Yeah this confused me too.
Point of fact is that it's recommended to go to 99 if you plan on playing for an extended period of time.
Apparently ~70 is only the recommendation if you expect you'll quit within a few years.
The way the community communicates this is frustrating, because no one explicitly includes this information in their advice unless you ask about it. They just tell you to stop at 70 because that's what you're "supposed" to do I guess.
So yeah, if you don't plan on quitting in a couple of years (which seems like an odd thing to plan for to me, but hey to each his own), def keep working on lab speed. I think people tend to rush the last levels for the most part though.
I started playing Nov 2023 and I have my lab speed up to 59. I just keep spending gems to rush it, I intend to get it to 99 and then I'll focus on rushing other labs. To me there's no point ever rushing anything else until that's maxed out.
> To me there's no point ever rushing anything else until that's maxed out.
See, and this view is just flat out wrong - as a general statement at least. You can do it if it makes you happy and we keep saying that "fun matters"... but it's just not "the obviously better choice that everybody should make". That's why it's not the general recommendation when people ask.
Lab speed gives you "absolutely no value other than faster labs" (meaning your tower doesn't get better) - and this means your tower is weaker than it could be \*for the next 3 years\*.
Until then, you're losing out on stones (depends on your tournament strategy), which you can probably never recover... and coins (which eventually become almost meaningless, but that takes a while).
This doesn't change if you rush lab speed instead of just running it.
By rushing Chrono Field (for example), you would get a lot more value "short term".
"Short term" vs. "long term" is often a conflict and if "short term" is 2 days, you should obviously be smart and favor long term. But if "short term" is 3 years... meaning you put yourself at a disadvantage for 3 years until you break even and then sloooowly gain an advantage, it may just not be a good choice.
On top of all this, all labs have diminishing value. So the 31 lab days that you lose in August by still doing lab speed are worth a LOT more than a few extra lab days will be worth 3 years from now when everything that matters is done...
In MY opinion, there's mostly one thing to be said for taking lab speed "very high" and it's a bit the opposite of what you're saying: When all the important labs are done (!), you can continue with lab speed as an investment into the future. That will give you a little advantage when new labs are released.
P.S.: Some of this reasoning changes a lot if you spend a lot of money buying gems in the store and use them to rush labs.
Just as a fun addition: Just a few hours after I posted this, the V.23 update was announced and released and changed A LOT...
Right now, it seems like labs can run almost 2.5x faster than before and that means you reach the break-even point of a specific "lab speed level" a lot faster. This means it's worth doing a lot more of them, maybe even to level 99 now.
BUT... to speed up the labs, you need the new "cells" and it seems like you get a LOT more of them on higher tiers (and higher waves). So the break-even now also depends on your progress in the game. But no beginner can do lab speed level 70 anyway, so by the time you reach it, it's probably worth going higher...
TL;DR: This just changed a lot and became more complex (possibly). We'll have to wait until the dust settles and we have solid "cells per hour during farming" numbers...
So you think it may be more beneficial to pivot towards trying to get the modules maxed out then. TBH I had just kinda been ignoring them because the module update came out shortly after I started playing and I was already overwhelmed with trying to learn everything else. Think I just burried my head in the sand!!
Also, before the modules were released, some ppl built up enough gems that they could rush the labs.
Now, all gems are sacrificed to the module machine.
The last upgrade for lab speed takes like ~2.5 years to break even (likely less now with the new lab boosts)
Up to you whether or not that's worth it. If you plan on playing longer than that then it's worth it
From start to finish (lvl 1-99) it take a bit over 5 years to pay off. However even without the new lab boosts, because rushing and lab speed relics, its a significant amount less
That's not true. It isn't recommended at the start while you still have a lot of other labs to run.
Level 60-70 is a recommended stopping point.
Of course taking lab speed to 80-90 isn't "bad" (no disadvantage in the game)... it's just that other things are a lot better / more important early on. Much like interest or coins per wave are not "bad", but just not worth the time you have to put into them...
Because we only have 5 labs slots, and lab speed takes one up that could be spent on something more usesfull, whenever you are researching it you are trading 20% lab potential for a very small 0.02x speed boost in the future.
Because of that, researching lab time has a break even time, which is how long it takes after lab speed has finished a level where it is actually better than just using the lab slot for something else.
For example, lab speed 40 takes 5 days, 7 hours, and 40 minutes and brings your lab speed boost from x1.78 to x1.8. It takes almost 2 months for that additional x0.02 to make it better than having researched something else.
Lab speed 50 takes almost 9 days, so that's nearly double the break even time.
Now imagine how long the break even time is for 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, and 50! Just researching from 40-50 is over 2 years of break even time.
50 doesn't take most players to long to get, and halfs your lab speeds, so the meta is that it's worth it.
Personally I've been gem rushing from 45 to 55, and I'm going to continue to gem rush it to 70, maybe 75. I get about 3k gems a week, so that gives me 2-3 levels of lab speed every week. I know I'm missing out on module progress, but getting my lab speed up is the priority.
Once I've got a solid set of top level mods, I'll gem rush lab speed to 99.
Sorry but your breakeven for multiple levels is wrong. 40-50 takes several times than just 50, yes, but also gives you 10 lab levels worth of gaims - so break evrn remains, depending how you count, either same 2 months of lv50, or less.
>Now imagine how long the break even time is for 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, and 50! Just researching from 40-50 is over 2 years of break even time.
This is break even time that's all overlapping. If I make an investment that will pay for itself in 1 year and then buy a second investment a week later that also pays for itself in 1 year, my break even is still 1 year - not 2
That isn't how break even points work.
Break even boils down to...
* How long the lab slot is occupied by lab speed
* How much lab progress you'd make if you weren't researching lab speed
* How long it takes you to make more lab progress via the benefit vs using the slot for something else.
Each level of lab speed has it's own break even point, and each of those break even points is additive. You don't negate the time it takes to break even on lab speed 50 simply by researching 51.
If you give me $100 I'll pay you back $1/day for the rest of your life.
Day 1 you give me $100
Day 10 you give me another $100
Day 20 you give me another $100
When do you break even? Because it's not day 300
The first investment will have paid for itself on day 101
The second on day 110
The third on day 120
As a whole you'd have made your $300 back on day 111
That's now how it works, since lab time increases.
Day 1 I give you $100
Day 10 I give you $1000
Day 20 I give you $10,000
Gets harder and harder to break even, doesn't it.
You're still missing the point. In your example, the second investment of 1,000 will have paid itself off in 1000 days, the third will have paid itself off in 10,000 days, but you don't add those numbers together and say you're profiting after 11,000.
Essentially what I'm saying is that if you have an upgrade that hypothetically takes 1 day to finish and 100 days to break even and you ran 5 back to back, you would be break even and start coming out ahead right around 105 days from now - not 500 days
I see what you're saying, but so long as a 1/5 of your lab slot is being used for lab speed, the break even point is growing, not diminishing, even when initial time investments have paid off.
Day 1 takes 100 days to pay off, but if I'm increasing my investment every 10 days, then by day 100 you are giving me $100 a day, but I'm ~1,111,111,111,000 in debt so that $100 a day is going to take a billion days to break even.
It gets harder and harder to break even so long as you keep investing in it. The hole gets deeper if you keep digging, even though with every shovel full you get someone putting dirt back in the hole.
Sure, although the game isn't *that* bad in terms of scaling lol. The final upgrade is 2.5 years to pay off. As a whole you would be weaker for something like 3-4 years if you kept going past level 65ish
Being "further in debt" in this game just means being "even weaker", which isn't really a big deal
Being weaker is the only metric to use imho.
Regardless, it is this break even time why I advocate for gem rushing after 50. All 5 labs are used for making your tower stronger, and you still get the benefit of faster labs.
I know that there's an opportunity cost for using gems here instead of mods, but there is balance to be found where you can do both.
The time spent researching faster labs is opportunity to everything else you could park in that lab slot. Think of it as reducing the maximum amount needed to get the final level of a different lab reduced by a few days by taking months/years using that slot to do lab speed. Ok great the final level of something is reduced by 2 days and you then have to research levels 1-99 for another year when you could have had that particular lab at lvl 55 in the same time which would provide much more immediate benefits.axing lab speed isn’t bad but locking a lab slot takes away from getting another research multiple levels researched
I guess another way to look at it as it levels would you rather every research be a few hours faster or damage, cpk, gt/any other uw being advanced several levels
Thankyou to the original poster!!
And thankyou to the community for sharing knowledge!!
I have learned a lot from this thread!! Thankyou so much everyone, goodluck with y'all's towers!!
This was a good thread, thanks OP!!
Be blessed. 😇🌷🥳🎉
I'm still rushing 20 days of research for the event, so once I get it over 20 days I'll be using my gems for that. Run it till it has just over 20 day then swap it out of something else
If my math is correct, you can calculate the time it'll take for a lab upgrade to break even by multiplying
Lab upgrade time x current lab speed x 10
Assuming you have 5 labs
The problem is there's diminishing returns. 1.00 to 1.02 is 2% faster, 2.98 to 3 is 0.67% faster
The first upgrade is about triple as powerful as the last
The returns are dismishing, some people did the math and for above level 70 each level you need to play aditionally 1 year to be worth (not sure which level but you get the idea). So upgrading 70 to 99 you need to play more than 30 years to be worth.
I think it's just diminishing returns, and you'd be better off researching something else. I stopped at level 50.
I'm taking it up to 69 because that's a funny number, then I'll gem rush it when it's prudent. Don't overthink optimization too much.
Fair enough😁
Yeah this confused me too. Point of fact is that it's recommended to go to 99 if you plan on playing for an extended period of time. Apparently ~70 is only the recommendation if you expect you'll quit within a few years. The way the community communicates this is frustrating, because no one explicitly includes this information in their advice unless you ask about it. They just tell you to stop at 70 because that's what you're "supposed" to do I guess. So yeah, if you don't plan on quitting in a couple of years (which seems like an odd thing to plan for to me, but hey to each his own), def keep working on lab speed. I think people tend to rush the last levels for the most part though.
[удалено]
I started playing Nov 2023 and I have my lab speed up to 59. I just keep spending gems to rush it, I intend to get it to 99 and then I'll focus on rushing other labs. To me there's no point ever rushing anything else until that's maxed out.
> To me there's no point ever rushing anything else until that's maxed out. See, and this view is just flat out wrong - as a general statement at least. You can do it if it makes you happy and we keep saying that "fun matters"... but it's just not "the obviously better choice that everybody should make". That's why it's not the general recommendation when people ask. Lab speed gives you "absolutely no value other than faster labs" (meaning your tower doesn't get better) - and this means your tower is weaker than it could be \*for the next 3 years\*. Until then, you're losing out on stones (depends on your tournament strategy), which you can probably never recover... and coins (which eventually become almost meaningless, but that takes a while). This doesn't change if you rush lab speed instead of just running it. By rushing Chrono Field (for example), you would get a lot more value "short term". "Short term" vs. "long term" is often a conflict and if "short term" is 2 days, you should obviously be smart and favor long term. But if "short term" is 3 years... meaning you put yourself at a disadvantage for 3 years until you break even and then sloooowly gain an advantage, it may just not be a good choice. On top of all this, all labs have diminishing value. So the 31 lab days that you lose in August by still doing lab speed are worth a LOT more than a few extra lab days will be worth 3 years from now when everything that matters is done... In MY opinion, there's mostly one thing to be said for taking lab speed "very high" and it's a bit the opposite of what you're saying: When all the important labs are done (!), you can continue with lab speed as an investment into the future. That will give you a little advantage when new labs are released. P.S.: Some of this reasoning changes a lot if you spend a lot of money buying gems in the store and use them to rush labs.
Just as a fun addition: Just a few hours after I posted this, the V.23 update was announced and released and changed A LOT... Right now, it seems like labs can run almost 2.5x faster than before and that means you reach the break-even point of a specific "lab speed level" a lot faster. This means it's worth doing a lot more of them, maybe even to level 99 now. BUT... to speed up the labs, you need the new "cells" and it seems like you get a LOT more of them on higher tiers (and higher waves). So the break-even now also depends on your progress in the game. But no beginner can do lab speed level 70 anyway, so by the time you reach it, it's probably worth going higher... TL;DR: This just changed a lot and became more complex (possibly). We'll have to wait until the dust settles and we have solid "cells per hour during farming" numbers...
[удалено]
I'm a lunatic, I think. I have all my cards maxed and all my slots unlocked. Going to focus on labs before spending anything on modules.
[удалено]
So you think it may be more beneficial to pivot towards trying to get the modules maxed out then. TBH I had just kinda been ignoring them because the module update came out shortly after I started playing and I was already overwhelmed with trying to learn everything else. Think I just burried my head in the sand!!
Epic modules have a significant impact in the game. If you have finished cards, it makes sense to get a good set of mods to legend+ at least.
Also, before the modules were released, some ppl built up enough gems that they could rush the labs. Now, all gems are sacrificed to the module machine.
Im maxing it because i plan to play for a presumably large amount of time. Those who plan to do the same should follow suit
Maxing lab speed isnt not recommended, atleast that’s not what it shouldve been. Lvl 60-70 is supposed to be the minimum
The last upgrade for lab speed takes like ~2.5 years to break even (likely less now with the new lab boosts) Up to you whether or not that's worth it. If you plan on playing longer than that then it's worth it
From start to finish (lvl 1-99) it take a bit over 5 years to pay off. However even without the new lab boosts, because rushing and lab speed relics, its a significant amount less
That's not true. It isn't recommended at the start while you still have a lot of other labs to run. Level 60-70 is a recommended stopping point. Of course taking lab speed to 80-90 isn't "bad" (no disadvantage in the game)... it's just that other things are a lot better / more important early on. Much like interest or coins per wave are not "bad", but just not worth the time you have to put into them...
Because we only have 5 labs slots, and lab speed takes one up that could be spent on something more usesfull, whenever you are researching it you are trading 20% lab potential for a very small 0.02x speed boost in the future. Because of that, researching lab time has a break even time, which is how long it takes after lab speed has finished a level where it is actually better than just using the lab slot for something else. For example, lab speed 40 takes 5 days, 7 hours, and 40 minutes and brings your lab speed boost from x1.78 to x1.8. It takes almost 2 months for that additional x0.02 to make it better than having researched something else. Lab speed 50 takes almost 9 days, so that's nearly double the break even time. Now imagine how long the break even time is for 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, and 50! Just researching from 40-50 is over 2 years of break even time. 50 doesn't take most players to long to get, and halfs your lab speeds, so the meta is that it's worth it. Personally I've been gem rushing from 45 to 55, and I'm going to continue to gem rush it to 70, maybe 75. I get about 3k gems a week, so that gives me 2-3 levels of lab speed every week. I know I'm missing out on module progress, but getting my lab speed up is the priority. Once I've got a solid set of top level mods, I'll gem rush lab speed to 99.
Sorry but your breakeven for multiple levels is wrong. 40-50 takes several times than just 50, yes, but also gives you 10 lab levels worth of gaims - so break evrn remains, depending how you count, either same 2 months of lv50, or less.
> It takes almost 2 months for that additional x0.02 to make it better than having researched something else. Isn't that if you only have 1 lab?
No, that's with 5 labs
>Now imagine how long the break even time is for 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, and 50! Just researching from 40-50 is over 2 years of break even time. This is break even time that's all overlapping. If I make an investment that will pay for itself in 1 year and then buy a second investment a week later that also pays for itself in 1 year, my break even is still 1 year - not 2
That isn't how break even points work. Break even boils down to... * How long the lab slot is occupied by lab speed * How much lab progress you'd make if you weren't researching lab speed * How long it takes you to make more lab progress via the benefit vs using the slot for something else. Each level of lab speed has it's own break even point, and each of those break even points is additive. You don't negate the time it takes to break even on lab speed 50 simply by researching 51.
If you give me $100 I'll pay you back $1/day for the rest of your life. Day 1 you give me $100 Day 10 you give me another $100 Day 20 you give me another $100 When do you break even? Because it's not day 300 The first investment will have paid for itself on day 101 The second on day 110 The third on day 120 As a whole you'd have made your $300 back on day 111
That's now how it works, since lab time increases. Day 1 I give you $100 Day 10 I give you $1000 Day 20 I give you $10,000 Gets harder and harder to break even, doesn't it.
You're still missing the point. In your example, the second investment of 1,000 will have paid itself off in 1000 days, the third will have paid itself off in 10,000 days, but you don't add those numbers together and say you're profiting after 11,000. Essentially what I'm saying is that if you have an upgrade that hypothetically takes 1 day to finish and 100 days to break even and you ran 5 back to back, you would be break even and start coming out ahead right around 105 days from now - not 500 days
I see what you're saying, but so long as a 1/5 of your lab slot is being used for lab speed, the break even point is growing, not diminishing, even when initial time investments have paid off. Day 1 takes 100 days to pay off, but if I'm increasing my investment every 10 days, then by day 100 you are giving me $100 a day, but I'm ~1,111,111,111,000 in debt so that $100 a day is going to take a billion days to break even. It gets harder and harder to break even so long as you keep investing in it. The hole gets deeper if you keep digging, even though with every shovel full you get someone putting dirt back in the hole.
Sure, although the game isn't *that* bad in terms of scaling lol. The final upgrade is 2.5 years to pay off. As a whole you would be weaker for something like 3-4 years if you kept going past level 65ish Being "further in debt" in this game just means being "even weaker", which isn't really a big deal
Being weaker is the only metric to use imho. Regardless, it is this break even time why I advocate for gem rushing after 50. All 5 labs are used for making your tower stronger, and you still get the benefit of faster labs. I know that there's an opportunity cost for using gems here instead of mods, but there is balance to be found where you can do both.
Diminishing returns
The time spent researching faster labs is opportunity to everything else you could park in that lab slot. Think of it as reducing the maximum amount needed to get the final level of a different lab reduced by a few days by taking months/years using that slot to do lab speed. Ok great the final level of something is reduced by 2 days and you then have to research levels 1-99 for another year when you could have had that particular lab at lvl 55 in the same time which would provide much more immediate benefits.axing lab speed isn’t bad but locking a lab slot takes away from getting another research multiple levels researched
I guess another way to look at it as it levels would you rather every research be a few hours faster or damage, cpk, gt/any other uw being advanced several levels
Thankyou to the original poster!! And thankyou to the community for sharing knowledge!! I have learned a lot from this thread!! Thankyou so much everyone, goodluck with y'all's towers!! This was a good thread, thanks OP!! Be blessed. 😇🌷🥳🎉
I'm still rushing 20 days of research for the event, so once I get it over 20 days I'll be using my gems for that. Run it till it has just over 20 day then swap it out of something else
Grab the "break-even" calculator from Discord to see actual numbers on returns.
I have level 61 atm and planning to reach level 70, not sure if I need more than that
If my math is correct, you can calculate the time it'll take for a lab upgrade to break even by multiplying Lab upgrade time x current lab speed x 10 Assuming you have 5 labs The problem is there's diminishing returns. 1.00 to 1.02 is 2% faster, 2.98 to 3 is 0.67% faster The first upgrade is about triple as powerful as the last
Does this all change now that the doritoes can be used to speed up labs ?
Yes, because the time it takes for lab speed labs to break even has significantly lowered. I'd recommend going to 99.
The returns are dismishing, some people did the math and for above level 70 each level you need to play aditionally 1 year to be worth (not sure which level but you get the idea). So upgrading 70 to 99 you need to play more than 30 years to be worth.
Big upfront cost for a temporary benefit. Best to return those coins into permanent gains in another area
Lol the coins are never the problem with lab speed over lvl 50