new to cards, when playing which card?

[Crenshaw]

hi,
i unlock the card feature and now i am not sure, when i should play which card?
there are things to know? or can i freen play what is possible?

thx

[Veny]

Well, not playing really does not bring any advantages (unlike f.e. Wishes that you can abandon and spent resources in hacks, NGU etc.). So yea, feel free to buy cards, uprgade mayo gains, and if i may reccomend, get recycle perk and quirk ASAP (the one that will give you mayo and card cooldown every time you recycle unwanted card).
Also, there will be more cards than mayo - i bet it will always be. So, choose carefuly what card you want to pick - i prefer Adventure power (which is always useful).

[Elenoe]

hmm.. actually.. it's the "hardest" feature there is. The "optimal" way is quite beyond playable, so unlike other features it's hard to tell how "it's best to be played" and everything said here is way to bleed left and right.

So first things first. Cards wiki[ngu-idle.fandom.com] holds very important information about how crappy-hotdamn cards work as well as how tiers affects different types of cards. It's crutial, keep it open.

Second, in that link, in "Tools" chapter there is a link to sheet simulator that can help you plan your strategy.

Cards play like this: you are hard limited by mayo and mayo is heavy timed resource. That will never change. You will always get more cards then what you can afford to cast so you need to choose (and it gets worse, not better). Crappy cards have 0.8-1x efficiency, hot damn 1.2x. Tiers raise efficiency by like 1.5-2x for first tiers. Which means if you are close to get a tier it's a waste to cast lower tier cards no matter what quality.

That said, the "optimal" long term strategy would consist of not playing cards at all. Wait until you get high tiers, save all mayo and then just cast every single crappy card you can because that would get you much more bonuses/mayo then anything else.

The wasteful way (everyone takes) is to set some complicated strategy which quality of what card to cast to keep statistical balance between mayo generated and spent (see the sheet above, that's what it's for) while following any number of additional rules to make it "more efficient" and convince yourself you are not loosing that much compared to "optimal" way... sometimes the convincing even works.

The overall strategy I use to keep my sanity... save mayo first and keep levels around 40. You really want at least first few extra tiers, they make a big difference at start (consult the wiki). And then cast anything good+ as it comes and toss everything else away. Keeping card number at 0.

You can try to use the sheet to "plan" different quality for different cards but it won't make that much difference in long run anyway (and if you wanted to be efficient you wouldn't had spent all that mayo on low tiers at all).

Don't ever spend AP for pens. Mayo infusers are actually good once you have tiers, faster mayo and fully grown mayo trees. And if you are on AP budget don't spend on mayo generators (infusers are better value).

When time for SADISTIC comes save for CHONKERS and RECYCLE quirks/perks, they are important.

Always tag adventures. And pretty much rotate the rest however you like.

Don't spend on even hot-damn cards if you are close to new tier. Todays hot-damn is tommorow's crappiest crap.

Happy wasting!

[Kuku]

Thanks Elenoe, that was pretty helpful :)

Only thing I want to add: I'm quite sure that the cards you already got do not get upgraded when you unlock a higher card tier. I think I tried saving up a few good quality cards to use them once I upgraded that card tier only to have my day ruined and suffer immeasurable disappointment.

[Elenoe]

they don't. I'm sorry if I made it sound like they do.

It was about keeping the effect per mayo as high as possible, that would be the card long term goal. Therefore "ideally" waiting for tiers 12-17. Practically just tossing hotdamn T2's because they are worse then crappy T3's you will have full inventory "tomorrow".

[Schrompf]

Well, it even says so in the "WTF do I do section"
"Raising a Card's tier means all future card spawns of that type will come with a highter tier"

In general: Don't worry too much about it. For me it's also about the cost of a card. For low cost I even cast some low tier cards, as long as I have enough mayo to cast some high tier high cost card that might spawn.
Also, unless you're sure you absolutely want to cast that card later, don't save any of them. Ususally I just cast a few cards and yeet all the others. They'll fill up pretty quick again and I still have perks, quirks and wishes ahead of me to speed up the card generation.

[Veny]

I will (ab)use this topic and add my question for more experienced people: Is it worth it to buy NGU speed cards, time machine cards, gold drop cards etc., or will NGU become easy to levelup as normal/evil version , and gold related stuff useless in endgame?
So far i am at IT HUNGERS and all my energy/magic is not enough to run sadistic NGU at 1% so thats why i am askin.

[Rubone]

@Veny
You will need to cast NGU cards because, unlike evil, you can't bb sadistic NGUs forever (until the hardcap) without some investment.

Some numbers:
At the EM Power/Cap hardcap, 19595% energy NGU speed, 12621% magic NGU speed from cards, both pots on -> NGU Adventure B at level 1.548e+008 (15% of the hardcap) is taking 26% of all my magic allocated.

I decided to stop casting EM NGU cards at this point and am just focusing on ADV, Daycare (faster macguffin levels adds up real quick) and gold (better gold diggers, better everything).

[Kuku]

@Elenoe
Nono, I got that idea by myself and it was a while ago^^
Was just trying to prevent other people from acting on the same misconception that I had.