I made a quick cheat sheet for some of our newbie guildies who are going to experience the event for the first time. Hope it might help you too.
Event info page on Wiki:
http://settlersonlinewiki.eu/en/even...en-event-2016/
*You will not get everything you would like. Make peace with it and set your goals for what is most important for you. Generals? Check the generals overview and ask players which ones would they recommend for a newbie. Buildings? Improved buildings are the newest and most valuable. Generally, I wouldn't stress about buying buffs. Get what suits you best, and let it be till next year when you get even more.
*Explorers bring pumpkins. As always long treasure search is the most resources for the time spent when you are away from game. When you are playing it might work better to send them on shorter searches.
*You can turn your pumpkin fields off. While they are off the harvest timer is still going on them, but they will not yield any pumpkins until they are on again. Buff your fields with shortest 3/4x buff, turn them on to collect the pumpkins and turn them back off. The 1hr field might be a bit of a hassle so you can perhaps keep it running while buffed, but the 4/8hrs might be worth the trouble of keeping the routine. Up to you.
*Doing quest chain and achievements rewards pumpkins. Check the achievement tab to see which one you may be able to crank during the event time window.
*Killing Golems rewards pumpkins. Higher level Golem you get, more resources will it take to kill it (by making the required buffs). Check at what point it becomes too expensive for you to keep it going.
*Stack up on resources to sell for the event. Everyone will need to kill golems so prices of certain stuff might be worth selling. You can either trade those for pumpkins directly or sell for coin and buy some pumpkins from Trade Office. As always during events, checking TO few times a day (if it possible) might be worth the time.
*Count buying pumpkins from other players as another source of them. Even top players with 20 explorers searching day and night still buy event resources. Check what quantities sell best/best price. Usually smaller quantities are faster sales. Than again, with stable economy and many high lever players selling large and still getting top price might not be a problem.
*If the economy on your server is pretty stable you can expect the same scenario of prices. First few days top, than slowly getting lowered during mid time and dropping even lower toward the end. It proved to be profitable to sell your event resources during the first week, and start buying them back from middle of the event toward the end. I was able to almost double my event resources gain this way last 5 events.
*Don't forget you can post your offers for pumpkins in Trade Office. If your server has a pretty good economy and many players are trading during the event, posting an offer 10-30% below what others are asking can bring a nice sell/buy. Patience, and checking the TO prices is the key.
*If you have difficult time finding pumpkins on your island, ask a guildie to search for them in exchange of you searching his/her island. It is easy to overlook spawning collectibles on your own island that your know the layout so well.
Hope all newbies will find it helpful. If you have other tips post them in here. New players often feel overwhelmed during events with so many tings going on. Lets make it easier on the first timers.
Enjoy