how the weekly Tournament works, and what we're trying to achieve as a fellowship
Every week a new Tournament opens up on the World Map. This page explains how the Tournament works, which rewards are the ones worth caring about, and what we are trying to achieve as a fellowship.
the basics
The Tournament is a weekly, fellowship-wide event built on the same encounter mechanic you already know from scouting provinces. Each week it runs in your already-solved provinces of one type of good, rotating through Marble, Steel, Planks, Crystal, Scrolls, Silk, Elixir, Magic Dust and Gems.
When a Tournament is running, a matching province you've already solved lights up on the World Map with a Tournament icon. When you solve that tournament encounter, a new one pops up in another matching province (as long as you still have one).
Each Tournament province has 6 stages with one encounter each. You can either cater to the encounter by paying goods, or fight it. The amount of goods required for catering and the difficulty of the battle increases both with the number of the province (e.g. the 10th province is more difficult to solve than the 1st) and the stage (e.g. the 1 stage of 5th province is easier than the 4th stage of the 5th province).
Every solved encounter earns different rewards. First, there are rewards only for you. These include Relics, Knowledge Points, Enchantment, Rune Shards and Broken Shards. Second, each each encounter also gives Tournament Points, which go to a shared pool for the whole Fellowship. Higher stages give more tournament points.
After you solve a stage, that province needs a cooldown before the next stage opens. You can shorten this cooldown with Time Boosters or, theoretically, Diamonds (don't!). The Ancient Wonder D111-a "Timewarp" also shortens this cooldown. However, you can complete all 6 stages without shortening the cooldown.
the chests
All the points members of the fellowship collects are pooled. Each time the total reaches a checkpoint, a chest unlocks, and its contents are paid out to everyone who took part when the Tournament ends. There are ten regular chests, but they are not all worth the same.
Chest 10 is the main prize. After it, nine very tough bonus chests unlock for fellowships that get that far.
The big one. The tenth chest is the only free source of a Blueprint in the game. A Blueprint is combined with Spell Fragments in the Magic Academy to craft Royal Restorations or Artefacts. They also upgrade Magic Residences or Magic Workshops. Blueprints are rare and hard to get, so this is our main target.
the prizeSeveral chests (4th, 6th, 8th, 9th) contain Royal Restorations, which you need to upgrade Ancient Wonders (every 5 levels), upgrade event buildings, and place most Wonders. Worth a look in the chest preview — these are the next best chests after the tenth.
very goodA second set of 9 chests opens once the tenth is unlocked. Each holds 1 Royal Restoration and 1 Ancient Knowledge 10, but the point targets climb steeply — a stretch goal that is currently out of reach for our fellowship.
stretch goalThe exact contents of each chest can change from time to time, so trust the in-game preview over any list, including this one.
our current plan
Plenty of fellowships race to open as many chests as they can every single week. That is our goal as well, but only partly so. Instead, sometimes, we're also aiming to build up enough stored points each week to help us reach the tenth chest and its Blueprint in a later week. The archmage will typically indicate in the chat if it is a week where the goal is to reach the 10th chest or store points. If it is to store points, we try to finish just short of completing the current chest. So if possible, on the last day of the Tournament (Saturday), check the chat for messages from the Archmage what the current goal is. If it is to store points, please check the current Tournament progress to see whether adding more points will put us over the top or not.
At the end of a Tournament, points the fellowship earned towards a chest it didn't finish are kept in the Fellowship's Tournament Archive instead of being lost.
The stored points can be put towards unlocking chests in the next Tournament. How many points the Archive can hold depends on our fellowship's Tournament Archive perk level. We are at level 10, which means we can store up to 25,000 points. But usually, much fewer archived points are needed to reach the 10th chest.
Only the Archmage and Mages can use the stored points. It only works if the stored points are enough to actually reach that chest's requirement.
your part in it
Like everything else here, the Tournament is entirely voluntary. Do as much of the ladder below as suits your needs and available resources.
odds and ends
The questions that tend to come up around Tournament time.
No. It's never mandatory in our fellowship. But even a few encounters help, and you get individual rewards and share in whatever chests the fellowship unlocks, so it is typically in your own interest to take part.
We're working towards the tenth chest, which holds the Blueprint — it's the only free way to get one. So it is better to forgo, e.g., finishing the 9th chest and instead store a lot of points so we can finish the 10th chest with our stored points in the following week.
The Tournament needs to be unlocked on the research tree. It becomes available in chapter IV.