Just some notes on my experience this go around.
I was finally able to upgrade to level nine just last night, with roughly 15 hours left on the clock. I really wanted to go for level ten, but with the really high requirements to do so, there was just no way. I don't know how I managed to lag behind by so much, except that I probably lost quite a bit of time collecting tea cups and everything else just from having to sleep (I know, who needs sleep, right?). Luckily, I work someplace where I can check my phone every hour for most of the day and then long into the evening once I'm home, but the drop rates really stalled progress.
And it wasn't even because of the spring petals, which, oddly, I didn't have trouble collecting (but I know a ton of other people did)...it was because of the lack of red petals for the dye and the abysmal drop rate of the tea leaves. I somehow had scraped along up until last night getting the red petals that I needed, hacking at grass like crazy and collecting from my one red flower, and depleting my small stash of pre-existing red dye, but there was just no chance for 10. If I had another ten days, I'd be able to do it.
It wasn't even necessarily because I didn't have the energy to do it--I've got two daily alicorns from previous sales and one of the regular white alicorns that happened to be timed just right for this event, and I've gotten energy from my royal exchange and adventures while this has been going on, but that's it. I just had dismal luck getting the tea leaves I needed and around level 8, I had trouble getting the porcelain I needed. I found that ponds had a better drop rate than rocks, so I had about 10 ponds on the board, along with about 15 different mushrooms, and a whole field of tall grass to chop at. I was even stocked pretty well with sugar and floor, but that's all gone now.
Early on, I just kept fighting the raccoons until I had enough for probably the first 5 or 6 levels and then just parked one in a corner so I wouldn't have to waste energy on other creatures. After that, I focused mainly on porcelain and tea leaves, collecting red petals as much as I could. And I was okay for a while. I actually was rather hopeful that I was going to finish with maybe a day left. Then it started getting rough about level 6. I've been playing for a while, so I had resources to work with, and I was diligent about checking things at least once an hour, but I didn't make much progress for several days and I swear level 7 took me a week to complete. That really made me unhappy.
But I really wanted that peacock and that level 10, so I kept at it. I didn't buy the spring flower because I knew it wouldn't do much after the event and I didn't start spending gems to speed things up until last night. So most of the event was spent just plodding along...the constant grass mowing and pond fishing and shroom collecting didn't bother me, though it wasn't particularly fun. A lot of the other materials those things dropped got wasted, though I did mostly keep on top of things, using as much as I could on other potions and building materials while I was waiting to collect enough of the event items to do something with.
But I saw I was barely going to get to level 9 and decided to stop there. I ended up buying the bundle with the 200 teacups and then bought some gems on sale so I could speed up teacup collection for the last 400 teacups. I didn't really feel too bad about doing that because if you wait an hour into the collection timer, it was only 2 gems per 25 teacups and I actually had even time where I could even wait an hour and a half of the timer and only have to spend 1 gem.
So I have my peacock, who will keep my other peacock company, and maybe it'll be another energy source, though early reports say it's probably only good for eggs, and I have my level 9 decoration, and I'm okay with that. I'm even almost level 48 when I was barely level 47 when this started, so that's something. What's really the most irritating thing is that now I have all these left over building parts for the event, and I can't get rid of them. So even though I knew I was quitting at level 9 and purposely stopped collecting some stuff so there wouldn't be any leftovers, I'm still left with spring petals and invites and sweets, etc. that are just going to sit there forever and bloat my inventory.
Yay.
I hate leftovers in this game. I want a nice, sleek inventory, clean of junk I can't use. Let me hide it, vendor it, give it away to someone else, I don't care. I just don't want it in there. I'm not a collector, so I don't find having all those item cards to look at all that appealing. It takes forever to find anything! My game almost always crashes when I go to the store or look in my inventory for something and that alone is really exhausting. The fact that I was at the store buying endless fields of grass this whole time made it even worse. I don't even know if there's a fix for that.
I guess I don't understand why it was only for 20 days. 30 would have been better. As it was, we barely got the final community prize, with less than half an hour left. That's rather silly. You know what's also silly? Really unrealistic drop rates. I mean, c'mon, I know we've gotta work for our loot, but seriously, why make it so hard? Also, adding energy to the bundles, even if it was only an extra 60 or something low like that, would have made it more appealing to purchase. If the point is to make money, then you have to market it in such a way that people actually want it, and I know I'm not the only one that's said so in this thread.
I'm sure there's more to be said, but I'm too exhausted from this event to try and remember it all. Time to focus on the BS event now. Shout out to those that documented what was needed for the levels and did the math--that is always extremely helpful and I want to shower all of you that do with the most delicious Internet cookies ever. =) And congrats to those of you that made it to the end with double raccoons, a peacock, and a level 10 tea party! I wish I had paid more attention to the note I think someone posted about how the creation of one raccoon removes the ability to have more because I actually wanted another and couldn't because I messed it up.