Nuke or do not nuke?

[Raptor]

I understand that nuke mode is just something like batch fighting. So should I use it always or only in specific scenarios? Let's say I'm just farming for basic stats. Nuke or not? Im missing differences between nuke mode and regular mode.

[Jerry]

The two main advantages of Nuke are, that you can quickly reach a certain level and that you can go faster than at the single enemy speed limit. Also your computer does not have to put as much effort into it. And then there is the fact, that combo bonus requires Nuke, though this one is very specific to situations.

For your stat farming, the best way would be to select a very strong board, Nuke you up to your Reward Multiplier limit (or maybe even further to get more Loot bonus), then replace Nuke with Scavenger.

[Mordtziel]

To build on the above post...
Your battle reward multiplier caps out somewhere in the realm of 2-3k difficulties iirc.
Your loot progress multiplier starts suffering a massive diminishing return around 100k difficulties.
Getting up to those points quickly are the general goal. Beyond that, it's just about triggering combo if you need it for the final two enemies or completing challenges. Can also be a bit of an ocd thing to keep the board clean, but also used to be a way to continue slowing your time to attack before. Though now we have custom scavenger so not as big a deal on that one anymore.

[Pulski]

I use nuke mode to push to 100k difficulty as fast as possible, then swap to 10x with the highest scavenger setting that kills the enemy before it can hit me... or longer if the damage isn't going to matter if I walk away for a week. :)

[Raptor]

How scavenger mode works? Just unlocked it.

[Jerry]

Scavenger mode multiplies the number of enemies you fight against in a level, the time to attack them, and, of course, the rewards they earn you.
That means, the best uses are to make more out of a strong board, to slow down your progress and keep your run going for a longer time while away (if you leave the game running without supervision), and as an additional break, once your attack speed becomes too fast.

[Jerry]

Bonus fact: If you are going against an enemy, that you can only defeat through a relatively high combo bonus, getting a single win takes almost the same time on high and low nuke multipliers, as the bonus scales up with Nuke mode. So in fights against [f] and Alphabetician, you can do some serious time saving this way.

[eishiya]

Something else I haven't seen brought up: The additive reward bonus from Upgrade52 works best on low/no Scavenger because it's added after the Scavenger and difficulty multipliers. So, if you have that upgrade, when farming rewards with automatic rerolling, it's best to go for low/no Scavenger and high Nuke (to bypass attack speed caps and ease CPU load) to get more rewards overall with that additive bonus. When you're spending most of your time fighting above 90k difficulty (which is roughly where the difficulty LPM multiplier tapers off), the temporary Loot Progress Multiplier "loss" from rerolling is also largely negligible, so you can still get plenty of Loot.

For farming specific rewards boards or even specific single rewards, low Nuke, high Scavenger is still a good idea, since it delays the need to reroll due to escalating difficulty.

[Mordtziel]

Originally posted by Jerry:

Bonus fact: If you are going against an enemy, that you can only defeat through a relatively high combo bonus, getting a single win takes almost the same time on high and low nuke multipliers, as the bonus scales up with Nuke mode. So in fights against [f] and Alphabetician, you can do some serious time saving this way.

There's still a pretty significant difference. I went into it in another post, but the difference between 10k/100 and 1k/1k is almost 50% (63 vs 43 attacks in the test). This is mostly due to the way difficulty scaling works. The difference is a lot less when dealing with nukes under 10k.

[Fytayn]

Worth noting that the reward multiplier and loot progress multiplier of the adjusted difficulty apply to the every enemy defeated in a "batch". So if you do x10 000 on a enemy with 21 reward blocks you are getting 298% rewards and 200% loot progress on all 210 000 enemies all at once. Without Nuke enabled you gradually build up those bonuses one enemy at a time.

[Goober]

Originally posted by Fytayn:

Worth noting that the reward multiplier and loot progress multiplier of the adjusted difficulty apply to the every enemy defeated in a "batch". So if you do x10 000 on a enemy with 21 reward blocks you are getting 298% rewards and 200% loot progress on all 210 000 enemies all at once. Without Nuke enabled you gradually build up those bonuses one enemy at a time.

Mhm, so you technically get 625,800% of normal reward instead the lower gradual increase at about ~350,000%? and 420,000 loot instead of a gradual ~265,000? (all things with ? are approximate, and not exact.)

[Porky Minch]

Originally posted by eishiya:

Something else I haven't seen brought up: The additive reward bonus from Upgrade52 works best on low/no Scavenger because it's added after the Scavenger and difficulty multipliers.

What is Upgrade52?

[Mordtziel]

Originally posted by Porky Minch:

Originally posted by eishiya:

Something else I haven't seen brought up: The additive reward bonus from Upgrade52 works best on low/no Scavenger because it's added after the Scavenger and difficulty multipliers.

What is Upgrade52?

Combat Upgrade 52. Additive battle reward increase.

[Porky Minch]

Ahh okay. Didn't realise it applied that after scavenger mode, that's good to know.