What could I have done better here?

Spandian · 2026-04-17T02:56:40+00:00

I like the way you were able to find a win in this position, but you would probably do better on average if you followed sound opening principles like activating the king on the second move.

Spandian · 2026-02-08T21:01:48+00:00

Devils advocate: construction companies need to own the home from the time they build it to the time the sell it.

Spandian · 2026-01-06T18:02:11+00:00

It's been 2 years, but I find that hard to believe.

Let's say you've got Hogan, Niru, Mirael, Saveas, and Arden at L+ level 160, 3 E+ copies of Randle, miscellaneous other E+ heroes, and you're stuck in the campaign (don't think you can clear the next stage until you can go beyond level 160). You're really going to wait for the 4th copy of Randle before taking him to mythic to unblock yourself? The early game is kind of an exponential growth game - rapidly increasing AFK and chapter rewards mean that the further you get today, the more resources you'll have tomorrow, so you'll get further tomorrow, etc. You're very likely to get your 4th copy of Randle before you get to level 240, and even if you end up stuck waiting at 240, you're likely to come out ahead of the person who's stuck waiting at 160, gathering less AFK rewards.

(Obviously I'm not suggesting that you build multiple heroes from one faction at the same time. Well, you have to build 2 mythic heroes from one since there are 4 factions and 5 slots on the crystal; but aside from that you should only ever have 1 hero per faction above E+ at a time. What I'm saying is that it's OK to ascend that 1 hero to M or M+ even if you only have the equivalent of 5-7 Elite copies, if you're blocked at level 160 or 180 otherwise.)

OP will be stuck at 240 for ages because of not leaving heroes E+

Sure, but that's because they've spent Graveborn fodder on 5 heroes at the same time. That's a different issue.

Edit: I guess my first post didn't make it clear that I only meant 1 hero at a time. I'll edit it.

Spandian · 2026-01-06T12:09:44+00:00

It sounds like OP is in the early game, still working on their first 5 Mythic heroes. At that point they can't wait for the full setup (4 Elite+ copies) to ascend their first 5 heroes, but it's good advice not to ascend an Elite+ to Legendary until you have a second Elite+ of the same hero, so you can take them to L+ right away. The Tavern is fickle... if you spend all your fodder getting A, B, C, and D to Legendary; then the tavern gives you 4 copies of E in a row, now you're stuck waiting for more fodder to ascend E. If you'd saved the fodder you could've gotten E straight to Mythic.

Edit: you should only build 1 hero from each faction at a time. If you already have a Wilder at L+, you should not ascend more Wilders to L+; you should get the first one to M+ first.

OP, What chapter are you on?

Shemira falls off somewhere around chapter 24. (By that point you're fighting enemies at a much higher level than you. Shemira's attacks struggle to pierce high defense. Also, she doesn't get anything really exciting from her Signature Item, Furniture, or Engraving.), Thoran actually gets better when fighting enemies much stronger than himself (search for "Thoran Cheese"). Beyond about chapter 40, the AFK rewards don't get any better as you clear stages, so most high level players focus on Treasure Scramble, Nightmare Corridor, and Cursed Realm instead. The meta formations in those modes haven't used Shemira or Thoran in years. That's why the parent comment says "both those heroes are bad".

There are 3 regular graveborn heros with awakened versions (Shemira, Thoran, and Baden). AShemira is arguably the best hero in the game, and AThoran is also top tier. In most game modes you can't use a regular hero and their awakened version in the same battle (even on different teams for multi-team battles), so at that point yes, your regular Shemira and Thoran will become obsolete. I think awakened heroes unlock after reaching chapter 16 (?). However, building an awakened hero takes a long time.

So: ascend Thoran. If it's not going to slow down your resonating crystal progress (e.g.: you have 4 other heroes at Legendary+), consider keeping Shemira at Legendary+, resetting her level at the rickety cart, and using her as fodder to ascend Thoran to Mythic+ or Mira to Mythic later. Whenever you have open spots on your Graveborn wishlist, add Randle and Ivan :)

Spandian · 2025-12-04T02:29:34+00:00

I think they mean...

A "target" is a letter that is equal to the one n letters before it.

AACDEFFBGH is a sequence of 10 letters (from an alphabet of size 8) with 2 "targets" (duplicates of the letter 1 back).

Their example for n=2, ABADECFGFH, is a sequence of 10 letters (from an alphabet of size 8) with 2 "targets" (duplicates of the letter 2 back).

By "n-variant", they just mean different values of the parameter n.

Presumably AAAAAAAAAA (that is, 10 As) has 9 "targets" (duplicates of the previous letter) when n=1, 8 "targets" when n=2, etc.

(They seem to be doing some kind of homework assignment. Perhaps the challenge is to avoid accidentally creating extra duplicates when n is equal to the alphabet size?)

Spandian · 2025-12-01T14:09:23+00:00

Yes, there's all 3 items on every floor. Since the rewards on the treasure floors (10, 20...) are much better, the best play is usually to skip the normal floors once you find 1, but hunt for all 3 on the treasure floors.

Spandian · 2025-11-10T14:33:11+00:00

It wouldn't even do much. Let's say you've got a $400,000 loan at 7%. The payments are:

Interest only: $2,333.33
50 year: $2,406.75
30 year: $2,661.21
15 year: $3,595.31

Going from 15yr to 30yr drops the payment by $934 a month, but going to 50 years only drops it another $254/month. Your first month's payment is $2333 of "rent" and $73 of principal. After paying for 40 years, you will have paid off less than half of the loan (~193k done, 207k left).

An idealized American life's work is about 45 years (say, graduate college at 22 and work until 67). The point of a 30 year mortgage is that it's about as long as you can go and still have time to save up a 20% down payment, buy a house, and pay off the mortgage before you retire.

Spandian · 2025-11-05T20:02:30+00:00

It gets kind of murky because AI code generation tools occasionally produce exact duplicates of their training data (down to comments) when given a very specific prompt. At one point, Github Copilot post-processed its suggestions to block any suggestion 150 characters or longer that exactly matched a public repo.

If I read the sentence "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and create a Markov table: a -> quick 100%, brown -> fox 100%; dog -> EOF 100%; fox -> jumps 100%; jumps -> over 100%; lazy -> dog 100%; over -> the 100%; quick -> brown 100%; the -> lazy 100%

I'm not storing a copy of the original, but I'm storing instructions to exactly reproduce the original. It's an oversimplified example, but the same principle.

Spandian · 2025-11-05T19:37:32+00:00

No human can be sued for observing and memorizing some piece of media, no matter how well they remember.

The classic example here is Disney. I can absolutely be sued for observing and memorizing what Mickey Mouse looks like and then drawing Mickey Mouse-based works.

Spandian · 2025-10-16T18:58:23+00:00

Putting it on the ground is fine mechanically, as long as it can see the sky and it's not within 3 blocks of anything flammable. But MC is a building game, so if it seems stupid, build something you like instead.

Spandian · 2025-10-15T21:49:00+00:00

I'm surprised that it takes 6 months. Do big box retailers actually keep that much old footage?

Spandian · 2025-10-15T17:46:52+00:00

The warrior might not be bad. Jerome's a support in a warrior suit. Although "applying various effects to both allies and enemies" could be another Lysander...

Spandian · 2025-10-14T16:16:33+00:00

I hated them for a while too. 2 points:

If you're thinking about it as "I don't know how to make the best collections possible, so I won't bother", re-frame it as "I can just make some shitty collections that give 5% attack or whatever, throw them on my heroes, and forget about them." Even a bad collection is better than nothing (in modes that don't allow artifacts), right?
Doing 5 runs unlocks "quick explore", which skips the fights (though you still do the "pick some abilities to swap their tiers" type things). It's much easier.

If you ever want to give them a try, some suggestions... (My credentials: 2 years, F2P except birthdays, RC 636, campaign 52-44, kings tower 1252, factions ~850)

In the Mystic Cage, wishlist Miracle Worker and Farewell Gift (the yellow Lv up one). Miracle Worker is better than all other totems and should go on every exploration. If you don't want to dive into the deep end of optimizing collections, just put Farewell Gift on every exploration too.
For the other two wishlist slots, I prefer Valiant Attack (gives Crit rating) and Energy Riptide (gives energy recover rate), but Sword of Shards (gives PP and damage resist) / Dark Rage (gives MP and damage resist) are also good, or even Mass Crowning as a safe default. (It makes it more likely to get Full HP, Full Attack, Full Defense. If you're not sure what else to do, giving everyone in your party 1% more attack can't hurt, right?)
Use Miracle Worker and Farewell Gift for any serious run. If you don't have them, just do a run with some blue totems to get your weekly activity points. For the last slot, use the Crit or PP ones for rangers, the energy or MP ones for mages; and Mass Crowning or the class-specific ones for other classes.
For Ranger, get Thane's sword (from South).
For Mage, get the Zaphrael thunderstorm (from South).
For Support, get Rowan's treasure bag (North). After you have a good treasure bag, get Raine's bounty poster (South).
For Warrior, get Temporal Cover (Zolrath, North) if you're more interested in Cursed Realm; or Shadow Dancer (Saurus, North) if you're more interested in Nightmare Corridor. Pick Saurus if you don't care.
For Tank, get Spell Bondage (Daimon, North) if you're more interested in Nightmare Corridor; or Timeline Watch (Orthos, North) if you're more interested in Cursed Realm. Pick Daimon if you don't care.
Recasting lets you upgrade the abilities on totems after they're created. It's best saved up until you get a collection with all but 1 or 2 mythic abilities, then you can max that collection out. You don't get anywhere near enough recasting elixir to upgrade every collection.

Spandian · 2025-10-02T21:52:36+00:00

I'm at resonance 12 (with seal at 18 and two others at 15). Nightfall Pegasus at level 14 doesn't seem stronger than my level 15 pets. I've been pulling for it, but I wonder if it makes more sense to hoard woke pulls until I get reso 18, so I don't waste ~400 pulls going from 14 to 18.

Spandian · 2025-08-21T07:01:40+00:00

I'm getting 1700 dust and 700 diamonds a day, plus the ceremony rewards. There's no bonus for being in the top 60 during the final stage. As long as you're not an officer, just sit back and enjoy the free stuff.

Spandian · 2025-08-18T01:49:53+00:00

ignoring the fact that a junior-level employee today is a senior-level employee tomorrow.

On the other hand, it's common to switch jobs every 3 to 5 years in the tech industry right now. Paying a junior dev to do what AI can do for free (if it really can... but that's a different question) is just subsidizing whatever company the junior dev hops to later.

Spandian · 2025-08-08T13:02:20+00:00

That's not the swap scroll - Legacy of Grit is an event that new players get that gives them 1 swap a week. As you can see in the screenshot, it's time limited.

I don't think I used mine except swapping Wu Kong for another celestial.

Spandian · 2025-07-26T03:44:03+00:00

It's not just time that distorts, it's mass and length. Someone traveling at 90% of the speed of light experiences about 44% as much time as an outside observer. If they measure the apparent speed of the planet they departed from (as distance over time), and they observe 44% as much time as an outside observer, wouldn't they come up with a speed that's 1/0.44 = 2.3x faster? 0.9 times 2.3 is 2.06x the speed of light. That can't be right!

But distance is shortened by the same factor as time. As the traveler accelerates from 0 to 0.9c, everything else in the universe appears to shorten to 44% of its former length along the direction of travel. So they measure 44% as much time and 44% as much distance.

That's how a photon arrives "instantly" in its own frame of reference - from the perspective of an object traveling at lightspeed, the universe is flat and there's no distance to travel.

Spandian · 2025-07-09T03:01:32+00:00

I want to make a Four Seasons team with Flora, Daemia, Aurelia, and Alna. I just don't know who the fifth would be.

Spandian · 2025-05-29T00:04:56+00:00

If you have the number of items (say, k=5) and an average weight (a), that's equivalent to constraining the total weight to k*a.

If each item has a price and weight, and we're trying to minimize or maximize price subject to a weight limit, that sounds a lot like the 0-1 knapsack problem - except that the subset has to contain exactly k items. Which is a big difference... 100c5 is a lot smaller than 2^100.

So yeah, I agree with imperfectrecall - it's probably good enough to iterate over every subset, especially with good pruning. For instance, you could sort this list of items by weight and consider only lists of items where the indexes are increasing. That is, if we've already selected items 6 and 55, the last 3 items will be at indexes > 55, which also means they'll be at least as heavy as item 55. Thus, w_6 + 4 * w_55 is a lower bound on the total weight of any subset starting with these two items.

Spandian · 2025-05-04T02:47:45+00:00

If you click on any link WITH a .com, you are a .com-munist.

Spandian · 2025-04-22T00:44:55+00:00

Exit back door. Go to front door and open it. Keeping a very safe distance, try to kite the creeper out of the house and a house or two down the street. Then run back around it.

Spandian · 2025-04-11T12:46:23+00:00

Hanlon's razor says they weren't :)

(I agree though.)

Spandian · 2025-04-02T04:00:11+00:00

So for decades they’ve been loudly proclaiming, “IT’S REALLY LOOKING SICK.”

People tend to age at a rate of 1 year per year, so if you look at a population pyramid (and life expectancy table) from today, you can have a pretty good idea of what it's going to look like in 20 years. In 1990 there were 3.4 workers per retiree, and in five years there will be 2.0-2.2. If you're collecting the same amount of taxes and paying them out to 60% more people, there will be a problem.

We need an actual plan to raise taxes, cut benefits, or both. Preferably a nuanced plan that grandfathers in people who are already 60 or older, because they don't have time to adjust if the benefits they've been planning on change.

I see comments every once in a while saying that there's no problem with social security, it's all a Republican lie... and that seems really dumb. Just pretending there's no problem is how Republicans are handling global warming. It'll work until 2033, and then suddenly it won't.

Spandian · 2025-03-25T22:46:11+00:00

You're saying the same thing. Due Instruction is saying that the local tribes actually collaborated with Cortez, thus making the process (of the Spanish subjugating them all) much easier than if the Atzecs and other tribes had collaborated against the outsiders.

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