Mastery Points

[Sutekh137]

@burbman

You mean enchant with shards? Can’t we just use any items for that? I usually just find whichever item I still have 15,000+ of and let my finger ride the green plus sign until I reach the spot where I don’t have the shards for it (which is most of the time).

Do “higher level” items run the bar up faster? Never noticed, and I am still well over 10,000 on enough items that no matter what Rovio throws our way I will never run out. They will never let our massive hoards of items be worth anything, because that would forego the chance to squeeze more LC out of folks. Having 15,000 pieces of wood will never mean a thing, I can almost guarantee it.

Thanks,
sutekh137

[burbman]

Yes, Squarewood, rainbow shells, and metal bars run the enchantment meter up much faster than lower level items. To the extent that it is advantageous to craft lesser items up to the higher level before using to enchant.

[Sutekh137]

@burbman

Cool, good to know! If I get bored I will fabricate some Squarewood and Shells…

Thanks,
sutekh137

[Maxx_Matt]

I read your arguments and numbers observed about mastery points distribution over the caves. I’d like to grind harder caves in order to rump up quickly at least my brand new samurai elite and lightning/rainbird elite too.

As far as I got from your reasoning, I should always pick up the highest cave that I can autoplay with my two birds, maybe opting, if I’m in doubt, for the One with the highest Number of enemies. Actually, following this reasoning I’m waving from 11-8 ti 12-3. My birds are at M46 and autoplaying 13-5, for example, doesn’t guarantee a sure win.

What do you think?

[Sutekh137]

@maxxmatt

Your logic seems sound to me, but @burbman is one of the experts…

I am surprised you can autoplay up that high with just M46, I still can’t guarantee wins in Cave 11, depending on the bird pairing.

Thanks,
sutekh137

[Maxx_Matt]

oh well, not with any birds’ pairing of course.
All’ birds are L80 now and that slightly improve winning chances compared with my old L70 grinding sessions.

I paired up SamuraiElite with MageElite today and I fail 13-5 only because sometimes A.I. started using secondary skills instead of kicking Bruges asses. I suppose that weapons’ choice helped me a lot: L71/E6 Dragon Breath and L71/E5 lightning set.

If I want a sure win I should add an healer to the team like Paladin nor Rainbird.

My L53 Paladin could wipe any caves up to 15/16 paired with LightningChuck because he doesn’t use secondary abilities at all and chuck’s One is and additional kick/heal from Paladin.

If they Will disabile secondary skills in samurai or other beaters when autoplaying, chances of winning Will rise up for other couples, too.

[Sutekh137]

@maxxmatt

I doubt they will ever make a smarter (or customizable) auto-play setup — but man that would sure be nice! As you say, just being able to turn off secondaries would make a huge difference, especially when you have nice weapons for your birds and can win with pure offense.

Thanks,
sutekh137

[burbman]

@maxxmatt – The information about grinding the highest cave you can autoplay is outdated. I grind for mastery in the five wave levels in cave 9 (9-3, 9-5, 9-7, or 9-9). These caves pay out more mastery than the others because more pigs continue to enter the battle. No autoplayable higher cave that I have tested pays more mastery per battle. (Cave 13-5 is close, but as you said, can only be autoplayed with the strongest classes, caves much higher than that cannot be autoplayed)

[Maxx_Matt]

@burbman
describe me your plan: due to the fact that new pigs come out only every two rounds and your birds are much stronger than them, you can wipe the board easily and quickly, without abusing “the recurring pig effect”.

have you “adjusted” or deflated your team in order to kill a only a single pig Every round, keeping the screen always full of them? if you are Simply iterating the winning routine without slowing the game to its maximum, you are not abusing the effect you suggested at all.

I wipe caves 9 (3/5/7/9) with pitpocketing bomb and lightning Chuck when I want to do your routine. any other strong combination of birds, doesn’t let pigs Survive for a Long time. not more than 2 turba each wave due to multiple targets weapons’

is your plan different?

[Pointless]

@maxxmatt Cave 9 involves “dumbing down” your Birds to reap the maximum Mastery benefits. Unequip Elites and definiteley steer away from AoE or Splash damage. Try and have your Team hit only one enemy each attack, thereby giving those Pigs more opportunity to enter each Wave.

[bchild]

For Cave 9 (3/5/7/8/9) I understand the reasoning behind “dumbing down” your birds and using Bomb with pickpocket. Would this method yield a higher mastery/minute than if you were to autoplay the level without trying to maximize the number of pigs appearing?

My runs on 9-7 resulted in an average of 120 mastery every 2.5 minutes. I was using Tbird and Pirate and averaged 3 extra pigs appearing per run.

[Anonymous]

I’m going to do some testing tonight, comparing grinding cave 9 with my usual strong gear, vs. using weaker and unenchanted. Will report back. Any suggestions/requests for classes, specific gear, etc.?

[burbman]

@maxxmatt – my approach to cave nine is to just play what I brought. Some teams clear the level in very short order, others can play for five or more minutes per battle. Either way, I have found that these battles on average pay out more mastery per play than any others, cave effects just add to this. All of my classes need mastery, so I am not too worried about which ones to play to maximize effects. On a mastery per minute basis, I would venture to guess that Wizard/Spies would do very well here, my current team of knight/cleric tends to buff a bit more, and increases the opponent count into the mid 30’s per battle getting more mastery per play as a result.

In my opinion, since I do not play arena, it is better to level all classes within a single bird family up evenly until max can be reached for all at nearly the same time, as this keeps the dojo from becoming diluted, and maximizes the value of mastery earned through events and via the calendar. Other players may have a “go to” team that they prefer to level up quickly and allow other classes to trail behind. Deciding which is better is really up to the individual player.

[Sutekh137]

@burbman

I have embraced your idea of spreading out the mastery gains. First of all, your ten-week claim appears to be true, so whatever you do, you are on to something. *smile* Yes, if I only primarily use the same five classes across my birds (and I do: Paladin/Wizard/Bard/Seadog/Spies) I can sprint to the finish with them, but it really does make large event gains that much diminished in value. My second wave of favorite classes would probably be Samurai/ArchMage/Witch/Berserker/Marksmen, mainly because Samurai and Marksmen are good at dealing with ninjas.

And even if you do have some faves, there is nothing stopping you from, say, ramping them up to mastery 77 or so. That leaves a buffer for event rewards to be more meaningful/fruitful while giving your favorite classes more of a buff. Best of both worlds.

I am not sure what you mean by “keeps the Dojo from being diluted”, though. The more classes you keep in play means the choices will be MORE diluted — 30 choices instead of fewer and fewer. In fact, that is a reason to max out specific birds more quickly. Once I am down to two or three birds, they ramp up quickly until the last two (and of course the last one) go MUCH more quickly. Can you explain what you mean by your dilution comment? Everything you have said so far makes sense such that I am emulating it, but that point isn’t quite clicking with me…

Thanks,
sutekh137

[burbman]

@sutekh137
By diluting the Dojo, I refer to the percentage chance of getting a snoutling offer as opposed to one for LC. There are a total of 6 LC offers and 30 Snout offers to begin with. If you take Snout offers off the table without also removing an LC offer, you reduce the number of snout offers per reset. The effect is not too severe at first, but compounds as the grind continues.

Take the scenarios to the extremes – one in which you have five classes remaining, one for each bird, in that case you then have a greater chance of an LC offer than a snout offer (6 LC vs. 5 snout) Compare that to having five classes of the same bird remaining where there would only be two potential LC offers, so you are guaranteed to have a snout offer available at all times.

Add to that my suspicion that LC offers are more highly weighted than snout offers, and I prefer to keep the playing field tilting in my favor by removing whole families at the same time.

[Sutekh137]

@burbman

Has that been confirmed?

I have leveled up my birds to max mastery, what, three times now, and I never noticed fewer snoutling choices as I maxed birds out (not even all in the same family, usually not, in fact). Even when I was down to just one or two classes for each bird, I would periodically run counts and was still getting 5+ snoutling buys regularly while previously having plenty of occasions where I would get only 2-3 buys back when I had a lot of birds/classes still in play.

I understand your mathematics, and it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean the mathematical model for how Rovio chooses is fully understood. That’s why I assume someone did the empirical data gathering both ways? As I said, I know getting down to just three or four classes (even across four birds) seemed to make the maxing out of those final classes FASTER for me, not slower — I was still getting plenty of snoutling choices and they were concentrated on just a few classes, thereby maximizing them faster (until the final bird where it is obviously the fastest).

Your limit case cannot be disputed, though. So, if I get down to just five classes for one bird, I should be able to maximize them all at once, correct? Is that what we have seen? Are you advancing all of your birds except one? (I know you have mentioned your methodology, but I forget…)

This is all anecdotal, but all I can tell you is that in the middle of the grind it seemed like I wasn’t getting anywhere, but once I got down to 5-10 classes, I was done in less than a week (granted, I was also applying the knowledge you helped me realize — this was for getting to M70). I would have trips to the Dojo where I would be able to advance the same bird 3-4 times in one trip. I always assumed the probability was just “snoutling offer vs. LC offer after a number of snoutling offers display”, not a more elaborate choice of now MANY snoutling offers there were vs LC offers.

I have no problem taking some figures once I get down to just a few classes left, and I will make sure to keep them across all birds. I will shoot for getting down to just five classes, one for each bird, and then see how many snoutling offers I manage on each Dojo trip. At least, I’ll TRY to remember to do that. In fact, the effect you are talking about should already be appreciable once only 10 or so classes are maxed out. Average number of snoutling buys should go down to 5-6 instead of 6-7, I would think… I suppose I should start logging now!

In the meantime, I am sure you can point me to posts among the 85 pages of this thread that confirm I am simply mis-remembering or biased in my perspective… *smile*

Thanks,
sutekh137

[burbman]

@sutekh137
I can only answer a couple of the questions above categorically, and that is if all the classes remaining that need mastery are in the same bird family, I do, for sure, get guaranteed snoutling offers until I exhaust all mastery needs. This way I only need to focus on grinding 24 classes instead of the full 30. This go around, it is the blues who are left to collect mastery only from events, calendar and dojo offers (plus any event levels that require use of blue). Typically this family falls 2-3 mastery levels behind the rest of the flock.

The problem with trying to solve any of the equations that you alluded to above is that the testing opportunities are very limited. I do know that last go round, I left matilda behind, and when I got to the final level of mastery, I maxed out full families at a time. For each family of birds taken off the board, I saw dojo offers per reset increase slightly to the point where when I had only two families left, I was seeing 9-10 offers. Naturally that did not last very long before I was down to just her and received unlimited offers.

[Sutekh137]

@burbman

Great info!

OK, I am going to go in the other direction, sort of. I will keep all birds in play, with fewer and fewer classes over time (I will max out classes, but not all for any given bird). I am going to keep a spreadsheet of data covering: date, number of snoutling buys per Dojo trip, number of maxed classes at the time, and number of fully maxed birds at the time. And I will leave Matilda behind, because, hey, why not? I can still take advantage of maxing her out at the end.

I should see my Dojo averages go down when number of maxed classes goes up but number of maxed birds remains at zero. And then once I start maxing out birds in full, I should see the average number of snoutling buys go up again. Yes?

I won’t probably be able to log every Dojo trip I do, but should be able to get enough data points within each scenario to make a reasonable conclusion.

Is it possible that everything you say leads to periods of more snoutling buys, but that there is a minimum on how many snoutling buys there are in the other direction (e.g. my poorly-advanced team — for SCIENCE! *smile*)? That would cover your clear empirical results and take-it-to-the-limit scenarios but would also cover my anecdotal, “It doesn’t appreciably get below 6.5” experience. Your way is obviously the way to go to maximize upside, but perhaps the downside isn’t as pronounced as the math would dictate.

My data should tell the tale. Heck, I might even buy LC — just so I can have more Dojo trips — in the event I have periods where I need to amp up data points for a particular scenario (and ability to get data logged).

(You are making me care about the grind… I really should hate you for that given my railing against Rovio’s lack of “real” enhancements to Epic! *smile*)

Thanks,
sutekh137

[burbman]

Gotta make the game fun somehow!

[Anonymous]

@sutekh137
“And even if you do have some faves, there is nothing stopping you from, say, ramping them up to mastery 77 or so. That leaves a buffer for event rewards to be more meaningful/fruitful while giving your favorite classes more of a buff. Best of both worlds.”

This is going to be my approach for the push to M80. My Witch and Rogues are up to M74 now. Once I get them up to M76, I’ll start grinding LBird, TBird, Paladin, Stone Guard, Capt’n, Marksmen, and Skulkers. Then, once those get to M77 (by which time I assume dojo buys and events will have gotten Witch/Rogues to M78 or so), I’ll start filling in the rest (and will choose which bird to leave for last based on who needs the most grinding at that time).

@burbman @sutekh137
My take on the LCs vs. Snouts dojo offer debate is that each slot that opens has roughly a 25% chance to be an LC offer, and 75% to be a Snoutling offer. Then, once that’s determined, it’s an even distribution of the available choices left. This is obviously based on anecdotal “evidence,” but I don’t ever recall feeling like I was getting less Snoutling offers as my various classes reached previous mastery caps and fell off as options, so it would make sense on that basis.

Some napkin math: If my numbers above are accurate, that would mean an average of 2.25 Snout offers at the beginning of each dojo visit, plus another ~3.5 Snout offers in the rest of the visit, which means ~5.8 total per visit, which is in the range of what people have generally thought for a while.

I’ll try to remember to collect data as much as I can as well, to supplement what you’re doing, @sutekh137.

[Anonymous]

@pointless @burbman @sutekh137 @bchild @maxxmatt

I’ve done some testing in Cave 9 (all results below are from level 7 therein), and I have some interesting results to report. The short version: If you only care about how much mastery you get in a single run, then it does indeed help to weaken your birds by not using your strongest gear. However, if you care about how much mastery you get on a per-minute basis, it’s much better to clear the levels quickly, by using your best items.

Before I get to the details of my research, two notes on methodology:
– I started timing an attempt when I hit the auto-play button, and stopped timing when I hit the reward wheel.
– The per-minute figures for both Snoutlings and mastery include 30 additional seconds to account for the time it takes between runs. If you’re only using two of your own birds, and not borrowing a friends’ bird, then you should modify my numbers by reducing this to around 15 seconds. If you’re borrowing friends’ birds and being choosy about which ones you borrow, then maybe increase this to 45 seconds.

1) In ten runs, I achieved the following stats, with the following birds:
– 3:21 time to complete per attempt
– 48.8 Snoutlings per attempt (12.7 per minute) (includes three wealthy rogues)
– 108.8 mastery per bird per attempt (28.3 per minute)
Bird 1:
Elite Witch L80/M74 (716 power; 2120 attack; 6420 health)
Doom L72/E7 (608 attack)
Demise L62/E5 (1903 health)
Bird 2:
Elite Rogues L80/M74 (882 power; 3381 attack; 6110 health)
RC Robot L72/E7 (972 attack)
Remote Control L62/E10 (1872 health)

2) Same birds, weaker gear:
– 4:55 time per attempt
– 54.7 Snouts per attempt (10.1 per minute) (includes three wealthy rogues)
– 134.9 mastery per attempt (24.9 per minute)
Bird 1:
Elite Witch L80/M74 (598 power; 1485 attack; 6018 health)
Heavenly Scepter L62/E0 (390 attack)
Heavenly Case L72/E0 (1754 health)
Bird 2:
Elite Rogues L80/M74 (626 power; 2189 attack; 5439 health)
The Sling L 62/E0 (624 attack)
Angry Birds Plushes L62/E0 (1248 health)

3) Everyone’s favorite classes:
– 1:27 time per attempt!
– 45.9 Snouts per attempt (23.5 per minute) (includes three wealthy rogues)
– 112.4 mastery per attempt (57.6 per minute!)
Bird 1:
Wizard L80/M71 (637 power; 2526 attack; 4615 health)
Living Lightning L67/E9 (885 attack)
Lightning Tome L52/E10 (637 health)
Bird 2:
Spies L80/M71 (782 power; 2999 attack; 5419 health)
RC Robot L72/E7 (972 attack)
Remote Control L62/E10 (1872 health)

4: Same birds, weaker gear:
– 2:27 time per attempt
– 41.9 Snouts per attempt (14.2 per minute) (includes two wealthy rogues)
– 108.9 mastery per attempt (36.9 per minute)
Bird 1:
Wizard L80/M71 (508 power; 1970 attack; 3829 health)
Phoenix Feather L72/E0 (653 attack)
Phoenix Egg L62/E0 (995 health)
Bird 2:
Spies L80/M71 (555 power; 1942 attack; 4824 health)
The Sling L 62/E0 (624 attack)
Angry Birds Plushes L62/E0 (1248 health)

So, in both cases, the team with the stronger gear was clearly better in terms of per-minute averages. Based on this data, in my opinion, the only way it makes sense to use weaker gear is if there’s a limit to the number of attempts you can actually make. The only meaningful way I can see that being the case, is if you have to borrow friends’ birds in order for auto-play to be successful, and you also have a limited number of friends with strong enough birds for that purpose.

I hope you all find this useful! Feel free to let me know if there are any other tests you’d like me to run (although be aware that it’s going to be a few days before I have another opportunity to do so).

[Pointless]

@poptimus thank you for the data, quite interesting.
My personal thoughts on Cave 9 in general is that it is suited for the “fire and forget” approach, wherein you are not necessarily paying attention to time per battle. Thus the “dumbed down” Bird approach.
If I am able to pay closer attention, or, forbid the tedium, actually play through, I still don’t think 17-5 or 13-5 can be topped. Thanks @bubbley for a semi- confirmation.

Edit…just blasted through a few runs manually. It is close, but I found 17-5 slightly better at 73 M/min vs 9-7 at 63 M/min. Autoplay to follow.

[bchild]

@poptimus
Thank you for your efforts. Results are interesting but in line with what I suspected.

[Maxx_Matt]

SNOUTLINGS/MASTERY SIMULATOR
[number of birds on screen] 7
[birds minimum hitting time (in seconds)] 5s
[pigs minimum hitting time (in seconds)] 15s
[snoutlings gained each bird’s hit] 14
[single game round duration (in seconds)] 20s
[birds hits in each minute] 3
[snoutling gained each minute] 42

GOAL: PLAY 1000 GAME ROUNDS in this farming simulations]
[forecast snoutlings gained in 1000 game rounds] 14000
[forecast minutes needed to complete 1000 game rounds] 333
[forecast hours needed to complete 1000 game rounds] 5.6

[damage done each hit through Skullkers/McCool] 604
[actual pigs level] L36
[average calculated pig life points, first wave, cave 9-5] 1682.9
[rounds needed to kill an average pig] 2.8
[pigs killed until goal reached] 359
[mastery points each kill for pigs level] L36 8
[bonus mastery points pigs on screen] 7
[mastery points gained until goal reached] 5,383.7

TEAM
Skullkers L80/M41
McCool L78/M45
Rainbird L80/M53

– these are simulations done without auto-play
– game awarness isn’t that high aside for optimizing the needed/calculated time between each player interaction with screen.
-I put in italic style the only hypoyhesis of this mini-model. changing these values, the spreadsheet I have in my PC can recalculate the entire outcomes.
– I’m not sure about the “unit of mastery measurement” that I set up (8) but any number read from your evidence is higher, so you could use this calculation as a “minimum benchmark”

MM

[Anonymous]

@maxxmatt
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t understand your last post. Can you explain more?