Let's talk about Cards

[Ibn Battuta]

So you've just unlocked Cards, Well, *I* did, anyway. Which leads to the inevitable question "WTF do I do with this now?"

I'll just say that despite a metric ton of information on the feature, there's nothing that qualifies as tactical/strategic information that covers the pre-SADISTIC usage of Cards, aside from "Adventure stats are good!". That's true, but it's hardly sufficient to explain several weeks of working up from Exile 1 to Exile 4.

So let's talk about Cards and how to apply them best before some of the SADISTIC upgrades are a factor.

The first thing I'm noticing is that Tier 1 cards just aren't that sensitive to anything but mayo. The difference on a 9 Mayo Aug from Meh to Good is .07%. Better? yes, but it's fairly small. I expect that at tier 5, the difference will be more pronounced, but Tier 1-3, where you'll be operating in Evil? Not so much.

The second thing I'm noticing is that mayo generation is the bottleneck. Obviously, not having to cast each card in turn gives you the option to select the better cards, but it's pretty easy to wind up with cards waiting to be cast.


My working hypothesis is:
1. mayo is the bottleneck and will remain so for all of evil. Operating assumption is that more generators is slightly better than simply faster generation, but can be argued both ways.
2. Card generation is not important at low tiers, because the better rarities aren't seemingly adding much (yet).
3. deck size is only important if you feel like having deck space to cover your work/sleep is important *for now*
4. tiers are important overall, but for the duration of Evil, I would only take them when the total cost is on the cheaper end of your options. The upper limit is just not high enough (3 or in a few cases, 4) to justify really driving the point.
5. When most of your cards are tier 1, the most valuable cards are the ones you can play easiest.
6. Most of this will invert as card tiers rise, except mayo generation is still king.

How does this track with your own observations of the *initial* stages of card use?

[Fel]

Card tier is in fact way more important than it seems at first.
Some types get a bigger boost than others from it but even for adventure stats that have the lowest rate of increase per tier you get some significant increase.
For example, tier 2 is 29% better than tier 1.

Since mayo is very limited early on and you don't have access to recycling until you go to sadistic, it's usually a better deal to go for adventure stats tier 2 cards before spending the mayo.
Of course, if you just need a few percents to get to the next zone or titan it might be different but that second tier will result into a much bigger increase per mayo.

[pac230]

When first unlocked, Cards are an excellent source of Wish speed bonus. Other sources of Wish speed may be expensive or limited by comparison. For example, from Cards, Hack/Wish speed get the same growth rate, whereas from Hack milestones, Wish gets 0.5% per 50 to Hacks 10% per 100.

Therefore, I would add Wish to Adventure as cards worth developing during Evil.


I think Tiers have more impact than you may be crediting them with. In any case, you need to look at where you're getting Tier bonuses from, and how much they cost.

Tiers from Wishes will be picked up when they are affordable. In Perks, there is major variation in cost from 150K to 3M -- but 3M for an Adventure tier is probably worth saving up for. Wish+, which I've argued is quite powerful, is only 300K. From Quirks, again, Wish is very cheap (3000) and here even the most expensive is only 20K.


Rarity may not have that big an impact, but you will have more cards than you can afford to cast, so it is effectively 'free'. I don't believe that the proportional impact of Rarity is affected by Tier, so this is not something that changes later.


It's not clear from your post whether you've discovered this yet, but additional Mayo generators do not mean Mayo is generated faster (except that they also come with a 2% speed bonus). They merely allow you to spread your Mayo generation out among more colours at the same time. (So, if you go away for 8 hours, you can come back to 4 more of 2 colours rather than 8 more of 1.)


Over all, from my experience with Cards in Evil, I would say that the most important things are firstly to work on Wish speed (200%+) and then Adventure stats (a big PP commitment). Some Drop chance (for Rad-Lands) and Hack speed are probably also a good idea. Nothing else has seemed that important.

[Ibn Battuta]

Yes, more mayo generators are slower than one, but more kinds of mayo is better than one kind over inactive/offline time.

Adventure stats are almost always the most useful thing. Wish cards are doing almost as much as Wish Hack, so it's definitely good option. There aren't any awful options, but I find A/D, Gold, TM, Augs, and Daycare to be less useful, and Wandoos/NGUs are mostly useful to shift resources to Wishes right now, but there is that.

I still view tiers as a compounding interest situation, so the most valuable tier is always the next one. I haven't seen enough to change my initial assessment yet. Mostly... jsut lack of data.

[Ibn Battuta]

Ok, so I have a LOT more feedback from trial and error and cards are really, really annoying.

Let's take a look at the initial assumptions that I started with and I'll comment on how true I believe them to be now:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

My working hypothesis is:
1. mayo is the bottleneck and will remain so for all of evil. Operating assumption is that more generators is slightly better than simply faster generation, but can be argued both ways.

Accurate: Mayo is the bottleneck.Mayo generators improve your ability to cast multi-mayo cards, Mayo speed improves single mayo card casting time. You need both, but in a case of pick one now, and the other in 2 weeks, I still prefer the generators (because of the dead time when one sleeps/works). Your situation might argue the reverse. Either way, you want both baldy

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

2. Card generation is not important at low tiers, because the better rarities aren't seemingly adding much (yet).

Rarities at low tiers indeed aren't very important, but that really doesn't factor in much.

Modification here: it's very important in Sadistic, where you have Recycling to make Yeeting cards valuable. In Evil, the benefit is purely more card options to get the ones you want. Therefore, the value of card generation is tied to the number and power of Tags. I'd say two improved or three basic Tags are necessary to justify going out of your way for this, but worth grabbing in passing always.

By the time card generation is really useful in its own right, you're likely to have additional reasons to make card generation a priority anyway.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

3. deck size is only important if you feel like having deck space to cover your work/sleep is important *for now*

Deck size is nice to have, but it's mostly a creature comfort. More valuable the better your cards are. Very valuable once you have certain Sadistic upgrades where you want to always have free space. It's a subjective thing how much you want/need at an elevated priority.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

4. tiers are important overall, but for the duration of Evil, I would only take them when the total cost is on the cheaper end of your options. The upper limit is just not high enough (3 or in a few cases, 4) to justify really driving the point.

this one I'll cover at the end, but it's somewhat true and somewhat not true. A more accurate short version is "with exceptions, most of your tier upgrades will be bought from the top row by total cost"

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

5. When most of your cards are tier 1, the most valuable cards are the ones you can play easiest.

This works as an initial launch strategy, but it's not sustainable (nor do you want to sustain it!) Mostly, you'll be scrambling to cast your best cards, and trying to nip off anything you can manage from tagged types.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ibn Battuta:

6. Most of this will invert as card tiers rise, except mayo generation is still king.

Mostly, things stay stable, other than moving on from play what you can as you get decent cards and some generators (won't go into it, but there's a reason why generators do it).

As for the evolved tier concept, I divide cards into 3 classes:

Class 1 is the cards to fill all potential Tag slots.
Class 2 is the 5 best remaining
Class 3 is the rest.

Priority-wise, it's important to note that cost matters. Higher priorities still need to be justifiable based on relative cost, so an extremely expensive Class 1 is probably less valuable than a cheap Class 3, but a merely pricey Class 1 is much more likely to be justifiable.

That said:

SInce I find "total cost/time" to be the most helpful view, my approach is centered on that, and full stacks for PP/QP. Wishes... get broken up because of the cost scaling. Everything follows from that outlook.

Class 1, Mayo, Tag Slots, and post-Recycle card gen are the "advanced purchase point" group. That is, upgrades that you're willing to sacrifice for.

Class 2, Better Tags, and "As needed" Card Gen or Deck size are "the normal purchasing cursor" group. That is, you're buying these in normal order.

Class 3 and anything left (typically leftover Card gen and deck size) are in the clean-up spot. Class 3 cards are useful, and because they're rarely cast, getting the upgrades is a good thing, but these will be a bit delayed because there are simply more needed upgrades that cost a little more. Once the price gap isn't justifiable, you clean up the cheap-but-useful stuff you bypassed. Like these.

There are no card upgrades that fall into the "I really don't need this and will only buy it when it gets in my way" category.