Thoughts:
Overall, this Tale was doable for me even though I was two days behind (delayed on chapter 4 and 5 due to waiting on a storyline confirmation from the staff) and a couple hours delay due to life situation. Still no gold was spent to complete it. Once again, thanks to my neighbor, the community, and the Dev. Team.
I was able to do a lot of preparations in advance inorder to catch up. Really like the fact that the Dev. Team made it possible for me to do so for this tale. And hope they keep it this way for future tales to come.
How I was able to get my orb requests back in a timely manner by stop requesting maps on the start of chapter 4, set my alarm at reset time to plant the 6 fireapples (leaving 1 Scalypears for Runestones and doing Rushrooms X 14 (planting twice)) and quickly send all request to all neighbors except Storm8 (just in case I need 1 last orb). Sleep and do whatever I need to do, patiently waiting for request back.
- I think speeding battles (4 gold per round) would be cheaper than to skiping the orb request act (75 gold). Waiting maybe till the last hour to get all your orbs and do everything else in under a hour would be cheaper if people are having a hard time with that (note: this is a gamble, does not guarantee you'll get your orbs even the last minute, it's just a way to give you the most time to get your request back). You would also need to do your preparation work such as having your craft ready to be collected and dragons at the required level.
In the end, started with 1,000,000 apples, ended up with 817K apples to finish the tale (due to continuous planting). Still feel the apple requirements (about 380k apples) for this tale is too much. Takes a lot of effort just to try and maintain whatever amount I could get.
But other than that, I would say this Tale is pretty successful.