Topic

Best (or most efficient) item to donate to shrines

I'm on a mission to collect icons and I've been thinking a lot about what to donate that yields maximum return for minimal energy spent. 

After A LOT of calculations I'm pretty sure Sparkly Rock is the answer, but it seems too simple.  I thought for sure that crafting stuff would yield better results but when you take into account all the energy it takes to make all the items needed that goes into crafting, it turns out that it isn't all that efficient. 

Am I getting this wrong? I would love to hear everyone's opinion and thoughts. 

Posted 11 months ago by Coconut Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Meat. You can gather a ton quickly by going to residential neighborhoods and using the keyboard verb shortcuts to Nibble your way to 3000 meat in an hour.
    Posted 11 months ago by TomC Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I always sell everything and invest in cubimal boxes which i donate UNOPENED and enhanced with EHS.  That yields 1500 favor and I fill in the rest with whatever music blocks I got.  Easy, breezy, relatively cheap.
    Posted 11 months ago by CosmicBitFlip Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think it depends on a number of factors, such as skills and level.  For example, if you have AK7 and Mining I, then I think meat is better than sparkly.  Also, if your energy tank is large and your time available for play is short, then your best strategy may be to use your energy to craft items. Also, using excess energy towards the end of the day for crafting is a good strategy in some cases.

    However, if your play style is such that return-on-energy is what you want to maximize and you have Mining III or IV, then you are right about sparkly.  But you will need EHSP as well, and that will leave you with excess elements.  So you might also consider what you can do with that excess.
    Posted 11 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Though they're costly to make, molybdenum ingots are quite powerful favorwise.
    Posted 11 months ago by The Mighty Dino Subscriber! | Permalink
  • hmm, cubimal boxes seem almost not worth it, if you were to buy 1000 chunks of sparkly at 300 each stack, it would cost 6000 for 1000, if you donate that ssparkly, you get at least 6000 xp from that.. not sure exact numbers.. i know WITHOUT shrine powder, 1300 is 4500ish xp
    Posted 11 months ago by blackwidow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • errr wait.. im talking xp, they are talking favor, scratch that... not sure lol
    Posted 11 months ago by blackwidow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you are going to make molybdenum, and have Tinkering skills, make the 20xMoly stacks (favor 200) into Crystamalisers (250 favor).
    Maximizing favor means making EHSP. Use up extra elements (usually Red/Blue) by making Friendly Acid and donate that.
    Collect and group music boxes. Only donate when you have >10 of one type, which will maximise your use of EHSP.
    Posted 11 months ago by Dru Id Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Extra elements can be released for XP -- 1000 red gives about 300 XP when released.
    Posted 11 months ago by JohnaMarie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When it comes to nibbling, don't overlook the benefit of gurly drinks.  
    Posted 11 months ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Definitely meat, especially with the highest level of AK (forgot what that is right now).
    Posted 11 months ago by Sororia Rose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What kind of game play do you like? Personally, I really like wandering around far and wide and collecting meat and milk. Staying in one area and mining endless, clicking now and then and waiting for the mining to complete... That's pretty boring. Though, I do like the community when a bunch of glitches are in Neva Neva and people call out the position, and everyone runs there. And in between, everyone is hopping around madly. It's fun. Pick the type of play that's fun, and go with it.
    Posted 11 months ago by Mr Shrimpy Pants Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I use EHSP and make crystalmalizing chambers to donate.
    Posted 11 months ago by MrVolare Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Least energy - just buy a bunch of gnomes or any other expensive item mix with shrine powder, repeat.
    Posted 11 months ago by snarkle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I exclusively donate Purple Snow Cones.  They cost 1100c each, they earn 110 favor each, they triple to 330 favor with EHSP.  Better than that, they stack to extremely efficient levels per bag slot (3300 favor a stack) and they are directly vendor purchasable.  No work, no fluctuations in auction prices, always available.  I've donated about 1.5Mc worth of them and I'm 9 emblems away from all 11 icons.
    Posted 11 months ago by Nerd of Epic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You can donate multiple music blocks of the same type at once?
    Posted 11 months ago by Rapture Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Rapture Yes!

    @Nerd of Epic You'll be losing 20% of the favour you could earn by going to buy sno-cones though, aren't you?  Maybe you're rich enough that doesn't matter, but 20% of 1.5million currants could buy a cubimal or two
    Posted 11 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ty Nerd .. I didn't know that about the Purple Snow Cones :)  I usually donate crystalmalizing chambers or grand  old grinders.. great favor and don't forget that chambers gets you about 1600exp and grinders about 1440 exp!!
    Posted 11 months ago by Qizara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I make cristalmalizing chambers. three of them enhanced with EHSP would get the emblem from shrine and one get as well 5 000 xp
    Earlier I made coctails and it gave me good return but considering the eatable and drinkable things I am too greedy and hungry )))
    so 10 or 20 savory smoothies with EHSP usually brought me an emblem.
    Posted 11 months ago by Rikki-Tikki Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I donate sparkly. 500 chunks of sparkly gives 1200 favour with EHSP.
    Posted 11 months ago by karathrace Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Rapture, yes, which is why I used to have musicblocks all over the floor of my place.  I would sort them by type and when any given stack got large enough, in it went with ehsp.  
    Posted 11 months ago by WalruZ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Craftable items' game-declared values are roughly tied to the energy it takes to collect the materials and to transform them, but the former varies wildly with skill levels.  (I think there's a spreadsheet out there that addresses varying energy expenditures for beans, meat, ore across major skills????)  I'd venture that with a level of AK7 and gurly drinks, meat is the cheapest thing to get (even more than Mining4 + earthshakers, because there are more pigs than sparkly rocks).  

    If you're selling resources to buy anything else, you are losing 20% of your bank right there.  If I donate 500 meat I get 500 favor points, but if I sell 500 meat I only get 4000 currants, not enough to buy the cubimal box that would get me the same favor.
    Posted 11 months ago by oscarette Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Meat is what I used to mainly speed up learning all the skills and, as a side effect, boost my XP as well.  Since each meat is worth 1 favor, it's easy to calculate how much is needed with EHSP to maximize donations under the emblem cap.  Also, meat collectors and housing developments with streets full of piggies meant that collecting meat wasn't an onerous task.

    Butterfly milk served as a not so efficient backup option.
    Posted 11 months ago by Warrender Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @shhexy corin - I have no idea where a 20% problem would be introduced by buying snow cones.  The value of virtually everything in the game is (10c = 1f).  In this case these items are not craftable (that I know of) and therefore have no "cheaper way" to produce them.  You go and spend 220,000c you flat out end up with 22,000f in 20 stacks (before tripling them of course).  Again, the point of my approach was to have an infinitely available, highly stackable, easy to acquire item that lets you effectively convert currants to favor.  If that's now what you are looking for, I'm not offended, honest.  :)

    Also, for anyone that fears the XP loss of using snow cones for donations, rest assured that the XP gained from donating them generally far out paces XP gained by eating them.  :)
    Posted 11 months ago by Nerd of Epic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nerd of Epic: What they mean by 20% is that if you donate something you bought with currants, and you got those currants by selling things to the vendor, then you could have just donated the things you sold to the vendor instead and they would have been worth 25% more (or, not 20% less from the other way around).

    This is not necessarily true.  If you were selling things on auction for more than their list value then you could be doing better.  Also, if you were harvesting a diverse array of products it may be more efficient to take the 20% hit so that you can EHSP one huge batch (this would depend on your current donation limit).

    At any rate, all things are equally efficient to donate, so the real question is: what is the most efficient way to generate wealth?  I know that mining sparkly seems to be the most popular answer to that question, but I don't think it's the right one.  Even if you stood at an inexhaustible sparkly rock and mined continuously you would only be making 8 currants a second in sparkly.  At that rate, I would have to mine for nearly three hours to get enough sparkly to make my donation for my emblem.  Currently I earn an emblem every game day I play and I play for an average of much less than three hours to do it.
    Posted 11 months ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Meat and ehsp.

    Everything else is crap, except for when folks leave random junk on the ground, all that gets tossed in the nearest Shrine (aka Glitch garbage can).

    Music blocks are nice in bulk (25 at once, if you want) but you have to hug a lot of chickens and really be into that sort of thing.  Lucky for me I am.
    Posted 11 months ago by ☣ elf ☣ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for all the tips everyone!  After looking into it some more, you guys are totally right: Meat is the way to go!  If you look at how many currants worth of meat you get per nibble (and therefore how many favour you get) compared to how much energy it takes to get that meat, it is by far the best ratio. 

    With a little EHSP, donating is a breeze!!!  Thanks everyone!
    Posted 11 months ago by Coconut Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Sure, your meat and sparkly are more valuable to the shrines than to the vendors but they're only worth your EHS when you already have hundreds of it.  The idea of buying an expensive item is that you get to do whatever you want with your game time.  If you were to donate millions of the same item you need to be farming that item mostly and to have a lot of it in your inventory until it's time to donate.  If you invest in cubimals, sno cones, etc you get it over with in 4min and you forget about it for the day.  So yeah... if you're gonna be nibbling all day long anyways, go right ahead and donate meat.  But if you're only doing it for the favor it gets boring.  You kno what'm sayin?
    Posted 11 months ago by CosmicBitFlip Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Good point Cosmic, I guess I'll probably start using a combo that depends on how much time i have that day.  If i've got the time, walking around nibbling piggies ain't so bad, especially since I can also work towards my completist badges and DNA spottings.   But I can see it being annoying if I want to spend my time doing other stuff. 

    I've managed to gather about 4000 meats in about 2 hours, so that should last me quite a few game days since I use EHSP :)
    Posted 11 months ago by Coconut Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've been trying to learn which skills each giant is the primary for and then donating stuff related to that. Friendly always gets my hooch, for example. It's been fun for me to play this way. If you give them what they each like, you get more love back!
    Posted 11 months ago by traypup Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you do want to go the crafting route (for occasional variety, if nothing else), then Crystamalizing Chambers and Grand Ole Grinders are not the best way to go. Ignoring energy costs, and just comparing the cost of the materials required to the value of the end product, those two tools give the worst profit margin (20%). That is, you get the most currants for a chamber (2500c), but the raw materials cost 2000c.

    FP Grills have the best profit margin (43%), but as they're low-ish value, making bunches of them is a bit of a chore. Awesome Pots and Irrigators are a decent compromise between profit margin (33% and 27%, respectively) and the profit in actual currants (100c and 200c, respectively).
    Posted 11 months ago by Bobby Chuckles Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Another thing to get tons of emblems fast: favor coins....some pop up quite regularly and those can add up nicely AND have the added benefit of adding favor to all the giants at once.

    So +150 favor or more translates to quite a lot of favor at once.  Just be prepared to do some camping...
    Posted 11 months ago by ☣ elf ☣ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'd agree the profit margin is bad, but what you can do is buy moly off auction and make crystal chambers at profit :) Because moly has no real use it sells very cheap on auction, allowing you to make a pretty significant profit in large amounts.
    Posted 11 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not the best at figuring out profit margins but what about the Super Scrappers 2000C each?
    You need 7 of each of the bars so you're not just using up the shiny elements making moly.
    Posted 11 months ago by BlackWolf Subscriber! | Permalink
  • You certainly do need a lot of wealth in one thing to make optimal use of EHSP, but there are two reasons that selling / rebuying still might not be a good idea.

    1) You don't actually need that much meat or sparkly to reach your donation cap.  Suppose you are trying for your last emblem to earn an icon (your 12th emblem since the first one was spent unlocking a skill).  You'll need only 2100 favor to get it.  To get that all in one donation with EHSP you need to donate just 7000 currants worth of goods.  That's just 700 meat, which means tracking down only about 44 piggies.  You can get that from four or five streets in some regions.  If you did it with sparkly you'd need 875 sparkly, which means locating less than 20 rocks (I don't know rock averages well, I'm sure it's well under this and then you'd get gems on top).

    2) EHSP isn't really that expensive.  As I said, you are looking to donate 7000 currants of goods at once.  If you want to sell other goods and rebuy something like sno-cones to make sure you get the maximum benefit from EHSP then you'll have to sell 8750 currants worth of goods.  EHSP is worth 400 currants per charge.  So even if you had 4 different kinds of resources totaling 7000 currants of value, it would be cheaper to donate those plus four charges of EHSP (total cost 8600) than to vendor them to make one large donation.

    The larger the donation, the better it is to just donate multiple types of things.  If your donation cap is 25,000 (*cough*) and you wanted to sell meat/milk to get enough money to buy sno-cones to reach it, you'd have to sell around 104,000 currants worth so you could make one large donation totalling 25,000.  If instead you sold enough to just pay for three uses of EHSP, that same 104,000 worth of stuff would get you your 25k plus another 5,750 towards your next emblem.

    But even with a donation cap of only 1000 you shouldn't vendor and rebuy unless you have at least four different types of goods to donate.  With only three, using three doses of EHSP is cheaper.
    Posted 11 months ago by Humbabella Subscriber! | Permalink
  • the most efficient donation (in terms of energy spent) may not be the fastest way to achieve your donation goals.
    Posted 10 months ago by Token☆ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Harvest general vapours and allspice, make fruit tree beans, donate fruit tree beans.
    1 bean with EHSP = 45 favour. 100 beans = 4500 favour and 10k xp.
    you also get good xp for seasoning the beans, not to mention, you'll be knocking off the gas changing and bean seasoning achievements in the process.

    my 2 cents
    Posted 10 months ago by Elfstar Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Collect meat with AK7. It is the best way (for energy consumption but don't know about time consumption) for currants/favor by far compared to Mining Sparkly with Mining 4. For mining 7 energy gets you an average of 7 chunks worth 6 currants each. For 2 energy nibbling a piggy gets you 4 meat worth 8 currants each. So mining gets 32 currants per 7 energy and nibbling gets 32 currants per 2 energy. Also the amount of meat you donate is equal to the amount of favor you will receive...very handy.
    Posted 10 months ago by Paxton Subscriber! | Permalink