Good advice Pickles, Thanks! I just battled the Koi Warrior on hard and picked up 2 regular and 3 red codestones across 12 or so quick battles (whenever the drops stop). Not bad at all.
I liked the mix plots like each of you have been describing. I am not sure how much actual time I will have considering RL is a mess right now. New boss will be on-site at least 3-days/week and I am currently needing to train him. I do understand that he knows nothing and he has much to learn. Patience is a virtue... But, the days are long and exhausting. I do not remember coming home being this tired in a very long time. Tomorrow will be at least 13+ hours. Thursday will be really long, too.
ETA: I guess this could go into gloats/crys, but since I gave a status a few posts ago, I will update here... Since I am still awake and catching up on work, I took a short break to visit Von Roo... Success with Deadly Dice tonight! I added an extra half-second to accommodate for lag and gained a level tonight

Should I continue to be up this late, I will need to relearn the lag time and practice it for a few weeks to truly nail it down. Then start going for the double-or-nothing ties. There are big gains to be had for tying multiple nights in a row. Far cheaper than codestones!
ETA2: I just picked up another 5 tan and 1 red codestone battling the Koi Warrior

Woot!