Beginner's Guide to River Crossing & Winter Peak

River Crossing and Winter Peak are the two locations in the game where 10 day Raid Events take place.  The appearance, raid bosses and event monsters change each time, however the format remains constant.  Raid bosses (and commons) in River Crossing tend to be leaf or water, and in Winter Peak they tend to be wind, rock or fire.

Key Features of the Event:

• Common monsters to battle
• Mini-boss
• Raid boss
• Tvt Ranger
• Trader & Event Tokens
• Event Monsters
• Event Specials

Common Monsters

These monster battles take place the same way that normally happens in the regular map areas of the game.  You'll face common monsters, possibly a rare or a special or an event special (see below for more information). In order to fight the mini-boss, you will need to complete a certain number of common monster battles first. (Click on the mini-boss to find out how many).

From these common monster battles, you'll receive common monsters, pieces of rares, specials, event specials, stones and/or event tokens (see below for more information).

A new feature was introduced during October, 2015, in which you can use multiple energies to complete multiple common battles at once. This can save time when you have 10 common battles to defeat before you can unlock the mini-boss.  Many people have enjoyed that the reward from the single battle is multiplied by the amount of energy used - a single special dropping from the battle becomes 5 specials if you used 5 energy.

Slider can be adjusted to use multiple energy in common battles

Double stone + 2 Event Specials won from using 2 Energy

How to identify the mini-boss and raid boss.

Each raid event will have a mini-boss and a raid boss, each labelled with "Boss".  They will look different between events and will appear in different places, however they can easily be identified by clicking on them.  The mini-boss is always smaller, and clicking on it will bring up a message about how many common battles you need to face before you can battle the mini-boss to win event specials and event tokens.  The raid boss is bigger in size and will bring up a screen to show how many event specials your troop needs to donate in order to be able to battle the raid boss.

Mini boss (left) and the mini-boss raid engagement screen (right)

Raid boss with the event special donation screen open

More about the mini-boss

Mini-boss battles vary between events, so a complete description cannot be provided here, however there are usually a number of waves of monsters to defeat.  There is always an option to set the difficult of your mini-boss battle, with higher difficulties rewarded with additional trophies.  If you set the difficulty too hard, you can choose to try again when you have sufficient energy or wait for 30 minutes until the difficulty setting resets and you can adjust it to an easier level.  The main purpose of mini-boss battles is to collect event specials to donate to the raid boss.  Many people use them as a way to collect event tokens as well.  

Victory screen from defeating the mini-boss on hard

At the start of the event, you'll need to defeat two common monsters within the event screen in order to engage the mini-boss. Each time you defeat the mini-boss, the required number of common monster battles will go up by two, until you reach the maximum of ten.

More about the raid boss

Once again, the raid boss changes between events, not just in appearance but also its element, its active ability and its danger bar (if raiding on hard/extreme).  The main purpose behind battling the raid boss is to win trophies.  Trophies are generally allocated at a rate of 1 trophy per 1000 points of damage.

The number of event special donations goes up with each raid completed, until it reaches a maximum donation level of around 40 event specials.  When your troop has donated sufficient event specials, the raid boss will be ready for your troop admins to engage. Your troop admins will have a choice of setting the difficulty level for the raid, and you'll then have 8 hours in which to defeat the raid boss together.  Failure to finish in time will result in no trophies being awarded.  Each time the raid boss is defeated, it will gain more health points to be harder to defeat next time (even on the same difficulty setting). It's common to start the raid event on the hardest level you believe your troop can complete. Once that level becomes too difficult, drop down to the next hardest setting, this will reduce the number of trophies available but allow you to finish raids once more.

In all raid events, running a raid on extreme will give your troop members a small chance of being awarded a crystal or candy on completion.  The top 5 attackers (by percentage competed) within that raid receive twice the chance of a crystal/candy dropping.  In some recent raid events, running the raid on either extreme or hard will give a (seemingly smaller) chance for a reward epic to drop.

Raid bosses run on hard or extreme will have a danger bar to take into consideration. Easy and medium raids are more straight forward.  Each raid will be randomly allocated a "season" - three zodiacs whose monsters will receive a 25% attack bonus.

Halfway through the event, the raid boss will have a chance to become enraged when your troop admin engages it.  If enraged, it's appearance will change - it usually grows in size and becomes more menacing.  An enraged boss has more health, making it harder to defeat, but will award 2x trophies at the completion.  There is no way to tell ahead of time whether the raid boss will be enraged - something to take into account when your troop is starting to struggle to complete regular raids.

TvT Ranger

I'm not sure what this ranger is actually called within the game but it has a consistent "black wolf" appearance that is readily spotted around the event screen. Clicking on this ranger will let you know how long it will be until the next troop vs troop (TvT) match is underway. These always run for 1 hour, at 12 hourly intervals throughout the event.

TvT is the easiest way to gain trophies during a raid event.  The battle is always against a single boss at a medium difficulty level (no danger bar).  The element and active ability (if any) will be the same as the regular raid boss.

At the start of the TvT match, your troop will be matched against a troop who has similar trophies to your troop. (The strength of your players is not taken into account, only trophies earned).  At the end of the match, if your troop earned more trophies within that hour long match than the other troop, you'll be declared the "winner" and your troop members will receive 1.5x bonus trophies (on top of their original trophies).  If your troop has lost, you'll still receive 1.25x bonus trophies.  Either way, more trophies are granted per energy use than regular raids.  For spenders, this is the best way way to win trophies quickly.

Trader & Event tokens

Within the event screens of 10 day raid events, arena events and celestial towers events, you'll always find a Trader on the screen.  Their appearance may change but they're identifiable by the "Trader" title above their avatar.  Clicking on the Trader will bring up a screen showing you what you can buy with your event tokens.  Event tokens are a universal currency between these three events and can be carried over for use in future events.  Spending these event tokens with a Trader is their only purpose in the game.

For players with lower power ratings (PR), event tokens can be a wonderful way to buy yourself event supers.  It's common practice to collect 500 event tokens to be able to purchase two event supers so you can later evolve them.  These event supers are the same as those that can won through the event spins (50 gold/spin), but come at feeding level 1 - you'll need to feed them up before they'll be effective.  (See below for more information on event monsters).

For players who no longer need event supers (usually high PR players), event tokens may be spent on event costumes (never repeated) or to buy specials if an evolution of event monsters is needed at short notice.

It's not a common practice to buy trophies or energy with event tokens, though some people still do.

Event Monsters

Event monsters are monsters that are released only for events and they have an attack bonus during that event.  For 10 day raid events, Arena events and Celestial Towers events, the event monsters are rarely repeated.  This means that they'll gain their event bonus for the duration of the event, but are unlikely to have their bonus activated again in future events.  The bonus will be active during mini-boss battles, raid boss battles and TvT matches.

Event supers can be purchased with event tokens at the trader.

Event monsters are predominantly won by buying spins (50 gold/spin) during the event for a chance to win event monsters or regular monsters.  There are two ways to spin for event monsters.  The most reliable method is to click on the event "E" in the top left of your screen, and scroll down to a description of an event monster with an event spin button.  This will open the event spin window, which operates in the same manner as normal (ultimate) spins but with event monsters added into the mix.  The alternative method is to wait until a "Lucky spin" is offered to you while battling around the event screen as these have 3x the drop rate for higher order monsters. (Note: lucky spins run during the event from other parts of the Battle Camp map will not include event monsters).  Be aware that the event epic monster will only be released into the spins halfway through the event.  Event monsters won from these spins will come either at the maximum feeding level or halfway.

Click on the Event "E" button to access the Event Spin, rules and leaderboards

Event Specials

The purpose of event specials is *only* to be donated to the event raid boss.  Even though they come as "potent", "charged" or "energized", do not try to level them up to feed your monsters.  They have the same feeding value (100) as common monsters, unlike regular specials with a higher feeding value (800).  Event specials have a different appearance each event and have no purpose in the game after the event ends.

More information about the current event can be found by clicking on the event "E" button on your screen and scrolling through the rules and information provided.  The leaderboards are also available here so that you can see the prize that you are in the running to receive individually and for your troop.  Benchmark prizes for winning certain amounts of trophies are also listed here.