@winkwink
I stand corrected! After pretty extensive testing over the past couple of days, I have to concur that cave 17-5 yields more mastery per run than 13-5. However, it also yields slightly less mastery per minute (and both 17-5 and 13-5 are still considerably worse on a per-minute basis than 9-5).
Here are the details of my work:
– I autoplayed each of the three cave levels mentioned above ten times each, with four different combinations of two birds (without borrowing any buddy birds, for various reasons). Those combinations were: 1) Paladin/Capt’n; 2) Seadog/Spies; 3) Samurai/Bard; and 4) Paladin/Treasure Hunters.
(Note that I tried a few other combos, but they either couldn’t make it through cave 17-5 on autoplay, or froze too often to record proper data.)
– Average time to complete (adding 30 seconds for time spent in between runs) came out as:
9-5: 2:22
13-5: 2:59
17-5: 3:32
– Average mastery per bird per attempt for the three levels came out as:
9-5: 118.8
13-5: 110.5
17-5: 129.6
– Therefore, average mastery per bird per minute came out as:
9-5: 50.2
13-5: 37.0
17-5: 36.7
– I also tracked Snoutput. Here are the numbers per attempt:
9-5: 40.0
13-5: 60.5
17-5: 51.1
– And Snouts per minute:
9-5: 16.9
13-5: 20.3
17-5: 14.5
I’m not sure if this is really a large enough sample to draw any concrete conclusions, but it falls more or less in line with what we already thought we knew, except for the fact that 17-5 produces more mastery per run than 13-5. I think it bears further testing, but I can’t commit to being the one to do it.
At the end of the day, if you’re able to have your phone/tablet nearby, so you can constantly spin the reward wheel when it appears, and start new attempts accordingly, it seems clear to me that 9-5 remains the best place to grind mastery.
However, if your ability to spin the wheel and start new runs is limited for whatever reason, AND if your birds are strong enough to get through it on autoplay, then 17-5 seems like the better choice.
I should mention that if your ability to grind on autoplay is VERY limited, then Mouth Pool is probably even better than all of the options above. While it certainly produces less mastery (both per-attempt, and per-minute), it also produces a lot more Snoutlings (both per-attempt and per-minute), so it’s a good way to maintain a healthy supply of Snoutlings to continue fueling visits to Mighty Eagle’s Dojo, which remains the best mastery source of all.
(To that last point, I kept very careful track of mastery sources during the grind from M60 to M70, and found that despite very diligent daily grinding, only about 1/3 of my total mastery points came from that grinding. Roughly 1/2 came from the dojo, and the rest from events.)
Finally, a disclaimers regarding Mouth Pool:
– If you started playing the game relatively recently, Mouth Pool is not going to be nearly as easy to grind on autoplay. The pigs I face there are level 14. If you are a more recent player, the pigs you face will probably be closer to level 35 or 40 if not higher, which makes it almost impossible to autoplay and still produce a lot of Snoutlings (because the Spirit Caller will be much harder for your birds to knock out before he runs away in each wave, and therefore you won’t get the ten extra snouts per wave that form the basis for my comments above).
