Mastery Points

[ToothGnasher]

@angryde @mvnla2

I have some results concerning mastery points. I’ve been tracking about hourly for 4 hours while they “self play“.

I started Captn(7), Paladin(7) and Wizard(7). In Star Reef Castle the trio has been gaining about 1100 snoutlings an hour – I’m sure it could be made higher.

I notice that EACH of those birds has grown exactly the same amount of mastery points – about 440 / hour (39% of the snoutlings gained). At this rate, they’ll be level 8 before I wake up tomorrow morning. I’ll change the mix to see if bird rank changes accrual rate – but it probably doesn’t.

It would take approximately 20 days of play at 6 hours per day to achieve level 10 for ONE “hat” per each bird (30 levels total).

[MVNLA2]

@toothgnasher — I use auto-play, but not the continuous “self-play”, if that is different. Would like to know how many points you’re getting per battle.

[ToothGnasher]

@mvnla2 “Self Play” = auto play + fully automated (no human interaction) replaying. I should be able to answer your question about points per battle when I get home and see how many times the self play has re-run. Note that not all battles end with killing Whiz Pig (as I show in the YouTube video) and I have no simple way to determine the ratio.

I do know that when I was paying attention each completed Star Reef Castle was worth about 135 snoutlings which by my empirical calculation works out to 52 experience points.

It would be interesting to see if I get more or less mastery depending on the piggy battled vs the snoutlings accrued. If you know of an auto-playable battle that accrues more than about 52 experience points, I’d be interested to give it a try. My goal now is to get my birds to level 10 while I sleep :-)

[MVNLA2]

@toothgnasher — By 52 experience points do you mean 52 mastery points?
That seems comparable to my data, but I haven’t really done the analysis.

[angryde]

@mvnla. I’ve been getting those averages with a 37-9-8-8 combo (Samurai-Wizard-Druid). Currently, I’m substituting either Spies/Tricksters for Samurai in an effort to get both of those classes up to level 8.

[Bubbley]

@mvnla2 I am also trying to level up thunderbird and skulkers. They would not be my paired choice for SRC however just tried it. Without bonus I got 49 for each bird. Paladin 9 Thunderbird 8 Skulkers 8.

Strangely enough I have just replayed twice. Once with supposed bonus and received 14 points per bird and once without bonus which achieved 56 points per bird!

Tried again. With bonus 28 points per bird, without bonus 63 points per bird.

Ok third time. With bonus 35 without bonus 84.

Is this the standard pattern and bonus is irrelavent once you reach level 37?

Anyone found something similar?

[angryde]

@toothgnasher. Really, really good vid there, bro. I’m WELL impressed with your dedication to the ‘epic’ farm! Have you ever considered a career in radio and/or professional Toobing..? You’ve certainly got the voice for it!

[ToothGnasher]

@mvnla2

By 52 experience points do you mean 52 mastery points?

yes, that’s what I meant. After looking at the data, the total snoutlings per SUCCESSFUL battle at StarReefCastle should be between 123 and about 135

I looked at the data last night and discovered that my average snoutlings-per-battle in StarReefCastle was a paltry 50 in 150 replays. That means it beat whiz pig on average 40% of the time. I let it run while I slept and it leveled up my Captn to 8. Because of the nature of the playback, sometimes battles don’t complete, and sometimes they don’t restart so there may have been fewer than 150 total battles started.

This morning I switched to Bard5, Trickster6, Wizard7. I also allowed a bit more replay time (so each cycle is slower). Wizard and Trickster both have regenerate sets. Bard was very close to level 6. I just checked and the accrual rate is slower, but Bard is almost level 6.

Over 22 hours, I netted a total of 27000 mastery points, and 27000 snoutlings! Those 27000 snoutlings would have cost me $52 to buy them and all I did was sleep. The mastery points would have required 54 500-point upgrades costing me another $10 in snoutlings. So in short, my $9 purchase of the mouse-record/replay program netted me $62 real dollars worth of added game value… less the cost of electricity, of course!

@angryde Thanks for your praise about the video. I feel it’s my worst overall as I’ve been teaching night-photography online and through videos for quite a while. I’ll probably replace my first ABE video with one that has some graphics, notes, and fewer mis-statements.

[CalvinJJ2009]

I’m fairly new to boards, so does anyone feel like taking a moment to explain “self play”? How do you get it fully automated? Can this be done from the iPad? Thanks

[ToothGnasher]

@bubbley Have you tried playing SRC with just two birds? I wonder if the number of awarded mastery points would increase.

ALL: I assume you are determining mastery points gained from the nest. E.g. pick a bird, hold the “scale” at the lower left and see how many points were reduced for the next level since the last time. Is there another way?

[ToothGnasher]

@calvinjj2009 Please see my YouTube video. Short answer, no, you can’t automate the iPad in anyway that I’m aware of. However, you can click the little circle in the lower right to get it to “auto-play” – that is, battle for you while you watch TV.

Auto-play lasts for the duration of the battle and then you have to take some action like accept the “Consolation Prize”, spin the wheel, etc. The “Self Play” that I’m talking about automates the whole process. Again, details are in the video and the notes for the video.

[CalvinJJ2009]

@toothgnasher thanks for sharing. I think I will look into that. My little boy uses potions like they are going out of style

[ToothGnasher]

I threw together a spreadsheet to find out how much pursuit of Mastery costs… Here you go.

Here is a little explanation:
The costs are cumulative. For example the cost to increase one bird’s class from level 1 to 5 is $3.14. To increase a bird+class to level 10, you’d need 282 upgrades for THAT CLASS at the Mighty Eagle Dojo (half as many if using the 75 LC upgrades).

The totals at the bottom are to upgrade all birds to level 10 via the three different methods. Obviously the cheapest way is to spend 75 LC whenever it presents itself since that upgrades 5 birds and 5 classes by 1000 all at once.

I used the ratio of 85 snoutlings per 500 point snoutling upgrade. And the cost per snoutling is computed from the $44.95 for 1200 Lucky Coins -> Kings Treasure Chest of 17500 snoutlings for 1000 Lucky coins. That is, Lucky Coins cost 3.6 cents each ($0.036), Snoutlings cost 0.21 cents each ($0.0021)

If you’re keeping count, it will cost 10875 Lucky Coins using the 75 LC option and – that’s just for Bird upgrades and doesn’t include buying some of the bird classes! In snoutlings, the total would be 599,250 – but since new single class upgrades only come around every 3 hours, you might get a little bored waiting for the chance to upgrade all classes of all birds via the snoutling route.

Last update to the chart is noted on the chart.

[burbman]

I think I found a flaw it your chart. It appears that you are assuming that the next level of Mastery is obtained upon the passing of the delta between levels, but it is actually a cumulative total, in that the bar is reset at zero each time a threshold is reached. I think you will find that it would cost quite a bit more to reach the target than you originally calculated.

That said, there is significant mastery/LC/Snoutlings available for free within the game. So sure, you could spend a considerable amount of real money to have the strongest lineup possible right out of the box, but I cannot imagine too many players taking that approach.

To turn your calculation on its ear, I can earn ~135 Snouts per 3.5min in SRC. reversing the math, that means I get paid roughly $4.86/hr to hit the replay button while watching television

[ToothGnasher]

@burbman It looks like you are correct. The “Points” are the additional points needed. I revised the chart!

I can’t generate snoutlings as fast as you are. My best efforts so far generate 1440 snoutlings/hour with 520 mastery points. That’s $3.45 worth of gains per hour – but I’m not doing anything except letting my emulator run.

If only I could find a way to generate lucky coins… I’d be set.

[GrauGeist]

I’m pretty sure you simply need to look at the cost of purchasing 50,000 Mastery per class.

Also, Snoutlings should be cheaper, perhaps 75 per 500, as the tickets get punched each week, for larger discount.

[ToothGnasher]

@graugeist as @burbman pointed out, the Needed mastery points are cumulative so you need 136840 mastery points per bird per class (~600000 total). It works out to 282 upgrades per bird/class.

For someone who just started, the total snoutlings needed would be 705,000 (100 snoutlings per upgrade). You have to play the game for 12 weeks to creep up to a discount of 15%. So if you did NO upgrades until your twelfth week, the total from then on would be ~600,000 snoutlings.

Not everyone here has been playing that long.

Of course you get some mastery without spending snoutlings. In my tests the best I’m getting is about 500 mastery per hour for 3 birds at once. I could definitely get more by playing manually… and do. But even those rates require that my birds be of sufficient level with strong enough weapons and off-hand items.

[GrauGeist]

The chart keeps changing. I can’t keep up. :D

[dr_ishmael]

You’re still not adding the mastery points correctly. The total for rank 4 should be 24 + 1,199 + 2,499 = 3,722. The formula should be adding the cell above and the cell to the left, i.e. the total for the previous rank + the points for the current rank. The grand total for rank 10 is 136,816.

[ToothGnasher]

@dr_ishmael Thanks for noticing that… it appears the rest of the data was correct, however. I’ve updated the chart above once again.

Here is another interesting finding… I found that running Desert Pig Castle but stopping before killing Porky is netting me fewer snoutlings per hour, but more mastery with my current combo.

SRC = Star Reef Castle
DPC = Desert Pig Castle

[dr_ishmael]

@toothgnasher You’d probably see a similar effect if you skipped WizPig on SRC, for two reasons.

1. He gives the same amount of mastery (when he drops it) as the other “big” pigs in the castle – i.e. Pyropig, Lightning Pig, Nature Pig, Necromancer, and Banshee – but takes longer to defeat than the other waves.
2. Sitting through the victory screen and loot wheel takes a few seconds where you’re not earning mastery.

Restarting when you reach Porky is eliminating both of those time-wasting effects for DPC.

However, SRC still might not reach the same rate as DPC for a different reason: DPC has no undead. Allowing an undead to respawn wastes a lot of time (at least 1 additional turn), and the auto-play is pretty stupid about letting that happen on SRC wave 4.

It would be interesting to see your data on SRC-sans-WizPig, both with the same team you used on DPC and with your previous best SRC team.

[burbman]

One thing I just noticed with regard to Mastery is that it does not appear that excess mastery beyond leveling up applies toward the next level. I just leveled up from 8 to 9 with my lightning bird by purchasing a snoutling 500 point upgrade in the dojo. I am 99% certain that I did not have exactly 500 points to go to reach the next level (what are the odds of that happening?), but now I have 49,999 needed to get to level 10. The only conclusion I can take from this is that the overage was disregarded, and not applied to the amount needed to get to the subsequent level. I have a few other birds that are near leveling up, so I will try to confirm this finding if I remember to look.

[MVNLA2]

@Burbman — Actually, I’ve been creating a spreadsheet (!!) to track mastery, etc. Excess mastery does apply towards the next level. Having exactly 499 point left to level up is not as uncommon as you think if you have not been using that bird much. Right now I have 8 birds with xx99 left to next level. Unless I use them, which I rarely do, they will level up exactly with 500 from the Dojo.

[burbman]

I would take your word for it @mvnla2, but I can’t resist. My Bard only needs 897 to get to level 9. With a little luck, I should see two dojo upgrades for her in the next day or so. When that happens, I can either confirm or deny my previous conclusion.

[MVNLA2]

@Burbman — Confirming data is always good. :)