Questions about essence

[Cohollow]

So I'm wondering about a couple different things to do with essence. First, when I finish a dungeon run I get bonus essence in brackets. Is this caused by the relic or perhaps certain items? I thought that the essence bonuses just made it more likely to spawn monsters with essence. Is there something I'm missing?

The second thing is I'm trying to figure out if it's more fortuitous to use items that increase Essence find or to increase gold find instead and then simply turn that gold into essence. It seems better to go for essence find but if anyone has any additional info on the matter that'd be a big help!

[RAD-82]

Originally posted by Cohollow:

First, when I finish a dungeon run I get bonus essence in brackets. Is this caused by the relic or perhaps certain items?

That essence is from the gnomes in the tavern.

[Handoiron]

The essence in brackets is the bonus essence you get from gnomes like RAD-82 said.

At first, you gain a LOT more essence running a ransack build with as much essence find as you can get up to +95%. The base chance to have an essence carrier spawn in 5% so to hit 100% and guarantee an essence carrier every non-janitor level is +95%. Janitors are coded to never hold essence.

Eventually, you reach a point where the time your thief spends ransacking is a loss due to a loss in kill speed and the associated gold lost. This won't happen until your gold find relic is in the level 8000+ range though. Even then, essence find will still give you an increase to your gains because you'll still be getting normal essence drops. Also, at that range, gold find gear will be a smaller portion of your total gold find just because you'll have such a large % from your relic.

With the gear available, Essence magnets should always be better than lucky clovers for increasing your gains. Early on, there aren't many options for essence find in other slots so gold shield and armor are great. Those are always a trade off of killing capability vs. gain increase and eventually become overshadowed by your gold find relic and the need to gear more defensively.

[Cohollow]

This response has been very thorough and helpful! Thanks so much for the help, I'll be sure to keep this all in mind moving forward!

[ChewMyFudge]

If it takes you 3 aoe skills to clear a floor and your gold relic below 10k, you let Thief do ransack. If you can clear with just 2 turns, you turn off Thief ransack but keep them for 2 extra chests passive.

Eventually you'll get to a point where by the time you naturally farm up say 50mill essence, the gold you got from the run will give you 900mill essence. From this alone, the +50mill from ransack is useless because all it does is slow you down. (These numbers are from my runs, my Gold relic is 29k at 670k floor stage)

There is no Relic to boost Essence income besides floor level, only spawn rate through items. Gold however has floor level + Relic and always drops (besides Janitors), so it will start nailing you bigger income the more you invest.