Topic

no-no addiction

How many users are always running on pure no-no powder rush? I recently experimented with no-no powder (I was young and irresponsible) and found it to have a lot of benefit with little drawback. It's really easy to make, lasts a while and we all know hell is pretty easy to get out of.

Does anyone else feel like no-no powder is fairly unbalanced? I've been thinking that post reset it might be a pretty smart strategy to learn alchemy and admixing skills and then use the drug fueled fury of no-no powder to endlessly mine and rack up a huge amount of currants.

[Note: Those of you who have never tried no-no powder, don't do it. Winners don't use drugs]

Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • it might depend on your playing style. i go AFK a lot, so no-no was a net loss for me both times i tried it.
    Posted 23 months ago by EgIantine Subscriber! | Permalink
  • no-no isn't really unbalanced.

    i mean, it seems great at first, and it is good for mining/refining, since you can get a cycle of production going and sell off or donate the unused chunks and gem.

    so a good engine for mining/refining but horrible for everything else, since the other things don't help you produce no-no to further the cycle.

    but currently cabbage from the produce vendors or earthshakers and humbabas from Helga beat even no-no powder. you make as much profit [since the chunks and gems easily offset the purchase costs] without the hassle of moving from panel to panel actually making stuff.

    if vendors with an unlimited supply of these items at their current prices didn't exist, and they might not always, then no-no would be a lot more tempting.

    but they do exist, so the powder isn't very tempting. mostly a hassle compared to the alternatives.

    without vendors/Helga, i think gardening for cabbage would probably be a better alternative than harvesting for earthshaker ingredients. more predictable and much less running around searching for just the right tree/doing drinkmaking, which is well outside the mining production cycle.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Striatic, could you explain the cabbage thing a little more? Does cabbage have a buff I am unaware of?
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Since they changed stack sizes on a number of items, cabbage/potato aren't quite as advantageous as they used to be.

    A cabbage/potato gives you 7 energy and you can have 80 per slot.
    An egg gives you 5 energy and you can have 250 per slot.
    Meat gives you 10 energy and you can have 50 per slot (certainly comparable to cabbage now, makes it easier to be a carnivore)
    Posted 23 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • cabbages are still the only ones you can purchase reliably in whatever quantity is convenient to you. that's the key to cabbage's power and convenience.

    but yeah, meat is much better now that the stack size for meat has increased. build a pork fountain at home, generate insane amounts of meat, never go hungry again.

    zaphod .. cabbage has no buff but it packs one energy per currant and you can fit lots of them into your pack due to their awesome stack size.

    basically you buy like 2000c worth of cabbage, use the energy it provides to mine 10,000c-ish worth of chunks and gems, sell/donate, then buy more cabbage to repeat. you make 7000c or more each time and since you aren't doing any crafting, things go really quickly and you make money and/or favor very quickly.

    you can also use the food vendor in llemenskie caverns in a similar way, but you carry less of the vendor's food around and make more trips to the vendor's convenient location.

    pork fountains work by raising a couple 100 pigs in your backyard and using multiple fecundity powders to cause them to drop insane amounts of meat over and over again. you can easily generate thousand and thousands of meats this way. the most annoying thing about this is the time it takes to grab the meats off the ground with all the pigs in the way, but using enter and arrow keys can make this go .. quickly enough.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • at a certain point, energy efficiency becomes less important than UI efficiency.

    let's say that for the sake of argument .. if all you are doing is mining and selling, no-no powder is theoretically the most "efficient".

    but it isn't in practice, because you have to mine the rocks, crush the rocks, test tube the elements, ad-mix the powder and then tinker-repair the refining tool. over and over again.

    going to a vendor and selling rocks then buying food is so much less hassle. it's a one stop shop. very few cursor clicks and no staring at progress bars.

    incredibly elegant when compared to all the hoops you have to jump through with no-no powder, and in the time you spent going through all the steps to make the powder, i've mined 10 more rocks.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • this thread makes me feel sad.

    I wish I hadn't read it.
    Posted 23 months ago by Wrendolin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I suppose it depends on how you want to play the game. Do you want to rack up as much money and xp as fast as possible? Or do you want to explore and try out all the little imaginative touches the designers and writers have built into the game?
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I made about 10 stacks of no-no powder in November, have been flying high on those since then, might try switching to something else when they run out. But using some quick maths, I have 2940 energy, if cabbage gives 7 energy and stack to 80 then I need 5.25 stacks for every complete energy refill. With no-no powder I have 10 glitch hours of infinite energy for every stack.

    At higher and higher levels, things other than no-no powder become less efficient, especially if you make it in massive batches.

    PROTIP: Don't donate a stack of no-no powder to a shrine, really not worth it :(
    Posted 23 months ago by SuperHappyFun Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I suppose it depends on how you want to play the game. Do you want to rack up as much money and xp as fast as possible? Or do you want to explore and try out all the little imaginative touches the designers and writers have built into the game?"

    oh c'mon.

    that is so totally a false dichotomy and you know it.

    personally, i use discovered efficiencies to grind as little as possible. it lets me spend 10 minutes powering up energy/make money, and then i can spend the rest of the day exploring whatever aspect of the game i want without energy or currants being an impediment.

    bluto, you're a higher level than i am, own a more expensive house, and i bet you have more currants in the bank than i do most of the time.. so how is any of this about the ridiculous dichotomy you're presenting?

    you honestly think that just because someone wants to figure out how to get around the game world better, they can't appreciate the "little touches" the devs put into the game? total baloney.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Why must you attack me all the time, Striatic?
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • tell you what, if you can go a single thread without implying the implication that i'm somehow oblivious to "all the little imaginative touches the designers and writers have built into the game", then maybe i won't be so defensive.

    because dude, you do *not* have a monopoly on wonder, and liking to think about coordination and efficiency is not antithetical to enjoying imagination, exploration and fun.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This thread is not about you Striatic. I was answering the OP.
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Bluto, are you saying that no-no powder is not a little imaginative touch which has been built into the game?

    I probably should have specified, all of my thoughts on strategy post reset is to allow me to purchase the house I want as early as possible. Everything else in the game is limitless, trees, cooking, meditating, peat digging and street building. The only thing I have found to be limited in the game is the availability of houses (both location and value). To me, this means acquiring the house you want should be the top priority, once you do that you can focus on anything else which takes your fancy.
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I tried no-no powder once and didn't like it because it made everything so easy, and I had a horrible crash at the end of it which left me not able to play for three hours over a weekend test. (I didn't know any of the ways round that). So personally I'm against using it. But that is my own opinion. Others can play the way they want.
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Zaphod, it isn't obvious but the devs do continuously add housing quarters to the game as the tests go on.

    this doesn't mean that houses are limitless, but they are at least as limitless as street building projects.

    like, sometimes we run out of streets to build before the end of a test .. and then magically there are more streets available to build at the start of the same session.

    same with houses. sometimes we exhaust the housing supply by the end of the test .. and then magically at the start of the next test some more sub-streets appear within each of the existing quarters.

    but if you still want to nab a house as quickly as possible, i'd go with cabbage instead of no-no. cabbage requires no skills other than mining, so you can focus entirely on your mining skill. making no-no will require learning the entire refining/alchemy/admixing skill branch, and thus won't be as quick to set up.

    of course, thinking about any of this stuff will totally ruin the game for you.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Wait, thinking about game strategy will ruin the game for me? I suppose the only way to really enjoy the game is to be one of the zombie hoards who hangs out at street projects just waiting for the next phase to begin?

    I'm still confused about the cabbage comments. I think cabbage gives you 7 energy a piece, with 80 in a stack, that gives you 560 energy per stack. For the last couple of tests I have been making tasty pasta as my base food. If I remember correctly tasty pasta give 75 energy per piece, even though you can only have 10 in a stack, that's still 750 energy per stack. However, in the last test I started making awesome stew, which has over 100 energy a piece, meaning each stack is now over 1000 energy. You can't buy awesome stew from a vendor (at least any I have found) but I still think it makes more sense to buy higher energy foods than cabbage.
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "You can't buy awesome stew from a vendor (at least any I have found) but I still think it makes more sense to buy higher energy foods than cabbage."

    you can't tho.

    there isn't anything with more energy per stack than cabbage that you can buy from a vendor, and the ability to buy from a vendor is what makes it best.

    otherwise you spend a ton of time harvesting and cooking instead of mining, and any energy/stack efficiencies are blown away by the time wasted waiting on progress bars and street loads when cooking the food and gathering the ingredients.

    awesome stew seems more efficient because of the energy/stack numbers, but you need to factor *creation time* into everything. cabbage kills on creation time, since the only time spent is travel time to the vendor, and produce vendors are all over the place.

    ever since the devs stuck a food vendor in the llemenskie caverns, i think gruel beats cabbage, but only in those specific caverns because you can't buy gruel anyplace else.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • but i think next test i will focus on building a Public Pork Fountain in Lemenskie or Cebarkul.

    Cebarkul/Lemenskie, because pork fountains are reliant on Fecundity powder to work and Fecundity powders are created from resources found in the neighbouring caverns.

    Public, so that anyone can use it with their own powder.

    Pork Fountain, because then i and others can take all the meat i make and put it up for auction at cost, making buying the meat at auction as reliable as buying the cabbage from the vendors, without any of the travel time.

    but to do that effectively i and others would have to give up totally on projects and questing and focus entirely on feeding people which isn't as fun. so i need to think up a way to keep it fun over days and days of play beyond the initial novelty of having a ton of pigs on a certain street.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Like I said, I think cabbage only gives you 560 energy per stack (please correct me if I am wrong.) But food vendors sell lots of different foods which are worth more than 56 energy (you can only have 10 food items in a stack, 10*56=560.) For example, I know I have purchased chili from the food vendors, and I think that is worth more than 100 energy.

    Although it is true, creating food does take time, I usually do it in large batches (80 or more at a time) which means that each step takes long enough I am able to do something away from keyboard, like fold laundry or sweep, so I'm not too concerned with the lack of efficiency in that part of the process. In addition to that, I think I would get pretty bored with just mining and eating cabbage all the time.

    And with that, I think I have answered my original question.
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "For example, I know I have purchased chili from the food vendors, and I think that is worth more than 100 energy."

    yes, i mentioned that vendor. there's only one vendor that does that though. in only one place. if you're woking on a street or quest in groddle heights, it isn't convenient to travel all the way to the cavern just to buy chili if you're running low.

    "In addition to that, I think I would get pretty bored with just mining and eating cabbage all the time."

    you don't need to do it all the time. personally i will do it for ten to 20 minutes, rack up 20 to 30k currants and then do pretty much whatever i want for the rest of the day. the speed of the thing is all that matters, and once you've met your needs there is no crash to deal with once you move on to other things.

    "Although it is true, creating food does take time, I usually do it in large batches (80 or more at a time) which means that each step takes long enough I am able to do something away from keyboard, like fold laundry or sweep, so I'm not too concerned with the lack of efficiency in that part of the process."

    you're not factoring in harvesting time. sure, you can sweep while the food is actually cooking, but you're missing the second aspect of creation time i mentioned, which is collecting all the spices and bubbles and meats you need to make all this food. you can't do any of that while sweeping, and it is easily the most time consuming aspect of food creation.

    of course that isn't an issue with no-no powder, just food.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ...Seems like I'd be wasting my time cooking and auctioning food between cabbage vendors and meat fountains.
    Posted 23 months ago by Elbee Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Elbee, i wouldn't say that.

    for auctioning? possibly yes.

    but food is useful for more than just auctions. it is often a key component to unlocking streets and for completing quests and achievements.

    if those things are your primary focus, running around making lots of food for streets and for quests while nibbling here and there on the side for fuel isn't a bad idea at all. it's just that from a pure energy perspective, cooking is going to get you grinding for longer periods and getting less energy/money/favor in return.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I thought there were food vendors in places other than the caverns, but I can't remember where else I think I've seen them, so maybe there is only one.
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • there are produce vendors in places other than the caverns, but they only sell produce, like cabbage.

    there are also grocery vendors in places other than the caverns, but they only sell cooking ingredients with poor energy/price/stack size ratios.

    they don't sell finished food high energy foods like chili or awesome stew.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • anyway ..

    gardening might end up an impressive way to make food. you get all your ingredients in one place and the yields are really high. you can go sweep while you wait on the growth cycle. just set a timer.

    unfortunately there aren't many recipes that only require produce, and so few trees fit in even the largest backyard.

    but with more larger gardens, gardening would beat produce vendors.

    and with more patches, you radically cut down the amount of time it takes to gather ingredients.

    higher volume backyard agriculture could initiate a cooking renaissance, since right now cooking requires harvesting and harvesting is severely impeded by the long street load/travel times. increased backyard yields [especially from trees] would eliminate the street load time tax on harvesting.

    tho on the other hand it would turn glitch into farmville and be less visually interesting. i suppose the difference would be that in the time you're waiting for the crops to cycle, you could go out into the glitch world and do things other than mine and make no-no.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • They could have vendors not sell produce. It always struck me odd that they did.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • it makes a lot sense to have produce vendors in the alpha. otherwise you'd need a house to be able to cook many of the recipes.

    even with communal gardens you'd still need croppery to plant in them, so without produce vendors you're punishing any player who picks cooking before gardening, and all cooks would need gardening skills.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Half the motivation for doing.. well, anything, is because it gives you something that you couldn't have otherwise, whether it gives you more money, energy, or materials. If produce vendors are available, it reduces massively the fun of growing your own stuff, because to anybody with money (which is pretty much everybody), they're equivalent, but one requires less work and time.

    I would say with the advent of commonplace, publicly-accessible gardens, we should eliminate produce vendors. Thoughts?
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nah, it's nice to be able to buy the one thing that you forgot to plant in your garden, or to stock up on stuff... or even, god forbid, just need some food when you're out and about.
    Posted 23 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Then why not sell spice, since it's the one thing I forgot to plant in my backyard? Or eggs? Or butterfly milk, since it's the one thing I forgot to get while I was out.

    Those things are all not sold because they're easily accessible through other means, and because selling them would hurt much more than help.

    If we removed produce vendors and somebody DID forget to plant something in their garden, they could ask other people for it, and offer something in return (or just get it for free), thereby encouraging a basic economy and some social interaction.

    I definitely agree that it makes things easier, and losing it after having it would be annoying, but I do think that people would get by fine without them.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This thread makes me so happy. If I can't play the game I can at least mentally argue with myself about whether I should join the throng of pick-wielding Striatists diving into the Public Pork Fountain, or if I'd be happier among the drug-free Blutopians swarming outwards from Groddle in search of imaginative touches.
    Posted 23 months ago by EgIantine Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think the real problem is the phrase "public pork fountain". It just doesn't sit right with me.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Cabbage, drugs, and pork?

    RobotGymnast, I agree, and also it would mean produce would be a more profitable thing to auction. Makes sense to me that people would sell what they grow to others.
    Posted 23 months ago by Cefeida Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Has it already been said that they're removing it in the official release? Or recommended? If not, I guess one of us should post it as an idea.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The game mirrors real life in the produce respect: I can grow food in my garden, or I can shop for it in the store. Shopping for it is far more convenient, but gardening is cheaper. On the other hand, my real-life gardening doesn't involve foraging for seeds in pig poop, and for that I am thankful.

    The only flaw I see in the public pork fountain is the lag. Stumbling across a street filled with pigs, unsuspecting players will be crashing left and right, losing testing time while muttering unspeakable things at the gods. A semi-public fountain organized by residents of one particular housing section would be kinder, since others would be much less likely to randomly encounter porcine madness, and some warning notes could be left by the entrance.
    Posted 23 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Auctions, trading and gifting would be available. Skill prereqs can be adjusted.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Auctions, trading and gifting would be available."

    people wouldn't trade their produce if they have a limited supply only from their own garden which they would need for their own cooking and energy.

    i mean we barely have a workable trading and auctions as it is, and the history of glitch so far suggests that people would rather wait the hours and days to provide themselves than rely on trade.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It wouldn't matter so much if skill prereqs were adjusted. Also, we don't know what gardening will be like after its revamp and balancing.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love the idea of semi-public pork fountain. Go up to the nth floor of Gregarious Towers and as the elevator doors open a flood of laggy meat hits you in the face!
    Posted 23 months ago by EgIantine Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you want to get rid of produce vendors, why stop there? You can make tools with tinkering skills, so why not get rid of tool vendors (except picks, as you need some way to get metal to make tools)? You can make eggs with an egg seasoner, so why do vendors sell those? The grocery vendors sell some produce and some spices, get rid of those too...

    I think produce vendors should stay, it's very easy for us to say, "who needs 'em, we can trade or buy stuff off of auctions." but I think such changes would make it pretty tedious for any new user starting off.
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • regarding public pork fountain location, gregarious towers is just too far away from the major fecundity power resource supply in uralia.

    i think the fears of crashes left and right are unfounded though. masses of pigs are much less crash inducing than people are, and we've already had a mass collection of pigs in marylpole, without people complaining about it crashing them.

    still, you wouldn't want to place a pork fountain in a highly trafficked thoroughfare.

    unfortunately uralia itself is so small, it is difficult to find an out of the way street.

    llmenskie is the most convenient, because it is so close to the cavern entrance, but everyone goes through there and the lag would be unfair to the unsuspecting.

    oktayabra is right out, since it is as far away from the caverns as any other street in uralia and is also the connection with groddle junction.

    cerbarkul is merely the connection with ix, where so few people go anymore, but it still is a connection street between two realms.

    that leaves eastern approach, which i think is the best place in uralia to pull such a stunt. it isn't heavily used compared to llemenskie, since it only has a little cavern entrance traffic and no exit traffic.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • another idea for a uralia pork fountain would be to put all the pigs up on a floating platform on one of the streets.

    pigs don't cause the massive street entry load times like people do, i think because you only need to download one asset [the pig] and just repeat it a bazillion times.

    graphical lag also seems to be reduced somewhat when the pigs aren't on screen, even if they're in the same street. i know this from building a backyard pork fountain and seeing the difference between being in the backyard and being in the house.

    so you get all the pigs collected up above people, who can then walk underneath the whole mess without suffering major lag.

    it'd be interesting to see where the meat would fall after using the fecundity powder in such an arrangement. possibly the meat would fall to the side of the floating platform and end up on the ground where it would be much easier to pick up.

    i'm not sure of this, but certainly worth testing.
    Posted 23 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I think such changes would make it pretty tedious for any new user starting off."

    Theoretically, you'll get gardening quests to plant what you'll later need for cooking quests. It'll all kinda flow if it isn't impossible to make happen.
    Posted 23 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Having to garden everything you cook only works if you learn the gardening skill before you learn any cooking skills.

    Furthermore, this idea only works if there are enough public plots for everyone to have one, in that case what will stop someone from planting as many plots as possible? What stops people from doing what happens at all public garden plots, and taking produce they didn't plant?
    Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "What stops people from doing what happens at all public garden plots, and taking produce they didn't plant?"

    That would be simple. The crop once harvested could be made available to all the active members of the garden. 5 glitches plant crops and when harvested each member can collect from the store a fifth of the produce.
    Posted 23 months ago by bluto Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Or just make them more similar to trees in the harvesting respect.
    Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink