Chip Effecency?

[Gunheart]

So, I'm a little confused on something regarding chips and hard caps.

According to the guide, a +8 "diamond" chip will require 21 slots. But the thing is, I'm noticing in cases like Drop Rate or Movement Speed enhancing chips that their respective hardcaps can be reached by equiping two chips for a cost of roughly 14 or so slots combined. Is there an additional benefit to fully upgrading a chip I'm unaware of?

[Bombast]

The best chips for anyone are whatever maxes you out with the least amount of chip utilization. In theory, that's the highest possible chip combination, properly upgraded to minimize chip usage. In practice, it all depends on how luck you are with drops, and how well you merge them.

[Chaewon]

Yes, there are some chip types, including the ones you've listed, that have lower level combinations that make +8 versions obsolete.

[Gunheart]

Thanks a lot. Further question, are there any chips that require more than a +8 to reach the hard cap?

[awanderingswordsman]

Not that I found. I didn't upgrade everything though. As far as I can tell, +8 will always be exactly the hardcap.

[Gunheart]

Okay, looking through my Chip List, it seems there are some cases where the upgrades scale differently. For example, +3 Movement Speed gives a 10% boost. So two of those hits the 20% cap for only 14 slots at Diamond. On the other hand, +3 Max HP up gets you only a 20% boost, while a +6 gets 50%. So equipping two won't get you near a +8's value. Looks like I've got some experimenting to do.

[obstructor]

I have no idea why the power cost doesn't scale with the effectiveness. The +3 and +4 chips 'tend' to be the most efficient, but by the time you get that far it usually doesn't matter that much.

Its like my GTX 1060 uses less power than my GTX 460 AND is miles better, the higher level chips should just be straight up better.

As for hardcaps being reached. You can't level up chips beyond their effective cap, not all chips go to +8. Many cap at +6.

[Shade Factory]

Originally posted by obstructor:

I You can't level up chips beyond their effective cap, not all chips go to +8. Many cap at +6.

Seriously? Can you name one? Not sarcastic I never got anymore than a +6 and I have read you just have to take them to a certain vendor not saying even though it's super minor spoilers. I never even used chips above +5 (most were like +2 or 3) and looking back I'm glad I didn't. The game was easy enough already without them.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Some chips give a good enough bonus at +2 to +3, where using anything higher wouldn't be that efficient depending on your setup. So if you can get those specific chips at +2-3 with diamond, they might still be BiS without requiring you use a harder to get diamond +6-8 that also takes more slots for a bigger bonus you don't really need. You can get +1-+2 diamond chips from drops. Maybe even the occasional +3 diamond. I think I might have seen even higher level diamond chips drop, but I can't confirm 100% that I didn't get those from a chest or a quest.

FYI, Weapon Damage +8 gives +100% bonus, even though a +0 only gives 2%, and 4% for +1. So chips like this are worth using @ +8. But that's not the case for every chip though.

Some chips have a level sweet spot where leveling it up one more will give a massive bonus over the previous amount. Other chips have a pretty steady increase over their level span.

[Young Erusean Officer]

Generally you only want +8 that improve your dmg output while having low diamonds for utility.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Shockwave is fine @ +3-6 diamond. I compared it to +8, and it's not that significant. And farming a +8 diamond shockwave would be bordering masochistic. The only thing worth farming to +8 diamond is Weapon damage. Someone posted a video on youtube, takes about 2 hours. Not every chip type has an efficient grinding spot for the drops. The ones that dont would require dozens of hours of farming to get instead of 2.

Or you could just use cheat engine to make all your chips diamond, and never farm for any chips at all. After I beat the game and get chapter select, I'm probably gonna do that. I'm not farming hours for drops. That and I can't test which combos of chips work the best if I don't have them. There is some min-maxing complexity with the chip loadouts that would be impossible to toy with if you couldn't test all the variables. I'm more interested in playing around with that than I am in grinding for chips.

[Young Erusean Officer]

Its a real shame they put this MMORPG grinding style but not much incentive to do it unless you are some kind of speed runner.