2022 Winter Event Guide!
Hello! My name is MooingCat and welcome to my guide for the 2022 Winter Event! In this guide I will go through the mechanics of the event, the different rewards and my thoughts on which are best, as well as how to get the most out of this event!
I also have video versions of this guide if you prefer that, check them out here!
Table of Contents
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 buildings!
Main Building: Chocolatery
The main building for this event is the brand new Chocolatery! This building has two variations, both of which are good for most players, with a good amount of attack boosts, a decent amount of goods or forge points, but perhaps most importantly up to 3 fragments of the new Nutcracker Guardhouse when motivated (200(!) required), but more on that building below. The two variations of the Chocolatery are the "Ted's Choc" and "Ketebo Candy". Both give attack and defense boosts for attacking army, though one much more attack than defense, the other much more defense than attack. Likewise, the goods and forge point distributions are very lop-sided. So which should you get? I think both are worth getting, though for most players (especially developing players), I think the Ketebo Candy is slightly better, considering all the additional forge points. If you really want attack for attacking army, you can definitely go for Ted's Choc.
Main Building: Ted's Choc (Chocolatery Lv11)
- Size: 4x6 (road required)
- Base: Happiness (depending on age)
- Production: 4 Forge Points, 32 Goods, 3 Nutcracker Guardhouse Fragments (200 Required)
- Boost: 16-28% Attack Boost + 5-8% Defense Boost for Attacking Army (0.81 to 1.38 combined per tile, including roads)
Main Building: Ketebo Candy (Chocolatery Lv11)
- Size: 4x6 (road required)
- Base: Happiness (depending on age)
- Production: 14 Forge Points, 10 Goods, 3 Nutcracker Guardhouse Fragments (200 Required)
- Boost: 4-7% Attack Boost + 21-34% Defense Boost for Attacking Army (0.96 to 1.58 combined per tile, including roads)
New Building: Nutcracker Guardhouse
In addition to the Chocolatery, we also get the new Nutcracker Guardhouse. This is a very good 2x2 building, with great attack values and forge point production. Everyone will find this useful, though getting it won't be that quick. You need 200 fragments to get the building, and as mentioned above the Chocolatery will give 3 fragments per day. That means it takes a bit over 2 months for each Nutcracker Guardhouse. That might sound very long, but considering the stats of the building, I think that's a reasonable timeframe.
- Nutcracker Guardhouse (Lv1)
- Size: 2x2 (road required)
- Production: 3 Forge Points (0.6 per tile) + 2 Fragments of Mass Self-Aid Kit (30 Required)
- Boost: 3-5% Attack Boost + 5-7% Defense Boost (1.6 to 2.4 combined per tile, including roads)
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 "Winter Prizes"). New this event is that 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.
* If you plan to go for 2+ main buildings, the event pass will save a lot of diamonds, if you are willing to spend the real money. More on that at the end of the guide :)
Grand Prizes:
The Grand Prizes start off with 16 unique Grand Prizes, then there's a chunk of 20 Grand Prizes that loop forever.
| Progress | Reward (Unique) |
|---|---|
| 0 | Winter Train Selection Kit |
| 20 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 40 | 2 Fragments of Wishing Well |
| 60 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 80 | 20 Forge Points |
| 100 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 120 | 3 Fragments of Wishing Well |
| 140 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 160 | Freight Car |
| 180 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 200 | Mass Self-Aid Kit |
| 220 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 240 | 25 Forge Points |
| 260 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 280 | 10% Attacker Boost |
| 300 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| Progress | Reward (Looping) |
|---|---|
| 320 | Dining Car |
| 340 | Chocolatery Selection Kit |
| 360 | Tactician's Tower Selection Kit |
| 380 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 400 | 35 Forge Points |
| 420 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 440 | Sleeping Car |
| 460 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 480 | Rogue Hideout Shrink Kit |
| 500 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 520 | Renovation Kit |
| 540 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 560 | 35 Forge Points |
| 580 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 600 | Parlor Cars |
| 620 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 640 | One Up Kit |
| 660 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 680 | Wishing Well Shrink Kit |
| 700 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
| 720 | 35 Forge Points |
| 740 | Chocolatery Upgrade Kit |
Event Pass / Winter Prizes:
As mentioned above, this event (and for all events going forward), the event pass will only be available for real money, around $15 in your local currency. This is a huge change, and for many means the event pass is simply not worth it regardless of what it gives. This is a shame, because for once the Event Pass is actually really good. After the first full level, the Event Pass will also give pieces for the Chocolatery. That means that if your plan was to get more than 2 main buildings, the Event Pass would have saved you a lot of diamonds. That's still the case, but actually requiring real money makes it a much worse deal than if it was available for diamonds. I'll leave it up to you if it's still worth it, and I'll go over it again in the section on diamond spending if you're interested. Below are the Event Pass prizes as they appeared on beta, again we have a Unique section followed by a Looping section.
| Progress | Reward (Unique) |
|---|---|
| 0 | 20 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 20 | 30 Forge Points |
| 40 | 5 Fragments of Wishing Well |
| 60 | 10% Attacker Boost |
| 80 | 30 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 100 | 60 Goods |
| 120 | Portrait of Nutcracker |
| 140 | Mass Self-Aid Kit |
| 160 | 40 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 180 | 40 Forge Points |
| 200 | 5 Fragments of Wishing Well |
| 220 | 2x 10% Attacker Boost |
| 240 | 50 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 260 | 80 Goods |
| 280 | Portrait of Snowman |
| 300 | On Up Kit |
| 320 | 60 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 340 | 50 Forge Points |
| 360 | 10 Blueprints |
| 380 | 20% Attacker Boost |
| Progress | Reward (Looping) |
|---|---|
| 400 | 100 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 420 | 100 Goods |
| 440 | 2x Chocolatery Selection Kit |
| 460 | Renovation Kit |
| 480 | 100 Fragments of Nutcracker Guardhouse |
| 500 | 50 Forge Points |
| 520 | 2x Chocolatery Selection Kit |
| 540 | 20% Attacker Boost |
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 10-12 on average.
Update 03.12: We now know all the daily specials that will appear on the live servers, so I've made an updated video going through them and my top recommendations! I've also made a link for my sortable table with the available winter event rewards (including Chocolatery & Nutcracker, though those aren't available as daily specials)
You can find a complete list on the fandom wiki, but here are my top recommendations:
- Sentinel Outpost Selection Kit: My top pick for most people this event.
- Winter Train (Charcoal): My top attack boost pick for people in the latest ages
- Olympic Treasury: My top defense + allround pick for people in the latest ages
- Festive Canal (Winter Canal Lv10): My top defense + allround pick for people in lower ages
- Jolie Canal (Winter Canal Lv10): My top attack + allround pick for people in lower ages
- Train Cars: Alright options for early-game players, but long-term they're not great.
- Sleigh Builder: Great building to have a few of to use for event quests
- Wishing Well Shrink Kit: Best option for diamond farms, no WW available though :(
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 same as last year's Winter Event, with the exception of an overhauled "reindeer sleigh". Most people should probably ignore that, though, so it's pretty much the same event as last year. Still, let's go over how everything works :)
Currency: Stars and Matches
The main currency of this event is Stars, which can be used to open Presents in the minigame (10 Stars per Present).
Stars:
- Starting: 20
- Daily Logins: 33*10 = 330
- Rush Quests: 38*5 = 190
- Daily Quests: 32*15 = 480
- Milestone: 25 + 50 = 75
- Total: 1095 Stars
For each present you open, you get a match, or in other words you get a match for every 10 stars you spend. Matches are used to progress towards Grand Prizes, with each match being worth 1, 2, or 3 progress (2 on average), 20 is required for each Grand Prize. This means that you'll on average get 2 progress for every 10 stars spent, or 1 Grand Prize per 100 stars spent. I'm specifically referring to stars spent here, that's because you will get back stars from certain presents in the game (see next chapter for details). That means you will get to spend more stars than you start off with. I will go over it in detail later on, but roughly speaking you get to spend 137 stars per 100 starting stars if you spend everything on a few days, or 122 stars per 100 starting stars if you attempt to go for the calendar, but more on that in the strategies section :)
Star Diamond Costs:
- 10 Stars for 120 Diamonds
- 25 Stars for 280 Diamonds
- 100 Stars for 1050 Diamonds
Minigame Basics: Picking Presents
The minigame itself is very simple, in fact you have hardly any impact at all on how well you do. All you have to do is click on one of the remaining 18 presents to open it, and pray it's the reward you want. Before you start picking presents you can see all the available rewards on that "board". When you start the game, these are shuffled, so you can't make any educated guesses on what's behind a present. Each board consists of 18 presents, 12 of them are random rewards, the other 6 are the same on each board:
- 12x Random Rewards (Units, Goods, Regular Buildings, Items, etc etc)
- Show 2: Reveals what is behind two random presents, and gives 3 Stars-
- Double Payout: Doubles the reward from the next present*
- Shuffle: Resets and shuffles all the rewards, and gives 10 Stars.
- 14 Stars: Gives 14 Stars.
- Calendar Key: Gives a calendar key if it's the first time that day, otherwise it gives a key piece plus 10 Stars - 5 key pieces are required to craft a full "joker" key.
- Daily Specials: Gives that day's daily special.
With these available rewards, the only time you have any agency at all is when you get the Show 2 option. That will reveal 2 rewards, so here you have to decide if you want to go for either of them or not. My recommendations are as follows, and where otherwise specified I recommend taking them immediately:
- Random Reward: Only choose if you specifically want that item.
- Double Payout: I think it's worth going for, for a chance to double daily special or stars in the next turn.
- Shuffle: Choose this after you have found the rewards you want on that board (daily special for example)
- 14 Stars: Always pick this option.
- Calendar Key: Most of the time this is actually worth picking up. If you're going for the calendar you want to pick it up, if you're spending everything on the same day you want to get the 10 stars or get the key here so you can get 10 stars the next time you pick up a key.
- Daily Special: Pick up this option if you're going for that day's daily special
- Special situation: Double Payout + Any other reward you want: Choose the double payout first, then the other reward. Only exception would be Double Payout + Shuffle if you haven't found the daily special yet, in that case I would take the chance on first picking Double Payout, then any other present for a chance of the daily special.
- Special situation: Shuffle + Daily Special: In this scenario, and if Double Payout hasn't been found yet, I would choose random presents until you get the Double Payout, then pick the Daily Special, then Shuffle.
And well ... that's about it for the minigame. The only other choice you have is if you should go for the calendar or not, or in other words if you should spend a bit every day for keys, or everything during as few days as possible. As I'll explain in the chapter below and in the strategy chapter, this is actually quite an impactful choice, and my quite strong recommendation is to not go for the calendar, even if you are planning to get multiple main buildings. You are better off spending on as few days as possible, but more on that later :)
Calendar
The Calendar is an additional way to get rewards in this event. It's the same as last year's Calendar, and the year before that ... and the year before that I think? So if you're familiar with that you know how it works. To complete the Calendar, you have to get 32 Daily Keys. The first time you pick up a key on a given day, you will be able to open that day's slot for a small reward. Any subsequent keys you pick up that day will instead be a key piece. With 5 key pieces you can fill in any slots you haven't completed, so if you miss a day you can complete it later on.
To see the daily rewards as they appeared on beta, check out the fandom wiki: https://forgeofempires.fandom.com/wiki/2022_Winter_Event/Beta#Calendar
In addition to keys from the minigame, you can also get key pieces from daily challenges. You have a 15% chance for 3 pieces, a 50% chance for 2 pieces, and a 35% chance for 1 piece, which on average is 1.8 key pieces per day. Across the event, that's a total of just above 11 full keys if you do the daily challenge every day. If you complete the full calendar, you will get these rewards:
Calendar Main Reward:
- 2 Chocolatery Selection Kits
- 1 Nutcracker Guardhouse
- 200 Forge Points
- 300 Goods
- "Nicholas" Portrait
I will cover it in more detail in the strategy section, but completing the calendar for free is practically IMPOSSIBLE, and even if you plan to get multiple buildings, it is actually more expensive to go for the calendar than to spend everything at once, so my strong recommendation is to NOT go for the calendar.
Elves' Workshop
You might recall the reindeer sleigh from previous years, or the piggy bank from this year's Summer event .. well this time the reindeer sleigh has received an overhaul and been turned into the Elves' Workshop. At its core it's the same idea of giving extra rewards for diamonds, though this time it's more convoluted, you can spend even more, and at least anecdotally the rewards are not guaranteed to be better. You might be able to tell that I'm not a big fan of the idea in general or this update, but it's an available feature so let's look at how it works regardless:
When you receive one of "Daily Special", "Show 2", and "Shuffle", you will receive a gift for the Elves' Workshop. You can access the window to see rewards from the top-right of the event window, or each time you hit the "Shuffle" it will open automatically.
For each gift you receive, you can choose between two options, or you can spend diamonds to select both. Note: You don't actually get the reward yet, you have to spend diamonds to actually claim them. If you don't like either of the choices, you can choose to spend even more diamonds to switch out each option. You will then get a new option to choose from, which will be drawn from the "reward pool" for that slot. Click on the "?" to see the possible items you can get when you switch.
To actually claim any of the rewards, you have to spend 2995 diamonds. You should only spend 2995 diamonds when all the slots are filled. You can do it before, but the price is the same if you claim 1 or 9 prizes, so always do it when you have filled all the presents.
Event Strategies
Alright, let's talk about strategies! There really isn't too much to say regarding strategies, the main choice you have to make is between going for the calendar, or spending everything on a few days for the daily specials you want. I will go over it in detail in the following chapters, but the TL;DR is that I recommend that everyone should play for daily specials and ignore the calendar. Not only is the calendar practically impossible to complete for free, you actually don't gain anything as you get fewer grand prizes, fewer daily specials, and fewer daily specials you truly want. Even if you are going for multiple main buildings, going for the calendar isn't cheaper than spending everything on 1 day for a daily special you want.
What's the reason for this? The main difference is that if you go for the calendar, you get fewer stars back from presents. First of all, the first key on a day only gives a key, while all subsequent keys give a fragment and 10 stars. So naturally, if you spend everything on 1 day instead of spread across many days, you will get more stars back from keys. Additionally, if you go for the calendar you should stop spending on a day after finding the key (because you want to spend as few stars as possible per key). This means you will hit fewer shuffles, so you don't get the 10 stars from those either.
Overall, the amount of stars you get back from spending everything on 1 day is around 37 stars per 100 stars you spend, or in other words for every 100 stars you start with you get to spend 137 stars. In comparison, if you attempt to go for the calendar, that drops down to 22 stars, or 122 stars spent for every 100 stars you start with. For the free currency, that equals an additional 164 stars to spend, which is quite important for getting the main building fully leveled. But how did I get to these numbers? Before going into if you can get the main building fully leveled and some more detailed numbers on the calendar, let me talk about the simulator I've made for this event!
Event Simulator
This event is actually one of the easiest events to simulate. Each board will always consist of the same types of presents, and each present only gives one reward, there's no chance in that aspect like most events. The mechanics are deterministic (the same starting board will always yield the same results if played the same way), which makes a simulator very accurate. I won't explain the exact details, you can see the (admittedly very messy) source code in the "simulator.py" script down below if you're interested, but let me explain how it works.
First, a random new board is created. This board will have all the "special" rewards, as well as 12 "blank" rewards which are the random rewards that differ from board to board. Perhaps next year I could add those as well, but for now the most important things to me are stars spent / grand prizes, keys, and number of daily specials. Anyways, after the board is created and shuffled, the simulator starts "playing". Each turn 10 stars are subtracted, and a random present is chosen. The rewards for that are added (or nothing is added if it's a "blank"), and the next present is opened. This continues until all stars are spent. When that happens the results are added to a list of results, and the entire thing is repeated again. You can specify how many times to simulate, I recommend 10k+ times :)
There are two different "modes" of spending stars: 1) spend everything for 1 daily special ("goForKeys = False"), or 2) go for the calendar by stopping each day after finding the key ("goForKeys = True"). For the first mode, the simulator simply picks presents until no more stars are available, and any keys beyond the first one will give +10 stars and a key piece. For mode 2), the simulator will simulate stopping each day for the daily key by shuffling the board the first 32 times keys are found. This simulates the behavior of stopping playing on a day after the key is found, and the board resetting the next midnight.
In addition to the two different modes, the simulator also accounts for the "Show 2" present. When that is found 2 random presents will be revealed, and based on my recommendations above the simulator will either pick one (or both) of those, or ignore them and go for the other random rewards.
To use the simulator, simply enter your own values and hit "run" (triangle on the top bar). To explain the variables:
- startingStars: Number of stars you start with. You get 1095 for free during the event, plus most likely 2-300 from incidents if you pick them up regularly.
- goForKeys: As described above, "False" simulates spending everything on 1 day for the daily you want, while "True" simulates going for the calendar.
- requiredProgress: Amount of Grand Prize progress required for your goal. You need 300 to get the main building fully leveled.
- simNum: Number of "players" simulated. 10k+ is recommended, it doesn't take very long to process :)
If you can't see/use the simulator you can use this link: https://trinket.io/embed/python3/d78a5ca418
How many Daily Specials can you expect?
The first and most simple question the simulator can answer is how many daily specials should you expect. Below are two graphs with different starting amounts, so as you can see the expected number of daily specials isn't that high, around 10-12 on average, though with a relatively big variance.
Daily Specials with 1095+300 Stars
Daily Specials with 1095 Stars
Can you get Chocolatery fully leveled for free?
So, the big question is, can you get the main building fully leveled for free? The answer here is quite likely yes if you spend everything on as few days as possible, especially if you pick up incidents. Going for the Calendar actually ruins your chance of getting the main building fully leveled, so again, do NOT go for the calendar. Let's dig into the numbers :)
To get the main building fully leveled you need 300 progress, so let's look at a few different amounts of starting stars and how likely it is to reach 300, and how likely it is to complete the main building:
1095 Stars Spending all same day, 52.2% chance of full Chocolatery
1095 Stars Going for daily key, 1.3% chance of full Chocolatery
1095+150 Stars Spending all same day, 99.8% chance of full Chocolatery
1095+150 Stars Going for daily key, 61.8% chance of full Chocolatery
1095+300 Stars Spending all same day, 100.0% chance of full Chocolatery
1095+300 Stars Going for daily key, 99.8% chance of full Chocolatery
As you can see, if you spend everything on 1 day you will have a 50/50 chance of getting the main building fully leveled for the free currency. However, even with 1-200 stars from incidents, which is only 3/6 stars per day, you get a huge boost in your chance of completing it, so you definitely want to pick up all your incidents.
What is also clear from the graphs above is that going for the calendar, you need a lot more stars from incidents to complete the main building with upgrades from Grand Prizes. With that in mind, I think it's finally time to go over why I recommend not going for the calendar.
Should you go for the Calendar?
Short answer: NO
Using my simulator, we can get some expected number of keys gained if you're going for the daily key each day.
1095 Stars, 11.83 average Keys, 0.14% chance of completing Calendar
1095+150 Stars, 13.47 average Keys, 0.98% chance of completing Calendar
1095+300 Stars, 15.12 average Keys, 4.08% chance of completing Calendar
2700 Stars, 29.38 average Keys, 98.7% chance of completing Calendar
Ouch ... only 12-15 keys on average for free. As mentioned earlier you can get up to 11 keys from the daily challenges, but you're still way short of the 32 required. Even with 300 stars from incidents, the chance of getting enough, according to my simulator, is 4.08%. This is no surprise, though, it has been like this for years now, and still InnoGames see no reason to change it ¯\(ツ)/¯
Alright, what about if you are planning to get multiple main buildings, surely it's worth going for then? A bit more surprisingly, it's actually still not worth it in my opinion. Because of the fact you get fewer stars back, you actually lose the 2 selection kits you gain in lost Grand Prizes. Excluding the event pass, you need 740 progress to get a 2nd main building without the calendar, or 660 with the calendar. That's 3700 vs 3300 stars spent. Earlier I mentioned some "multipliers", where every 100 stars spent going for daily specials (spending all on 1 day) gives 37 stars back, whereas for the calendar you only get 22 stars back. So to get the number of stars you need to start with to get to 3700/3300 stars spent, we can divide those numbers by 1.37 and 1.22, respectively. That gives us the results of 3700/1.37=2700 starting stars going for daily specials, and 3300/1.22=2705 if going for the daily key. In other words, you have to basically start with the same amount of stars, but you lose out on a few grand prizes, and more importantly, you can't get the quantity or quality of daily specials. And actually, even getting enough keys with 2700 starting stars is not guaranteed. It is very likely, but as the graph above shows it's not guaranteed, so with the other downsides I simply don't think it's worth it.
Diamond Spending Costs
Let's round off this guide by talking a bit more about getting multiple Chocolateries. As mentioned in the previous chapter, going for the Calendar actually doesn't help when going for multiple main buildings, so I will be basing my numbers here off of spending everything on 1 day (or as few days as possible). The main question regarding diamond cost for multiple buildings is if you buy the event pass or not. As mentioned, after reaching 400 progress you will get 2 selection kits for the main building every 4 event pass prizes, which will cut down the required number of daily specials quite a lot. For the 2nd building, it means you only need 580 total progress, compared to 740 without the event pass. Then beyond that, any subsequent Chocolatery will require 440 progress without the event pass, but only 220 on average with the event pass (some will be +-20 stars).
For free, you can get 1095 stars, which is around 1500 stars spent, for around 300 progress. That means the 2nd building requires an additional 440 or 280 progress. You will also be able to get some stars from incidents for free, so you can subtract 1050 diamonds for every 100 stars you pick up from incidents. I think 2-300 is likely, so you can probably subtract at least 2-3k diamonds.
| Cost 2nd Building | No Event Pass | With Event Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Required Progress | 440 | 280 |
| Required Starting Stars | 2200/1.37=1605 | 1400/1.37=1022 |
| Required Diamonds | 16*1050=16.800 (+5 stars) | 10*1050=10.500 (+22 stars) |
| Saved with Incidents | Estimated 2-3k Diamonds | Estimated 2-3k Diamonds |
| Total Cost | 13.650-14.700 Diamonds | 7.350-8.400 Diamonds |
| Cost Each Building (3+) | No Event Pass | With Event Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Required Progress | 440 | 220 |
| Required Starting Stars | 2200/1.37=1605 | 1100/1.37=803 |
| Required Diamonds | 16*1050=16.800 (+5 stars) | 8*1050=8.400 (+3 stars) |
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!
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Event Rewards
- Quest "Cheat List"
- Event Mechanics
- Event Strategies
- Diamond Spending Costs
- Comments
