Double Pet Rewards: on a budget with low level wizard does it help?

The double pet rewards event has been an interesting experience with three accounts.  They’re all at different stages when it comes to gardening (which equals mega snacks), money spent, and levels of wizards.  For my newest account, it’s a struggle to get much of an advantage from this.

The first account is by far the oldest.  When I finally got into gardening I virtually stopped questing for all six wizards and concentrated on gardening for several months, which included lots of fighting mobs in Grizzleheim and Krokotopia to get Couch Potatoe and Pink Dandelion seeds.  I had enough crowns to buy Evil Magma Peas on sale as well (haven’t seen a sale in ages so not sure how easy that is to do any more).

On that account every wizard has a big store of mega snacks in the backpack and there’s also a big store in the Shared Bank, so I’ve been able to really move a bunch of pets along on this double reward thing.  Oh how I wish I could go into my account management page and pass mega snacks the way I can transfer crowns…

The second account is newer and though I knew enough to start gardening right away, I haven’t had a chance to develop the same stockpile of snacks.  Their gardens have been built mainly on seeds I could get from drops so they also don’t have as many plants producing mega snacks.

I’ve been leveling up pets pretty well on that account as well, but unless one of the mega snack crops produces tonight or in the morning, the mega snack supply may run out before I train as much as I’d like to.

The third account has been a big challenge.  I don’t have a membership on that account, so in order to partake at all I had to buy another one month membership (after just finally stopping the marathon I ran with a one month membership to take advantage of the double gardening days).  So for starters if you’re on a really tight budget and trying to play for free, these double reward events don’t do you any good unless you can spring for a gift card.

Further,  I’ve had rotten luck on that account with getting CP drops so the probable main source of mega snacks isn’t there yet.  With the questing marathon over, I’d planned to spend a couple of months just working on getting those seeds…  Best laid plans.  I also only have a small crowns amount on that account and it’s just for buying the small number of zones I plan to buy so mostly haven’t bought seeds.

I DID gift Heather G. three Evil Magma Pea seeds from my first account’s crowns back on the double gardening reward event.  I’d planned to gift three more on the next sale, but decided to suck it up and send over the extra three in the hope of a final harvest while the double pet rewards are still going (looking promising as of this afternoon).  And managed to win a second CP after defeating bunches of Troubled Warriors.

So far I’ve been passing lots of Treasure Cards over from my big gardens accounts and buying lots of Shanta Pudding, Killer Tomatoes, Bogwich, etc.  Boy those rank 6 and 7 snacks eat the gold!  Using those lower level snacks gets the job done but takes forever even with double rewards.  Have I mentioned I don’t like playing pet games?  🙂  Especially the dozens and dozens and dozens of games per pet it takes to get to mega.

Normally I refuse to buy Mega Snack Packs even on a half price sale, but I REALLY wanted to move the pets on the third account along, so I finally decided to gift one pack over from the first account and one from the second.  In the absence of gardens full of mega snack-producing plants I could see no other way.

My current to-be-deleted wizard (Kiley L.) was thus able to accomplish some good training on a Jellyfish who will be passed to each new Death wizard.  Alura D., who will ultimately be the pet trainer for the account doesn’t have much of a garden yet and there aren’t enough mega snacks from Heather’s garden to pass any along, so the 500 XP form the pack really helped.

I’m already not too happy about paying for another month of membership nor buying the packs, so I’m seriously not willing to buy any more packs.  I’ve also refilled energy a couple of times for wizards whose gardens take all their energy — something else I generally have a policy against doing.  So I’m a bit disgruntled over the degree to which this seems to be an “advantage” that’s designed to entice us to spend more money.

For the most part on that third account  I’m depleting all the gold I’d accumulated to buy snacks from the Bazaar and doing the best I can.  It helps to move things a long a little faster, but without mega snacks it still leaves me playing way more of those pesky pet games than I want to.  In fact after this weekend I may not do any pet training until July… or 2016…

Bottom line, if you’re playing on a tight budget and don’t already have one or more wizards growing large gardens of plants dropping mega snacks, this double reward deal will only help a little unless you’re willing to fork over $10 for a one month membership and another $5-20  (or more) worth of crowns for mega snack packs .  Which is kind of too bad because it’s those of us on tight budgets with lower level wizards and pets who could use a bigger boost for pet training.