of points.

To see your Luck Coin total, simply visit the luck coin tab in the shop.

WHAT DO I DO WITH LUCK COINS?

Go to your main island shop (hammer and saw, lower right corner) and click the Luck Coin tab at the top. You will see buildings, upgrades, and puzzle pieces from past events. NOT ALL PAST EVENT ITEMS ARE IN THE SHOP YET. They will add past event items one year after the event in which they were originally released. Anything you've already won in a past event cannot be earned again, but if you missed something, you can buy it with enough Luck Coins when you've amassed them. The past event pets are broken up into puzzle pieces just like the Jungle Collection and the Holiday Collection, and you can buy the puzzle pieces for them from the shop. You will need to buy 12 puzzle pieces per animal that you are missing.




Non-animal event rewards are offered in two parts, the item and an upgrade to the item. If you do not own the item yet, DO NOT BUY THE UPGRADE YET. You must buy the item before you buy the upgrade. Purchasing the upgrade is not the same as buying an upgraded version of the item - it is a separate purchase, and you must have the item first before you can apply the upgrade to it. For example, if I want this Laughing Castle, I need to spend 400 luck coins on the castle first, and then if I want the upgraded version of the castle, I would need to spend an additional 400 luck coins to get the upgrade:


There are a few items at the very end of the luck coin shop that have no upgrades available. Those are luck coin shop exclusive items; they were never event rewards. Those are there mostly for the people who already have literally every single past event item and pet already, as rewards that they can work toward with their luck coins.

That's really all there is to it. Just play your event EXACTLY AS ALWAYS, and along the way you will earn points that will help you collect some of the items you've missed out on. Don't get caught up in the hype and think you need to spend gems to do better, or to earn more. Just keep plugging away and you will reap the benefits of this addition to the game.

SUMMARY

As you clear items on the event quest islands you will receive "good deed points" (GDPs). You also receive a set of GDPs each time you finish a quest on the island, and the amount received for that increases by island (50/quest on island 1, 75/quest on island 2, and so on). Your GDPs will be added to your points counter, but the number is only updated once per hour, on the hour. (You can also refresh to force it to update, but even that number is apparently not totally right.)

If you collect enough GDPs during the day to break into the top portion of your faction's leaderboard, you can also gain a multiplier for your points for that day's points. These multipliers range from 1.1 up to 2 times the points. So if you collect 5,000 GDPs over the course of the day, and you are one of the top three players, you would receive 10,000 GDPs at the time of the afternoon reset. The in-faction multiplier ONLY multiplies your GDPs for THAT day. All 5 of the factions have a leaderboard with multipliers, so all teams have a shot at getting their GDPs multiplied for the day.

At the time of the afternoon reset (for this event, it is 4:00 Central, USA time), your GDP counter at the top of the screen will be zeroed out. Please don't panic! Your points are being tallied, and will son be moved to the Karma machine. This can take more than an hour for some players. Once your points have been tallied and moved to the Karma machine, you will get a little pop up on your screen, telling you how many points you earned for the day.

At this time, you can go check your Karma machine. There is one on the main event island, as well as the one they gave you to place on your main, regular island. When you open the Karma machine, if your faction won the daily points contest, you will see a 2X multiplier on the screen. If your team did not win, don't fret, you'll have another chance tomorrow. If you have a 2X multiplier on your screen, that means you will get twice as many luck coins than you would normally.

(If you reach the leaderboard of your faction AND your faction wins the day, too, then you will earn a lot, because not only will your personal points be multiplied, but your available luck coins will be doubled as well.)

You do NOT have to exchange your GDPs for luck coins every single day. You can leave them sitting there in the karma machine for as long as you like. The best strategy is to ONLY exchange the GDPs on a day that your faction has won, so that you have a 2X multiplier. All GDPs are carried over from event to event, so  be smart and wait to exchange only on a day that will give you double luck coins.

Once you do exchange, your available luck coins will no longer show in the karma machine. They will now be showing only in the shop (hammer and saw icon), when you click on the luck coin tab.