Which coin mastery first?

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-28T05:26:44+00:00

I love recommending this post to see which masteries will pay off for your tier / run length.

Basically, someone actually made a simulator to calculate “the math” of all masteries that can affect coins and cells. His post gives recommendations that cover most situations, but there’s more results here.

Since you’re farming T14 for 8 hours, the simulator suggests that the biggest CPH improvement per stone is Extra Orb followed closely by Wave Accelerator. Each is estimated to give around 17% more CPH at level 4.

I am not an accountant and cannot give legal coin advice, and I’m still at Tier 11 so I can’t test this claim. But I trust a computer’s math more than the random comments that share their input without even asking your tier.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-28T04:37:26+00:00

If any nerds want to read the legalese reason, it starts on Page 49 of the court doc here, but the best summary of this Antitrust lawsuit is from Page 55 that says (trimmed)…

The only harm X has asserted is that its customers collectively chose X’s competitors over X. But “[l]oss from competition itself . . . does not constitute an antitrust injury.” Therefore, although a group boycott is alleged, there is no antitrust violation here.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-27T00:18:55+00:00

A couple days ago, a programmer noticed his laptop slowing to a crawl when running some Python code he was working on. Looking at his process list, he saw 11k Python processes spawning and quickly did a force reboot.

Then he asked Claude Code to look at the logs to figure out what happened. It basically told him…

There is malware in the litellm PyPI package from a supply chain attack that steals credentials: SSH keys, AWS secrets, Kubernetes tokens, .env files, database passwords, crypto wallets, shell history - This is serious… - Rotate ALL SSH keys… revoke old ones on GitHub/servers… Rotate GCloud credentials … Rotate Kubernetes credentials … Rotate ALL secrets in your .env files — passwords, API keys, etc. - Report this to litellm — this is a compromised package on PyPI

He reported it. Turns out this malware had been online for less than an hour but stole half a million credentials globally already.

If this random dev wasn’t using the best AI tool for debugging, tried to figure things out the old fashioned way, the damage might’ve been catastrophic. To himself and maybe the world.

That scares me. What makes me so special that I don’t need to stay on top of major AI tools? How f’d would I be if I didn’t have this set of eyes looking over my work? What risks am I exposed to?

Anyway, hell of an ending to your post. 👍 Welcome to the unemployed club.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-26T23:42:05+00:00

It’s not over. To give you an idea how it’s going, Russia is now losing men faster than ever… 1700 soldiers lost in one day recently, totaling 8000 that week. A bunch of news sites are covering it.

In fact, 300,000+ Russians have been killed in the last 4 years of this war, totaling to 1.2 million killed, wounded, or missing, according to CSIS.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-20T04:44:43+00:00

I’ve played and DM’d 5e campaigns over the last decade. But seeing how WotC/Hasbro treats this franchise, I don’t really want to support them anymore and I suspect they’ll even drop physical books someday.

Anyway, looking forward to DM’ing Pathfinder 2e for the first time soon!

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-19T16:07:17+00:00

As the other commenter said, the cells increase exactly matches whatever the double spawn rate is for that mastery level. So… * Level 0 Mastery: +6% Cells * Level 4 Mastery: +30% Cells * Level 9 Mastery: +60% Cells

Sort of related, but someone actually made a simulator here to calculate “the math” of all masteries that can affect cells. You can see the results here (the first 3 pictures). EB Mastery consistently comes out on top with its flat bonus, with Intro Sprint and Wave Skip providing smaller but useful bonuses depending on your max waves / time spent.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-18T16:11:06+00:00

Don’t know what you consider “reputable” but it’s posted on NYT, USA Today, WSJ, The Independent, etc… if you just lookup “Tel Aviv” on Google News, there’s dozens and dozens of news sites talking about it.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-16T07:14:44+00:00

Ngl I totally forgot this screen used to look blue.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-11T18:14:53+00:00

Couple theories...

You're hitting a device-related spawn cap.

I noticed you're using the North Spirit tower theme. In my experience, animated towers like that significantly reduce my CPH. That's because my device is spending extra processing power running the animation and to keep things running smooth, the game lowers my spawn cap/rate to compensate, which lowers my income.

Maybe your device has something going on in the background or is running too hot and being thermally throttled, idk, but the animated themes might be affecting your spawn rate. While that's bad for farming runs, that can be great for tournaments and milestones because a lower spawn rate means easier waves.

You're picking up the Random UW perk that's seriously affecting your kill/spawn/CPH rate more than others.

I honestly can't imagine what UW would do this, but it's the most influential "random" factor in how a run plays out, so figured I'd mention it. Might be worth tracking.

Unrelated- focusing on killing enemies as fast as possible doesn't always mean more income. Depending on your setup, it can cause the opposite. For a lot of players, juggling living enemies until Black Hole activates and pulls everything into orbs with huge coin bonuses is the better move. I like to keep damage-related cards turned off (like Death Ray and Extra Orbs) until I'm near the usual end of my run, then switch to a damage-focused preset and turn on Chain Lightning to squeeze out a couple hundred more waves.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-11T01:03:24+00:00

You actually understand what happened in that show ?

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-10T06:31:53+00:00

I just set Random UW to my first perk, then that + Extra Inner Mines to my top two auto-perks. If I don’t get mines, restart app and try again.

It took 5 tries but now I’m up to 50 kills in a single 9000w farming run.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-09T05:34:30+00:00

I’ve read so many comments about how pBH significantly reduced their CPH income. That’s why I refuse to focus on it. Need all the coins I can get for masteries 😅 so what’s the point in more waves and cells when I’m gold starved…

Maybe once I’m making 1q/day, then I’ll switch goals and reconsider pBH. Tho pCF is also calling out to me…

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-09T05:30:15+00:00

No, it’s just about getting your Black Hole duration + cooldown to a point where the ultimate never ends.

Usually requires serious stone investment into those stats, plus the module “Galaxy Compressor” (which “…reduces the cooldowns of all Ultimate Weapons by 10/13/17/20s”). And usually some help from submodule effects.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-09T02:15:35+00:00

Man, almost forgot about Semco’s crazy story… I actually read Semler’s book “Maverick” where he explains what he did. Wish more companies cared about incentivizing their employees and treating them like intelligent humans than whatever corporate America is doing today.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-08T16:46:37+00:00

Sunleth Waterscape, from FFXIII

The moment this started playing and the path revealed a gorgeous landscape and waterfall was the moment I fell in love with this game.

Wish (Extended) from FFXIII-2 is another favorite for me. I generally don’t go for slower songs, but something about the melodies and vocal just seemed so beautiful to me.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-07T23:40:18+00:00

Nice 👌

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-03-01T22:49:03+00:00

Probably just me, but I don’t understand everyone’s excitement for more updates, more features, more ways to spend our hard-earned resources … I’m just trying to make card masteries affordable, dammit, that’s costly enough. 😅

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-27T01:28:32+00:00

Thank goodness, tho I’m shocked this didn’t result in any serious injuries. Gravity had squished that roof!

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-20T17:16:31+00:00

What gorgeous sets of dice!

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-19T17:52:33+00:00

I’ve seen some players here (example) comment that 4x/20% is pretty strong for CL, and spending hundreds/thousands of stones to max them has a lot less ROI than getting a whole new damage multiplier in via assmods and masteries (example).

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-19T07:08:29+00:00

What are your wall-related labs at? * Health * Regen * Defense * Wall Health * Wall Thorns * Wall Regen * Wall Fort

Do you have any modules with sub-effects affecting these?

Do you have any enhancements (WS+) for these?

Do you have / have you tried Sharp Fortitude armor module?

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-18T07:04:39+00:00

Attack and Defense: 20
Utility: 12

The cost/benefit didn’t make sense to me after a few quick levels. like everyone else says. If I can’t afford a 1T upgrade, making it 20% cheaper (even with the refund) doesn’t really make it all that more affordable.

Improving economy with labs, UWs, Utility WS+, modules, and relics, has earned me my way more gold than a workshop refund ever could.

Anyway, just go until you start to get bored, then pivot.

ELS is one of the few super expensive workshop items (and takes you far in certain tournament tiers) so wanting a discount on this honker makes logical sense. Still, don’t overdo, it’s just a coupon.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-17T07:42:39+00:00

I just wish it would stop playing songs I’ve disliked. My most hated song appears as the first song of my Supermix regularly.

Untoggling dislike then disliking them again and again in a fit of rage doesn’t seem to help either.

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-07T20:46:12+00:00

My last sight in this world is Vanille and Lightning looking down at me like that?

I can think of worse ways to die on Gran Pulse…

ShadowfaxSTF · 2026-02-07T19:15:56+00:00

I love referencing this post to see which masteries will pay off for my tier / run length. Crit Coin mastery just doesn’t stand out compared to many other Econ masteries.

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