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Mission crowns study

14 replies [Last post]
Thu, 01/02/2014 - 06:44
Donkey-Haute

Since autumn 2011, the guild Lancer Knightz has been collecting data on various aspects of Spiral Knights. Today I'm here to report on our data about mission crown payouts.

So far, we have measured the 51 permanent fighting missions an average of 17 times each, on various difficulty levels, with various party sizes. Our conclusions are not especially surprising — they often confirm the conventional wisdom — but having reliable data is always good. Among our conclusions thus far:

  • Party size does not affect crown payouts.
  • Difficulty does not affect sparks (Forge, Grim, Primal), but does affect crowns:
    • Elite pays 21% more than Advanced.
    • Normal pays 19% less than Advanced.
    • Classic (pre 2013-07-30) paid the same as Advanced (2% more, but it's not statistically significant).
  • In terms of total earnings per level, the most efficient Elite missions are:
    1. The King of Ashes (2537)
    2. Legion of Almire (2288)
    3. Compound 42 (2100)
    4. Heart of Ice (2073)
    5. Ghosts in the Machine (1870)
    6. The Gauntlet (1602)
    7. Sovereign Slime (1256)
    8. An Occurrence at Owlite Keep (1245)
    9. White Collar Captives (1139)
    10. Built to Destroy! (1129)

If any has any questions or comments, I'll be checking this thread for a while. Cheers.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 06:50
#1
Halandin's picture
Halandin
Any data on highest number of

Any data on highest number of shining (and maybe other types of) fire crystals per level? It might be different since that depends on boxes rather than the number of enemies.

Is OCH included in your data? I've heard that OCH may give more radiants than most other levels. I'm not sure of the crowns payout from it per level compared to the others either.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 06:57
#2
Krakob's picture
Krakob

@Halandin
It's very possible that O:CH gives more Radiants than KoA. The reason is that O:CH's final treasure boxes are one depth lower than the ones in KoA, which means that there should be less Shining Fire Crystals instead of Radiants. Both missions have 12 boxes and all boxes are red, no matter.

@Donkey-Haute
I believe it's very safe to assume that Classic and Advanced are exactly the same in terms of crowns since they are exactly the same in terms of other gameplay aspects.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 07:01
#3
Skepticraven's picture
Skepticraven
Two Pronged Confirmations

I have been doing a rarity drop analysis.

I can confirm the general trend, although not recorded, of the efficient mission list. The crown rate is largely influenced by monsters count and not treasure box count (which I studied). One of the highest arcade depth for crown count is the Graveyard depth, due to the very high number of zombies (which ironically ranks lowest on the treasure box average).

Spark tokens (not the SoLs) are most influenced by finding red treasure boxes, where they have a significantly higher probability than green boxes.

I will also note that as a general trend, even stratums give significantly better loot than odd stratums. All the missions listed above in the top 10 exist on even stratums. I would have to run an analysis on the data, but I would venture to guess that even stratums give approximately 1.5x-2x more crowns per depth than odd stratums.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:25
#4
Bopp's picture
Bopp
good

It's great to see so much data collection going on. I have nothing to add, but maybe I can gather some more OCH for you.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:28
#5
Skayeth's picture
Skayeth
Mmh

However, if you do boss runs and get tokens, you can buy weapons and earn more money?

NO WAIT, how about the most crown-earning but LEAST time consuming?

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:41
#6
Donkey-Haute
responses

Halandin: We don't collect fire crystal data. OCH is officially part of our study, but we've done only one measurement on it thus far. (I rarely have blocks of time large enough to do OCH.) Our one datum suggests that OCH will not be one of the top earners per level.

Krakob: I agree that Classic and Advanced are essentially identical. The 2% difference is almost certainly not statistically significant. I'll add a note to this effect.

Skepticraven: I've been following your study with interest. Keep it up. Perhaps I will do a follow-up analysis to see whether the even stratum advantage shows up in the mission data.

Bopp: Thanks.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:46
#7
Skayeth's picture
Skayeth
Honest

What is the most rewarding, yet least time consuming? Man, a guy could just do Jelly Runs and earn more money than a guy that does FSC sloooowly.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:47
#8
Skepticraven's picture
Skepticraven
@Annilaton

Maybe you should follow their link. Boss tokens and sparks (tokens, not SoLs) are included in the 1'st post values. Materials are not.

They also mention at the bottom... "Many players are interested in crowns per minute. However, we do not collect time data, because they would vary so much from player to player. Anecdotally, rushing through the King of Ashes to get the tokens and treasure boxes as fast as possible seems to be the most profitable strategy. "

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:57
#9
Skayeth's picture
Skayeth
Maybbee

Maybe if you skip all dah monsters except arenas, and get dah tokens faster, you can actually profit more by selling 5 stars than running the whole thing fighting all dah monstas and then getting dah tokens?

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 08:59
#10
Krakob's picture
Krakob

If you have enough Eternal Orbs, the most efficient grinding is speedrunning O:CH on normal and vendoring PMsoS.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 09:03
#11
Skayeth's picture
Skayeth
/laugh

Doesn't everyone have enough eternal orbs? /laugh
(Except for me.... /cry)
Oh yeah, you get eternal orbs in a jelly run now. Dunno if this is a advantage for defender elites, or a disadvantage for knight elites.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 09:05
#12
Donkey-Haute
Krakob

Now I remember your thread about that. Once we get some more OCH data, I'll add an analysis to take that into account. Thanks.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 12:48
#13
Dutch-Oven's picture
Dutch-Oven
on a similar note

I wanted to find out the quickest solo farming method so I started a table to record payout per minute for the three best paying missions FSC, JK and OCH on elite setting. I never bothered keeping up with it though but based on the few runs I recorded I got these numbers:

FSC: 360 crowns per minute (includes payout and ancient vendor profit) average run time of 31 minutes
OCH: 297 crowns per minute (includes payout and 5* mask vendor profit) average run time of 34 minutes
JK: 265 crowns per minute (payout and jelly vendor profit) average run time of 14 minutes

I didn't take account of material or mineral values or material cost for the Seerus mask. Mission time was based on solo speed runs, so I skipped a lot of content in OCH, 1 room in JK unless the treasure box room had a good payout, and rushed 1st and 2nd floor of FSC. Variance in run times was 5 minutes at most.

Sorry for the detour there. Nice list.

Thu, 01/02/2014 - 14:27
#14
Donkey-Haute
Sheriff-Dutchy

Sheriff-Dutchy, thanks for the information. People visiting this thread will probably be plenty interested.

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