s & f advice (in Off-topic)

i am going to be sending out another guild mail over on shakes & fidget since i notice quite a few people are using the 30% mount again and want to give them the math behind the mounts and growth. i would appreciate any input here to make sure it is as easily understandable as possible. here is what i plan to send:

Maximizing Growth in S&F

I see many using the 30 percent mounts in the game so i wanted to go through the math once again. I find it easier to use a dollar for the math than the 100 minutes a day.

A 30% discount means that what would normally cost a dollar will now cost .70 cents. To figure out how much of a bonus this equates to we just need to take the total amount of 100 and divide it by the 70 which gives us about 1.43, so our 30 percent discount equates to a 43 cent bonus. So our $1 can now buy $1.43 worth of stuff.

A 50% disccount means that what would normally cost a dollar now costs .50 cents. Using the same formula we see that 100/50 equals 2. This means our 50% discount becomes a 100 percent bonus.

This means that 25 shrooms every 14 days gives a 100 percent bonus. To get the same bonus using the 30% mount you would need to spend another 3 mushrooms each day to make up the other 60 minutes needed. Over 14 days the total would be (3X14) 42 mushrooms plus the 1 mushroom cost of the 30% mount brings the total to 43 mushrooms to equal the growth over the two weeks of the epic mount's 25 mushroom cost.

Either you buy shrooms or you don't. In my opinion if you do not buy shrooms, your best bet is to save all shrooms for the epic mount and get gear from dungeons and quest rewards or gold only gear in the stores. It makes sense to me to grow twice as fast and then the gear is less important as you just really don't have it that long.

If you do buy shrooms then the epic mount plus maxing out the purchase of thirst each day will maximize growth most efficiently.

The only times when I'm using the 30% one is when my 50% ran out and I didn't have enough shrooms to get it again.

yeah, i have had to do that as well at times but many of our guild is running it all the time.

I think that should be good to send out to the guild, the difference between mounts is pretty obvious once you start using the epic mount. If you aren't buying shrooms, then its really the only worthwhile investment for the shrooms you do find.

If you do by shrooms then epic mount + full thirst each day = rocket to the top. I was gaining about ~2 levels per day from lvl 90-130 on thirst alone.

Just fix the typo. It's "70 cents", not ".70 cents".

yeah, i was going one way and changed it afterwards without changing all of it. ; )

anyone know how to copy and paste into s&f so that i do not have to retype?

also, if you have any questions regarding the scrapbooks you can ask them here as well. i got mine 27% full now! ; )

CTRL + Insert = Copy
SHFT + Insert = Paste

I thought you knew that?

i knew there was a way, couldn't remember how though, thanks!

I'm irked that I still don't have my scrapbook yet. I foolishly wasted between 15-20 shrooms trying to make it spawn the day it came out with no success ("Just one more, its gotta spawn soon.. crap.. ok one more.. crap.. bah alright just one more.. crap.." *repeat*), and now after two natural resets of the shop I still have yet to see it.

They should have put some sort of check on it for the game to see whether or not you have one and automatically spawn it when the shops reset if you don't, seeing as its a new addition to the game and basically everyone is going to have it at some point.

Thank god I wasn't one of the people who dropped like 150+ shrooms searching for it while it was bugged and wasn't actually live yet.

i wasted one shroom and then saw that it might be bugged. after they said it was fixed but to press ctrl + f5 to reset cache before trying again i decided to try one more shroom and got it.

Yeah I waited to hear that it was live before even attempting it (was following the forums) made sure everything was correct with the game version and did the ctrl-f5 a few times for good measure and still got nada.

sorry about your luck then, i guess i was just lucky!

dudemus, I think I have a tweak for your math--If the 30% mount gives a 43% bonus, you actually only need 2 mushrooms a day to get the same benefit as the 50% mount. 40 x 1.43 = 57.2. 2 x 14 = 28 + 1, so you need 29 total mushrooms vs 25.

The 50% mount still makes sense, but the advantage isn't huge (unless you use even more mushrooms for thirst, as the thirst bonus for the 50% mount is even greater).

You're missing something here... in the 14 days between mounts, you can't necessarily gain 25 mushrooms. You can easily gain 1.

lol. i just looked in the magic store for items and instantly found a scrap book xD not even tried to search it, not even HEARD of it :P

bolfen, the math i stated is correct. you get 143 minutes instead of the 100 with the 30% mount but 200 minutes with the 50% mount. 200-143=57. it takes 3 shrooms a day to get the extra 57 minutes doesn't it?

ns, there is a better shroom drop rate with shorter quests. it is possible to take the shorter quests and almost get the 25 shrooms in the two weeks on an average basis. i have done this for most of my levels.

if i do not have the 25 at the end of the period then i do spend one shroom on the 30% mount until i can upgrade to the better mount. this is assuming that you spend no shrooms on anything else and with a random drop rate you do have some periods that are better than others.

I will try to clarify my math by using RM (real minutes) and EM (effective minutes).

So when you start with 100 RM, you end up with:

30% mount: 142.9 EM
50% mount: 200 EM

1 mushroom will give you 20 RM, which is the equivalent of:
30% mount: 28.6 EM
50% mount: 40 EM

So 2 thirst mushrooms a day with a 30% mount will give you exactly 200 EM, which is exactly the same amount of EM you get with the 50% mount with no extra mushrooms.

i had wondered if you were saying my calculations do not take into account the bonus on the purchased minutes. i will concede to that then as it looks like you are right. 25 is still better than 29 though and those 4 extra shrooms would equate to 160 more em with the better mount.

is the game down?

Not for me.

http://downorjust.me/

I only get a black screen, anyone want to help me?

clear cookies, cache, etc. see if s2.sfgame.us comes up? try a different browser?

You get what I do at work. Clear your cache, and if it still doesn't work, update Flash (though not the likely culprit).

Clearing cache did the job!

Argh! Here's my current body armor with one I got yesterday below it:

Armor 2123
+205 to main 3 stats
Value 28,159

Armor 2138
+197 to all stats
Value 372,863

The way the game is set up, I feel better off using the top one. The 197 to each of my lesser stats is so close to useless that it doesn't make up for the slight drop in my main stats.

the first one makes your butt look huge though! ;)

Scrapbook question---

So when I beat someone in Arena, the scrapbook button starts bouncing as expected.

But if I get an item in a quest, I have to crack open the scrapbook and then scroll to the page where the new item is in order to get the bouncing scrapbook.

Do I need to do things like open the scrapbook or equip it to get it to register?

Equipping does it every time. Probably a bug in the game.

Yeah, the scrapbook idea is genius. Makes me pay attention to the rewards and who I'm duelling instead of just blindingly clicking on the biggest exp. I'm up to 27% now...

incase you want mushrooms but you cant use cash; using low time quests increase your mushroom gains with big steps, a mushroom once in 2 weeks changed in already 2 in 1 day without all my thirst used :p

we have some players who haven't logged in for a bit if anyone else is interested in joining us! ; )

we added one from s&f but still have at least one more slot at the current time!

50% already ;)

still don't have a friggin scrapbook.

just dont think about the scrapbook and it will pop-up at the magic shop :p

So I tried it your way, dudemus, and after two days with the 25-mushroom mount and fighting only the shortest quests, I've gained 1 mushroom. It's not looking good.

the first time i did that, i got 5. the second day i had 3. some days after i got 1.. now, 2 weeks later i only got 1 :|

i suppose thats alot? :P

I went the whole 2 weeks doing the shortest quests and only got 13 shrooms back. Hope it works better next time ;p

4 days in and only 1 mushroom.....

Dudemus, I think your idea that you get a ton more mushrooms with the shorter quests isn't exactly accurate.

Shrooms drops are a percent chance that's the same for all quests, regardless of length (mounts or lack thereof do affect the flat rate slightly). Therefore, picking the shortest quests does increase your shrooms, but whether or not it's worth the hassle of constantly doing 2:30 quests is another story.

four chances at 2:30 as opposed to one chance for a 10 minute quest tells me all that i need to know.

you won't always have enough to keep the elite mount. that does not change the fact that it is by far the best way to grow.

as i stated above, if you do not have 25 shrooms when your elite expires, spend one shroom on the 30% mount and upgrade it to the elite mount as soon as you have 25...rinse & repeat.

the main thing to know is that you need to save all shrooms for the mount and spend none on equipment, timers or thirst unless you are buying shrooms.

Anyone else upgrade to the latest flash and lose the ability to play?

heh, i didnt upgrade :)

Control+F5 didn't help?

Nah, it's many flash sites, aside from adobe itself. 10.3 must be a major backwards-incompatibilty, like java 5 to 6.

I updated to 10.3 and I'm playing s&f now.

Unless the rate is different depending on your quest. Maybe shorter quests have a different drop rate. And maybe different mounts give a different drop rate.

^ I know for sure that the epic mount has a lower drop rate then all the other mounts due to how much time it cuts away from questing. I'm not sure if there is a difference between the quest times.

I'm pretty sure it's 5% chance if mountless and 3% chance if mounted. There aren't any other variables I've read about in the forums.

Kept downgrading until 10.1.102.64, now it works. Go figure.

thanks for the heads up, i will hold off on that upgrade! ; )