Talk:Emerald Dragon/@comment-108.202.198.73-20120529005947

For the problem of running out of gems, I used the following approach to help speed things along yet still maintain my gem stash more or less: I have both the NBC and the EBI, so if one of them got a really long inc time, I simply ignored it until the other one also got a long inc time - then I'd wait until I couldn't stand it anymore, and speed up whichever one had the least amount of time left. Also, I was careful not to speed anything up if there was just a few minutes left until the next hour down... For example, if one of the caves had an inc time remaining of 3 hours /11 minutes, I'd just wait those last 11 minutes before spusing the gems - that way I used only 3 gems as opposed to 4.

Another time I felt justified in using a few gems was if I knew I wouldn't be playing again for several hours - i.e. at bedtime. If I needed to spend, say, 4 gems to be able to try for Emerald one more time before going to bed, to me that was acceptible.

And it worked! I started with about 265 gems (give or take a few), and I now have 2 Emeralds: one for the island, one for egg display. And I still have 228 gems, thanks to careful spending of the gems I started out with, the Colluseum, and my loyal gifting friends! I didn't spend a dime, and I most certainly haven't jail broken my device. And now i have plenty of gems for next month, when Pearl comes out. I tell you, this system works! :)