The Fortune Teller is the only spin a day that pays
The Fortune Teller is an event tent added in December 2019 where you buy random divinations for rubies. It looks like the Wheel of Fortune, but with one crucial difference: the prizes are genuinely random and cannot be timed. The maths, however, can be calculated — and it says something very specific: the first divination of the day is one of the most profitable ruby investments in the game, while all fourteen in a row are the fastest way to lose 1.4 million rubies. This article shows why.
How the Fortune Teller works
The Fortune Teller is a tent outside your castle where you pay rubies for a divination — a random reward from a predefined list. Unlike the Wheel of Fortune you cannot time or predict the reward; every divination is purely random.
Within a single run you can buy a maximum of 14 divinations and the price rises steeply with each one: the first costs 100 rubies, the second already 300, and from there it roughly doubles. The price list resets back to 100 rubies once the event ends and a new one begins; the daily reset happens at 9:00 CEST.
The key property the game never highlights: the first divination follows completely different maths from all the others. While divinations 2 to 14 carry a 25 % chance of a ruby prize, the first one carries 90 %.
Price list for all 14 divinations
The complete table of prices, the highest ruby prize and the chance that a ruby reward is the one that drops:
| Divination | Price (rubies) | Highest ruby prize | Chance of rubies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | 200 | 90 % |
| 2 | 300 | 600 | 25 % |
| 3 | 550 | 1,100 | 25 % |
| 4 | 1,050 | 2,100 | 25 % |
| 5 | 2,000 | 4,000 | 25 % |
| 6 | 3,800 | 7,600 | 25 % |
| 7 | 7,300 | 4,600 | 25 % |
| 8 | 13,900 | 27,800 | 25 % |
| 9 | 26,500 | 53,000 | 25 % |
| 10 | 50,400 | 100,800 | 25 % |
| 11 | 95,800 | 191,600 | 25 % |
| 12 | 182,100 | 364,200 | 25 % |
| 13 | 346,000 | 692,000 | 25 % |
| 14 | 657,400 | 1,314,800 | 25 % |
The sum of all fourteen divinations is 1,387,200 rubies. For perspective: that is roughly twenty times the price of the most expensive generals' offering (69,999 rubies for Beatrice), and more than 46 generals' skill reset tokens.
A note on the seventh divination: the listed top prize of 4,600 rubies breaks the pattern by which every other divination pays exactly double its price (the seventh would be 14,600). Treat that row with caution — it is either an error in community data or a genuine anomaly that makes the seventh divination especially poor value.
The maths show why only the first divination pays
Let us calculate the expected return from the ruby part of the reward. For the first divination: a 90 % chance of 200 rubies means an expected return of 180 rubies at a price of 100. A net profit of roughly +80 rubies — and that ignores the remaining 10 % of cases where units or tools drop instead of rubies.
For every subsequent divination the formula inverts. The top ruby prize is double the price, but the chance of hitting it is only 25 %, so the expected ruby return is 0.25 × 2 × price = half the price. In other words: on the ruby side you lose half your stake and the rest has to be made up by non-ruby prizes — veteran units, banners, chests and time skips.
| Divination | Price | Expected ruby return | Ruby balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | 180 | +80 |
| 2 | 300 | 150 | -150 |
| 3 | 550 | 275 | -275 |
| 5 | 2,000 | 1,000 | -1,000 |
| 10 | 50,400 | 25,200 | -25,200 |
| 14 | 657,400 | 328,700 | -328,700 |
The conclusion is unambiguous: the first divination is profitable, every one after it is a loss — unless the non-ruby prizes carry exceptional value for you. And even then, veteran units and banners can be obtained far more cheaply from events.
What drops in each divination
The reward pool grows with the divination number. A sample of the first three tiers:
| Divination 1 | Divination 2 | Divination 3 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 rubies | 600 rubies | 1,100 rubies |
| 62 veteran units (Deathly Horror, Demon Horror, Flame Bearer, Composite Bowman) | 150 veteran units | 275 veteran units |
| 50 Horsetail standard | 93 Royal Banner | 130 King's banner |
| 50 Silver Khan chest | 93 Gold Khan chest | 130 Royal Khan chest |
| 50 The dignity of Berimond | 93 The splendor of Berimond | 130 The treasure of Berimond |
| 50 chests of samurai tokens | 93 Case of the shogun | 130 Chest of the shogun |
| — | 45 minutes of Season points booster | 1 hour 15 minutes of Season points booster |
| — | 1 time skip of 5 hours | 2 time skips of 5 hours |
Higher divinations follow the same scheme with ever larger quantities — the fourth already gives 500 veteran units and 2,100 rubies. The composition stays the same, only the amounts change. For a player collecting Berimond tools or Season points the higher divinations carry some value, but for most people this is merchandise available free from ordinary events.