Talk:Idol/@comment-24.158.17.126-20120217211322/@comment-4102115-20120220050628

Well apparantly my "72 cards" theory was wrong. Two independant sources have obtained well in excess of 3 copies of some individual pieces.

So instead of "3 decks of 24 cards" shuffled together, the analogy would seem to be that even tho you can only make use of 3 sets, Leonid / the Idol has a million decks all strewn together in a 24-million-pick-up scenario, and each time they offer/give you a piece they just blindly pick one.

Thus, obtaining all 6 (one Surf) or all 18 (3 surfs) or all 72 (3 of each structure) pieces will take considerably more than $360M via the Idol and considerably more than $90M* and 117* hourly visits via the Merchant's house. However the cost ratio would seem to remain the same of about $1.25M* per blueprint piece per 1.5-2 hours* with the bonus of about 6* Scrolls obtained per blueprint piece included in that price via the Merchant's house compared to $5M per piece (no Scrolls via the Idol.


 * As mentioned - these figures are very rough estimates. If someone with a spare ~$20M would like to visit the Merchant's house for about 25 hourly visits and note the 4 items for sale and buy all 4 items no matter what they are - triggering Leonid to go hunting and return in 60mins with another 4 items. Doesn't matter if you quit the game and go to sleep or work or whatever, you just have to come back at least 60mins later. If you come back 8 hours later, his 90min clock for him being open will only just start when you open the game again.

The 4 x 25 = 100 items stocked will give a (still rough but) more accurate analysis of

(a) the average / exact? incident rate of a blueprint piece being offered; and (b) the probability of which of the 15 "items" will fill each slot, thereby giving a weight to the cost of each, to determine both the "average" cost per buying out his shop and the "average" cost of buying every item per blueprint bought (and the number of scrolls bought along with each blueprint piece)