Monday, March 22, 2010

The value of Doubler

Recap the blog I wrote exactly 2 years ago, of the same title.
http://sisland83.blogspot.com/2008/03/doubler.html

Things have changed quite a lot since then.
We now have :
1. Potion of Supreme Doubling (10x doubler)
2. Potion of Greater Doubler (16x doubler)
3. Christmas Present 2008 (21x doubler)
4. Enlister Potion or Santorks Stocking (25x doubler)

So let's add to the table a few new columns. The math remains the same.


2 3 4 5 16 25
0.2 71% 125% 167% 200% 357% 400%
0.4 56% 91% 115% 133% 203% 218%
0.6 45% 71% 88% 100% 142% 150%
0.8 38% 59% 71% 80% 109% 114%
1.0 33% 50% 60% 67% 88% 92%
1.2 29% 43% 52% 57% 74% 77%
1.4 26% 38% 45% 50% 64% 67%
1.6 24% 34% 41% 44% 56% 59%
1.8 22% 31% 37% 40% 50% 52%
2.0 20% 29% 33% 36% 45% 47%
2.2 19% 26% 31% 33% 41% 43%
2.4 17% 24% 28% 31% 38% 39%
2.6 16% 23% 26% 29% 35% 36%
2.8 15% 21% 25% 27% 33% 34%
3.0 14% 20% 23% 25% 31% 32%

So for most levels, the observed average number of creatures is between 2 and 3.
Other benefits not included in that computation are :
1. Lower chance of getting killed/losing an imp.
2. Lesser chance of losing durability on crystal items.

So, this question was actually asked by my friend UveBinHad.
And I missed having him in PANIC.
What's the value of the Enlister Potion?

From hunting stam perspective, it's only about 1%, and it's actually less since we now have Lightfoot. But 1% is 1%. If you have 13.5k stam, that is 135 stam, and 5.4 fsps in value. Now, if you consider that you will use fewer imps (16/25). If you usually use 3 imp buffs in the hunt, you will now use (16/25)*3, about 2 imp buffs. That's 50 stam, or 2 fsps.
If you're using UB 200, you lose no durability anyway, so I'll discount that.
All in all, that Enlister potion should not be worth more than 8 fsps for a regular hunt.

But hold on to that. If you are burning say 3 times that amount of stam, that value to you will be 24 fsps. And wait, if you needed to re-buff, you can probably burn the stam faster, and maybe you won't have to rebuff. And if that's the case, then you need to add the rebuff stam cost to its value. And a full buff itself can be about 20 fsps. So its value may then be 44 fsps.