Best Of

Progress update:

Dammit Kabam, I HAVE THINGS TO DO TODAY. Okay, fine:

Here's our progress towards the milestone 63 (the CCP selector and the Founders first appearance crystal). The dotted line is the average pace we would need to sustain from the moment the milestones showed up until the finish. We're trending higher than that, but as you can see from the previous days we tend to go higher during the day and then drop at night as North Americans fall asleep and my Hawaiian neighbors and Aquaman can't keep up the same pace. So the important thing is a) we stay above the line all the way throughout the night and b) the last day is a solid one. So far, the day has ben going relatively strong:

We did not have as big an initial spike in the morning as the previous two days, but we've been sustaining about 20 million per hour for a while now. We would need to hold that rate for several more hours at least to compensate for what I assume will be the normal slow down over night. If we do and we're still above the line tomorrow, I would say we have a good shot at milestone 63.

My feeling right now: 60% chance we make it.

I’m not 100% consistent with that, but in general if I’m mostly calculating, that’s an estimate. If I’m just tossing out a number based on feeling, that’s a guess. A guesstimate is when I’m not sure which numbers matter, so I’m doing calculations as a guide, then make a guess as to about where in the neighborhood the value is likely to lie.

For example, I show two different potential final points in my chart based on two different assumptions: that we drop to Sunday-like coasting and we continue pumping out points at Monday-Tuesday levels. Both of those are estimates. If I were to say I think we’ll end up around 7.1 billion because that’s somewhat in the middle, that’s a guesstimate. It doesn’t come out of thin air, but it isn’t strictly speaking a purely data-based result.

As we get closer to the finish, my need to guess drops as all possible results converge on an increasingly narrow result. But, since the milestones are relatively close together, even small changes in our trajectory can have meaningful effects.

My bracket cut offs for 1% and lower are guesstimates: calculation guided, but who really knows where the players have ended up. The lower you go the more confident I am, and the higher you go the less confident I am, because as you go higher player motivations change meanwhile the number of such players drops, so changes in their behavior won’t necessarily be reflected in the realm points.

Consider: if the top player puts up 4 million points or 8 million or 12 million, that would be invisible to me and my charts. He or she can spend an extra hundred grand, and not make a visible dent in the points. But if the average free to play player decides to buy 15 crystals instead of ten with their unit stashes, that’s is huge for realm points.

Spenders matter, but what a hundred thousand players decide to collectively do also matters, even if what they decide to do doesn’t look like much individually.

Kinda. I mean, as someone that thinks about the game economy constantly, I worry about everything. But I think the saving grace is that R5s are going to start coming out and we have ascension looming. R4s are no longer the top of the pyramid of chase materials. That's moving to R5 and Ascension. So R4s were already destined to become a lot more plentiful in 2026 as the top tier chase moves on.

Every time you give out a reward, you dilute its value. You essentially lose something in the game. You need to make sure you get something for that loss. Kabam is getting a happy banquet, which ends the year on a high note and of course helps with their 2025 revenue numbers. My guess is when the dust finally settles on the 2025 banquet, the devs will decide it was well worth the trade.

Definitely Crashed is lurking lol

The final milestone should just be a title. "I 2nd-mortgaged my house to reach level 60 and all I got was a Valiant Grace Crystal."

I haven’t been on this much of the edge of my seat in a long time

(Probably) Last update of 2025

Yeah I know it is already 2026 for pretty much all of you, but it is still 2025 for me. I will probably celebrate the New Year and then pass out, so this is likely my last update of the night. Here's our current progress towards milestone 63:

Factoring the usual overnight slow down I estimate we will probably end up scoring about 335 million on day 13. That would put us 25 million ahead of the pace necessary to reach milestone 63. We would then need to score about 290 million on the last day to reach milestone 63. How likely is that?

On the one hand, you'd expect things to slow down over time. On the other hand, the very last day is likely to have a burst of activity, as players realize the event is ending and get all their last minute crystals opened or bought. There's also the Bigger Thing wars that might be delivering their last crystals to many alliances tomorrow. In the last three days we've scored 354 million, 351 million, and (estimated) 335 million. It seems likely that 290 million is well within reach for the last day of the event.

I would say the odds of hitting milestone 63 have improved to about 67% - two in three. As we can see from the daily rate chart:

Those first few hours after 10am Pacific tend to tell the tale. It sets the pace for the bulk of the points we score in that day. The higher the rate and the longer it lasts, the better our chances. It will be close either way, and we will just have to watch probably right up to the end.

Happy New Year everyone, and keep those crystals spinning. I'll see you all next year.

I am a little disappointed theres no rare champ selector though. Would have liked to scoop up JJ

WWas there really a need to post all the milestones tho?

New Years Eve update:

This is my optimistic / pessimistic projections for where we will end up. Milestone 63 is right smack in the middle of those two projections. The pessimistic projection assumes the late night scoring drops to its normal 8-9 million per hour and the last day drops to the Sunday scoring, which was the worst we've seen. The optimistic projection assumes the last day will be closer to the last three days. The low score ends at 7.17 billion (milestone 62) and the high score at 7.28 billion (milestone 63).

Happy New Year everyone, and good luck. To us all. I might post one last late night update (midnight for me is still 5.5 hours away) or I might pass out in which case next update will be tomorrow morning. Our first indications as to which way this will go will probably be between 11am and 12pm Pacific tomorrow. That's usually when scoring bumps upward on any day where it does bump up. If it does, we're in business. If not, well its not over, but it would take an increasingly high burst of scoring the later it gets without a wave of points. Either way, it might come down to the wire.