Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24145588-20131206233652

Title pretty much says it all. Is there any way to get onto the Ethereal Island without laying out a pile of real-world money? Each of the one-element Ethereals costs 1250 gems, and obviously you will need at least two types to breed. And having just two would still be really dull.

Buying 1200 gems costs $50. To get all four types, that's $200. Definitely not going to happen.

The alternative is to just wait and accumulate gems from my mini-mines. I have them on four islands now (don't really care about getting the Earth Island), so that's 4 gems a day, plus occasionally 2 gems from a scratch ticket, so that's at most about 30 gems per week. 42 weeks, or 10 months, to get ONE monster on the Ethereal Island.

Considering that the rest of the game will be entirely played out in about 2 months, I doubt I'll spend another 8 months coming through once a day to collect gems from mines. 