It keeps picking the crappy ones. I’d rather have a 2 hour pause between two 3 hour 100% common digs because I didn’t refresh than a 100% common dig auto jump to a 8+ hour 97% poor dig. It doesn’t make anything better.

I know nothing will be done about it but I need to vent.

A quick calculation:
5 commons give 1 uncommon
5 uncommons give 1 rare
5 rares give 1 epic

--> So you need 125 common artifacts to get a single epic one which amounts to 41 days of digging.

A 3% epic - 97% poor artifact is then a hit or miss thing. You dig for roughly 1.5 days and hav a 3% chance of getting the outcome which you otherwise get within 41 days. 3% of 41 days amounts to 1.23 days.

I have not looked over the exact numbers here but what it looks like from this quick calculation is that the value of the digs is relatively equal. However where they start to vary is when you use a time warp which has more of an effect with a fast 8 hour dig.

Edited 5/2/2022 15:14:01

I only do 3% digs if one is available. I used Insane TW so that's a factor, but it's also less effort to come back, start a new one, etc, and it feels great when the sand parts to reveal Hot Pink lettering.

There is a difference in dig site efficiency, but that's not the main problem with auto-Dig.

By main problem I meant it's bugged and doesn't work with Time Warp.

Edited 5/2/2022 15:48:56

What is the main problem?

More specifically, even assuming it chooses the "most elite" (3% Epic, 2% Epic, 1% Epic, 7% Rare, 6% Rare, ... etc, 89% Uncommon, etc, ... in this order) dig available, hopefully it chooses the least expensive elite dig?

I have legendary tw so it gives me +1 common artifact per day (2 when I have clan war cool down boost) I cycle between all commons and then high uncommon probability digs 75%+ when I’m inactive. I just prefer it to the 3% epics dice roll. There’s no guarantee you will get an epic, when it happens, it’s great but I can count on my hand the amount of time that’s happened.

My point is that it’s a great advancement in theory but in practice it doesn’t help that much especially because it mixes digs . You should be able to prioritize. But the ability to prioritize auto advancements on the whole is a bigger subject to discuss

Edited 5/2/2022 17:26:10

I have not looked over the exact numbers here but what it looks like from this quick calculation is that the value of the digs is relatively equal. However where they start to vary is when you use a time warp which has more of an effect with a fast 8 hour dig.

They are exactly the same. The base time (before applying anything that makes digs faster) is exactly 8 hours multiplied by the expected common equivalent artifacts a dig gives you, with uncommon being 5 commons, rare 25 commons, epic 125 commons and poor 0.2 commons.
So 3% epic 97% poor gives (0.03*125+0.97*0.02)*8=30.1552 = 1 day 6 hours 15 minutes
Note that digs do not show the minutes, so any difference you find, may be due to that.

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether percentages are are always exact, e.g. if 3-97 is exactly that, or may be 2.8-97.2 as well

You should be able to prioritize. But the ability to prioritize auto advancements on the whole is a bigger subject to discuss

Totally on board with you on that. In desperate need of customization beyond "ambiguous and often detrimental auto-ability fully OFF or ON". And the more you pay into the Auto (low activation time, higher %, etc), the higher the risk it poses.

Like with every Auto-adv: If you know that you will be online when it might trigger next time, then just turn it off and do the stuff yourself, but if the current dig ends when you are asleep, having Auto-Dig on will at least start SOME other digging instead of wasting hours in which you don't dig. And as others pointed out before, all digs are equally valuable.
Or in other words: If you always time your diggings in a way that you are online when one ends, then spend your APs wiser and skip Auto-Dig. What's the problem? It's not like other Auto-advs would have spoiled you. They are all (equally) bad.

@Math Wolf @Phoenix - Have you confirmed that all Digs are the same? I have been assuming the stated times (e.g. 1 day 3 hours) to be exact, but is it actually confirmed to be the case that the minutes are rounded off? If so I’ve wasted a lot of mental energy identifying “the best” Digs to do!

Agree with you.

I'm in phase 4 again now and honestly just don't have enough _good_ stuff to spend 100K AP on.

The easy choices are:
5518 Better Hospitals
25739 Inc Army Caches

But then what? Faster Digging doesn't really make a difference given that I won't be in phase 4 long enough to do many more digs. Auto-Draft is questionable since drafts in general are outright terrible on the new levels b/c army camps are even more neutered than in the old levels. Similarly, Inc Clan Req Sizes is garbage b/c they depend on army camps and +300% of ~25M (this is the range that Clan Reqs get on the new levels) is still only 100M which is garbage considering that most of the levels have total army counts between 1T-55T, so a 100M boost doesn't even register.

Auto-Purchase Techs/Hospitals/Mercs, Auto-Mortar, Auto-Market and Auto-Dig are either fairly useless at best or (all the 'Purchase' ones) extremely deadly and can instantly cause you to wreck progress on a level, and thus are non-starters.

Simul Levels also really has no point since I won't be here long enough to benefit from it. In the end, Simul gets little to no benefits other than having more digs on multiple levels available, while causing you to stress about constantly switching between levels.

And that leaves AAQ and Cache Visibility.

9460 Cache Visibility

So that still leaves 59k. So I guess Auto-Draft will do. It's really the only Auto that does no damage. I suppose Auto-Dig is next contender for 'do no harm'. It may be non-optimal, but it will never actually do damage to your progress on the level you're playing, like wasting all your money on useless upgrades. The new levels are highly money-driven and cache based, so these Autos can really wreck you hard.

Still need to spend more AP though ... so maybe Faster Digging after all. Or just pump it into AAQ and see how well/poorly it performs.

So the final list of stuff to choose for post-1st-SAsc on way to 2nd-SAsc phase 4 Adv's:
5518 Better Hospitals
25739 Inc Army Caches
9460 Cache Visibility
10044 Auto-Draft

Also just realized that I don't need to Asc in order to re-SAsc ... by playing through a bunch of levels, then skipping from Hard Scand to Aus to Afro to Regio to Dodeca to Hex, I can actually get the 100K AP required by playing as such:

HEH 2x
HT 2x
HC 2x
Aklog 1x
King's 2x
7yW 4x
30yW 5x
Hex 5x

Actually even doing Hex 7 times still gives >2000 AP so still fairly valuable. Mind you I picked +25% Reward for SAsc #1, so for those who chose an artifact instead, add ~25% more level clears, may be better to Asc and reskip to the end at that point. I also didn't count the AP of reg EH, Trisk & China to get the Hard versions in the calc, so could probably eliminate 1-2 replays of the other levels.

I haven't calculated them exactly, but a few have, and you could measure the "roundedness" based on how they are reduced by buffs such as CW reward, HC level Reward & Faster Digging.

I think Common goes from 8 hrs to 3.25 hrs but I forget what sequence of buffs was applied to that, likely +50% FastDig +10% HC Level for 55% reduction, which works out to 3.6 hrs so likely not the right buffs. Not sure. Maybe someone smarter can figure it out. (;

Wow amazing advice krinid. I’m close to my first Sasc just grinding for an insane Artifact. Hence why I made this thread

@Math Wolf

I believe that the in-game base time and in-game percentages are always exact.

Master Jz made a nice spreadsheet comparing different dig sites.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5ejYV2bYeaP6yTH683A27iTY8ulDFxGXjwh0zXB82s

oh I supposed it came from mathematician.

However digging sites are pretty the same, unless you are able to avoid digging poors. (which permits to cut time until you start having a lot of epics).

@functor - Yes, that is the sheet that I have been going by! But if it turned out it was based on misleading information, I was going to stop paying attention to it. Sounds like that is undetermined - maybe I will attempt to study this question.

@Jeffo: I have never checked this myself but if I recall correctly more than one player (therefore, more than just Master JZ) have analyzed this and all dropped the case after checking several dozens of digging sites that all turned out to perfectly match the formula (100% poor - 1:36h, 100% common - 8h, 100% uncommon - 40h, 100% rare - 200h, etc, and the combinations thereof). So, while I won't stop you, it pretty much is considered proven by now. Except perhaps for the still open question, how these numbers are rounded. But for this particular question you have to test really accurately.

So, while I can understand players that tend towards the poor-epic-digs, you need to be (extremely) lucky with them to have any benefits over pure-common ones or common-uncommon-digs. Unless you plan to have dug a million artifacts eventually, then you will receive enough epic artifacts to achieve the mentioned percentages. Knowing my luck, I'd rather go with the pure-common or common-uncommon ones.

Phoenix is correct, it amounts to the same # of artifacts more or less.

When to choose C/UC over R/E digs:
- If you need more variety to target an artifact type you don't have yet. eg: if you still don't have SAC, AV, etc.
- You're frequently around when these shorter digs finish. If you're not there to start a new dig, it's wasted dig time.

When to choose R/E over C/UC digs:
- If you have all the artifacts you need and are just trying to upgrade existing artifacts.
- If you either aren't around when shorter digs finish or want to be around less frequently to avoid babysitting the digs as much.
- If you use TW to accelerate digs, notably when TW efficacy exceeds length of digs, you benefit longer dig times. eg: Using Insane TW (8h) on a Common dig if you have +50% Faster Digs & +10% Mollification is a waste b/c you could do >2 C digs in that time and thus you've wasted ~5h of digging time, so makes sense to do a longer dig and get the larger value from it.
- You're in it for the long haul. You're not going to get Rares & Epics each time, so you can't get disappointed when you get a Poor.
- HOWEVER ... note for the Rare digs in particular, some of these are SHORTER than the high % UC digs, and you often still get a UC artifact as a consolation prize of not getting a Rare.

I personally don't want to be micromanaging my digs every 3.25h, and I use Insane TW all the time, so I only do Rare & Epic digs. And I have long lost count of the # of Rares and Epics I've gotten from digs. If I had to estimate, I'd say I've gotten about 50 Rares and 20 Epics through this method. And sooooo many Poors from the R & E's, and Commons and Uncommons from the R digs that I can't even fathom the counts, but they have of course all been foddered now.

Edited 5/4/2022 18:56:07