crafting and upgrades???

I stopped Monsarno at 19, Herbicide at 16ish and I will stop opera house at 10. There is not much point going beyond these.

my building are about 17-18 will this effect my new currency?

Not really. The building level just dictates what characters have tasks that they can go on to earn event currency, it may just be that you do not have enough characters earning event currency, I would stop upgrading your buildings now though.

Similar situation as OP, spent so much of my time and resources upgrading Mansarno and squirter in first 2 acts, that crafting was a distant second place, and my results weren't good. Especially in my active freemium side towns, where I have no premium characters to boost my crafting supply resources.

This time, I sprung for $5 per town to buy 60 donuts (which, luckily, i can afford because of a "special" Mothers Day gift from my son, who has to explain to his students that he gave his sixty-five-year-old mom money to buy imaginary donuts for a game. So i had money and instantly upgraded Opera House through several levels, to the point where I can have a task for all ofr the children, since i have a lot of children and not all of them have the default task ... Not proud of myself for taking the easy way this round, but not sorry I did it.

Now I can concentrate on playing my tail off and getting stuff crafted as much as possible in the rest of this event. :oops:

There are definitely points at which you should stop upgrading and start crafting. For more information, please see the FAQ thread link in my sig.