2023 Forge Bowl Event Guide

Written By Mooing Cat

Welcome to my 2023 Forge Bowl Event Guide. In this guide I'll go over all you need to know to ensure you complete your goal, be it get the main building fully leveled, get as many daily specials as possible, or a bit of both!

Check out my video version of this guide as well:

Event Rewards

Before we get into the mechanics and strategies, let's have a quick look at the rewards you can get from this event, starting with the new building.

Main Building: Pergola

The main building for this event is the brand new Pergola. This building has two variations, both of which are good for most players, with a good amount of attack boosts and a decent amount of goods or forge points. The two variations of the Pergula are the "Pizzeria" and "Bistro". Both give the same attack boosts for attacking army, with the main difference being Goods vs FPs, as well as different item fragments. So which should you get? I think for most players the Bistro will be the best option for the additional FPs. I think the kits are equally valuable, so the main difference is more goods or more FPs, and I think more people will value the additional FPs.

  • Main Building: Pizzeria (Pergola Lv11)

    • Size: 5x4 (road required = 22 tiles)
    • Base: Supplies, Medals. No Population or Happiness.
    • Production: 3 Forge Points, 30 Goods, 0-30 Previous Age Goods, 2 Store Building Fragments (15 Required)
    • Boost: 16-25% Attack Boost for Attacking Army (0.73 to 1.14 per tile, including roads)

  • Main Building: Bistro (Pergola Lv11)

    • Size: 5x4 (road required = 22 tiles)
    • Base: Supplies, Medals. No Population or Happiness.
    • Production: 12 Forge Points, 10 Goods, 1 One Up Fragments (30 Required)
    • Boost: 16-25% Attack Boost for Attacking Army (0.73 to 1.14 per tile, including roads)

New Kits & Goods Reward Types

In addition to the Pergola, we also get a few new kits this year.

Epic Forge Bowl 2023 Selection Kit

This kit gives you the option to choose between all previous Forge Bowl rewards, including Fiore Village, Terracotta Vineyard, Terracotta Vineyard Fields, Olympic Treasury, Colossus, and the Classical Garden pieces. The kit can be won through the event pass and as fragments from the final daily special of the event (10 of 15 fragments each daily special).

Finish Goods Production & Finish Special Production Kits

Other new kits this year include "rush" kits for goods buildings & "special" buildings. Goods buildings are any regular goods building you place in your city, the "special" buildings are any event, ge, gbg, and settlement buildings. Both kits exist in two versions, one for a single building and one for all buildings. The kits can be won through the event pass, grand prizes, and daily specials.

Next Age Goods & Special Goods

Another new reward this event is the ability to win Next Age Goods and Special Goods. Next Age Goods will give goods from the next age, unless you are in the final age where it will give current age goods. Special Goods will give special goods if you are in an age with special goods (Promethium, Orichalcum, etc), or Next Age Goods if you don't have special goods yet.

Grand Prizes + Event Pass

As usual, you have two sets of "grand prizes". The main one you unluck as usual, with a second set of rewards locked beyond a one-time payment (event pass, or "Bowl Prizes"). As was introduced in the Winter Event, the event pass is ONLY available for real money, around $15 in your local currency. That's a huge blow to a lot of players, and sadly means going forward you can't use diamonds for the event pass. That said, the event pass is not required to get the main building, so if you're free to play (or don't think it's worth it) you can ignore it without losing anything. Below you can see lists of how these rewards appeared on beta, though there may be some changes on the live servers.

Grand Prizes:

This time it looks like all the grand prizes loop, so after 1840 it goes back to 0.

Progress Reward
0 Finish Goods Production Kit
80 Pergola Upgrade Kit
160 Gigantic Medals
240 Pergola Upgrade Kit
320 20 Next Age Goods
400 Pergola Upgrade Kit
480 Mass Self-Aid Kit
560 Pergola Upgrade Kit
640 20% Attacker Boost
720 Pergola Upgrade Kit
800 Shrine of Knowledge
880 Pergola Upgrade Kit
960 40 Forge Points
Progress Reward
1040 Pergola Upgrade Kit
1120 Store Building
1200 Pergola Upgrade Kit
1280 30 Next Age Goods
1360 Pergola Level 1
1440 50 Forge Points
1520 Pergola Upgrade Kit
1600 40 Next Age Goods
1680 Pergola Upgrade Kit
1760 Renovation Kit
1840 Pergola Upgrade Kit

Event Pass / Forge Bowl Prizes:

As introduced in the last event, the event pass will only be available for real money, around $15 in your local currency. You can find information about the rewards in-game or on the fandom wiki, but due to reasons I'll go over in a future video I'll not be talking about it here.

Milestone Rewards for this event give you some building pieces and event currency, as usual :)

Daily Specials

How many daily specials can you get? I will go into more detail further down in the guide, but my rough estimate is around 13-14 or 23-24 on average, depending on your strategy.

You can find a complete list of available rewards on the fandom wiki ("list of possible Switched Prizes"), but here are my top recommendations:

  • Winners' Plaza Selection Kit: My top pick for attack, especially for people in higher ages.
  • Vineyard Fields Selection Kit: My top pick for FPs, Attack, and/or Defense for players in lower ages (and don't plan to advance quickly), or those who want a lot quickly regardless of age (if you're in the highest ages the Winners' Plaza is better than the attack field on this as well as efficiency, but in lower ages fields give more). Note, you need at least a level 1 Terracotta Vineyard, which you can get from this event.
  • Olympic Treasury Selection Kit: My top defense + all-round pick for people in SAJM (or getting there soon)
  • Fiore Village Selection Kit: Almost as good as OT for defense + all-round, though not quite as good, unless you value the coins boost this gives.
  • 10 Fragments of Epic Forge Bowl 2023 Selection Kit (what a mouthful...): This is guaranteed to be available on the final day, so it's a good alternative to spend any remaining currency on. You'll get 2 instead of 3 buildings/levels per 3 daily specials, but at least it's guaranteed to be something you want, instead of medals, for example.

You can compare all the available buildings from daily specials in my sortable table: https://mcfoe.com/forge-bowl-buildings

Quest "Cheat List"

Below you'll find my "cheat list" for the quests in this event. This is not a complete list of quests, that you can find here on the fandom wiki. This is a list of quests you might need to plan ahead for, but I always recommend that you check out the complete list yourself to see if there are any other quests you might find challenging. Also, only the "difficult" part of a quest will be shown. For example, a part like "pay X coins" will not be included.

Event Mechanics

The event mechanics should be quite familiar to most players, they're pretty much exactly the previous few Forge Bowl Events. It's a classic "choose 1 of 3" minigame, with some additional complexity with the coaches. That doesn't mean your choices won't matter, in fact your choices will have a big impact on how well you do. So let's first quickly go through how the minigame works, then I'll guide you through all the different choices you can make.

Currency: Handeggs

The main currency of this event is Handeggs, which are used in the "choose 1 of 3" minigame.

Handeggs:

  • Starting: 250
  • Daily Logins: 22*120 = 2640
  • Rush Quests: 35*110 = 3850
  • Daily Quests: 21*130 = 2730
  • Milestone: 450 + 950 = 1400
  • Total: 10 870 Handeggs

You can also get Handeggs from Incidents, in fact you should be able to get quite a lot, potentially over 1k. As I'll go over later on, these can be very important, so make sure you pick up your incidents.

Handegg Diamond Costs:

  • 100 Handeggs for 200 Diamonds
  • 400 Handeggs for 700 Diamonds
  • 1200 Handeggs for 1995 Diamonds

Players

With each turn or "play" you will be presented with 3 players to choose from. The players are chosen randomly from 12 different players, split into 4 groups. You will only get 1 player from a group for a given turn, so each turn one player from 3 of the 4 groups will be available. You can find detailed information about each player on the fandom wiki page (players). Each player will give a reward, including a chance of the Daily Special, and it will progress you 4 to 7 yards down the field. You need 80 yards to complete a field, for each field you complete you get a Grand Prize. Additional yards from the previous field will carry over to the next field, so you don't have to worry about which option you choose at the end of a field.

There are different ways to talk about the players, but from now on I'll use "brown", "gray", "blue" and "yellow" to refer to the groups, and the player cost to refer to individual players: 41, 48, 49, 60, 62, 64, 74, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105.

In general, the cheaper players are better for Daily Specials and Grand Prize progression, while the more expensive players often have more exciting other rewards. Again, check out the wiki page linked in the previous paragraph for a complete overview of the players. I'll go over the specific order of which players are best for your chosen strategy in the strategies section.

Coaches

In addition to the players, you also have coaches (top left corner of the playing field). There are 5 available coaches:

  • Default Coach: Gives a 3% chance to double the reward each play
  • Progress Coach: Gives +1 yard each play
  • Special Coach: Gives +5% chance to win Daily Special each play
  • League Coach: Gives double the points toward the League
  • Ultimate Coach: All of the above bonuses, but costs 150475 Diamonds. (Often called "Diamond Coach")

When you select a coach it will be active for 24 hours, before you go back to the Default Coach again. After a coach has been active for 24 hours, it will have a cooldown period of a further 24 hours, meaning you can't choose it again during that time. This cooldown does not apply to the Default Coach or Ultimate Coach.

Leagues

The league returns this year as well. Like with most of these leagues, your position will be determined by how much event currency you spend during the event. For this event the leagues are based on number of yards you progress down the field. This means that if you want the maximum progress towards the league, you want to get as many yards per handegg as possible (see below for info on which players are best).

There are two coaches that improve your points gain towards the league: The Progress Coach indirectly improves the points gain by increasing the number of yards you progress, and the League Coach will directly improve the league progress by doubling the points. The Diamond Coach will give you both of these at the same time, for maximum points gained.

Event Strategies

Alright, let's talk about strategies. For this event the strategy you choose will have a big impact on the rewards you get, particularly if you want to get the main building fully leveled. There are two main things you need to think about when playing, which player do you choose each turn, and which coach is the best to use?

Which Player should you choose?

This depends on what you want to focus on: Grand Prizes or Daily Specials. Which coach you choose will also have an impact, look below for more information on which coach I recommend.

If you have the foehelper extension installed you can use the event helper to get the best option. You want to choose the green "Cost/Step" option if your focus is on Grand Prices, or the green "Cost/Prize" option if your focus is on Daily Specials

foe helper

You can also use this sortable chart on the fandom wiki page to get the best option for your focus.

Players for Daily Specials

If you want to focus on Daily Specials you should pick the option that gives the highest chance per handegg. Depending on which group a player is in, it will either have a 5% (brown), 8% (gray), 10% (blue), or 12% (yellow) chance to get the Daily Special, though you want to look at it in the context of player cost.

The best order of players is as follows:

  • With Special or Ultimate Coach: 41, 60, 62, 48, 49, 64, 74, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105
  • Without Special or Ultimate Coach: 74, 60, 76, 62, 78, 64, 41, 101, 104, 105, 48, 49
  • General Rule with Coach: cheapest (brown > gray > blue > yellow)
  • General Rule without Coach: blue > gray > yellow > brown

If you don't have tools available and don't want to memorize the order, you can use the general rules. They're not completely accurate, but quite close. You will always get one of the first two groups, so you only have to memorize the first two colours for the general rules. So brown > gray (or just "cheapest") with coach, or blue > gray without coach.

Players for Grand Prizes (and league progress)

If you want to focus on Grand Prizes (for Pergola upgrades and league progress) you should pick the option that gives you the most yards per handegg. Depending on which group a player is in, it will either move 4 (brown), 5 (gray), 6 (blue), or 7 (yellow) yards, though you want to look at these numbers in the context of the player cost. You need a total of 80 yards per Grand Prize.

The best order of players is as follows:

  • With Progress or Ultimate Coach: 41, 48, 49, 60, 62, 74, 64, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105
  • Without Progress or Ultimate Coach: 41, 48, 60, 49, 74, 62, 76, 64, 78, 101, 104, 105
  • General Rule: cheapest (brown > gray > blue > yellow, not completely accurate, but quite good)

If you don't have tools available and you don't want to memorize the order, you can use the general rule of picking the cheapest player. This isn't always the optimal choice, but it's quite close to it. If you have the Progress or Ultimate coach this general rule is very good. If you don't have one of those coaches it's not as accurate (still good), but I would not recommend focusing on Grand Prizes without one of those coaches.

Which Coach should you choose?

Again, this depends on what your goal is, but before I go into my recommendation I think it will be helpful to go over some numbers. There are three main things you can try to optimize; Daily Specials, Grand Prizes, or League Progress. There are two main choices you can make to optimize for these options; Coach choice and Player choice.

At the end of this page you can find a simulation I wrote to estimate the number of daily specials and yards you can get with different coach and focus options, I've used that to create these tables (with 10870 starting handeggs):

Focusing on Maximum Daily Specials Default Coach Progress Coach Special Coach League Coach Ultimate Coach
Daily Specials 14.7 14.2 24.0 14.2 24.2
Yards / League Points 869 / 869 1025 / 1025 919 / 919 869 / 1738 1125 / 2250
Grand Prizes (probability) 10 (100%) 12 (100%) 11 (100%) 10 (100%) 13 (23%) / 14 (77%)
 
Focusing on Maximum Yards Default Coach Progress Coach Special Coach League Coach Ultimate Coach
Daily Specials 13.3 12.5 23.4 12.9 24.0
Yards / League Points 923 / 923 1139 / 1139 923 / 923 923 / 1846 1139 / 2278
Grand Prizes (probability) 11 (100%) 13 (0.2%) / 14 (99.8%) 11 (100%) 11 (100%) 13 (0.2%) / 14 (99.8%)

As you can see there are significant differences between the different player and coach options. We can quickly eliminate the Default and League coaches as good options. These simply are not worth it. If you aim to go for daily specials, the Special coach heavily outperforms the Default coach. If you want to focus on the league the League coach outperforms the Progress coach, however by going for it you lose 1-3 Grand Prizes. The additional rewards from the leagues are not worth the Grand Prizes you lose, and you're not even guaranteed to reach Bronze League. For reference, the minimum number of points on beta for bronze was 1916 points. This is likely to be a bit lower on live, but that will depend on your world.

This leaves three good options: Progress, Special, and Ultimate coaches. In previous years I'd strongly recommend the Ultimate coach, but this year the price of it has been increased from 150 to 475 diamonds. That's a massive increase, so this time around it might not be worth it for you personally. I'll leave that up to figure out, but I can at least go over the consequences of your choices:

  • If you are planning to go for Daily Specials, using the Special coach will give almost as many daily specials as the Ultimate coach, but you will not get the Pergola fully leveled. If you go for the Special coach, you will likely only get 9 of 11 levels. If you go for the Ultimate coach instead, you will most likely be able to get the Pergola fully leveled. You'll get 10/11 levels from Milestones + Grand Prizes, and very likely a final level from Bronze league placement.

  • If you are planning to go for Grand Prizes, using the Progress coach will give you around 14 Grand Prizes + some change, or around 60 yards missing for 15 Grand Prizes. You need to either land in Bronze league (which you won't be able to with Progress coach), or to get the 15th Grand Prize for the final level of the Pergola. That means you need to pick up handeggs from incidents. Around 5-600 should be enough, which is possible with the drop rates of incidents, but it's not guaranteed and will depend on how often you're able to collect them. If you use the Ultimate coach instead, you will not get any more yards, but you'll get double the league points, so you are all but guaranteed to end up in Bronze league or higher. That means you'll get the final kit from there, so you do not need any handeggs from incidents. You'll also get almost twice the daily specials with Ultimate coach compared to Progress coach.

Can you get the Pergola fully leveled for free?

The quick answer to this is ... maybe. There are two main ways to make sure you get the main building fully leveled:

  • Use Diamond coach and either optimize for daily specials or grand prizes (mostly same players). Depending on how active your world is and how much you pick up from incidents, you can get away with using Progress coach for some of your currency, just make sure you have enough to land in Bronze League.
  • Use Progress coach and optimize for grand prizes, and also pick up at least 5-600 handeggs from incidents. This should be enough to get 1200 yards for 15 grand prizes.

You will not be able to get the Pergola fully leveled with the Special coach without spending diamonds (in which case you should go for Ultimate coach in my opinion).

Event Simulator

Finally, I'd like to share my interactive simulation of the event! To use the simulation, simply change out the values to your own values, then click the "Run" button (black triangle) to simulate the event. This will simulate "num_iterations" number of events with the values you have chosen. For example, if your "active_coach" is "Special" and "player_focus" is "Daily", the simulation will always pick the best option (out of 3 randomly chosen players) for daily specials, keeping in mind the +5% bonus. If you set the "starting_eggs" and "incidents" to the numbers you are interested in, the simulation will run until it is out of handeggs. If you set "num_iterations" to 1000, this will be done 1000 times, with the results from each run saved. You will then get the average daily specials and yards, as well as the probability distributions.

The higher number of iterations the more accurate it will be, but will also take longer to calculate, I recommend around 10k.

If you want to see the code itself, check out the "simulation.py" file in the widget below. I've commented a bit, so hopefully it is clear enough :)

If you can't see/use the simulator you can use this link: https://trinket.io/embed/python3/cd60d62c25

Diamond Spending Costs

Due to reasons I'll go over in a future video, I will not be including diamond spending information in future guides, unless Inno changes their current shift towards pay 2 win and increasingly tight balancing of events.

And that's it for this guide! I hope you found it helpful, and please let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Mooing Cat
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