And tonight's update is...
I forced down another 80 half elixirs, bringing the total consumed for this event to a nice, round 300. Honestly, at some point today, the quest for the bow devolved into the quest to hit 300 HEs used. Got 1500+ gold mats. After buying everything in the shop except for enhance mats, I've still 1100 gold mats and 1800 silver mats.
1 rainbow chest dropped today at about... 1.5 hours away from event end. It was the damn hammer. 'tis a nice gesture there, RNG. Almost perfect, even. Now if that dropped on my last run of this event, then it'd have been the perfect middle finger.
Ah well. It's a setback for sure, but not quite a permanent one yet. I'll just have to use the first 10k tower medals I get on a weapon brick to use on this 2nd bow. That ought to take me 2 or 3 tower events, so either next February or early May. I'll also need this remaining stack of 1716 half elixirs to successfully produce me 1 Apocalypse Lance/Typhon Lance/Garuda Hammer.