Octopus's Token Improve worth it?

[ilias]

So im about to get another Pet Token from the Event, but I have 50 pets and im pretty alright with that number for now (as I dont know what pet to get next really)

I saw that Octopus's Token Improve seemed pretty good for the price as im able to make the Hammers with a bit of time ill be it, even if it means I will only be really using one blacksmith.

I dont mind having only one main Blacksmith for some time, but I wanted some input from others to make that decission clear for me.

I only have 3 Blacksmiths, them being Octopus, Anteater and Hermit Crab

[Xelos]

Upgrading Octopus and equiping it with hammers will give you about 2x-2.5x more crafting speed on it (depending on the main hammer it's using). It should also boost it's experience gain by about 20-25%.

The main pro for doing this is QoL. You will be able to create new equip or gem things very quickly. It gets insanely nice if you have also unlocked queue with blacksmiths.

The main disadvantage is that it takes resources and a very long time to create 7 tier 3 +20 hammers. Also, by unlocking new blacksmith, you will get more xp and growth over time.

If you prefer QoL over min-maxing, or just wanna be done with Octopus, then I would say go for token upgrade.

[ilias]

Originally posted by Xelos:

If you prefer QoL over min-maxing, or just wanna be done with Octopus, then I would say go for token upgrade.

I see. I am playing the game in a lazy way so I guess for the QoL of it would be a lot better for me. Thanks for the info

[muljostpho]

I forgot that that was even an option that was available. (Probably had the same thought when I first saw it that I had just now: "oh sure, because those are something that one just casually has spares lying around! Pass!") My Octopus has been parked in the 2nd slot of the fishing pond for ages though, so even if I activated it the improvement wouldn't mean anything until I swap something else into that spot at the pond anyway. And I probably won't do that until it hits CL 100. (Currently Octopus is my 2nd highest CL pet at 86. Swan is ahead of it at 91 and Koi is 4th highest at 83.)

I have 12 pets currently set as blacksmiths. Octopus (86, fishing), Anteater (84), Pegasus (83), Robot (76), Crab (66, RTI), Firefox (63, dungeon), Bug (59), Elf (58), Book (57), a Gray child (52), Anything (46), and Dwarf (42). Hammers: I have 1 T4 SSS+10 that I did not craft (came from a purchase or a code or something) and that's equipped on Anteater, 1 T3 SSS+20 that's equipped on Pegasus, 5 T3 SSS+15 that are equipped on Dwarf, Bug, Robot, Elf, and the Gray child, and... I actually do have a surplus of 8 T3 SSS+10 that are spares that can be upgraded to replace the +15s that are currently equipped (plus there are some blacksmiths that don't currently have a hammer equipped). I have xp swords equipped on Octopus, Crab, Book, and Anything. And Firefox has knives equipped. Oh, and of course occasionally there's Owl (72) that can decide to make itself a blacksmith, which of course has Haposti (SSS +15) equipped.

Looking down my list, for their current levels and equipment, their crafting speed displays as: Octopus 1009, Anteater 2083 (boosted 44.93% by 3.493M ants), Pegasus 1951, Robot 1300 (or T4 if/when I start making them will go at 1874 (yeah, I grabbed that token improve when I wasn't actually using it yet...)), Crab 738, Firefox 990 (Rune Patch is equipped so that's with a 25% boost), Bug 716, Elf 1144 (boosted by 37.3% by her ability), Book 625, Gray child 949, Anything 562, and Dwarf 833 (no gems given yet so 0% boost from his ability). Quality, in that same order: 530, 856, 789, 683 (or 1015 for T4), 388, 531, 376, 605, 328, 499, 295, and 438.

Octopus's 1009 speed and 530 quality are without any hammer equipped... Improved Octopus with the improvement maxed out would boost a weapon's speed by 210%, so that'd bump a T3 SSS+20 from 50% up to 155%, yes? So if I did that and equipped it with that my Octopus would go from 1009 speed to 2573 (2572.95 to be accurate) speed, yes? Quality would only bump up by 50% (improvement only affects speed) so it'd go from 530 to 795. Well, my Anteater would still be my best option for quality (best one to actually make new stuff for me) but Octopus would take the lead in speed by a good margin (so it'd whiz through reforging and upgrading things). (EDIT: Oh, or I could try Octopus with the T4 hammer that's currently on Anteater, but the difference between T3 SS+20 vs T4 SSS+10 is 50% boost vs 52.38% boost. Octopus in that case would end up with... 2647 speed and 807 quality. Nope, Anteater with the T4 would still be better quality.)

EDIT: Just sneaking an edit in a week and a half later while my Owl is a blacksmith to add that at CL 73 and with a 61.54% bonus on Haposti my Owl has 1796% craft speed and 1242% craft quality.

[Undefined]

I've always felt that Token Upgrades were intended for late-game or end-game players who had unlocked most (if not all) pets.

You say you don't know what pet you would want next, but I'd figure that out first then weigh it against using a Pet Token on an improvement.

If you need help figuring out which pets would be next, there's two pet-tier guides out there (1[docs.google.com] and 2[itrtg.wiki.gg]), or you could just post some screenshots of all your pets or something and people here will offer their advice.

[adeyke]

That was my reasoning as well. I've been ignoring the improvements so far, focusing on getting more pets. I have over 70 pets so far but can still productively use many more. And I figure that the earlier I unlock them, the more levels and growth they'll get.

[Xelos]

A lot of upgrades are very small and not worth it unless you have spare pet stones.
But there plenty that are super good, e.g. Hedgehog, Gray, Chocobear, Corona, Book, Owl.

[n00bdragon]

Originally posted by Undefined:

I've always felt that Token Upgrades were intended for late-game or end-game players who had unlocked most (if not all) pets.

They also are useful if you have a lot of low growth pets that need improvement and can't really take on buffing another one to a meaningful value at the given time, but this is a phenomenon that has only really started to affect me at ~80+ pets. For a long time I was acquiring new pets faster than my GC could bring them up to speed. Now I have almost half my roster below half my GC level so any new tokens I get go to improving the pets I have.

[Alberich]

One of my goals for this year is to get the "four seasons" pets (white tiger, black turtle, etc.) that popped up last year...if their descriptions are anything to go by, their token upgrades sound pretty awesome.

[Alberich]

Resurrecting this thread because I just gave this upgrade to my octopus....and he got a lot more than 25% of an experience boost. With 55,000 growth at level 43 he's now getting 22,411 XP/hour without the learning coat...and my anteater, with over 93,000 growth at level 63, only gets 13,197.

Definitely, definitely worth it.

[muljostpho]

My Octopus is CL 95, token improved, 198k growth, and equipped with a T4 SSS+10 hammer (still my only T4 hammer) and a SSS+20 ear muffs. That puts it at 4936 speed, 893 quality, and 48940 xp/hr.

When I first gave it the token and gave all the hammers to max the bonus I had tested out what it looked like with the rune patch and a master gloves. I forget what it had with that equip but it was some insane amount of speed.

Looking at my other big blacksmiths for comparison:

My Anteater is CL 91, 181k growth, and equipped with a T3 SSS+20 hammer and a SSS+20 master gloves. That puts it at 2480 speed, 919 quality, and 37262 xp/hr.

My Pegasus is CL90 188k growth, and equipped with a T3 SSS+20 hammer and a SSS+20 master gloves. That puts it at 2350 speed, 856 quality, and 37075 xp/hr.

My Robot is CL84, 215k growth, and equipped with a T3 SSS+20 hammer and a SSS+20 ear muffs. That puts it at 1903 speed and 819 quality for T3 or less (2616 speed and 1190 quality for T4), and 39865 xp/hr.

None of these xp numbers are with learning coats.

[Haakon]

I'm going to suggest not token improving anything until most of the pet roster is unlocked. I have 74 pets and the only token improve I'm currently considering is Ape, as I'm at the point he can be replaced in my GC and I could use him to help push dungeons - this is a fair choice imo as a team only has 6 slots, so tokening a dungeon pet for a big power boost as I have 5 full teams running seems like an ok choice. I wouldn't consider anything else for a long time and I have 74 pets as of this week - my most recent Evo is Alien.
I still have room for more pets with tavern still pulling from my 30 in dungeons or pet camps when that class is needed. I think until you're around 80-90 pets there is always something you can unlock that will give you a better benefit.

[Alberich]

I take a different view - I'm at 73 pets unlocked, 71 evolved, 5 dungeon teams, and I've tokened up five: the "four seasons" pets from last year, plus the Octopus. (I haven't yet cracked the "Ape code" and don't want spoiling; that's a goal for later this year). Precisely because I'm not going to get more dungeon teams anytime soon, I greatly appreciate the extra powers on the seasonal pets, 'specially the black tortoise and the blue dragon.

(This is also affected by my decision to move to a growth-oriented strategy for a while -- I am having my growth chamber "grow itself" for the rest of the year, which slows down helping new pets to meet growth targets, and makes them less important.)

[Dark Lord]

I know this is a bit late since this tread was started back in February, but my two cents is that early on crafting quality is more valuable than crafting speed. So if you have the means to evolve the Firefox I would use the pet token on unlocking it. The Firefox is one of the best blacksmiths in the game and early on most of the other smiths can't compete. A bonus 25% to crafting quality can make a big difference early.

[muljostpho]

Huh, veering off topic here but with pets sorted by class I was just looking at my blacksmiths all next to each other and I just noticed that most of them have some dungeon levels when they shouldn't have any dungeon levels because they've either never been in a dungeon team or I drained their DLs at some point after I no longer needed them in dungeons (in depth 3 there's only still room for one in Volcano, other dungeons double up on a defender, supporter, or assassin instead of leaving room for a blacksmith) and haven't taken them back into dungeons again since then. I had noticed a while back that my Elf and Dwarf were both DL 18 with the exact same xp towards the next level. They had been the only ones when I noticed them, and I kept an eye out for a while and didn't see any other mystery gains after that. But suddenly right now I'm seeing Octopus, Anteater, Pegasus, Robot, Elf, and Crab all at DL 18 with the same xp and Dwarf is at DL 23. Elf is the only one with an xp sword but she's in RTI so it's all going to CL. Hamster hasn't gained any of these out of nowhere DLs.

Firefox is in my Volcano team so DL 196 is not a surprise. Bug used to be in my Volcano team and is now in my strat room so DL 169 is not a surprise. Book and Anything were deliberately leveled so they could be dungeon capable just in case I ever wanted them there for any reason, so their DLs of 128 and 162 aren't a surprise.

Those 18s and the 23 though... I mean... Is Owl's Shroud picking them or something? Shouldn't it be picking the lowest DL pet from among the pets that are actually in dungeon teams? Owl is currently an alchemist and earning 59370 xp/hr from crafting but I really haven't had a clue where the Shroud has been copying any of that to in the entire time I've had it. That handful of DL 18s seems like it'd barely be scratching the surface of accounting for it all though.

[muljostpho]

Anyway...

Originally posted by Dark Lord:

I know this is a bit late since this tread was started back in February, but my two cents is that early on crafting quality is more valuable than crafting speed. So if you have the means to evolve the Firefox I would use the pet token on unlocking it. The Firefox is one of the best blacksmiths in the game and early on most of the other smiths can't compete. A bonus 25% to crafting quality can make a big difference early.

Yeah, looking over the blacksmiths... Well, before tacking on any special bonuses you're looking at Elf and Dwarf having the best advancement per level with their BS evo bonus of 0.9 per CL, and then the adv/crafter Grayling is next with 0.8 per CL, and then Robot and Firefox are next with 0.75 per CL.

Robot is easiest to evolve out of those but is more commonly used as adventurer in the early game for its strength in the growth camp, we change it to blacksmith later when Raiju has evolved and leveled up enough to replace it in the growth camp. Unlocking and evolving Gray aren't newb / earlygame friendly tasks. Elf, Dwarf, and Firefox are all token-only unlocks. Elf can't evolve until after you own a bunch of T3 or better gear. Dwarf can't evolve until after you've farmed a ton of gems from challenge dungeons to feed it a bunch of high level gems. And then Firefox's evo condition is just a relatively small number of T3 mats. (A lot less than you'd spend on crafting for Elf's evo.)

Elf gets speed and quality boosted based on your owned gear, no limit. (Well, aside from however big of a cap on inventory space you've traded pet stones to get.) Dwarf gets speed and quality boosted by feeding it even more gems, but can not have a bigger boost than Elf. Firefox only gets quality boosted, but the cost is just some more of the T3 mats... but this caps at a 25% boost. Robot can get a speed and quality boost that only applies to T4 crafting. Robot gets nothing extra for T3 and lower crafting. Grayling gets nothing extra, aside from the flexibility of being able to remake it as blacksmith, alchemist, or adventurer for free to fit wherever you want it.

Firefox stands out as the most introductory level crafter of those stronger crafting options.

Anteater and Pegasus are the next ones down the list in the per CL advancement. They get 0.7 per CL as blacksmiths. Octopus follows behind them at 0.65 per CL. Anteater has its ants bonus going on for it. Pegasus has nothing. And Octopus of course has the extra hammer boost that this topic was started to ask about.