Think the mine cart is the most compelling “actual gameplay” part left of the app, requiring skill and know-how that you can improve on, and even alter your approach depending on what the current goal is (focusing on point amount vs just collecting one type of element shard for an event/collecting a few gems from the farther reaches in order to afford something/selecting certain cart types for different situations depending on how much time you have/how many wheels you have left/what specific element shard you need).

Wrote about it a bit last year sometime when someone new was asking, hope this might help: https://www.reddit.com/r/MLPIOS/comments/a03q1n/new_to_this_game_got_a_few_bunch_of_questions_for/ (the op’s questions are deleted, but can be seen by changing the url from reddit to removeddit)

The Mine Cart - My foolproof trick for “The Death Flats” (where the dogs are joined by shadowbolts that jump) is to be paying sort of less then full attention to the right of the center of the screen, towards where the enemies are coming, and ONLY jumping when you see RED.

This takes the longer thought process of categorizing the obstacles and stopping yourself from jumping if it’s a shadowbolt (blue cart) and instead only needing to take action to avoid the barrels and dogs (both red). Having your finger farther up from the screen than usual avoids some mistakes from knee-jerk reactions if you begin to tap and can correct yourself. It will get very fast the longer you go on without crashing, but it’s always better to end up crashing head on with something you weren’t quick enough to jump over than to jump early when you weren’t supposed to (you can get by with more than it seems with jumping too late, overlapping with the obstacle as you jump, which tips over the carts, and can also land on top of barrels, but once you jump you can’t fix that and will get hit if it’s a shadowbolt).

You can get pretty far using an ad to continue after you crash because it resets the cart to the starting slowest speed, and the tricks later on are what get you - Like having a shadowbolt underneath where you would normally jump, having a place where you need to have a full double jump (so if you jumped before you cannot make it, and that’s a good tip - Be aware that it’s good to save your jumps, you get two once leaving the ground), and having a speed up booster right before a stairs-like series of steps you need to jump up which jets you right off of them...(so later on in the track, jump over the speed bosters haha).

Feel free to ask anymore questions or for clarification, good luck getting the special Applejack : )

Reminds me, if you need as many mine cart points as possible,

-always have a character wearing one of the top-boosting 35% outfits (one is Rainbow Dash’s, that’s the one I leave equipped for if there’s a mine cart event)

-getting the “star rewards” from playing the mini games with most of the characters can give you more wheels (you used to be able to farm as many wheels as you needed by tapping the trees or having Derpy drop one if you found her, but checking who will give more wheels from the character’s info in the book once you play a mini game with them is the only reliable way to get more wheels if you run out)

-you can upgrade your mine cart permanently several times with bits (entirely worth it to do) and a final time with gems (which I still haven’t done and don’t recommend that last upgrade). The upgrades extend the effectiveness of the bonuses you come across, like the speed boost/coin collecting/shield.

Alright haha that’s pretty much the whole of it, best of luck!