Pitnyelder..I'm so glad I saw your post. I too was a victim of your opponent. i was No.1 and played this person ( I won't mention names) first in the elimination round. Lo and behold he or she had all this power. I checked the history and, yes, it was a person "laying low"..I too was surprised that someone who played that way could still amass quite a bit of power. I lost and I was rooting for you but saw you lost too. It is frustrating because you're supposed to have an advantage by being a top player by playing the lesser opponents. A "seeded" tournament so to speak..Yet, maybe thats what the game is and, if so, I'm not too eager to be at the top..BTW, our opponent is gone (yea)
Karen

> I guess I *was* surprised to see characters that powerful come up against me in the second elimination round. In my previous tournaments it was never before Round #3 that I actually saw a set of characters to worry about.
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> I think I could have won, but I made an error in spending the money I had. I spent no money before Elim Round #1, since my opponents were woefully weak, so I had over 1000 gold before Elim Rd #2.
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> I used some of it to go from +1 Str/+1 Con/+1 Agi to +2/+2/+2 on all my weapons, and used the rest on enchantments of my weapons and armor.
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> In retrospect, what I should have done is used ALL of my cash -- or at least more of it -- on enchantments, and I think I would have come out slightly ahead of him/her.
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> I agree that some kind of rule could be of use here. Maybe put a limit on the amount of money that can be hoarded? 1000-1200 gold or some such number? By my rough calculations, someone following this strategy would have around 2000 gold to work with once the elimination rounds begin.
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> > > Mine went according to the strategy I set up, so it worked for me. Unfortunately, I got screwed by someone running the "I'll do nothing through all the preliminary rounds only to power up all my characters before the qualifying round" strategy. Very frustrating to find myself in first place one round, and then eliminated by someone playing a gimmick game the next.
> >
> > Yep, that happened to me, too. I always thought that was a bit of a false strategy, because the amount of money gained from losing was not as much as someone winning and spending on upgrades, then trading them all in for better ones on the qualifying round. But obviously, it seems to work. I was running in the top five through most of the preliminaries, so as you say, very frustrating.
> >
> > It would be interesting if, say, a block was put on an account that didn't update for five days.
> >
> > Bea"More discussion on this is imminent, I feel"sty