Gems of War

***Caution up front***

This achievement is based around a cash grab by the company. This takes about 3000 gems (in game currency) and high level teams. If you can't field a team to deal with level 600+ enemies, you have no shot at this unless you want to pay money for additional sigils and gems to buff your team. More detail below.

This achievement is for accumulating 20,000 miles in the new Journey event which became available on 11/15/2021. The event is a week long. They provide you with some sigils to start, but nowhere near enough to reach the achievement goal. It is essentially a bad mix of the monthly bounty mission combined with a delve run.

The team available is limited by a type and color. In the first event, the troop type was elemental and the color was green. This color limitation also extends to your weapon choice. Also to be successful you will need the event "captain" (similar to the bounty events). The captain has a new ability called "Pathfinder" which is the third troop upgrade. It offers a mileage multiplier up to x3 for a mythic level troop. The captain for the first run was Hawthorn. Unlike the Bounty events the captain multiplier does NOT stack. Running four Hawthorns will only give you a x3 multiplier.

Here's how the Journey works. Each fight is a fork in the road with two or three battles. Each fight costs one sigil unless you want to pay more for a stat buff (similar to other sigil based events). Enemy level and general type is displayed. Also displayed is how many miles you will win for victory. Occasionally you will see additional symbols for bonus prizes which could include Stat buffs, souls, gold, or glory. In my run, I took the highest level enemy only unless the lower had a stat buff. I ignored all other bonuses. ***Important to note*** Taking more than ten turns or losing troops incurs a mileage penalty. As a result, you need a team which can punch pretty hard. While you could attempt something like a Queen Beatrix looping team, the whittling away of damage could cost you miles in the end. The good news is unlike faction assaults, your team is not fixed and you can change it up between fights.

Now for the cash grab part. I stopped the event at 20,037 points which took 168 battles. Enemies at the end were level 698 having around 700 points for armor and health plus an attack around 360. My team rating was 17,003. Unlike high level faction runs, there is no horde to pump up your stats. Also because the event is only a week long, you can't take months working up. While ravens were fairly plentiful, I still only finished with 20 extras. So basically your only hope is buy all the potions. As an added FU to the players, the tier seven potion runs 500 instead of the normal 200 associated with a faction assault. So it takes 1850 gems to get through tier seven. Then on top of that I had to do two more tier sevens to have enough sigils to make 20k miles. That means you'll need just under 3000 gems to even have a shot.

I have serious doubts about regular successes for certain troop types and colors. Many first position enemy troops have armor so you have to deal with that. By the time you hit the upper limits, you have enemies that can kill one of your troops in 2-3 hits (including the shield potion). There are also some teams which have Stealth traits so even if you can negate attack values, you may still have a leading enemy you can't target and gem RNG can do you in....especially with these stupid new multiplier and enchanted star gems. They can power up a mythic enemy in one turn if you're not careful. If you get on the wrong side of a looping team, your match can be over quick.

For my run, I used a variation of the classic Essence of Evil (EoE) team I run in guild wars.

1st position - Essence of Evil
2nd position - The Wild Queen
3rd position - King Gobtruffle
4th position - Hawthorn

I also went with a level 100 Archer class. You can't run Queen Beatrix or Leprechaun due to troop restrictions. Basically EoE was used to nerf the first and possibly second enemy. The Wild Queen did most of the work stealing attack from the enemies. Gobtruffle was ok at the lower levels but useless for attack at the higher levels. At that point I was mainly using him to power The Wild Queen. Hawthorn was useless and was there just for the mileage bonus.

When this goes to other troop types and colors, I recommend talking to your guild mates or looking online for team recommendations. I can almost guarantee they are going to be based off mythic level troops and specific weapon combos. Think upper tier guild war/level 500 delve teams.

Bottom line, this is not an entry level achievement in the slightest. If you can't deal with enemies with the stats I listed above, don't attempt this one until you're in a much better playing position. I have over 3,300 hours into this game and run in a top 25 guild if you want a baseline.

EDIT AT 02-MAY-2022
Journey is active this week, for the first time since November 2021.
Pathfinder troop is "Deathclaw", and needs to be fully traited to unlock "Pathfinder" perk.
I suggest your strongest class with at least one Mythic Undead (The Gray King / Xathenos).
Let me know any queries!

ORIGINAL

Journey has been added in update 6.0 as of yesterday (15-Nov-2021), and is a weekly campaign.
The progression is measured by miles travelled, hence the achievement goal

I'm adding this guide now to strongly recommend - as soon as you can use Gems to unlock higher tiers and unlock a troop with the third perk, "Pathfinder - Gain 2x / 2.5x / 3x in my Journey event".
This week's is Hawthorn, and will massively reduce the amount of miles needed.
You only appear to need one of these in your team, as the perk does not seem to stack with multiple cards.

EDIT TO ADD - Looking at the Leaderboard people who've travelled more than 20,000 miles appear to have played... 180 battles and upwards

Let me know any questions!