What's the point of Proficiency?

[Voodoo Voorhees]

Since you're already very end endgame when it even unlocks and is lost upon realming? Just for some extra memories?

[Firefrye]

What's the point of ANY system in an idle game? The point is to watch the numbers go up and find satisfaction in making them go up efficiently by "correctly" distributing your resources.
Proficiency is a system that competes with the "rare goodies" experiment for resources. Therefore it's bonuses should be compared to those you get from that experiment: time warps, get mysteries, and various respec currencies. Proficiency gives direct power for the run and make the other repec currencies, TWs, and GMs better at what they do. Therefore it's best to split your red dust in a way that gives you "enough" of those items while still allowing you to interact with Profficiency. Right now the discord is saying a rough 50/50 split is good with no one having found (or bothered) a way to actually calculate "true" optimal ratio (this would be EXTREMELY difficult due to how many variables there are that would vary *radically* from player to player such as realm length)

[phenir]

Originally posted by Voodoo Voorhees:

Just for some extra memories?

Yes. It is basically enchanting except affects the base stats of the items. It'll probably be more worthwhile once >1300 mystery content gets added.

[Voodoo Voorhees]

@Firefrye: Yeah so basically it is just that, haven't used them yet, but that makes sense

@phenir: that's exactly what I thought the point of them was, but the update didn't mention anything like that so I was wondering if I missed something

thanks guys

[M F]

Originally posted by Firefrye:

Proficiency is a system that competes with the "rare goodies" experiment for resources.

I gave this some thought for awhile and I still can't agree. Maybe I'm missing something but since relics were removed from rare goodies, I've been converting red dust I don't use for remembering equipment into orange dust for memetics. Now that trials reward nullifiers cores and rare goodies experiments are even more expensive, I feel even less need for rare goodies experiments. I'm at 30M memories and 60M splinters and it seems like memetics offers more long term value, which Quasi Realms made even more valuable.
Edit:Removed unneeded /quote.

[phenir]

Originally posted by M F:

Originally posted by Firefrye:

Proficiency is a system that competes with the "rare goodies" experiment for resources.

I gave this some thought for awhile and I still can't agree. Maybe I'm missing something but since relics were removed from rare goodies, I've been converting red dust I don't use for remembering equipment into orange dust for memetics. Now that trials reward nullifiers cores and rare goodies experiments are even more expensive, I feel even less need for rare goodies experiments. I'm at 30M memories and 60M splinters and it seems like memetics offers more long term value, which Quasi Realms made even more valuable.
Edit:Removed unneeded /quote.

Was that under consideration that time warps are much more valuable than they used to be since they now affect stuff like expeditions (after the first) and offline casts (which themselves have been improved recently as well)? Also feels like I get more get mysteries from it which is a pretty big time saver.

[Firefrye]

Originally posted by M F:

Originally posted by Firefrye:

Proficiency is a system that competes with the "rare goodies" experiment for resources.

I gave this some thought for awhile and I still can't agree. Maybe I'm missing something but since relics were removed from rare goodies, I've been converting red dust I don't use for remembering equipment into orange dust for memetics. Now that trials reward nullifiers cores and rare goodies experiments are even more expensive, I feel even less need for rare goodies experiments. I'm at 30M memories and 60M splinters and it seems like memetics offers more long term value, which Quasi Realms made even more valuable.
Edit:Removed unneeded /quote.

For long term play the time warps and get mysteries from rare goodies are EXTREMELY important. TW allow you to charge your major/minor gods at the start of a realm or at the start of a final "long" exile. This also gives a very sizable amount of trial runes and with the recent changes to how TW works it CASTS all your active spells for the effective duration. This lets you perform multiple days worth of spell casting buildup very quickly and precisely. Once you get slightly further (I started in the high e6 to low e7 memory range that you are approaching), it becomes worthwhile to perform 50-60 day long realms where you spend the last 30-35 days in a SINGLE exile before using 2-3 Get Mysteries at the end to effectively perform multiple month long exiles at once. In addition you get to reap the rewards of late-realm rune generation, high trial count bonuses, the splinters from Hypnotizing hardships from all those trials, multiple fully charged e-dust phases with your minor gods at levels 60-80 giving a sizable bonus to edust and splinters gain, and void echoes that spawn in seconds. Lastly, the lost dust from converting Red into other colors is an incredibly high cost to pay.

I cannot recommend to anyone that they ignore the rare goodies experiment, let alone convert all their dust into other colors. Sure, the null and enchantment cores as well as alteration sand can now be gained in low quantities elsewhere, but those are not the actual high value items you care about most.

[M F]

Originally posted by Firefrye:

For long term play the time warps and get mysteries from rare goodies are EXTREMELY important. TW allow you to charge your major/minor gods at the start of a realm or at the start of a final "long" exile.

In general, I don't consider using Time Warps until I've finished leveling Peritocapia for the realm because of praying experience.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

This also gives a very sizable amount of trial runes

As someone who always passes the 2000 milestone in prime realms, sizable is an exaggeration, especially in compassion to how many runes are required to reach that.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

and with the recent changes to how TW works it CASTS all your active spells for the effective duration. This lets you perform multiple days worth of spell casting buildup very quickly and precisely.

The effect to spell casts from Time Warps diminishes noticeably when your cast rate is over 90 per sec for a 10 day exile.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

Once you get slightly further (I started in the high e6 to low e7 memory range that you are approaching), it becomes worthwhile to perform 50-60 day long realms where you spend the last 30-35 days in a SINGLE exile before using 2-3 Get Mysteries at the end to effectively perform multiple month long exiles at once.

I said I have 30M memories, that's 3e7 and I've been doing long realms (and long exiles, which I start about two weeks into a realm) to optimized memetic income since about 10M memories. Using a Get Mystery at the end of the realm doesn't add very many 1e# and they're so infrequently earned that you'd be lucky to earn 2 per realm. On a very long realm, that might earn you 1e10-1e20 mysteries. I much prefer to use them to shave many days of time off a goal, for example. I used 3 to hit Ascension forms the first time, saved about 2 weeks. I used 5 to shave a week at low mysteries and which made earning the When the Clock Strikes Twelve Triumph much less tedious. In the same realm I spent another 3 shaving another week off the time it would have taken me to get the Unworthy Triumph.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

In addition you get to reap the rewards of late-realm rune generation, high trial count bonuses, the splinters from Hypnotizing hardships from all those trials, multiple fully charged e-dust phases with your minor gods at levels 60-80 giving a sizable bonus to edust and splinters gain, and void echoes that spawn in seconds. Lastly, the lost dust from converting Red into other colors is an incredibly high cost to pay.

Again, I think you're over valuing the memories you earn from the few Time Warps and Get Mysteries that are earned, which is even less since the cost of Rare Goodies was increased. I don't need Time Warps to get Peritocapia to 100 and Mundigenia + Contraligia to 90+. Minor god leveling drops off very fast and Time Warps don't fix that. My enchanting dust income meets my needs, which is to say I reach the appropriate enchanting level cap for the memories I have, currently level 43.

Lets boil the value of each to their essence. One is more memories and more praying experience, the other is more memetics and more mentalizing experience. I think the question is not whether or not it's a good idea but when exactly does the ratio of splinters earned to memories earned justifies doing Rare Goodies experiments. And I don't believe I'm at that point. I think the ratio of value toward splinters is going to get a meaningful adjustment up when Pantheon Memetics become available.

Since you didn't mention the flip side, I'll review that again, fully. By converting red dust to orange and not doing Rare Goodies experiments, I also get to use the orange dust that would have been used for Rare Goodies, for those memetic splinter experiments. The end result is I get decent bump to splinter income, about 3 splinter experiments per Rare Goodies experiment. I get more mentalizing experience. I have more of what makes Quasi Realms go faster while spending less blue dust (the saved blue dust gets used in a Prime realm) which really diminishes in Quasi Realms because of low milestones. The minor benefits are that I'm not getting more Nullifiers cores that I don't need (400+ stockpiled already) I use something like 75 per Realm, Disenchantment cores I don't need (466 stockpiled), 10-13 per realm and alteration sand I don't need (1.22k stockpiled), I have all the achievement finished and I'm not interested in cosmetics.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

I cannot recommend to anyone that they ignore the rare goodies experiment, let alone convert all their dust into other colors. Sure, the null and enchantment cores as well as alteration sand can now be gained in low quantities elsewhere, but those are not the actual high value items you care about most.

But we're not talking about anyone, this discussion is focused on those who've reached 1e1300+ mysteries. Those who have, I would probably recommend either putting all your red dust into Rare Goodies or if you've reached the point where the value of memories have diminished meaningfully compared to splinters, put that dust into earning splinters.
Edit:Fixed quoting.

[Delreich]

A 12h time warp is 12h worth of rune generation. Converting red dust to yellow or green (for splinters or keys) also costs you runes.
Runes are effectively more crafting dust, keys and splinters. It's not a clear-cut tradeoff by any means.

[Firefrye]

Originally posted by Delreich:

A 12h time warp is 12h worth of rune generation. Converting red dust to yellow or green (for splinters or keys) also costs you runes.
Runes are effectively more crafting dust, keys and splinters. It's not a clear-cut tradeoff by any means.

not including the partial progress you make on runes from experiments that you lose because you lost dust in the conversion process. This might be small, but every lost rune is another handfull of experiments worth of dust you could have had.

Originally posted by M F:

The effect to spell casts from Time Warps diminishes noticeably when your cast rate is over 90 per sec for a 10 day exile.

This is not true. There was a change to how time warps work relatively recently so that they cast your spells at their actual cast rate. So a 12h TW is equivalent to letting your game run in the background for 12h. (it came along with the most recent change to allow spells to properly buildup and cast while offline too) Just about the only noticable difference between a TW and "actual" game time is the few pets and abilities that scale off of "real" time in game (like the Mechanos casts of Black Beam).

Originally posted by M F:

I said I have 30M memories, that's 3e7

Sorry, I misread what you said and thought you were at 3e6 instead of 3e7

Originally posted by M F:

Using a Get Mystery at the end of the realm doesn't add very many 1e# and they're so infrequently earned that you'd be lucky to earn 2 per realm. On a very long realm, that might earn you 1e10-1e20 mysteries.

My last realm ended with a 32day exile in which I used 2 GM I'd earned that realm (while splitting my red dust 50/50 with proficiency). My mysteries before the final burst were e1404 and I jumped to e1519 after the GM. Split over the effective 3 "exiles" I earned an average of e38 mysts each (weighted slightly towards the first true exile) and thought
I didn't track the actual amounts, I would estimate this gained me an additional 20% or so more memories than I would have otherwise. Even more than splinters, those bonus memories are the most important form of meta currency due to how their acquisition rate is even more restricted (and our only way to boost them is through limited imprint upgrades, REAL time in a realm, ... and Get Mysts at the end of a realm-ending long exile).

[Tom the Mime Artist]

Originally posted by Firefrye:

My last realm ended with a 32day exile in which I used 2 GM I'd earned that realm (while splitting my red dust 50/50 with proficiency). My mysteries before the final burst were e1404 and I jumped to e1519 after the GM. Split over the effective 3 "exiles" I earned an average of e38 mysts each (weighted slightly towards the first true exile) and thought
I didn't track the actual amounts, I would estimate this gained me an additional 20% or so more memories than I would have otherwise. Even more than splinters, those bonus memories are the most important form of meta currency due to how their acquisition rate is even more restricted (and our only way to boost them is through limited imprint upgrades, REAL time in a realm, ... and Get Mysts at the end of a realm-ending long exile).

e1404 to e1519 is an 19% jump in memories overall. Assuming approx half the mystery gain each GM (pretty close but slight underestimate due to extra sources), that means if you just exiled instead of the first GM, you'd be at ~e1469. e1469 to e1519 is an 7.6% jump in memories overall. So it's a boost but pretty far off what you were expecting.

[M F]

Originally posted by Firefrye:

not including the partial progress you make on runes from experiments that you lose because you lost dust in the conversion process. This might be small, but every lost rune is another handfull of experiments worth of dust you could have had.

A small amount of dust because, it's random between that and other useless goods like enchanting dust, nullifier cores (not useless but I already have plenty from Trials of Talent I normally do), catalysts (not useless but better earned from auto expeditions) and alteration sand.

Originally posted by Firefrye:

This is not true.

I didn't fully quote that because of the misunderstanding. I wasn't saying you don't get the full 90 per sec, I was saying the value of an extra half day or even one and half days of extra casting on a 10 day + exile is significantly less value then using a Time Warp on a one day exile. I mention the 90+ casts per second because the more spells you cast during a 10 day exile, the less value the extra casts of a Time Warp will add. At least that's how it appears to me watching the bonuses of Quasi-incantation and Manifest Twisted Reality rise slower the deeper into an exile I am (except in the beginning).

Originally posted by Firefrye:

My last realm ended with a 32day exile in which I used 2 GM I'd earned that realm (while splitting my red dust 50/50 with proficiency).

I'm also not going to fully quote that either because we clearly have significantly different end game approaches. I'll give a brief synopsis of my style.

When I hit the point where daily exiles aren't very good, I switch to my long exile phase when I've reached a non orange dust cap. While I'm waiting for the cap, I do splinter experiments to keep orange just under the cap. Once a non orange dust hits the cap, I do an experimetns phase (with realm upgrade respec to maximize enchanting dust). I spend my enchanting dust and maybe I level a memetic. I respec my realm upgrades for pure profit and do a burst. After the burst I respec again for buildup and maximum catalyst income. Then I rinse and repeat, experiments, burst, buildup phases. By the time I've reached about 60 days a burst gives at best 1e2 per day, usually less. So for me, a Get Mysteries is only going to give 1e20 mysteries, at best (more likely 1e10-1e15), a second would at best be 1e12 (more likely 1e6-1e9). So maybe you do get a lot of use out of Get Mysteries but only because you force that setup and I'm not sure there's value doing it that way.

[Firefrye]

Originally posted by Tom the Mime Artist:

Originally posted by Firefrye:

My last realm ended with a 32day exile in which I used 2 GM I'd earned that realm (while splitting my red dust 50/50 with proficiency). My mysteries before the final burst were e1404 and I jumped to e1519 after the GM. Split over the effective 3 "exiles" I earned an average of e38 mysts each (weighted slightly towards the first true exile) and thought
I didn't track the actual amounts, I would estimate this gained me an additional 20% or so more memories than I would have otherwise. Even more than splinters, those bonus memories are the most important form of meta currency due to how their acquisition rate is even more restricted (and our only way to boost them is through limited imprint upgrades, REAL time in a realm, ... and Get Mysts at the end of a realm-ending long exile).

e1404 to e1519 is an 19% jump in memories overall. Assuming approx half the mystery gain each GM (pretty close but slight underestimate due to extra sources), that means if you just exiled instead of the first GM, you'd be at ~e1469. e1469 to e1519 is an 7.6% jump in memories overall. So it's a boost but pretty far off what you were expecting.

This made me curious because that still seemed a bit low, so I looked it up.
Memories = (log10(myseries)-360)^1.67 (before other multipliers)
e1404 myst -> (1404-360)^1.67= 1.10e5 memories
e1519 -> = 1.31e5 memories
This is in fact a 19.07% increase overall as you said. However, these memories are split over 3 effective exiles not 2, so the GM are responsible for a little less than 2/3 of these total memories. Assuming I gained 40% of these mysts/mems in the initial Burst (before I used either GM) then I would have reached e1450myst and 1.18e5 mem from the burst (7.47% increase out of the total 19.07%). This leaves the remaining 11.6% of my total memories to be split across the bursts from my 2 GM.
Even if we take your example where you assumed about 50% of the total memories were from the GMs, that still means that I spent 2 GM to double the effectiveness of my single long exile.

[Tom the Mime Artist]

The approximation wasn't that 1/2 the mysteries exponent came from GMs. It was that most of the additional profit after GM comes from the extra mysteries as you're past upgrades at that point and the only thing changing other than mysteries is the source amount (which does have an impact but isn't the major factor). So if a GM gives you e50 mysteries, your profit is boosted by e50 by the extra mysteries so an extra burst under the same conditions gives would give you e25 extra mysteries from that and maybe e2-3 from having more sources. It is not roughly evenly distributed between exiles. It is heavily weighted towards the first exile. Neglecting additional sources, the first exile/GM gives 4/7 of the total extra mysteries, the second 2/7 and the third 1/7.

I'm not saying it doesn't give a boost - it does. Just not as much as you seem to think.

[Delreich]

Originally posted by Firefrye:

Originally posted by Delreich:

A 12h time warp is 12h worth of rune generation. Converting red dust to yellow or green (for splinters or keys) also costs you runes.
Runes are effectively more crafting dust, keys and splinters. It's not a clear-cut tradeoff by any means.

not including the partial progress you make on runes from experiments that you lose because you lost dust in the conversion process. This might be small, but every lost rune is another handfull of experiments worth of dust you could have had.

That's what I was referring to with the "conversion costs you runes" bit.

Originally posted by M F:

A small amount of dust because, it's random between that and other useless goods like enchanting dust, nullifier cores (not useless but I already have plenty from Trials of Talent I normally do), catalysts (not useless but better earned from auto expeditions) and alteration sand.

The chance of getting cdust from trials is about 22%, so should be easy to quantify how much each rune is worth. Trials are also a pretty significant source of splinters, so should consider that too.

For the conversion issue, assuming you convert all red dust, you lose 1/6 of your total cdust. That's 0.5-1 rune per real-time day, if your average cdust income is around 15k-20k per day.

Originally posted by Tom the Mime Artist:

The approximation wasn't that 1/2 the mysteries exponent came from GMs. It was that most of the additional profit after GM comes from the extra mysteries as you're past upgrades at that point and the only thing changing other than mysteries is the source amount (which does have an impact but isn't the major factor).

There's also attributes. In my experience, each GM is about 60% extra mysts (logarithmically). If final exile goes from e1414 to e1484, two GMs would take it to about e1550.

More than just adding more mysts, GMs change how active you have to be. It's probably more efficient to do multiple shorter exiles, but a single 40-day exile with 2 GMs thrown on at the end is convenient for lazy sods like me.

[Tom the Mime Artist]

Originally posted by Delreich:

Originally posted by Tom the Mime Artist:

The approximation wasn't that 1/2 the mysteries exponent came from GMs. It was that most of the additional profit after GM comes from the extra mysteries as you're past upgrades at that point and the only thing changing other than mysteries is the source amount (which does have an impact but isn't the major factor).

There's also attributes. In my experience, each GM is about 60% extra mysts (logarithmically). If final exile goes from e1414 to e1484, two GMs would take it to about e1550.

More than just adding more mysts, GMs change how active you have to be. It's probably more efficient to do multiple shorter exiles, but a single 40-day exile with 2 GMs thrown on at the end is convenient for lazy sods like me.

It varies a little depending on the what source you have gilded and the biased statistics paramnesiac but at 20 gild, if the value of your bought sources increases by a factor of 1e8-9, your profit increases by an order of magnitude. The extra attributes is minor compared to this - 1.75 attribute points per mystery exponent gain (for equivalent waiting time for attribute gain, will actually be lower because you're not spending the same time again after the get mysteries). Even with max unnatural talents, that's 69 attribute points for an order of magnitude profit gain, which you'd get at e39 extra mysteries (if you were waiting the equivalent time.

Plugging into a get mysteries for an extra e40 mysteries for an example:
Extra profit from mysteries - e40
Extra profit from more sources - ~e5
Extra profit from attributes - ~e1
The extra profit from sources and attribute also increases the sources you can buy, so loop that in once - ~e0.75
Total extra profit ~e47
-> e23.5 extra mysteries at about ~59% of the original. So the 60% checks out with the maths.