Hardstuck in Pretty Pink Princess Land

[szukuro]

Hi everyone!

I have been playing this game for a while now, and got to Evil difficulty 3 months ago. As expected I was stuggling at first, but managed to slowly but surely progress, currently at around boss 167. However in Adventure mode I seem to be lagging very much behind.I have all Accessory slots unlocked, all gear from Pretty Pink Princess Land and Easy Greasy Nerd unlocked and fully upgraded/boosted, yet nowhere near Meta Land. I can't even defeat Normal Greasy Nerd yet, but this at least should happen soon. However, even with the 2 extra accesory drops from there, the next zone just seems very far away, yet I already have Interdimensional party unlocked.

So in terms of numbers, even with Beast mode I have only 3.3 Qa Power, whereas per wiki I would need around 25, and that's just for Manual. With current pace it seems this will take many months. Is this really supposed to be this hard, or am I doing something wrong? Is there anything off about my stats, some multiplier being way lower than should be at this stage etc. that would point to some error. Example stats (Power):

ADVENTURE STATS BREAKDOWN

Base Adventure Power: 5,030 Million
Equipment Modifier: + 29,280 Million
Infinity Cube Modifier: + 360 722
Subtotal: 34,671 Million
Advanced Training Modifier: x 4 031,36%
Energy NGU Modifier: x 58 658%
Magic NGU Modifier: x 570%
Digger Modifier: x 251,37%
Basic Challenge Modifier: x 135%
BEARd Modifier (This run): x 842%
BEARd Modifier (Permanent): x 545%
Perk Modifier: x 111,32%
Quirk Modifier: x 197%
MacGuffin Modifier: x 110%
Hack Modifier: x 127%
BEAST MODE Modifier: x 150%
Total Adventure Power: 3,331 Quadrillion

Thanks in advance

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

More importantly with the tree, the question is which fruit are the most important to you at the time.

Once you get fruit of knowledge to 24 and have all of the relevant perks, it is the most important fruit. Always. Optimizing around "newer" fruits doesn't make sense. Because of the way fruit scales with tiers, anything less than 24hr fruit is practically worthless.
You are correct about the optimal rebirth being less than 24 hours, if you have the relevant quirks. But planning around a 22 hr 48 min rebirth schedule is ... less than ideal.

[pac230]

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

Once you get fruit of knowledge to 24 and have all of the relevant perks, it is the most important fruit. Always.

No. There are a lot of other things going on in the game than EXP.

For sure, there is a certain period, once you've got the EXP Fruit perks, the EXP Digger and other bonuses, and so on, where a high level EXP fruit has a huge impact, and it seems amazing, but it doesn't stay that way, especially given what page-2 fruits are doing.

Moreover, there are other ways to boost the EXP fruit than raising its tier: any EXP bonuses and any harvest bonuses you can get will affect it too.

Optimizing around "newer" fruits doesn't make sense. Because of the way fruit scales with tiers, anything less than 24hr fruit is practically worthless.

The power of fruits is based on their tier ^1.5.

1^1.5 = 1
2^1.5 = 2.828
3^1.5 = 5.196

This means that a T2 fruit is almost 3 times stronger than a T1 fruit: well worth the wait, unless there are other very strong reasons for a shorter run, like getting a challenge done. A T3 fruit is not far from 2 times stronger than a T2 fruit: again, well worth it, especially if you have a whole slew of fruits to that level.

By the time you get to the max tiers, however:

23^1.5 = 110.3
24^1.5 = 117.6

A T24 fruit is only ~6.7% better than a T23 fruit. And you must extend rebirth time by an hour, or almost an hour, to get this benefit. (To be fair, this power increase does apply to both seed gains and fruit effect.)

Note that, for T12 fruit:

12^1.5 = 41.6; *2 = 82.1 (my rounding)

So if you were to do two 12-hour rebirths, you will still get (82.1/117.6) ~71% of the effect of your T24 fruit in those categories, while with any lower-tier fruit you get to eat them twice with their full first-harvest bonus, so you will get better output from them, and you get all the other benefits of a shorter run (e.g. beards (assuming 5'O Shadow perk), McGuffs).

In addition, upgrade costs scale up much faster than a ^1.5 rate. How many newer fruit could be upgraded by a few much more impactful tiers for the cost of a 6.7% boost to Fruit of XP?

More importantly, newer fruits are doing things that earlier ones simply can't regardless of their level, granting PP, QP, McGuffin levels and permanent Att/Def in the case of page-2 fruits.

You are correct about the optimal rebirth being less than 24 hours, if you have the relevant quirks. But planning around a 22 hr 48 min rebirth schedule is ... less than ideal.

Basing your play around 24-hour rebirths is an entirely legitimate way to play, particularly if it fits naturally into your schedule, because with a game as vast and consuming as this, it's hard to talk about it without addressing how it fits into your everyday life.

However, if we were to exclude the demands of day-to-day life, structuring rebirths around high-tier early fruit is not optimal. In fact, IME it is notable that NGU Idle continues to add features that encourage both longer and shorter rebirths as it unfolds.


To make this specific to the OP: I seem to remember that it was around this stage of the game that I got some serious impacts by using the McGuffin-Alpha trick --

McGuffin-Alpha effects hit a random equipped McGuffin. But if you unequip all the others except the one you want to target, you can control where it hits and this effect becomes much more useful.

-- as well as McGuffin-Beta (from both fruit and blood) to get all my McGuffs over Lvl 100, as well as rapidly levelling any new McGuffin. For stacking up McGuff bonuses, the benefits of very long runs tail off, so doing a lot of short runs while doing challenges and then rebuilding number, plus switching to a new rebirth schedule based on consuming McGuffin fruit at max power more often, made it possible to get all those bonuses up and running at a decent effective level.

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

For sure, there is a certain period, once you've got the EXP Fruit perks, the EXP Digger and other bonuses, and so on, where a high level EXP fruit has a huge impact, and it seems amazing, but it doesn't stay that way, especially given what page-2 fruits are doing.

You are wrong. It never stops being amazing.
Pre-mayo, all of the fruits level up super quick so it's not even worth considering. You would have to be adjusting your rebirth timing every single day, and even if it was worth it to do it for gameplay reasons, it's simply not practical. After that, mayo fruits don't even benefit from first harvest.
MacGuffin beta and Power delta are nearly worthless even at 24.
MacGuffin alpha does start to give a lot of levels at high tiers, but the diminishing returns on MacGuffins means it loses its usefulness pretty quickly. At lower tiers it has even less of an impact.
The amount of extra PP or QP you would get optimizing around those fruits isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to how much PP and QP you actually need. You will get all of the important/useful perks and quirks anyway, LONG before you reach the end. You'll be sitting at the end, slowly building adv stats to kill T14, spending every bit of EXP you get on them.
And there are other things to consider.
Shorter rebirths means smaller banks (this becomes extremely important in early evil and never stops being important). Shorter rebirths also means a larger portion of your rebirth has to be devoted to augs, wandoos, blood magic, and time machine, which means less time spent doing NGU, hacks, and wishes.

In fact, IME it is notable that NGU Idle continues to add features that encourage both longer and shorter rebirths as it unfolds.

It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The game is structured around daily rebirths. It's very telling that we got a challenge reward at the beginning of sadistic that makes MacGuffin growth optimal up to 24 hours. Even the final feature is structured around doing something once a day and then forgetting it exists the rest of the time.

[pac230]

You haven't addressed any of my numbers, just repeated yourself. Even if you've completed the game, that doesn't mean every decision you made during it was the best one.

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

MacGuffin beta and Power delta are nearly worthless even at 24.

I know this isn't true.

MacGuffin alpha does start to give a lot of levels at high tiers, but the diminishing returns on MacGuffins means it loses its usefulness pretty quickly. At lower tiers it has even less of an impact.

Even at fairly low tiers, McGuffin Alpha bonuses allow you to get new McGuffins over Lvl 100 more quickly, achieving optimal effectiveness.

By all means, once you have all McGuffs over lvl 100, the importance of anything affecting them will decline, but that isn't the situation for the OP.

The amount of extra PP or QP you would get optimizing around those fruits isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to how much PP and QP you actually need. You will get all of the important/useful perks and quirks anyway, LONG before you reach the end. You'll be sitting at the end, slowly building adv stats to kill T14, spending every bit of EXP you get on them.

What the situation will be at the very end of the game is not at issue. In the immediate term, I know very well that there are stages of the game where the Perk and Quirk fruits can play significant roles in PP/QP income.

Shorter rebirths means smaller banks (this becomes extremely important in early evil and never stops being important). Shorter rebirths also means a larger portion of your rebirth has to be devoted to augs, wandoos, blood magic, and time machine, which means less time spent doing NGU, hacks, and wishes.

This is actually a good point: the benefits of a longer run from the PoV of less time spent on set-up each rebirth. This is much more relevant to the value of long runs than the productivity of a high-tier fruit. IME, this is the main factor that has to be weighed against things like McGuff growth when determining run length.

However, worrying about banks too much would mean you never did a challenge.

It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The game is structured around daily rebirths. It's very telling that we got a challenge reward at the beginning of sadistic that makes MacGuffin growth optimal up to 24 hours. Even the final feature is structured around doing something once a day and then forgetting it exists the rest of the time.

That tells me that that may become the structure of the game towards the end of it. Not earlier. In the OP's position, shorter runs and some greater attention to other features certainly seem to be in order.




Edit: Reviewing the wiki, after 2nd Sadistic Troll Challenge, the McGuffin ratio is linear with rebirth (until 24 hours), rather than being square-rooted. This still doesn't mean any particular benefit to very-long or 24-hour runs, just the removal of a negative, and any run in the 30min-24 hr range is also benefiting from this.

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

By all means, once you have all McGuffs over lvl 100, the importance of anything affecting them will decline, but that isn't the situation for the OP.

I really don't know how you got to macguffin fruit without your macguffins already being 100+.

Your numbers don't need to be addressed, because they don't matter. Optimizing for a particular fruit gets you +50% yield from first harvest, for each harvest of that fruit. Adding 50% yield to an ineffective fruit is still ineffective.

However, worrying about banks too much would mean you never did a challenge.

We're not talking about challenges, we're talking about scheduling your rebirths around worthless fruit. You're moving the goalposts.

[pac230]

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

I really don't know how you got to macguffin fruit without your macguffins already being 100+.

This is what I've been trying to tell you: there are other approaches to the game than building around T24 Fruit of Knowledge.

How did you level your McGuffins if you didn't use the fruit at all? Actually grinding zones for more drops? Just the Blood spells?

Your numbers don't need to be addressed, because they don't matter. Optimizing for a particular fruit gets you +50% yield from first harvest, for each harvest of that fruit. Adding 50% yield to an ineffective fruit is still ineffective.

Well, the numbers are right there whether you want to look at them or not.

Even considering only Fruit of Knowledge, two 12-hour runs with T12 Fr of K will give ~71% of the EXP output.

'Exponential' doesn't simply translate to highest number best and all other numbers worthless. The actual exponent matters, and the relative value of each extra tier on a fruit does taper off.

We're not talking about challenges, we're talking about scheduling your rebirths around worthless fruit. You're moving the goalposts.

In that part, you were talking about banks. As I said, I don't worry too much about banks because they will all be gone whenever I decide to do some challenges anyway.

I certainly don't see banks as compelling 24-hour runs, because they can also make shorter runs easier: less set-up time each run because there is so much carry-over. All the things affected by banks are heavily impacted by diminishing returns anyway.

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

How did you level your McGuffins if you didn't use the fruit at all? Actually grinding zones for more drops? Just the Blood spells?

Now you're acting stupid.
The fruit got used, I just didn't optimize for it because it was pointless to do so. Before that, you get drops from ITOPOD (with a perk), and from titans, starting with T7. MacGuffins are not particularly helpful before T7 anyway (unless you specifically grind out their bonuses with 30 minute rebirths) and the most important one is a guaranteed drop every time you kill him. It also starts dropping in ITOPOD at that time. The topic creator should already have that one well above 100 by this point, just from AK T7 on Easy.

Even considering only Fruit of Knowledge, two 12-hour runs with T12 Fr of K will give ~71% of the EXP output.

29% less of the most important fruit is fricking huge. It's absolutely not worth the loss. Not only that, you're also missing out on AP, drop chance, and a boat load of seeds to get the rest of your fruit to 24 faster. You're going to have multiple fruits that are below 24 at varying tiers, so no matter what you do you're going to be missing out somewhere.
But since you keep harping on the numbers.
1x24 with FH: 177
2x12 with FH: 126
2x12, one with FH, one without: 105
You're giving up 29% on all of your 24 hour fruit just to get 20% more on one 12 hour fruit.

In that part, you were talking about banks.

Because they matter and are important for rebirth timing.

I certainly don't see banks as compelling 24-hour runs, because they can also make shorter runs easier: less set-up time each run because there is so much carry-over. All the things affected by banks are heavily impacted by diminishing returns anyway.

Not that specific timing, no, but it's still a noticeable loss. There is a reason people do long rebirths to push titans. It's because they want more of the things that are affected by banks. And less set-up time? What are you talking about? Set-up time is basically static. With shorter rebirths you're spending more time in set-up because you're setting-up more often.
First some assumptions: AT and Beards are running full speed for the entire rebirth. I know this isn't reasonable to ask in early Evil but it does make the calculations easier. Given the nature of diminishing returns, I can only imagine the difference will be bigger if you're running slower. At any rate, PPPL is approaching that point for AT, and Beards should reach that point around mid Evil. Also assuming AT unlocks at 25 minutes into a rebirth. That is the standard timing, without any bonuses. Will also assume beards start running at that time as well.
Now, with 12 hour rebirths, you will level out at 2.085 million levels at 25 minutes, with a bonus of 3370% P/T. The BEARd temp bonus is 990%. Combined, that is a bonus of 33363%.
With 24 hour rebirths, you will level out at 4.245 million levels at 25 minutes, with a bonus of 4479% P/T. The BEARd temp bonus is 1226%. Combined, that is a bonus of 54912%. (note: the wiki has 61415% for 24 hours, which is not actually possible given that even with all the BT bonuses you don't unlock AT until 6 min 15 sec, and you would also need beards running instantly at rebirth)
With 12 hour rebirths, you've lost 39% of your P/T, and that's not even considering Wandoos dump (which is linear, btw, and very important in early Evil just to make Wandoos useful at all), or other beards (or time machine but who really cares about that).
Just to be fair, we should look at permanent beard bonuses, too.
2x12 hour rebirths: 23102 levels gained
24 hour rebirth: 16482 levels gained
As it turns out, long term beard growth is better if you do 12 hour rebirths, as long as you have the relevant perk. 40% more levels. How significant that is, I can't say, but I don't think it's worth the sacrifice.

[pac230]

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

Now you're acting stupid.

No, not really.

You seem to take a completely different approach to the game to me, so I was interested in how you did it.

But if you're going to be rude just because someone else doesn't follow your one-true-way in playing an idle game, I think this discussion is over.



Edit: I will say that I do remember reaching the Titan you are talking about and the fragment it drops. By that time, I had my system for new fragments well set-up, and it got bombed with Alpha Fruit and Alpha Blood spell and was over Lvl 100 within hours. Definitely wasn't waiting for more drops.

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

Now you're acting stupid.

No, not really.

Yes, really. You willfully ignored the obvious to make your point. It has absolutely nothing to do with my approach to the game, and everything to do with yours. You're pushing bad advice based on flawed reasoning, because It's how YOU approached the game.

But let's go one step further.
Again, you're focusing on MacGuffin alpha fruit (we'll come back to blood) and using it to push a MacGuffin up to level 100.
With a 20% yield bonus (A Giant Apple) and the 12 hour fruit you're so fond of, here is what you get:
2x with FH: 76 levels
1x with FH, 1x without: 63 levels
That's an 13 level difference.
Either way you do it, you still need 3 harvests to push it over 100. (3x with FH: 114, 2x with FH and 1x without: 101)
You can get it down to 2 harvests if you use poop. (2x with FH: 114, 1x with FH 1x without: 95, which gets pushed over 100 from other sources)
So much for your claim of getting that MacGuffin over 100 "within hours".
You can see by the numbers that no one has need to wait for drops, whether they optimize rebirth timing around this fruit or not.
You really think that's worth screwing over your 24 hour fruit yield, as well as throwing away half of your banks? Again, we're not even looking at the seed loss, seeds which would help you get your fruit to 24 faster.

And since you mentioned blood. Blood MacGuffin alpha has a recast timer of 23.5 hours. That means you can only use it slightly more often than once per day. Theoretically, with a longer rebirth you have more blood to put into it, so 24 hours has an advantage over 12 hours. In practice you won't actually spend that much blood on it, so it's going to be the same yield either way. Beta is even worse, as it has a 1 day 23.5 hour recast timer.

[pac230]

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

Yes, really. You willfully ignored the obvious to make your point. It has absolutely nothing to do with my approach to the game, and everything to do with yours. You're pushing bad advice based on flawed reasoning, because It's how YOU approached the game.

You have no idea what my approach to the game might be, except that I don't agree that 24-hour rebirths are always correct -- though I don't have any problem with those who choose to play the game that way (it's probably a very sensible choice from a time management PoV). Quite why this small disagreement riles you up so much remains a mystery to me. Why not let the OP decide what advice they want to follow, if any, rather than frantically trying to suppress all dissent?


If you want to continue this discussion -- while, I would hope, being more civil about it -- we could perhaps do so in a new thread, as this dispute is no longer germane to the OP's question, I think.

[Hypertext Eye]

引用自 pac230：

frantically trying to suppress all dissent?

I give you real numbers to show you the relative pointlessness of what you're suggesting, and instead of providing an actual counterargument, all you can do is present this fantasy. Great job.

You're right about one thing. This discussion is over.

[pac230]

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

I give you real numbers to show you the relative pointlessness of what you're suggesting, and instead of providing an actual counterargument, all you can do is present this fantasy.

Stamping on 'wrong-think' is all you've been doing since you first replied to me, man.

I don't think I've managed to make a single post in this game's forums without being jumped on for being out-of-step with received opinion. There are a lot of ways to enjoy this game. Get over it.

[Jalir]

引用自 pac230：

引用自 Hypertext Eye：

I give you real numbers to show you the relative pointlessness of what you're suggesting, and instead of providing an actual counterargument, all you can do is present this fantasy.

Stamping on 'wrong-think' is all you've been doing since you first replied to me, man.

I don't think I've managed to make a single post in this game's forums without being jumped on for being out-of-step with received opinion. There are a lot of ways to enjoy this game. Get over it.

You act like you were just giving an opinion for another way to play, but state it as fact. When you said Fruit of Knowledge is not THE defining factor of rebirth efficiency, everything else you said ceased to be of importance. EXP is 100% the factor for moving forwards in this game, regardless of anything else. You're not a victim, you're just wrong.

[pac230]

引用自 Jalir：

You act like you were just giving an opinion for another way to play, but state it as fact. When you said Fruit of Knowledge is not THE defining factor of rebirth efficiency, everything else you said ceased to be of importance. EXP is 100% the factor for moving forwards in this game, regardless of anything else. You're not a victim, you're just wrong.

I know very well that *eventually* Fruit of Knowledge becomes by far the best EXP source. But it also starts off as by far the worst, and nothing more than a poor seed producer. The question is how soon it is worth focusing on boosting it up, given that in the short term there are lots of ways of further improving the EXP sources that start out better than it.

The #1 factor for progress in the game is unlocking and exploiting new features. EXP is just one of the currencies that are involved in doing that. Everything in this game is subject to diminishing returns (even when there isn't a tooltip saying so), and that's true of EXP too: of course I want to up my Energy/Magic stats again, but EXP is just one of the ways of doing that.

As I've said before, you are quite free to play the game based heavily on 24-hour rebirths from very early on if you want: it works, there are perk (etc) choices that support it, and so on. But it does a great dis-service to this game to suggest that there is only one way to play: to give just one example, look at the huge array of possibilities for perk choice 'openings' with just the first 100 PP. Given the time the game takes to play, and the sheer breadth of features, there is no way that anyone can have figured out everything within the gamespace to the last detail.

[rockhopper]

12 hour rebirths are perfectly fine in Evil if you have the time to juggle them, in my opinion they're likely the better option. It has nothing to do with fruits though, the main benefits are permanent beard and MacGuffin growth.