Talk:Idol/@comment-24.158.17.126-20120217211322/@comment-4102115-20120220000048

First - recall I am not the developer ;) My theory of starting with the 72 card deck and the blueprint being offered or donated is just a theory, but my way of buying every piece I can when I see it will get me all the Surf pieces via Leonid the fastest whether the theory is right or wrong.

But the Law of Averages would state that with many many individuals playing with an equivalent deck being offered cards purely randomly, some people would be lucky and receive all 6 or 9 pieces of one structure fairly quickly without too many duplicates. But that does not seem to be the case. Pretty much every comment made on the topic is that many people get something along the lines of 5/6, 7/9, 8/9 and keep getting duplicates but not those 1 or 2 missing pieces.

Second - I am assuming that there are just the 72 "cards", and not an "infinite" amount. That is, I am assuming you can only obtain a maximum of 3 copies of each individual unique piece. If you have 3 x copies of piece #3 of Drawing "Waterslide" and then you see piece #3 of Drawing "Waterslide" on offer from Leonid or you receive a 4th copy from the Idol, (which would be ridiculous), then there will be no possible way whatsoever to ensure you get all unique pieces without buying the last few for 20piastres each.

I based my theory on the blueprint/"card" being selected randomly each time on the basis that each scroll being offered certainly seems to be completely random, hence why some people might get 4 x small economy scrolls at once, and so on.

But still assuming that the pieces work on the principle of there being 72 "cards" total (unless and untill proven otherwise by receiving or seeing a 4th copy of one piece), then the flipside to that theory is that the pieces are being offered / donated in a pre-determined order. In hindsight (at the start of the blueprints we had no idea how difficult this was going to be and we were concentrating on the Wonder first ...) it would have been great if a few of us could have taken note of the first, second, third, etc, blueprint piece that was offered for sale. If the lists matched, then the answer would be definite - they're being offered in a fixed order, and if you don't buy one piece, it goes back to the end of the deck. If they don't match, it could be that they are still being offered in a fixed order, but that order was randomly generated on each phone. If the order is pre-fixed or randomly generated, the ordering could be weighted, so that all 3 copies of a couple of pieces are placed towards the end of the set list, so that it will take a long time to get to them. Would make sense. Perhaps the developers wanted to add new structures but don't want you to get them quickly. They released a Hotel Lux for Level 35 and others, so average players had to work towards getting them, but old players already on Level 40 could just snap them up instantly. This way everyone is on an equal footing, it takes a long time for even a Level 40 player to get these new structures, or else at the expense of many millions of $s or Piastres - which would also make sense. There are lots of players saying "I have a spare $500M accumulated and nothing to do with it" - well now the developers have given you something to do with it - you can choose to spend it to get new structures more quickly than the average player. And if you want it super quick, spend piastres. (Ideally purchasing them for real $s).

@Ezcry4t3d - if you are not purchasing any Ruins or Water slides pieces, you should take note of the pieces you let go by. If the same piece comes up for offer a fourth time before you've seen every other piece, then that proves either: they have not limited the total pieces to 72, ie. they have not limited the total number of drawings to 3. (I highly doubt this). Or else: it means the piece is chosen randomly from the whole remainder of the deck each time.

The detailed explanation of my thoughts is because I think the premise of your question is faulty.

Again I'll re-iterate - my theory is just my theory. Please don't go and start spending millions of $s without at least some testing of the theory. If the flipside of my first theory is true - that they come in some pre-determined order - whether set the same for everyone or set for each individual, and whether any pieces are weighted or not - then your current method of buying them is the cheapest and without spending excessive millions - the quickest. Your question also assumed that my limited-findings of a blueprint being offered every 6 or so items is accurate. I did not do dedicated accurate testing of that nor did I do anywhere near enough cycles to verify it. (In actuality I did no specific testing of that, I just documented every item offered on each shelf, which item(s) I bought if any, which item was replaced if none were bought to work out what gets replaced if you buy nothing. And from that data over 20 cycles I happened to observe a blueprint came up about every 6th item. But that was also through 3 version changes, and we know other things changed through version changes.

But if you have a spare several million $, you could test that theory. Buy all 4 items, wait 60mins, buy all 4 items, wait 60mins. If you do that 8 to 12 times and note every item on every shelf you can work out the % likelihood of what is going to be offered each replacement - a blueprint, a Small, Medium or Large scroll or a Destroy, Sell or Repair. Hopefully you'll get a blueprint at least every 2nd hour or at most every 3rd.

You will need this data from a dozen or so cycles to answer your original question. Lets say hypothetically you find a blueprint piece comes up on average once every 6.5 items, Of the other 5.5 items, there is a 20% chance of it being a small profit scroll, 15% a small economy scroll, 15% a small time, 7% a destroy, 5% a sell, 3% a Large economy, etc, etc. From that we work out the cost of buying that blueprint piece + 5.5 other items = $420k + 5.5 x (20% x $10k + 15% x $25k + 7% x $300k + 5% x $250k + 3% x $500k + etc + etc + etc) = $xxxxxxx.

Therefore your answer is: If $xxxxxx is less than $5Million, then it is cheaper to buy 4 items from Leonid every 60mins for 72 * (6.5/4) hours (using 1 blueprint per 6.5 items as the hypothetical guess of the average offering rate).

If $xxxxxxxx is greater than $5M, then it is cheaper to donate $5M x 72 times to the Idol.

Just looking at those last two lines I wrote, it is plainly obvious that it is far cheaper to buy 4 items from Leonid every 60mins - assuming he keeps offering pieces at at-least a semi-regular interval and that he won't offer a 4th duplicate of a piece you already have 3 of. It is obvious - because lets say that a blueprint piece is offered only once every 10th item, and lets say those 9 scrolls in between are 3 x large economy, 3 x large profit and 3 x large time. The cost of the 9 scrolls is $4.5M + the cost of the blueprint piece ($420K) = $4.92M, which is less than $5M - and obviously the average scroll cost is going to be significantly less than this wild example and the blueprint pieces come up much more quickly than once every 10th item, so the cost of each blueprint via buying every item every hour from Leonid is going to be:

(a) Significantly cheaper than via the Idol; and

(b) giving you the benefit of receiving ~5.5 x 72 = 396 scrolls, many of which you can use to recoup some of the costs.

SUMMARY


 * The fastest way to receive every blueprint for just the structure you want is to spend 20€ for the missing piece(s) of just that structure. ie.Surf station. But you'd need to do that 3 times for 3 Surf stations


 * The fastest way without spending € is to donate $5M (up to) 72 times to obtain every copy of every piece of every structure. * this assumes you will not receive more than 3 copies of any 1 piece * In theory if you have a spare $360M then you should have 3 x 3 Drawings in as much time as you can click the Idol, slide the bar ever so accurately to $5M, hit donate, and repeat 71 times (less the number you already have).


 * The cheapest way is to make no donations, find pearls and rings and shells, buy the pieces when they are offered and you have the resources. Cost: $0 and €0. Time to complete: Oh, about 3 years?


 * The next-cheapest non-wasteful no-€ way is to buy the scrolls you want and the blueprints you want as you see them, lets say an average of 2 items per cycle, check the Merchant's house an average of 6 times over 90mins and 60mins apart each day (giving 3 cycles a day). This structuring should average you about 1 blueprint offer per day. If every piece is offered once before the same piece is re-offered (you will see 3 duplicates of each but realise each copy is only being offered once - in this theory of ordering) then it will take about 72 days collect all 3 copies of the drawing pieces you want, and you have spent economically on scrolls. 
 * '''Or - whilst spending no €, the best compromise between checking the shop 6 times a day for 72 days with minamilist $s and spending $360M in 72 taps is:


 * Every hour buy all 4 items in the Merchant's house - no matter what they are. As soon as you buy all 4, Leonid will depart and bring back 4 more items in 60mins (instead of the normal 90 mins + wait for you to check in + 60 mins). The weighted cost of the average scroll has not yet been calculated, but a reasonable guess would be $150,000. The incidence rate of a blueprint being offered has not been calculated over a large sample, but in a small sample it was about 1 blueprint per 6.5 items. Therefore, buying 4 items every 60mins no matter what they are will cost you about 5.5 scrolls x $150k + 1 blueprint x $420k = $1.245M spent per blueprint = $90M in total spent which is much much less than $360M, plus for that $90M besides all 72 blueprints or all 9 completed Drawings, you will have 5x5*72 = 396 Scrolls to use increase profit, etc. Even the demolish scrolls - whilst you would not buy them in their own right as they cost more than the benefit they give, if you have a dozen anyway because of a blueprint shopping spree, then you will save money using them when you're going to do a demolition anyway - even if it is just to demolish some violets.


 * The compromise is: it is not as quick as 72 taps of the idol, but its also not a 3 year journey. Instead this method will take 72 x (6.5/4) hours (using 6.5 as the estimated blueprint incidence rate) = 117 seperate visits at least 60mins apart. With a bit of hourly dedication each day you can complete this in under a fortnight.