Do the tournament mode whenever you get the chance to unlock multiple benefits. Entering the competition will allow you to prestige before hitting level 600, which will not earn you many artifacts, but if you only need one or two episodes in order to get to the next relic or upgrade, then that’s a good time to enter the tournament. You can earn free diamonds, weapon upgrades, and pet eggs.
Pet eggs have already been explained, but weapon upgrades are something completely different than the weapons in the equipment section. A weapon upgrade will improve the DPS of a specific hero (you can track weapon upgrades under heroes in the “upgrades” button). If you build a full set of all weapons upgrades, you will get a gigantic global hero DPS multiplier – 10x for a full set of level 1 weapons.
If you have Polly (the pet that multiplies the gold you earn), the way it works is that if it’s equipped, it affects gold that pops out at the moment where the enemy is killed or where the fairy drops the gold. So before tapping the fairy or right before striking the killing blow to a boss or to Chesterton, make the quick switch over to Polly to earn the boosted coins or chest, then switch back once you’re done collecting them.
The pet damage is calculated as a percentage of your tap damage, so each time that you boost your taps, you boost your pet also. For Phobos, who multiplies the tapping power, you have to multiply the pet damage by the tap power multiplier as well, because the pet damage percentage is multiplied by the tap percentage, as well, making Phobos far more advantageous than would initially be indicated.
Level rounding makes it so that upgrading x10 or x100 levels doesn’t give you EXACTLY that many levels. Instead it makes it so that your upgrade is automatically rounded off to the nearest 10 or 100. Use this if you want to buy just enough upgrades to unlock the next DPS boost or hero skill without spending excess money on unnecessary upgrades. You can toggle this on and off in the options menu.
All of the special attacks pull from the same mana pool in order to enable them, so there is no point in using all of them at once like in the original game. Now, the critical strike and the war cry are arguably the most pointless boosts. Fire Sword is going to be where you want to live if you want to race through levels and boost your cash. Hand of Midas is great for when you are hitting diminishing returns with the Fire Sword, and you want to make a tidy profit to make the next DPS multiplier to your player damage.