Mead Festival

If you have 25 explorer moves, it may be a good idea to grab those meads on the southern island. Then invest on the mead generator for at least 27 total meads for free use in the shop or on the golden thread generator (the latter are more rare, but pick your priority instead). You might be tempted by the adventure energy instead, but it is unlikely you will get enough to go far in the adventure anyway - but this is speculation at this point.

Another option is to use 16 explorer moves to grab the 30k keys and fulfill some quests in the hope you will get 4 meads for the mead generator. This would net you 12 meads for free use (see above).

Finally if you do not want to use explorer moves (maybe to save them for Winterfest), you will likely not get enough meads nor keys for generators. But still use 5k keys for the rank 1 of the golden threads generator.

If you want rewards, buy meads and invest in the various generators first, before buying from the shop. Maybe stop the barrel key generator at rank 4.

If you want to win the competition, buy barrel keys and invest asap, preferably within 3 hours after the event starts.