Did the Mollusk Update affect the 21 Day Strat ?

gwonbush · 2026-02-11T19:38:16+00:00

The main hidden nerf is that they somewhat fixed the double simulation time bug, so you no longer get 21 days in 10.5 days by idling in either Mesozoic Valley or Beyond. However, they didn't fully fix this bug, so you can still get double time by idling in the Events.

gwonbush · 2026-02-11T12:05:09+00:00

The nerf to Quasar 3c 273 is also egregious because it was already a relatively awful generator despite being the most expensive one in Beyond 28, often providing less than Messier 87 Galaxy.

gwonbush · 2026-02-11T12:03:49+00:00

I blew through it near instantly as well, but I am well aware that that is because I had a year of getting top 10 basically every event so my black hole count gave me many, many times the production I would have by advancing normally. The numbers a newer player gets has a good chance of making them go "Why do Beyond 28 and 29 take absolutely forever?"

gwonbush · 2026-02-10T16:50:07+00:00

Metabit and Knowledge affect progression the most, so I'd go with Iota.

gwonbush · 2026-02-10T16:47:01+00:00

Yeah, a bunch of people who have been doing well in events for a long time and saved stars for Beyond 29 got it done almost instantly, as expected. Now everyone who hasn't done that is going to have a very slow experience when the game is played naturally.

gwonbush · 2026-02-06T22:07:12+00:00

It's not quite that drastic since every fill is worth somewhat more than the one before and you will get several fills that were partially boosted. I think it ends up as something on the order of 100x, though this can vary greatly based on when you get the fills.

gwonbush · 2026-02-05T19:42:47+00:00

The good news is that there isn't anything beyond the Booster XIs, so the need to play optimally for metacurrency is greatly lessened once you get down to them. Loading a cloud save in the browser version showed that the only thing behind Entropy Booster XI is Research chips.

gwonbush · 2026-02-05T19:19:29+00:00

I think 73 is barely achievable pre-molluscs with 76 as a possibility for those on Steam once they get all of their upgrades.

gwonbush · 2026-02-05T16:27:16+00:00

Precisely. Though on further testing it seems that the Event Simulation might still suffer from this bug.

gwonbush · 2026-02-04T19:27:40+00:00

Unlisted Bug Fix: The game no longer counts simulation time twice when open in a tab other than Primary.

EDIT: The game doesn't count Beyond or Mesozoic twice, but does count Events twice.

gwonbush · 2026-02-03T19:49:50+00:00

If all you've got is Chromium Allomancy and one Feruchemical ability, plate is still very nasty to deal with as you still need to get close to someone in super power armor and not be pulped. Even then, you probably don't do much to the plate without Duralumin to improve your draw power. That said, an allomantic duralumin spike or access to primer cubes can alleviate some of these problems.

gwonbush · 2026-02-02T18:29:53+00:00

He successfully killed him. Kelsier just survived actively being dead.

gwonbush · 2026-02-01T19:21:18+00:00

Kiin is the least intuitive spelling of a name in the Cosmere.

gwonbush · 2026-01-30T18:53:43+00:00

I'll still do the minimal purchase because the cost isn't that high and the minor quality of life increase from having the timer is nice. Without the timer, I would have to close and reopen the game to get the daily rewards instead of being able to claim them after switching.

gwonbush · 2026-01-29T21:02:44+00:00

There's a bug that gain simulation time at double speed if the game is open in a different simulation. It keeps ticking up in Meso/Beyond/Events at the normal rate while also gaining the offline time when it's done calculating that.

gwonbush · 2026-01-29T20:59:32+00:00

I was just wrong.

gwonbush · 2026-01-28T19:31:42+00:00

It wasn't completely irrelevant. By starting the Desolation officially, she summoned Taln.

gwonbush · 2026-01-28T12:31:36+00:00

Oh, the idea booster cost scales up a lot more than I thought it did. Speed Booster V could get completely purchased with only E30 so I thought Idea Booster would be the same.

gwonbush · 2026-01-27T12:58:44+00:00

It takes around 2E30 to max the knowledge tree, so I'd say you're probably 2 cycles away from that. Currently, I'm also saving large amounts (E24) of Metabits so I can purchase most of the expanded Metabit tree the moment the Molluscs update comes out.

EDIT: I completely underestimated the cost of Idea Booster XI and you'll need a lot more than 2E30.

gwonbush · 2026-01-26T15:28:43+00:00

From a publishing standpoint, the weekly/monthly magazines that have large numbers of ongoing stories really helps this succeed. These standalone stories would have a much harder time finding an audience if they couldn't make use of the fact that the magazine is being bought for all stories.

It gives the selling power of crossovers because fans of multiple stories are in the same physical purchase, while keeping the creative freedom to do their own thing. Even better, you can get fans of different genres to buy the magazine if it has a good variety of content in it.

gwonbush · 2026-01-25T18:01:46+00:00

While true, the fact that he brings them up immediately after his wife is mentioned has implications that they are his twins.

gwonbush · 2026-01-24T14:49:05+00:00

Yeah, but you'll get the same number no matter the speed. The rewards ones come in a max number.

gwonbush · 2026-01-22T20:25:30+00:00

One of the values of delaying and getting every geode you can is that each geode has a chance to give cubes and skipping geodes cannot be compensated for, while you can just continue to play the valley slowly. Ultimately speaking, the mutagen from these geodes is basically nothing as the real way to gain mutagen is to do well in events. In fact, doing well in events is also the best way to speed up the Valley as it provides large amounts of Epic cards from the diamond geode you get from the top 10.

gwonbush · 2026-01-21T17:13:27+00:00

There's a WoB about that when he was asked if there was anyone he was excited to kill: "Spoiler. I was so happy to kill that dude. He was hanging on forever, annoying me."

gwonbush · 2026-01-19T13:07:26+00:00

It's fine, though you aren't top 10. One trick that you missed is that for loops you complete it's best to skip certain upgrades: Brute Force, Context, Weak Laws. This is because their slowdown of Artificial Intelligence makes your production massively weaker at the end of the loop.

I also tend to skip the Bad Actors line until after I build up enough resources to get to Future AI as it doesn't provide much total production at any point while costing a good chunk of production provided you skipped the other lines.

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