Question about the new materials factory

[MSJ-06II-C]

So, a couple of questions for those who already have it built:

Assuming I already have a couple of reasonably leveled alchemists, is there any advantage of building its first level (eg. the assigned pet doesn't have to be an alchemist/evolved (kinda like the fishing pond), it's faster, etc.) or does its "real" use come in the ability to downgrade materials?

If I assign the caterpillar to it, do the materials refined there count towards its 2nd evolution goal?

On 10th level, what does the manager slot accomplish?

[n00bdragon]

There is a powerful advantage to building it: Dungeon drops are boosted by 2% per level.

The pets you put within it, if any, are a bit more suspect. Pets in the Material Factory don't gain class XP and their class level doesn't matter. They gain an entirely new form of xp called Worker Experience based on the number of seconds they've been in the Material Factory. As such, the best pets to put in the factory are those you never plan to use for anything again. As such, Adventurers and Crafters will always be better doing their jobs. Most other old pets can work in the Tavern. Anything that is left over after that can go in the Material Factory.

[muljostpho]

My thoughts so far are for level / multi camp focused adventurers (Hydra, Sphinx, UFO) to be the main ones I use as workers. Because level and multi camps are the absolute bottom tier in my priority list for camps. I don't give a crap about those camps. Although I'm expecting to rotate such pets in and out for some other pets to keep some class xp coming in. Even with those camps being considered so low, I don't want to freeze those pets at their current CLs. (And then the 3 I listed aren't even enough to cover all the slots anyway since max level factory has 1 manager plus 5 workers.)

Something I've kinda pondered a bit is pets that are already CL 100 since they're already at level cap. Using any of them as workers might sound like a fair compromise, although it means less xp getting saved up in the dojo for whenever I finally start buying dojo upgrades. But I only have 8 pets at CL 100 so far. They're my Koi (which I don't want to move off of fishing), Swan (which I don't want to move off of fishing), Owl (although it doesn't look like Owl can work in the factory anyway), 1 of my alchemists, and 4 of my blacksmiths. Sooo... meh.

And then... Yeah, I guess it kinda comes down to considering whatever dungeon-classed pets end up as leftovers after dungeons/towers and RTI and strat room and quests have all snatched them all up? Maybe a way to handle the factory will be to have a lot of your potential questers working there whenever they're not needed for a quest.

EDIT: Hm, any pet at the base speed they get before earning any work time experience can make a nothing in just over an hour. Some of my best crafters can use their own ability to make a nothing much faster than that, but the starting point when they're low level / weak is much slower than that. I wonder how well pets with lots of work time will compare to the best crafters though? (Although, yeah... using the factory to upgrade materials seems like a desperation move since it eats up 10 T1 to make 1 T2 while an alchemist eats up 8 T1 to make 1 T2. Downgrading, on the other hand, turns 1 T2 into 8 T1. I wonder how things will look for T3 to T4 and for T4 to T3 at the factory though? Since the upgrade rate for alchemists changes depending on if they equip a robe of economy.)

Also, my factory is just at 3 (upgrading to 4, and the timer for that started at just under a day and they're getting slower with each level so even if I have enough materials already to coast all the way through to 10 with back-to-back upgrades it's going to take quite a while to get there) right now so I don't know if tooltips for the manager slot when it unlocks will reveal anything that's not already discernible elsewhere, but the tooltips for the worker slots do mention a manager multiplier affecting the speeds of all the workers. So at the bare minimum, that's what the manager does.

[tf]

Material Factory is a bolt from the blue for mid gamers like me who are busy making Nothing.
The daily production of Nothing has almost doubled at once.
I was thinking of unlocking Void at some point this year, but I think I need to rethink the order of pet unlocking.

I am interested to see how people choose Material Factory worker.
I also found muljostpho's post helpful.

My first choice was Pignata (Alchemist).
He is already CL40 and the rebirth beacon is in sufficient supply for my needs and I also consider any more CL to be excessive, so it was a natural choice for me.
I had a little trouble deciding who to go with for the second slot, but decided to go with Camel (Alchemist).
He spent most of his time in Nothing production anyway, so this was also a natural choice.

As for the third and subsequent slots, I honestly have no idea what to do now.
My total pet count is 85 and I don't have that many pets to spare.
I will try to raise the Factory level as much as possible for the Dungeon Drop Bonus, but maybe I will leave the third and later slots open for a while.

[Shadow]

Anyone know if the drop rate is +2% per level, or x(1.02*level)? I wasn't paying attention before leveling it up.

[n00bdragon]

It is additive (so level 1 is +2%, level 2 is +4%, level 3 is +6% and so on).

[Alberich]

Originally posted by tf:

Material Factory is a bolt from the blue for mid gamers like me who are busy making Nothing.
The daily production of Nothing has almost doubled at once...
I had a little trouble deciding who to go with for the second slot, but decided to go with Camel (Alchemist).
He spent most of his time in Nothing production anyway, so this was also a natural choice.

Does it also help with the production of Absolutely Nothing? (Only just started building it.)

[Kreuz]

Once I get the mats to build it I'll probably start sticking some of my blacksmiths in it since I don't really have the material income to use them outside of the crafting challenge. Still not in D3 dungeons yet cause I can't get enough materials to make enough good equipment, though I'm slowly building up some t3 SSS gear.

[Shadow]

You could just have them craft Nothing...it costs nothing, gives them exp, and you'll need TONS of it later. I have almost all of my alchemists and blacksmiths crafting Nothing or Absolutely Nothing.

[Alberich]

I suppose in the future we can expect a pet or two geared to the materials factory, the way the pack mule and the monk fit the other village buildings. Maybe a good builder or an equivalent to the "void" who's really, really good at making nothing...

Maybe a Material Girl and a Nowhere Man?

[Shadow]

We already have a pet geared for work with the material factory (not in the factory, but it can be used in combination with the factory to generate free materials).

Alchemists take 8 T1 materials to make 1 T2 material. The material factory takes 1 T2 material and turns in into 8 T1 materials. So if you use Bottle as an Alchemist (with Spectrometers +20, SSS) you can have up to a 70% chance to not consume materials when crafting...so you set it to craft T2 materials while breaking them down (or not, up to you really) with the factory. At max level, it will give an average of 5.6 free T1 materials about every 2 minutes. Personally, I think there are better things to use Bottle for though.

[Shadow]

Not exactly...when both are working together, they can generate additional T1 materials (and maybe higher tier materials...my factory can't dismantle T3 items yet, so I'm not sure on the conversion rates). Bottle doesn't do that by itself, it just has chance to not use them.

[n00bdragon]

It's not that you aren't generating free stuff. It's that the free stuff you are generating isn't worth all that much. It's going to be essentially worthless compared to even minimal dungeon activity.

[Shadow]

I DID say that there are better things to use Bottle for...

Edit - There's also a good chance that higher level factories will break down items at the same cost that Alchemists can make them...which would mean that crafting T3 or T4 items with Bottle is quite a bit more profitable.

[muljostpho]

My stockpiles of T1 mats are at 310.57k iron ore, 1.71M ice block, 891.67k hot stone, 1.25M feather, and 535.18k wood. So I'm toying with the idea of using the Bottle/Spec profit loophole myself to supplement iron ore gains for a while. So I just ran some numbers...

With my CL 98 Bottle with Specs and with my CL 97 Bee with 5000 honey and Specs, if each of them produces iron bars Bottle can expect to burn through an average of 52.52 ore/hr and Bee can expect to burn through an average of 181.42 ore/hr (Bottle takes 2m50s to make one and Bee takes 2m7s to make one) while I just assigned a pet on one of my three factory slots and it takes 28s to deconstruct one bar so that's plus 1028.57 ore/hr. So in total I would expect an average gain of 794.64 ore/hr.

So yeah.... It's "something".

On its own without taking dungeon gains (or any gradual increase in the factory worker's speed) into account it would take... about 12 days to catch up with the wood stockpile, and... about 31 days to catch up with the hot stone stockpile. Meanwhile, the iron bar count would be at a net loss based only on Bottle, Bee, and the worker at the factory because it's basically +5 bars in about the same time it takes to go -6 bars.

Anyway... Just got my factory to level 5 and started the upgrade to level 6 about 40 minutes ago. 1d15h20m until I gain the ability to downgrade T3 to T2.

EDIT: Curiously, my T2 mat stockpiles are much closer to each other than my T1s are. I've got 203.76k iron bar, 277.02k nevermelt ice, 212.55k fire stone, 267.08k bound feather, and 250.70k special wood. Although the two weakest there are the two elements that the factory upgrades are digging into.

[Shadow]

You could also put an additional alchemist on crafting and have a net gain to both tiers of iron...at the expense of whatever the other alchemist would be crafting. Probably Nothing. Would take a longer to build up your T1 stockpile, but would keep your T2 stockpile about equal.

Edit - Or, you could equip them with a Magic Pot and boost their speed...my bottle is lvl 95 and crafts Iron Bar in 2m 19s. Level 100 should get it pretty close to 2 mins. That's a lot of T4 materials just to craft T1 materials faster, though. Although, it could be considered a good investment on Bottle because it allows to benefit from it's free crafting more frequently.