Discussion Rise of the Phoenix Cult

[CrazyWizard]

Related question: How do you get so much crafting in a day? I get 2-3 in a day, if I'm lucky. That link assumes 4/day is normal.

Do you use time boosters to get more in? Do you just craft something, even if all options suck? How do you not have spell fragments left over after using up all CCs, even with constantly making CCs in your MA?

It assumes "an active crafter"
if you are a player like myself there is always something to craft on each rotation. and sometimes more than 1.

For example: a good time booster, a pet food and a combat buildig, then I want them all.
If it's all junk, there is always a guaranteed small or big timebooster to craft

off course this assumes that you have the ability to check al recipes (of the rotation sucks according to your RL schedul, you can pay 50 diamonds to reset the scedule to something that does fit in your scedule)

When we look at "does the spire give too much" you have to look at it from an active perspective, for anyone who crafts the occasional thingy al;most anything is to much, but when we look at what is realistically possible IF you want to. it actually gives less spellfragments than you could use.

 

[Karvest]

Such active players have a lot of junk in inventory that can fulfill almost any needs for spell fragments. You can even treat that recipe as a converter of 5 useless artifacts to 1 useful.

 

[eltina]

I do not like task no 53
I have no Units on instants and can't get it.
I think it NOT ok to have a Q, I can't get.

I have now negotiete, but this event Quest is many meeting and relics sow my meeting is very hard now.

 

[Aeva]

Related question: How do you get so much crafting in a day? I get 2-3 in a day, if I'm lucky. That link assumes 4/day is normal.

Do you use time boosters to get more in? Do you just craft something, even if all options suck? How do you not have spell fragments left over after using up all CCs, even with constantly making CCs in your MA?

I have 668K spell fragments and 291 CC's in MA at the moment. I always make something but never use diamonds in MA to change the choices. I mainly make usefull military buildings (2x2), timeboosters, windfall (33 50 100) and coinrain, restaurationspells, kp-spells, sometimes valorian and orkstrategist to upgrade, if available and usefull artefacts. Sometimes I will use timeboosters to get more if there is a lot that I want.

 

[little bee]

what am I missing?

The 12th chest gives 1100 fragments. You forgot them.
But I also seem to have miscalculated by 50 somewhere. I corrected it now.

Such active players have a lot of junk in inventory that can fulfill almost any needs for spell fragments. You can even treat that recipe as a converter of 5 useless artifacts to 1 useful.

First of all, getting fragments from events is absolutely no solution. If you want to compensate the annual fragments from a single spire-set you would need to disenchant 80 4*5 eventbuildings. And I certainly don't want to loose 80 daily prizes per year.

Secondly, converting 5 artifacts+3 Blueprints into one artifact sounds quite expensive, but I guess it would be alright if those fragments were rare for everyone. The problem lies in rewarding players who have been overusing the spire set. Think of it like pollution. Everyone likes using energy and the amount any single individual uses is negligent for the enviroment. But collectively our energy consumption causes massive damadge to the planet. Therefore it is important for the goverments to make new rules that incentivise everyone of us to use less energy.
Here the energy is the spire set, the goverment is INNO and the enviroment is the market for scrolls etc. What the goverment should do is to pass laws that punish the worst polluters, e.g by making the excess fragments useless. But what they are actually doing with this recipe is to reward the big polluters. It's like giving a discount for people who use more energy. Such discounts are fine in other situations, but not when it comes to pollution.

 

[Arthus]

3 in 1 quest... reward same as for single (8 fights or negotiations) quest...

 

[Karvest]

previous quest has only one objective, probably they just copypasted wrong number.

 

[Arthus]

Afterwards there's also 1 objective as i've heard.
Strange

 

[DeletedUser3308]

Edit Marindor: English only, please.

 

[ekarat]

It assumes "an active crafter"
if you are a player like myself there is always something to craft on each rotation. and sometimes more than 1.

For example: a good time booster, a pet food and a combat buildig, then I want them all.
If it's all junk, there is always a guaranteed small or big timebooster to craft

off course this assumes that you have the ability to check al recipes (of the rotation sucks according to your RL schedul, you can pay 50 diamonds to reset the scedule to something that does fit in your scedule)

When we look at "does the spire give too much" you have to look at it from an active perspective, for anyone who crafts the occasional thingy al;most anything is to much, but when we look at what is realistically possible IF you want to. it actually gives less spellfragments than you could use.

I've been trying for four months to figure out what the groupthink (ie hidden assumptions that are never spoken) is for crafting. I thought I was an active crafter, but apparently not.

It never occurred to me that people would craft timeboosters (except for ones that only use spell fragments). I mean, they're flexible and can be turned into almost anything (I've just used them on an armory to catch up on orcs when I didn't have enough), and it's great QoL, but it feels expensive for what you get.

The exception are the time boosters that only take spell fragments. I've been thinking of recipes that only take spell fragments as "free" since my limiting factor has been CC spells.

But there are a lot of assumptions in the analysis.

Gold spire fellowships are rare. 10 this week on my server. I had to join a sister FS for 3 months to get into a gold spire FS. Now that I am, I'm readjusting -- I am getting more CCs than I was before, so I need to figure out the balance for that. More supply means lowering the bar for what is worth crafting. Still adjusting.

Also, I sometimes get MM spells in the MA (tournaments are stingy on MM spells). Though I run at least 80-90% CCs with 10-20% MM spells. I had them on all the time on my sentients for chapter 15. But now that's over, and I don't need them on every day.

Finally, I do have a beef with the claim that it is easy to get all 4 crafting periods / day. My schedule is not regular enough to have a time that always works. Right now, I have it reset at 9:45 AM, which means I can easily check before going to sleep, but some mornings are busy enough that I don't have time to log in. It varies.

 

[Lovec Krys]

@ekarat You don't need to be in gold FS for maximum CCs from Spire. Max. CCs count is one point below gold (11th gate).
And even if you're in a weaker FS, you still could go to the top yourself to boost your CCs production by placing several libraries (no longer available since Library removal).

 

[ekarat]

The new chest values!

Quick analysis of these values.

Greedy choice of best ratio first gives (denoting the chest with the raw cost, without prize essence):
113 -> 137 -> 45 -> 79 -> 24 -> 64 -> 57 -> 36 -> 33

Over 84 chests, each combination should come up once (ie best chest comes up 28 times, 2nd best 21 times without the best one present, down to 1 time for the worst combination of the worst 3 chests), giving an expected output of 291 over a cost of 6555, or .04439 output/cost.

We can adjust for the cost of the chest by taking the difference between what we get and what we expect based on what we spend.
Ordering by (output) - (expected ratio) * (cost) switches the last 4 chests around to:
113 -> 137 -> 45 -> 79 -> 24 -> 36 -> 64 -> 33 -> 57

Over a cycle of 84 chests, this gives an expected output of 288 (or 3 fewer feathers), but with a reduced expected cost of 6481, for .04444 output/cost. In other words, you get fewer feathers, but you paid less for those feathers by picking cheaper chests.

This is stable when the expected ratio is updated, meaning this algorithm has reached a stable solution.

Note 1: While there is a difference between stability and optimality, I doubt that is relevant here.
Note 2: That there is only a 0.1% difference (that is .001 fractional difference) in efficiency between the naive "best ratio" solution and the stable solution. Previous events have diverged more because of a really good chest that is no longer present.

 

[little bee]

@ekarat We didn't mean to suggest that it is easy to check all 4 rotations, just that it is quite realistic to craft 4 recipies without timebosters.

You are of course right, that our assumptions have been extremly focused on top players. However, for casuals, the library plays an even greater role in ruining the balance between fragments and CCs and thus in stockpiling fragments. Let me try to make some calculations for less active players:

Lets assume you are in a silver medal fellowship and regularly finish the High Halls. Then you will get an average 9800 fragments and 19 CCs (12 from multi and 7 from chests) per week from the spire itself. For a 300:1 ratio you need another 14 CCs which is 50% of a lv. 5 MA max. production. With just one library you will have 13475 fragments and 26 CCs. So now, you need 19 CCs from the MA. With 2 libraries you have 17150 fragments and 33 CCs and need an other 24 CCs from the MA. Once again, it is impossible to keep up CCs production for 3 or more libraries forcing you to stockpile fragments.

Now lets assume an even less active player, finishing only the Gate in an copper medal fellowship. This player will get only 4900 fragments and 8 CCs from the spire. Compare that to 3675 fragments and 7 CCs per library. To keep the right balance would take 8 CCs from the MA without a library and 5,25 more for each library. And that is quite a lot for such a player.

 

[Karvest]

Those who have more than 1 library don't care about fragments/CC balance, they just want more CCs and/or free MA queue for MMs.

 

[ekarat]

@ekarat You don't need to be in gold FS for maximum CCs from Spire. Max. CCs count is one point below gold (11th gate).
And even if you're in a weaker FS, you still could go to the top yourself to boost your CCs production by placing several libraries (no longer available since Library removal).

Did you just give me advice to go to the top of the spire to win libraries that are no longer available (and that you yourself said are no longer available)?

For reference, I always go to the top of the spire, and I've only won 1 library ever.

And I'm pretty sure I need FS contribution to win more CCs from the spire, unless I'm horribly misunderstanding that mechanic (which is possible, since the Spire didn't exist when I quit the game and I only came back 4 months ago -- also why I only have 1 library). Some of the prizes (mostly CC spells) are locked unless both your participation and total FS participation are over a certain level, so if you go to the top in a weaker FS, you won't win all the CC spells?

 

[Karvest]

All FS rewards are locked by both yours and FS contribution.

 

[ekarat]

@ekarat We didn't mean to suggest that it is easy to check all 4 rotations, just that it is quite realistic to craft 4 recipies without timebosters.

You are of course right, that our assumptions have been extremly focused on top players. However, for casuals, the library plays an even greater role in ruining the balance between fragments and CCs and thus in stockpiling fragments. Let me try to make some calculations for less active players:

Lets assume you are in a silver medal fellowship and regularly finish the High Halls. Then you will get an average 9800 fragments and 19 CCs (12 from multi and 7 from chests) per week from the spire itself. For a 300:1 ratio you need another 14 CCs which is 50% of a lv. 5 MA max. production. With just one library you will have 13475 fragments and 26 CCs. So now, you need 19 CCs from the MA. With 2 libraries you have 17150 fragments and 33 CCs and need an other 24 CCs from the MA. Once again, it is impossible to keep up CCs production for 3 or more libraries forcing you to stockpile fragments.

Now lets assume an even less active player, finishing only the Gate in an copper medal fellowship. This player will get only 4900 fragments and 8 CCs from the spire. Compare that to 3675 fragments and 7 CCs per library. To keep the right balance would take 8 CCs from the MA without a library and 5,25 more for each library. And that is quite a lot for such a player.

Is there any way to interpret this as anything other than extremely insulting? I find this attitude and approach to be completely unhelpful, especially since:

1) Multiple libraries are no longer available.
2) I have a huge stockpile of fragments, despite never having more than 1 library.

 

[little bee]

Is there any way to interpret this as anything other than extremely insulting? I find this attitude and approach to be completely unhelpful, especially since:
1) Multiple libraries are no longer available.
2) I have a huge stockpile of fragments, despite never having more than 1 library.

Multiple libraries are still available because a huge amount of them have already been placed in game. My calculations are supposed to show that the stockpiles are almost exclusively caused by the library. Therefore increasing the demand for fragments will increase the demand for libraries and prevent these set from being deleted.

If you are really stockpiling fragments despite having only one library and a lv. 5 MA running 24/7 and producing mostly CCs, then you are almost certainly either regularly outperforming your fellowship (thus getting the fragments as individual rewards but not the CCs from multiplayer) or you are heavily favoring recipies that need especially many CCs (like petfood and military boosts) while ignoring the more balanced crafts (like timeboosters). Quite likely you are doing both.

 

[ekarat]

Multiple libraries are still available because a huge amount of them have already been placed in game. My calculations are supposed to show that the stockpiles are almost exclusively caused by the library. Therefore increasing the demand for fragments will increase the demand for libraries and prevent these set from being deleted.

If you are really stockpiling fragments despite having only one library and a lv. 5 MA running 24/7 and producing mostly CCs, then you are almost certainly either regularly outperforming your fellowship (thus getting the fragments as individual rewards but not the CCs from multiplayer) or you are heavily favoring recipies that need especially many CCs (like petfood and military boosts) while ignoring the more balanced crafts (like timeboosters). Quite likely you are doing both.

Fair. Both are true. I was getting to the top of the spire when the FS rewards weren't, but I just switched to a gold spire FS, so that equation is changing. I have also been favoring military boosts and pet food as the essential crafts, since CCs were limited. In other words, I have also been letting the crafter go idle if I don't like any of the choices, since CCs were limited. On the other hand, I'm not the only person for whom this is true, since only 10 FS got gold spire on my FS this past week.

I will, however, pick one nit and say that "no longer available" means you can't get new ones, not that the old ones disappeared. (That's certainly what I meant when I said it.) And that's certainly relevant for me.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Fair. Both are true. I was getting to the top of the spire when the FS rewards weren't, but I just switched to a gold spire FS, so that equation is changing. I have also been favoring military boosts and pet food as the essential crafts, since CCs were limited. In other words, I have also been letting the crafter go idle if I don't like any of the choices, since CCs were limited. On the other hand, I'm not the only person for whom this is true, since only 10 FS got gold spire on my FS this past week.

I will, however, pick one nit and say that "no longer available" means you can't get new ones, not that the old ones disappeared. (That's certainly what I meant when I said it.) And that's certainly relevant for me.

true but thats not the fault of the spire.
The question is "does the spire give too much spellfragments.
and the answer to that is no, it's either the libraries or other choices you make tham lets the pile grow. for example you can go to the top of the spire but choose to keep your magic academy at level 2.

but if you maximise crafting you need more spellfragments than the spire can provide

It makes sense that things pile up if you do not maximise it's use.