TL;DR Your PvP Matches will be very difficult in stage 1 (Season max + ~600 to start), difficult in stage 2 (season max + ~400), and then slightly less difficult in stage 3 (Season max + ~200). If you wish to finish this event, be prepared to budget around 500-1,000 gems. The trophy count does not seem to carry over between stages.

It is not wrong to skip this event. This event will leave you frustrated regardless how you choose to participate in it. Moreover, if the gear is bad, you are in fact diluting your legendary pulls by unlocking Silverhand Gear. It’s fine to just play enough games until you have to pay gems.

Introduction

The mobile game Warriors of Waterdeep is releasing alternate legendary cards for their characters called “Silverhand Gear” through an event called the “Silverhand Trials” on February 12, 2020.

The month of March has been designated Silverhand Month, where a 4-day Silverhand Trial event will be held weekly.

Silverhand Gear can currently only be unlocked by completing a Silverhand Trial event. Once a “Silverhand Gear” is unlocked, it will be added to the pool of random drops (presumably at the same rate as legendary cards).

Initially, there were two “Silverhand Gear”: weapons for Halbenet, the Cleric and Shevarith, the Wizard. The prize during the initial release was randomized; some players received the weapon for Halbenet, while others received the weapon for Shevarith. [Note: Halbenet and Shevarith are the only two guaranteed characters that all players possess. This is presumably why the developers chose to give these two characters priority.]

During the first week of March, players are guaranteed to obtain the Silverhand Weapon for Halbenet.

Here are images of the Level 1 and Level 2 Cleric Weapon “Sword of Bright Blinding” courtesy of @Koyote:

Here is the image of the Level 1 Mage Weapon “Sword of Bright Blinding” courtesy of @Zeldoron:



Note: Level 2 of the mage weapon is reported to be

Silverhand Trials Same but 150% injure area if triggered.

Forgotten Realms Lore

Laurel Silverhand is one of the Seven Sisters, a group of sisters who are all daughters and Chosen of Mystra (the Goddess of Magic), the Open Lord of Waterdeep and romantically involved with Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun until his death.

Laurel is one of the most prolific creators of magical items on Faerun, and presumably that’s why we’re getting Silverhand gear.

Unlock overview

For the first Silverhand Trial events, to access your Silverhand Gear, you must complete 3 Stages of the “Silverhand Trial" Heroic Adventure event.

The first stage requires 7 PvP wins to clear, and players are given unlimited attempts to complete this stage. The second stage requires 14 PvP wins to clear. For the second stage, you can lose up to 3 times before you must pay 30 gems for each refresh to continue the Heroic adventure with up to 3 more losses. The third and final stage requires 14 PvP wins to clear. This cost to refresh rises to 60 gems for the third stage. [Thanks to @Koyote for providing these values.]

There are gold, equipment card and Brawl Chest rewards (which correspond to your arena level) along the way.

The original event will last starting from Wednesday February 12, 2020 at 9:00 am EST until at least Monday February 17 at 9:00 am est. The weekly events for Silverhand Month also span from Wednesday 9am EST until the following Monday at 8:59 am.

Event Matchmaking

For each stage, the event takes your highest Battle mode trophy count this season and adds a variable amount to it as your base event trophy count for beginning of the event (which I’ll also call Event Matchmaking Rating). [There is no point in tanking Battle mode trophies. It only wastes your time and aggrieved your fellow Battle mode players.]

A Bag of Beans: retsamerol’s guide to the Test of Might (December 2019) Event Matchmaking Rating (MMR) : This is a hidden value that can only be estimated based on the difficulty of the bots and their stated trophy level. This rating is what is used to determine matchmaking. AI will be within 200 trophies of your current rating for the event. At 3k-3.5k, AI will start at level 16; at 3.5k-4k level 18, and 4k+ level 19/20. [Outdated text removed for clarity] Neither your own nor a human opponent’s stated trophy count is informative because it only reflects their current Battle mode trophy count.

Your event trophy count does not appear to carry over between stages if it is lower than your season max. Each time you start a new stage, you end up adding some number of trophies to your season max. Based on some testing, I believe these values are +600 for the first stage, +400 for the second stage and +200 for the third stage.

For a slightly outdated explanation of this hidden variable is used for matchmaking, see this post. Please note that the first bold item is no longer accurate, and sadly, no official documentation of the change has been disclosed by the developers. This post is one of the earliest documentation of the “stage-based inflation” of the event trophy count, to my knowledge.

The developers have complied with the players’ request to adjust the event trophy count based on the participant’s relative event trophy count, rather than their Battle mode trophy count. [For more detail, see: Recommendations to fix Test of Might ]

This means that players are no longer punished for early wins and no longer need to fear positive feedback loops that drive fights harder and harder.

Instead, players must now manage the trophy count inflation from starting each stage.

Recommended Approach

Skip this event. You will be frustrated no matter what your approach will be. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.

If you feel like your time is less valuable than being an Amazon Mechanical Turk, then here’s what you can do to try to minimize your gem expenditure. Really though, if you engage with this event, the system is really gaming you.

The developers appeared to have engineered the system such that gaming it through losing deliberately will no longer be of substantial benefit. If you want the prize, play to win all your fights, and try to minimize your gold.

@Koyote also offers an alternative strategy: If you an handle a team of Level 20 bots consistently, use the stage trophy inflation to match only against bot players; never face a team of humans and you can do alright as well without the need for tanking.

I shall keep the following outdated information for posterity:

If the first stage has unlimited tries Play the first stage with intent to lose each match and try to push your current trophy count to about 1000 or so below your current season max. This will probably take about 50 games worth of losses. If this sounds terribly unappealing, then you’re right! It’s a huge waste of time and why I’m recommending against participation.

Even with this approach, you’re still looking at playing 100 or more games while likely paying 30 gems during stage 2 and then playing 14 games with close to 50% win rate and paying 300-500 gems during stage 3 to finish off the event.