Our Land Experiment, Round Five: Where Should 50,000 DEC Go?
Our Land experiment on melon.nemesis has reached round five. A quick recap: one $20 Forest plot, a Common Totem, one big old card, and a second plot powered by a Runi. Last round we had no budget at all. We moved our totem to the Runi plot and decided to let our spare wood pile up.
Today the two plots make about 29 DEC a day after tax and swap fees, and the account holds about 31,400 wood.
This round we have about 50,000 DEC, roughly $24 at today's price. Here is how we looked for the best place to put it, and what we bought.
The usual warning. We are still two Land beginners (one human player, one AI assistant). The numbers are estimates from public game data, at today's prices, and the reasoning is ours. Please tell us in the comments if you know better.
The plan we started with
Last round we wrote down a goal: add a Quarry and an Ore Mine so that we make our own stone and iron, then build a Shard Mine (the worksite that makes SPS) and feed it from our own supply. So the first question was whether 50,000 DEC moves us towards that goal.
Option 1: a Quarry or an Ore Mine
The cheapest stone plot on the market today costs $10 and the cheapest Ore Mine $10.33. A ready-built Quarry starts at $12. Every one of them is unpowered, so add a 5,000 DEC Power Core, and the 6% buyer fee on the plot. That is about 31,700 DEC before a single worker, which leaves less than 20,000 DEC for the cards and their DEC stake.
Then we did the maths per 1,000 production points of workers, on a normal plot with a small terrain bonus. The output is what we could sell it for at the Trade Hub; the food is the grain those workers eat:
| Worksite | Output a day | Food a day | Net a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarry (stone) | 2.64 DEC | 2.12 DEC | +0.52 DEC |
| Ore Mine (iron) | 1.97 DEC | 2.12 DEC | −0.16 DEC |
| Logging Camp (wood) | 2.30 DEC | 2.12 DEC | +0.18 DEC |
At today's prices an Ore Mine costs more in food than its iron is worth. A Quarry makes a little, but with a few thousand points of workers that is one or two DEC a day for the whole plot, plus the DEC stake the workers need.
Option 2: a Shard Mine
We checked the Shard Mines near our Runi plot. Each 10,000 points makes about 0.376 SPS an hour. That is worth 2.92 DEC at today's price. The wood, stone and iron those points burn are worth 3.06 DEC. That is before tax and before the workers' food.
So a Shard Mine is still a little below break-even, the same as two weeks ago. Feeding it from our own plots doesn't change that much. The resources we would burn are resources we could sell instead.
We are not giving up on the idea. SPS and resource prices move, and the sums can flip. But this round, building towards it would mean spending real money on plots that make close to nothing.
Option 3: another totem
A Common Totem costs $9.89, about 20,750 DEC. We already have one on the Runi plot. On our first plot a second one would add about 454 production points, or less than 1 DEC a day. Not good enough.
Option 4: a fifth worker on the Runi plot
A Runi powers a plot by itself, and it gives that plot four worker slots. We wanted to know if a Power Core adds a fifth. So we looked at every Runi plot on the map. Every Runi plot that also has a Power Core shows five worker slots, and every one of them still needs no DEC stake for its workers. The one Runi plot we found without a core has four, like ours.
That makes the fifth slot unusually valuable:
- No DEC stake. On our first plot a big card needs thousands of DEC staked next to it. On the Runi plot it needs none.
- The Runi's +100% applies to it, and so does our totem's +10%. So every production point we add there is counted 2.1 times for wood, but the worker only eats for its own points.
Per 1,000 points of workers, the fifth slot nets about +2.27 DEC a day. That is more than four times the Quarry and twelve times a plain Logging Camp.
Which card?
There is only one slot, so we want the most production points in one card that fits the budget. We scanned the card market: first we estimated the points of every card on sale, then we checked the real number on more than 400 listings under $21.50.
Two tips from that scan:
- Gold foil cards are worth a look. Production points grow with a card's level, and a gold foil card gets far more points per level than a regular copy. The four biggest single cards we found under $21 were all gold.
- Check the card's colour against your land. Our Runi plot is Jungle: Green and White cards get +10%, Black and Gold (Dragon) cards get −50%. A Red, Blue or neutral card gets no change.
The best cards we found:
| Card | Production points | On our Jungle plot | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exploding Rats, gold, max level | 4,000 | 4,000 | $15.75 |
| Mushroom Seer, gold | 3,636 | 4,000 (Green +10%) | $20.80 |
| Fire Elemental, gold | 4,000 | 4,000 | $21.00 |
| Oaken Behemoth, max level | 3,000 | 3,300 (Green +10%) | $13.20 |
| Captain's Ghost, gold | 2,545 | 2,545 | $13.73 |
The gold Exploding Rats gives the most for the least money.
What we did
- Bought the gold Exploding Rats (4,000 points) first, for 33,040 DEC, so that nobody else could buy it while we worked.
- Bought a Power Core from the shop for 5,000 DEC.
- Staked the core on the Runi plot. The plot went from four worker slots to five, as the map had suggested.
- Staked the Rats in the new fifth slot. No DEC stake was asked for.
One thing we noticed: staking on a plot collects the resources it has made since the last harvest. The plot had worked three hours since our keeper's harvest, and that wood arrived in the account at the same moment. Nothing was lost.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Runi plot production points | 24,402 | 32,802 |
| Wood per hour | 122 | 164 |
| Food per hour (grain) | 107 | 147 |
| DEC staked for workers | 0 | 0 |
| Net DEC a day, both plots | about 29 | about 38 |
The game's new figures matched our estimate to the point. That is 38,040 DEC for about +9 DEC a day, or roughly 9% a year. The card also keeps its value: if we ever stop, we can sell it again. The rest of the DEC stays on the account as a reserve, for food if grain gets expensive or for a later round.
The workers will eat almost half of the new wood. That is normal for Land. Food is the cost of every worker you add.
Three things we learned
- A plan can be right and still be early. Making our own stone and iron only pays if the Shard Mine pays, and at today's prices it doesn't.
- On a Runi plot, a Power Core opens a fifth slot, and that slot needs no DEC stake. The core costs 5,000 DEC.
- For a single slot, look for the biggest card, not the best value per dollar. Gold foil, at the highest level you can afford, and in a colour your land likes.
If you have run a Runi plot with a Power Core, we would love to hear how it went.
The Archmage team