Topic

How does the time bonus from using shrine favor work?

Before the recent tests it was only able to cut the time needed to learn by 49%. Lately, there has been some oddity in it...

I tried to reduce a 2-day skill to 1 day, donated to all 3 giants (2000 favor x 3), but at the 3rd giant, and with 1 day and 14 hours left, it said that I was already learning as fast as I can.

Just wondering... how does it work now? Is it limited to a certain percentage or what? This is one part of the game that the mechanics I haven't really got to understand.

Posted 18 months ago by Serenadier Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • At each Giant, just above  the "Donate" is "Check Favor" - when you select that you will get a window that tells you how much time will be reduced from the Skill you're working on.

    I'm believe that if you get a "learning as fast as I can" message it's because the favor you have accumulated is greater than the amount of time needed to to finish that Skill. But I'm not certain, as I've recently run into that as well.

    Hopefully someone else will correct me if I am mistaken.
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Seren, do you have any of the better learning skills? I'm not sure either, but maybe you can only go as fast as the skills real time (without better learning applied). For instance, if a skill takes 3 days learn, but with better learning it only takes 2 days, then you can still only get it to 1.5 days. does that make sense? Also, I'm not sure if this is true or not, just a theory
    Posted 18 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thank you for asking this - I never know how much time you can take off. And I always have it say "learning as fast as you can" after donating to the first giant. I'd love to know if there's a way to optimize the donations for that, because after I finish learning Gardening V in a couple of days, my other skills are gonna balloon to week-long learning processes.
    Posted 18 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have always gotten this message when the Rock is already speed reading.  I just figured that I could only speed him up one shrine at a time.  I have been able to speed him up again when he finishes.  I don't know how it is supposed to work but that is how it works for me.  I have BLII.
    Posted 18 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • (ignore me)
    Posted 18 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm pretty sure I was able to get learning times down to ~50% time in the last test.  You might have run into the daily donation limit for the three giants in question or something like that, although I wouldn't expect that to give you the maxed-out learning message.  Sounds like you may have encountered a bug, from what you describe.

    You can use favour at any giant to speed up learning, by the way, it doesn't need to be the three named in the skill description.  You do use up a bit more favour for the same benefit, but if you have the cash you can speed up learning more rapidly if you donate to all eleven giants.
    Posted 18 months ago by mintimperial Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have BL V and I tend to reach my learning as fast as you can limit sooner than I would expect. I thought I noticed a change last test that forced me to spend a certain number of minutes/hours by just putting me at that limit when I had just over an hour left to finish my skill. I'd like to hear a dev comment about this. Is this portion of the game supposed to be mysterious or can it be understood by us?
    Posted 18 months ago by Not IxAEoN Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I also noticed it changed in the last test :

    1. I seemed to be able to get the learning time down more significantly than in prior tests.
    2. I ran into the limits described above, but they were "Game Day" limits only, and I could continue contributing on the next game day.
    3. I don't think the "You're already learning as fast as you can" applies to the total time. I _think_ "Speeding up" applies a time dilation factor to learning (a.k.a., "the dog years factor"), and you can only apply so much of a dilation, no matter how much time is left.  

    I also KNOW that whichever giant you need to donate to for the current skill, it's shrine will always be the one furthest from you. I swear those shrines move!
    Posted 18 months ago by Skippy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @mintimperial Never realized we can donate currant to the Giants - thanks for the info. 
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Some people are confused I think.  I am not completely sure either, but basically there is a limit to how fast you can learn a skill.  I believe you can only learn the skill 50% faster.  So for example, a skill that takes 2 hours to learn, you can only learn it in 1 hour at the fastest.  Once you reach 50%, you will get the message you are learning as fast as you can.  At least thats how I understood it was supposed to work.  I mean, come on, how fast can a rock learn anyways?  I had a pet rock for several years before it finally learned the sit command. 

    This doesn't relate to donating to the shrines unless you have hit the favor limit for every giant in a given game day, then you cannot use any more favor to learn faster.  Has that actually happened to anyone?  I've hit the limit for favor for one maybe two giants in a given game day, but never more than that.
    Posted 18 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think Laurali describes how it works.

    You can donate up to a maximum favor per shrine per day.  Not sure if it's 1000 or 2000 favor, but once you hit that max, you cannot donate any further to that shrine until the next day.

    I hear there is also a cap on XP from shrines per day (not sure, around 18,000?).

    You can spend favor to increase learning times, however once you have hit the 50% mark on time, you cannot spend anymore favor, regardless of day, to speed up learning until that skill is finished.  So, say you have a 10 day skill.... you can go a shrine in a day, get up to 999 favor, then spend it all toward learning.  You can then visit every shrine and do this.  When the day rolls over, if you haven't hit the 50% mark on learning, you can go revisit every shrine and spend 999 favor to keep reducing the time - until you hit the 50% mark, or 5 days for a 10 day skill.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

    (I'm hoping someone who has the actual numbers comes along to verify this, since I'm not 100% sure that I've got it right, but I think I'm close)

    For the initial question, we don't have enough detail.  When you started the skill, was it 2 days exactly in length?  Or was this a skill that originally had 4 days on it and was down to 2 when you decided to start speeding up learning?  Or did you start that skill, speed it up, then pause it to start another, then come back to that skill?
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When learning a skill, I look to see which 3 Giants are the associated with the skill.  Then I proceed to donate to them the most I can ~ starting with the primary one first.  I donate to all 3 until I can't donate no more and it says learning as fast as I can.  I found this to work well for me.  Not sure how much is taken off, but by donating it does drastically reduce learning time.
    Posted 18 months ago by Sayuri Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The theoretical maximum you can speed it up is 2x (so 50% off the total time). If it's working any other way, then there is a bug. But, to get the maximum, you'd have to donate to a shrine the second you started the skill and make sure you are always donating ahead of the expiration of the benefit from your previous donation.
    Posted 18 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "make sure you are always donating ahead of the expiration of the benefit from your previous donation"

    Say, whaaaa? Is this to say that speed learning is an accurate description, as opposed to time 'reduction' of learning a skill? It always appeared to me that donations simply deducted time remaining, rather than speed up the rate time was being deducted. Sure, the rock goes into a page-flipping frenzy, but time is still deducted at a rate equal to real-time (and all in one chunk at the time of spending favor, I should add). Pungent sunrise, on the other hand (or whatever drink increases learning speed), actually does speed learn, in that time is actually deducted at a faster rate (2 seconds deducted for every 1 second of real-time) for the duration of the buff.

    This is further evidenced by pausing a skill - there is some wording that pausing will lose speed-learning, but it doesn't seem to work that way. The time remaining before pausing and after unpausing a skill remains the same

    So 'expiration of benefit', huh? Do tell...has anyone else noticed this or is my description accurate?
    Posted 18 months ago by Joe Blow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd like clarification from stoot as well, but I'm thinking once you get down to 50% of the time, period, you're not going to be able to reduce the learning.

    So... skill takes 20 hours to complete.  I donate as soon as I set the skill to a shrine and say get 1 hour off the time, so, 19 hours to go.  Now, I walk away from the computer for 10 hours.  When I return, there is only 9 hours left to learn, which is less than 50% of the original time, so I can't speed up learning any further.  Total time to learn skill is 19 hours.

    But if I didn't walk away and instead kept donating to shrines until i got it down to 10 hours, now total time to learn skill is 10 hours.  Now I'll go log off for 10 hours, when I return, the skill is done.

    Is that about right?  Or is it that if you've started speeding up a skill and then it goes back to regular learning, you cannot speed it up again?
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Me too - please clarify...Do donations have to be via the same Giant? and are donations cumulative?
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think I need to clarify. Let's use a test scenario. 

    I want to learn Better Learning V. Time to completion is 5 days. This is what I usually do:

    1. I head to the shrine of the main giant (eg. Lem). I max out the 1000 favor and convert all into speeding up my learning time. Let's say, that 1000 favor contributes to an amount of 3 hours. That means I have 4 days and 21 hours left (approx.). 

    2. I head to the shrine of a secondary giant (eg. Alph). I repeat, max out the 1000 favor, convert it into time savings. Problem is, either two scenarios will happen:
    a. I am only able to convert a certain amount of the 1000 favor into learning time. Then it will say that I am already learning as fast as I can. 
    b. I am able to convert all that 1000 favor into learning time. (has never happened)

    Problem here is that scenario A always happens... and I have barely taken away 10%, or even 5% from the total learning time.

    That's why I was asking this question. Clarifications would be lovely, devs. ):
    Posted 18 months ago by Serenadier Subscriber! | Permalink
  • zeeberg, in your scenario, I believe you would be able to donate and cut the learning time by half, at that point from 9 hours down to 4.5.

    I have no idea what could have gone wrong for the original poster.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Serenadier, it used to always work like your scenario a. More recently, it's been as in b, where you can keep speeding it up at a different shrine.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Forgive for not fully understanding this but could you clarify what and where do you see a time for donating before expiration,"make sure you are always donating ahead of the expiration of the benefit from your previous donation.I usually go to many shrines and load them untill I finally get you are learning as fast as you can from all the shrines and then it is usually half the time in the end.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jellybelly Baby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, kat, but now I'm more confused than before! ;-)

    So, you can take up to 50% of the total time from the beginning of the skill... or you can take up to 50% off from wherever in the skill you start cutting time: like, I start a 10 hour skill.  I wait 2 hours.  Now I speed learn - how much time can I cut off the learning?  5 (half of ten) or 4 (half of 8)? 

    Also, Serenadier, I have definitely donated to more than 3 shrines to cut learning time, but only for very long skills.  In fact, for one long skill, I distinctly recall going through every shrine once in a game day then going through a few more the next game day.

    It'd be nice to know from the devs how this is supposed to work, so that if there are bugs, we can report them.

    Also curious to know about XP with shrine donations.  I keep hearing about people donating 20 gnomes with EHSP to one shrine and getting 100,000 xp.  But this last test, at the start of a game day at a shrine where I had maybe 1 favor, I pitched in 10 awesome pots with EHSP, got the warning for exceeding my favor for the day asking if I wanted to proceed, did so, and got the emblem and 60 (yes, sixty) XP.  

    Again, can we please hear from the devs the way this is supposed to be so that if we are not experiencing the way it is supposed to be, we can report any problems?  Thx.
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @MeherMan, just to clarify, you can't donate currants, I just meant you can buy stuff from vendors and donate that.

    Also, what zeeberk just said, I'm a bit confused now too...
    Posted 18 months ago by mintimperial Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @zeeberk re:the gnomes.
    When I heard that, I assumed the player only got XP and no favor beyond the 1000 limit for day. And XP payout does seem regulated except for the odd random bonus which I assumed was like any other random reward like from garden and mining.
    Posted 18 months ago by MaryLiLamb Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thank you for this thread. I'm at the point in the game when I'm trying to figure out the favor/speed learning/xp thing. I've begun experimenting with various items, though I did mess up at one shrine trying to maximize favor for speed learning. Seems like I was at 995 and donated 10 red elements, thinking I would just get one favor point, but  out popped an emblem! Oh phooey! Now I stop favor around 850. Next test I was going to try something like what Zeeberk did, but am now hesitant.  Ouch, Zee, that must have really hurt!
    Posted 18 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • While we're here, what do people recommend donating to the giants to build favor quickly?
    Posted 18 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • In my experience, after slowly learning 2 hours from a 10 hour skill, you can then speedily learn it in 4 hours (half of 8). It's meant to be double time, even if it doesn't display this way, this is what the reduction represents.

    (Now I'm confused!)
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I found Hallowed powder good and diamonds,or in fact all jewels were good.but like almost a lot of folks here would love a Dev to step in and easily step by step a good method of giving to shrine to get your time down faster with out confusion.I am a simple type and like simplicity for answers not chaos of thoughts,thanks for all this info everuone but honestly still confused.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jellybelly Baby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Extremely Hallowed Shrine Powder + Gnome = 600 favor points & 1,440 XP.
    I have not been able to calculate what 5k elements + EHSP would be.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jepro Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And yeah, ouch zeeberk.

    You know though, thinking about it now, I have had both unexpectedly low and high returns on xp when donating over the last couple of tests. I am never sure if I should report these incidents as bugs, because I am not clear on how it's supposed to work.

    I have had crazy high xp from a gem on rare occasions. And I've found at least one item that is suddenly and consistently returning much less xp than it should for its worth, which is the last portion of the EHSP after I've sprinkled the second to last dose.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The problem with:
    5k elements + EHSP

    is that it's really:
    (1 element + ESHP) + 4999 elements.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Cerluean, it doesn't matter what you donate - you will get 10% of the value of the item as favor.  A gnome is valued at 2000 currants, so you get 200 favor.  EHSP marks it up 3x, so that gnome would be 600 favor.  FHSP marks it up 2x.  Things with negligible value behave a bit more erratically (like red elements), but the point remains, the donation is equal to 10% of the value of the item in favor.  The value of every item is noted on its info page.

    XP doesn't work that way - it's more random based on bonuses - and that's fine except that for one person to donate 20 of something and get 100,000 xp and another to get 60xp feels obtuse.

    Yea, losing the cooking pots would have sucked had we not been in beta.  But to me, it doesn't matter.  I've gone from 0 currants to 5000 currants in the blink of a game day, so for me this is all about testing what happens. ;-)
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When you spend favor to speed up learning, you're not really reducing the time spent by some percentage, you're speeding up how fast the learning happens for a period of time. The end result may be almost the same, but this is an important distinction, which is why some of you are confused by Stoot's statement.

    Let's throw out some made up numbers to illustrate. You have a skill that takes 10 hours to learn. You donate to a shrine, which results in double learning speed for 1 hour. This means that you have effectively chopped 2 hours off the 10 hours, rather than just 1 hour. However, for all the remaining hours, you're still only learning at normal speed, so you could go donate again to speed up the learning speed for another period of time.

    This may look like a reduction in total time, but the effective percentage varies based on how much of the 10 hours you've already used up! So, it's best *not* to think of it as a reduction in learning time as a percentage, but instead as it was intended, which is as a maximum amount of time you can spend learning at double speed.

    So, for that 10 hour skill, the best you can ever do is to donate enough, to get enough favor to spend, so that you are learning double speed for the entire time it will take to learn that skill--taking into account the double speed. So, a maximum of five hours at double speed for this skill, if you spend favor the second it begins, rather less if you spend favor along the way.

    I hope that makes sense. Also, I'm not a dev, so apologies if I stepped on toes.

    Heh: So, basically what katlazam said, in many more words ;-)
    Posted 18 months ago by Martian Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I squeeze chickens for musicblocks, and donate those.  I mine sparkly and dullite for elements to crush into shrine powder (usually EHSP, but occasionally FHSP, if I can't find enough dullite for green elements).  If I get gems from mining, I donate those, too.  You can now donate multiples of one thing and get powder bonuses for all of them, instead of just one.  For example, if I have six rubies, I'll use shrine powder once, and donate all six rubies, and get extra favor for all six.  Until recently, we'd only get extra favor for one of the rubies.

    From what I can tell, you can only speed up learning by half of whatever time you have left, so I learn long skills between tests, and don't bother to speed them up until the very end, if the end correlates with the beginning of a test.  Then I'll donate a little to get rid of half of whatever time is remaining, so I can start (and hopefully finish) a new skill during the test. 

    One other thing I've noticed -- I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature -- if I speed up a skill, pause it to learn another one, and then restart the first skill, I can no longer spend favor points to speed it up.  Once it has been paused, the amount of time remaining at that moment is final.

    The whole thing is a bit counterintuitive.  If a skill is supposed to take me twenty hours to complete, I'd like to be able to speed it up by ten hours, regardless of where I am in the learning process.
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • kat - that confuses me.  i have donated multiple items on ESHP (like 10 awesome pots) and gotta 3x the 10% total value of their worth, not ((1 cooking pot + ESHP) + 9 pots), so why would elements be different?  I think their starting value is the issue, because each red is worth 0.2 currants, so a stack of red elements should be 100 currants, or 10 favor.  30 favor with EHSP.
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Aha - from what glum said, my understanding was in fact obsolete. Good news!
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think what Stoot might have been saying with "make sure you are always donating ahead of the expiration of the benefit from your previous donation" is something along the lines of this: Say you're speeding up learning with favor from a particular giant (or three, however it works). That improvement in learning speed only lasts so long, so to continue that improvement constantly, you'd have to donate again just before the previous boost ran out. I'm thinking of it like a time-based buff... like you drink an Earthshaker and mine like crazy till it runs out, you donate for time and the Rock learns like crazy till it runs out. (If this is stupid-obvious and someone already said it but in different words, I blame my lack of reading skills on a combination of heat exhaustion and caffeine withdrawal.)

    Basically, the giants get bored/distracted and wander off periodically, so then you've gotta go ask someone else for help, but you can't be rude and go looking for extra help when one of the giants is already helping you. =)

    Edit: So yeah, kinda what Martian said, which is kinda what Katlazam said, which is kinda what Stoot probably said... in the house that Jack built.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jennyanydots Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ah - a 'time buffer'.  that makes sense to me.  thanks, folks.
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If what Martian says is accurate, which appears to be the case given various wordings and statements, then my only problem is with how time is displayed on your skills page. It should show double-time, as a pungent sunrise buff does, instead of one big reduction up front.

    I say this because it would then seem to have an impact on what pausing a skill does, depending on when you pause it. For example, if I donate enough to cut learning a 10 hour skill by 50% (or speed learn for 2.5 hours, if you prefer) and then pause it immediatley, this would seem to be different than pausing after 4.99 hours (edit: i guess I mean 2.499 hours here lol) ... or 5.01 hours for that matter. Although, since I don't really understand the impact of pausing to begin with...who knows.

    Wouldn't knowing when the speed learning wears off be important? Maybe showing it like a buff would work?
    Posted 18 months ago by Joe Blow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Joe, yes, I completely agree... I'd like to see a progress meter, if that's how it works.

    I'm glad you mentioned the pungent sunrises, because they keep working after you've sped a skill up as much as possible, so they're a good way out of time issues at the ends of tests.  Just don't drink two at once... it wastes one. 
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Pungent sunrises no longer cut down learning time when you've already sped it up to the limit allowed by shrines, or at least they didn't 2 tests ago.

    And I'd rather not have yet another progress bar on the screen, but it would be good if the rock told you when you checked his display.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Okey so asking here to end my confusion do I or dont I. Ready next test for 7day 4 hours for Teleporting V to take effect,hoarded a lot of music bxs ect ect for time saving to shrine Lem.or Cosmo,now what to do donate right away asap or wait till end like when it hits 3days.1/2.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jellybelly Baby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As for the general way it works, Martian had it right above.

    The XP/favor rules for donation are still being tweaked (constantly) so expect change (eventually they'll stabilize when it seems like the balance is right).

    "make sure you are always donating ahead of the expiration of the benefit from your previous donation" just means: "if the rock stops showing double speed then you waited too long".

    And ghost777: it doesn't make a difference, so go ahead and donate right away.
    Posted 18 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wow, thanks to everyone (and stoot) for all the help and info. Dumb n00b question: where do I get these shrine powders? Lmao, at first I misread them as "shroom powders." :P
    Posted 18 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Okey thanyou so much Stoot,Now we need to tweak you to open for say maybe 15 min to test and I will fly through those doors and start that 71/2 skill .lol.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jellybelly Baby Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wait, stoot... it DOES make a difference... at the 3.5 day mark, ghost777 will only be able to speed up by 1.75 days.  In order to cut a full 3.5 days off the original 7, donations would have to start immediately after beginning the skill, and continue until no more favor points can be used to speed it up.

    If this is a bug, please fix it.  :)  It's what I've found every time I've tried to speed up a skill over the last several tests (before then, I just collected emblems instead of spending favor).

    ETA: during the last test, after spending all of the possible favor points, I was still able to speed up learning via guzzling excessive numbers of pungent sunrises, so either katlazam or I found a bug.
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ Cerulean: You can make the Extremely Hallowed Shrine Powder (3x favor) or Fairly Hallowed Shrine Powder (2x favor) by combining the elements you get from grinding rocks. You need a beaker to make the compounds and a test tube to make the powder---or visa versa. Check out glitch wiki. I have seen  EHSP at the auction for anywhere between 1800-2500 c. The powders give 5 uses.
    Posted 18 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So just to clarify...

    Let's say I have 1 day left out of the 5 days needed to learn a particular skill. That means I can only speed up by half the remaining time (12 hours)? Which translates to 6 hours of speed-up from the shrines? 
    Posted 18 months ago by Serenadier Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Serenadier: you'll be able to lower the time required from 24 hours to 12 hours, provided that you donate/spend enough favor. 
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • glum pudding, re: "Wait, stoot... it DOES make a difference... at the 3.5 day mark, ghost777 will only be able to speed up by 1.75 days."

    Yes, you're totally right. I wasn't thinking :)

    Serenadier, re "Let's say I have 1 day left out of the 5 days needed to learn a particular skill. That means I can only speed up by half the remaining time (12 hours)? Which translates to 6 hours of speed-up from the shrines?"

    Kind of. Glum had it right: if you the normal time is 24 you can speed it up to 12 hours (since spending favors doubles the normal rate). So, it's not 6 hours of speed up: it's 12 hours.
    Posted 18 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Okay, will try. Problem is that in the past few skills that I have learnt/am learning... I can not go past 50% of the remaining time.

    I was trying to learn Mining IV, so I donated 1000 favor (in multiples of 500) to the first shrine which got me about 6 hours faster... proceeded to the second shrine to donate, but halfway through it said I was already learning as fast as I can.

    Must be a bug then?
    Posted 18 months ago by Serenadier Subscriber! | Permalink
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