Optimal Upgrading??

[rmarquez5]

So I stumbled upon a spreadsheet on reddit when I first discovered this game and explored strategies on how to play. The spreadsheet was one player's take on the best order to upgrade your characters to maximize their effectiveness. Is there a lot of stock in that kind of strategy? Right now, all I do is upgrade my characters to the next upgrade level instead of one level at a time. And I upgrade the one that costs the least at the moment. I haven't seen any real benefit to upgrade this character up a lot first, then that one, as per the spreadsheet I saw. But maybe there is and I'm just not paying attention. Thoughts?

[Soul Reaver]

Upgrading by 1 level has not much sense, unless you don't want to heal your champ (it does have this nice effect ;) ). Actually, there are benefits of upgrading this or that champion further, while skipping upgrades on others.

Explanation is simple: most of the time, only single, max two champions are dealing damage and other are only used to buff those two. If you have this in mind, don't you think that it's better to upgrade buffer, that will give you bonus +100% to global DPS, which will be 2nd upgrade on that buffer, instead of giving cheaper upgrade to another buffer, that have only self damage upgrades in the near future? In the beginning you might not see much of a difference, as you're not going far with those upgrades, but that's exactly why there is a point in upgrading them in order.

Remember though, that there is no single way to play this game. Play it the way YOU want, using champions you want/like. If you don't feel like having to stick strictly to some magical spreadsheet - don't do that. (I haven't ;) ). In such case, you only have to accept that you won't be playing optimally ... but I feel that it's better to play at your own pace :) To some extent sticking to the best, optimal solutions might get boring soon because of too many spreadsheets in use etc.

[rmarquez5]

Oh, of course, I've played how I want to play. But I have found this game to have a depth to it that I have never seen in an idle clicker game. That REALLY intrigues me. How the characters affect one another, the permutations that you can configure the formation and even upgrading them optimally just keeps me coming back for more.

All that being said, its a grind. And though I don't follow that spreadsheet to the letter, I've gleaned a few concepts that I wanted to clarify here. Your comments about upgrade order are helpful and I've never considered that before.

I'm still early in the game compared to a lot of posters here though. So I'm still farming favour at this point to earn more gold to earn more favour and so on. Would that affect upgrade order?

[RWarehall]

In terms of "optimum", using the correct upgrade order will push your wall forward the best. Remember that spreadsheets like that do not take in account your primary DPS which should be upgraded every time it is cheaper than other upgrades listed on the spreadsheet.

That said, if it's the spreadsheet I'm thinking of, I don't think it counts the "quality" of the upgrade. Some upgrades are 300% boosts and others as low as 50%. Since most things in the game are exponential, it's only going to affect a few upgrades here or there, but sometimes it might be better spending a little more for a 300% vs a 50%.

Then there are "gold find" upgrades where if you buy them first, they earn you more gold and start paying for themselves.

And there are "essential" upgrades like "Usurp" or "Bulk Up" if you are using Arkhan as DPS or his later Rising Anger which boosts his damage per enemy attacking. These are magnitudes more valuable than the typical upgrade and might be be worth passing on a number of other upgrades to reach first.

The spreadsheet is a good guide in general, but even then, if you want to put more thought into your own setup, there is still plenty of room to individualize it. There is still some adaptation you can make depending where your wall is in different campaigns.

What the spreadsheets do best, is once you are approaching your wall, you aren't spending gold on DPS upgrades for non-DPSers, saving it for upgrades that are actually helpful to getting past more levels. And these additional levels will drop more gold than the last, which makes the next upgrade after that much quicker.

[rmarquez5]

Nice! That's great insight. Thank you.