Originally Posted by
jesslc41
The 5 fangbeast goal is really not worth wasting your energy on.
I've been playing for about a year (now level 48). I got my first wizard school fairly early by doing lots of the "play this other S8 game to earn gems" quests and trying to be super careful to not fall into gem traps (I still lost gems to traps along the way though). After you get on in the game a bit it actually becomes easier to earn gems (through adventures, purple cow, royal exchange). That's how I got my second wizard school. I did buy gems at black friday last year because I wanted a golden mine and figured it would eventually repay its gem cost through trading the golden items. Other than that though all my gem items were earned. It takes longer if you don't buy gems and you have to be careful about gem traps but it's possible to get there. The wizard schools are worth it. Sometimes these days I even have more energy than I know what to do with (not during monster hunts though). I think it took me 3 hunts to get the MRC (or maybe 4?) which give you access to various energy animals - didn't have enough tokens left over to get an animal from it after I built it last hunt but I will definitely get one this time (maybe even 2 or 3).
As to how long? I felt like I was at a reasonable level after maybe 4-5 months or so. (I think that's when I got my second wizard school and before I bought the golden mine). I was super dedicated about going after the wizard schools though. Somewhere on here, I forget where, I came across a few tips about avoiding gem traps. They're not foolproof (I shudder to think how many gems I've lost to traps over the year) but they did help a bit.