User blog:DeeMac/Torches: Friends vs. Diamonds

The Torches are a Fantastic addition to MSM and I think they are great ! But, what is the best way to light up your torches so that you can get that Elusive Etheral Monster? Is it Friends or Diamonds?

This is how I look at it -

Diamonds - it takes 2 diamonds to lite a torch for 24 hours, so if you have the maximum number of 6 mini mines it will take you a bit over 3-4 days to save up 20 diamonds in order to lite up 10 torches. This method requires either a stash of diamonds or patience to save them up. But if you are lighting your own torches with diamonds, you will have a 100% chance that they will be lit.

Friends - this option might work. Say you have accepted 3 pages of friends, 45 total friends that have supposedly agreed to light your torches every day. Then you should have enough friends to keep 2 sets of torches lit, or 20 torches,  right? I would think so. That is only 20 friends of your 45 that would not be too busy to light a torch. Then you would not need to use your diamonds to light torches and everyone would be Happy. You would light the torches of your 45 friends  every day and they in turn would light your torches and you would pretty much always  have your torches lit because you have over double the number of friends as you have torches !! Great !!

But... This has not been what I have observed. I will typically have only about 1/2 to 2/3 of my torches lit and I only have 20 torches - 2 sets of 10 on 2 islands. I only have about 40-45 friends; I cannot have more than that because I just dont have time to light more torches than that every day. BUT, the really sad thing is that when I look at the Islands of friends that have really been helpful to others on different threads, well, a lot of their torches are sitting there NOT LIT UP!!! How can that be??? How??? With 10 pages of friends??? There should NEVER be an unlit torch on these folks islands !!

So, that brings me to the conclusion that the Friends method of Lighting torches is not very dependable. You may be lighting a lot of torches, but your friends are not lighting yours in return?

Conclusion:

Is the best solution a combination of Friends AND Diamonds? I think that it may be the case. Perhaps timing and patience with your friends lighting torches is also to be considered... I would love to hear if anyone has had better success with having the torches lit by friends.

Let me hear your experience if you wish.