Alphabear 2 Tournaments FAQ

Q: When do the tournaments run?

• Tournament run every week!
• A new tournament begins weekly at 12:01am Eastern Time on Monday.
  • On Mondays I would recommend not trying to get in until a few hours after the start time. The automated system that resets the tournament sometimes executes a bit later than expected. (Sorry, Spry Fox doesn't control the auto-resetting directly--it's run by a 3rd party--or we'd fix it.)
• The tournament ends at 11:59pm Eastern Time on Thursday.
• Each tournament has 4 tiers, each beginning at 12:01am Eastern Time and lasting for 24 hours. You have to do well enough in the tier on Monday to play on Tuesday, and so forth. You get rewards for each tier you participate in, even if you don't qualify for the next tier. So start on Monday and go as far as you can! Even if you don't get past the first tier, at least you'll get the first tier's rewards.
• As opposed to most other things in this game that start at midnight local time, tournaments start at midnight Eastern Time.

Q: What if I'm not usually awake at midnight Eastern Time?

• That's okay. The tier stays open for 24 hours, so play it at whatever time is convenient for you.

Q: How can I access the tournament?

• The tournament is accessed from the Special Events screen, which unlocks when you get to Chapter 3 of Story Mode. The Tournament Special Event should be accessible from Monday through Thursday (Eastern Time) so long as you are still qualified to play, but once you miss a cut you won't be able to access it anymore until the following week.

Q: How well do I have to do to make each cut?

• This may change in the future, but from its beginning through the time this sentence was updated on 2022-12-13, the thresholds are:
  
  • The top 50% of Monday's participants qualify for Tuesday.
  • The top 40% of Tuesday's participants qualify for Wednesday.
  • The top 20% of Wednesday's participants qualify for Thursday.
  • Thursday rankings are just for bragging rights--there are no more tiers!--but you should make sure you score reasonably well (see the next bullet) or you won't get any bear tokens.
• The score requirements for a match should be low enough that almost all participants will "win" the match (which is very different from finishing in the top so-many percent) and get some bear tokens at the end of it for winning. BUT, if you score very, VERY low, then you will lose the match and won't get any rewards regardless of what percentage you end up in. We don't expect that anyone who makes a reasonable effort will score that low, but we want to mention it so you don't expect to get rewards if you, for example, start a match and play a single word then let the timer tick down to zero.
• Note that, while the game shows you your rank and percentile as soon as you finish playing, that's only true at that particular moment. Other players' scores will come in throughout the day and push your rank and percentile up/down accordingly. What matters is your final percentile after all scores have come in.

Q: I didn't get any bear tokens!

• These are some reasons you might not get bear tokens:
  
  • You already played today's match once (regardless of how well you did). You are allowed to replay it as many times as you like, but you can only get bear tokens from your first play.
  • You didn't exceed the "win" score (which should be pretty low) for the match. This shouldn't happen to most people who give a reasonable effort, but if you, for example, start a match and play a single word then let the timer tick down to zero then this could happen to you.
  • Maybe you've encountered a bug. If so, please let us know about it. But please first make sure that one of the other conditions doesn't apply.

Q: Why do I want Bear Tokens from the tournament?

• Because there are 5 bears for which the primary way of earning them will be tokens from tournaments. When you collect the required amount, you'll get that bear!
  
• Note that there are other ways of getting bear tokens, and other bears that can be earned with tokens, but this is probably the fastest way to earn these 5 particular bears:
  • Cthulhu Bear (Legendary)
  • Graffiti Bear (Legendary)
  • Koala Bear (Epic)
  • Captain Bear (Epic)
  • Tissue Bear (Epic)

Q: What do I get if I win the tournament?

• Bragging rights!
• As of the first tournament, you don't currently get any special rewards for winning (this may change in the future).
• You do get the Tier 4 participation rewards--the same rewards as everyone else who participated in Tier 4.
• As shown at the top of this article, the avatars of the top three finishers of Tier 4 are featured in a podium graphic in the game during the *following week's* tournament. If you think you're going to finish on top, dress to impress!
  • The podium graphic is updated when the new tournament starts on Monday. If you're checking on Friday or the weekend and see outdated results, that's probably what's going on.

Q: Are there any special rules for the tournament events?

Here's a list of some differences:

• Bears' powers still work in a tournament match, but bears' score bonuses are set to 0%. So a player with low-level bears has a chance against players with higher-level bears.
• Each day a different affinity is banned. E.g., a particular week might prohibit the use of Calm bears on Monday, Brave bears on Tuesday, etc. So if you have a favorite bear or team of bears, be aware that sometimes it's going to get banned and you'll have to find a replacement.
• On some days the points awarded for the biggest bear on the board are 3x the normal value. This is called out in the Bear Selection screen. On such days you'll want to pay careful attention to avoiding rocks so that your biggest bear grows as large as possible.
• Boosts (e.g., "Ban XZJQ") cannot be used.

Q: The icons say that Coins are one of the rewards, but I never get coins.

Coins are an alternative reward for folks who no longer need Legendary Bear Tokens because they've already unlocked Graffiti Bear and Cthulhu Bear. If you're still working on these bears, you'll get bear tokens and not coins.

(Similarly, there is an alternative reward of extra Berries for folks who have already unlocked Koala, Captain, and Tissue Bears and thus no longer need Epic Bear Tokens. All participants get Berries as a reward anyway, but you get extra as the alternative reward.)

Q: Can my score go down if I replay a tier?

No. If you replay a tier and score worse than you did previously, we keep the higher score. So there's no disadvantage to replaying.

• While your score may not decrease, note that your rank could decrease if other players score better than your highest score and thus push you downward. But that's because they did better than your highest score; the fact that you replayed had nothing to do with their outscoring you.