Yes, if you want to get a full LvL 2 from scratch you will most likely spend diamonds, but most of us will be able to get our set, more so if we were able to get just 1 piece from DC. I'm guessing that luckily, most players are happy with the event, with only a small but vocal minority filling the forum, but you guys must step back and look at the bigger picture, and realise that for the most part, Inno hit a sweep spot on this one. If you don't fully take advantage of DC, then honestly, that is just your fault, since I can almost effortlessly complete 95% of them. This quest and DC complement each other, and you should consider that in your playing experience. If you complain that the event should be independent of the DC, I strongly disagree.

From DC, I already had 3 cherry pieces, which made the spring event even easier.

I wasn't here for last year, but riddle me this: did you have Daily Challenges last year? Inno created DC, which is to me one of the largest sources of set pieces, FP and special units, without a drawback. Now, some of you might say 'well, last year was better'. Moreover, you are also guaranteed a SoK, probably a Reno Kit as well. I don't know about you guys, but the chance to obtain that is just very nice to me. That means, on average, this event will give you 6 pieces (2 are guaranteed, 4 you get from chests). Let's be pessimistic and round it down to 4. That means, ON AVERAGE, you can try for 22,5 times, so 20% of that is 4,5 pieces. If you use only the Gold Chest, you have a 20% chance for a 60 Lantern cost. Probably actually more than this, with the bonus from the newsletter, and I may have rounded down the average daily lantern from trees. You may obtain by the end of the quest around 1350 Lanterns (Initial 40, plus 175 from specific checkpoints, plus 820 for the 62 quests, plus 10 daily, plus around 5/daily, average from trees). However, the amount of complains for this event seem completely disproportionate to the actual odds, and outright unfair.

Yes, we all had the dreaded Carnival Event with stacked reliance on luck (luck to obtain tickets, luck while spending them), which could result in very binary results, often to catastrophic effect. I had to register here just to be able to comment, since something was bugging me in this thread.

Forge of empires 2018 events