Sixteen days ago we started a Land experiment with one fresh account (melon.nemesis) and one $20 Forest plot. Since then we have added a Common Totem, one big old card and, last week, a second plot powered by a Runi. Together the two plots made about 29 DEC a day after tax and swap fees.
This round has a different rule: no budget at all. We can't buy anything. The only question is whether the cards, items and resources we already own are in the best places.
The same warning as before. We are still two Land beginners (one human player, one AI assistant). The numbers are estimates from public game data, and the reasoning is ours. Please tell us in the comments if you know better.
Step 1: the cards on the account
We started with the Land Optimiser on archmage.app/land, pointed at melon.nemesis. It reads the plots and every idle card on the account, and looks for any change worth at least 0.25 DEC a day.
It found nothing, and that was the right answer. The account has 34 idle worker cards, but they are mostly starter cards. The best are two level 1 Dwarven Wizards with 136 production points each. The weakest worker already on a plot has 300 points, and every slot is full. A free card is only useful if it is stronger than the card it replaces.
Step 2: cards on our other accounts
The optimiser has an option, "Also check free cards on another account". It leaves out soulbound cards, which can't be moved, and cards that account has battled with in the last 14 days. We ran it once for each of about a dozen of our accounts.
Most of them had nothing to offer. One account had all 2,420 of its worker cards already lent out to other accounts. The small accounts had a handful of starter cards. One larger collection would have helped, but its cards are set aside for other uses.
Our main account did have two cards that would add about 5 DEC a day on the Runi plot: Kron the Undying (3,000 points) and a level 10 Warrior of Peace (2,000 points), in place of our two Djinn Biljka. We said no. Both are in that account's battle deck, and a card on a plot can't battle. Battles come first. If your own suggestions include a card you play with, it's worth asking the same question.
Step 3: the totem was on the wrong plot
This one surprised us. Our only totem, the Common Totem from round two, was on the first plot. It went there because that was our only plot at the time.
A Common Totem adds 10% of the plot's production points. On a Runi plot those 10% count before the Runi's bonus, not after it. But the Runi plot simply has more points. Its workers make 11,620 points before the Runi, against 4,542 on the first plot. So the same totem adds about 2.5 times as much wood there.
A totem also costs no grain. Workers eat by their own production points, and a boost does not change those. So all the extra wood from a totem is extra income, with nothing taken off for food.
The Land Optimiser shows what a Common Totem would add on each of your plots, in its totems section. That is where we saw it. So we moved it, in two steps: unstake it from the first plot, then stake it on the second.
Before we did, we tried to find out whether a totem has an unstake cooldown, the way cards do. We couldn't find the answer anywhere online, so we tested it. There was no cooldown that we could see. Straight after the unstake, the game listed the totem as ready to stake again, and the second step went through at once. Cards wait 3 days. If you know of a case where a totem did have to wait, please tell us in the comments.
| Plot 1 (Forest) | Plot 2 (Jungle, with the Runi) | |
|---|---|---|
| Production points | 4,996 → 4,542 | 23,240 → 24,402 |
| Wood per hour | 24.98 → 22.71 | 116.20 → 122.01 |
| Food per hour (grain) | 41.3, unchanged | 107, unchanged |
| Net DEC a day | about 1.95 → 0.97 | about 27.2 → 29.7 |
All together that is 29.2 → 30.7 DEC a day, about 5% more, for $0. The game's new figures matched the optimiser's prediction exactly.
Step 4: why we keep the wood
Our daily keeper harvests both plots and swaps just enough wood into grain to keep the workers fed. It does not sell the rest. After the totem move that is about 1,630 spare wood a day, and the account already holds 7,321 wood, worth about 146 DEC after the swap fee at today's price.
The "DEC a day" in our tables is really wood piling up, and for now we are letting it pile up on purpose. Here is why.
A Shard Mine is the Land worksite that makes SPS. It does not make a resource. It burns them: every production point uses 0.005 wood, 0.002 stone and 0.0005 iron an hour. Those are exactly the amounts a point makes in a Logging Camp, a Quarry and an Ore Mine. So to run a Shard Mine without buying anything, you need a Logging Camp, a Quarry and an Ore Mine of about the same size.
We already have the wood side. Our spare wood alone would feed a Shard Mine of about 13,000 points, and the pile we hold would last that mine about three weeks. So the plan for our next few spends is:
- Keep the wood. It costs nothing to hold, and it doubles as insurance if grain gets expensive.
- Add stone and iron. Over the next spends, a Quarry plot and an Ore Mine plot, so that all three resources come from our own land.
- Then a Shard Mine, fed from our own supply instead of the Trade Hub, where every swap costs 5% or more.
We have also checked one thing that caught us out last time. There are 2,226 working Shard Mines in Praetoria, and they stand on all 14 land types, including many built this year. So, as far as we can see, a Shard Mine is not tied to one type of land the way the resource worksites are.
The honest maths
At today's prices, a Shard Mine is close to break-even. Every 10,000 points make about 0.38 SPS an hour, worth about 3.06 DEC. The wood, stone and iron they burn are worth about 3.18 DEC at the Trade Hub. The SPS is also shared among every Shard Mine, so each mine's share changes as others start or stop.
So making our own supply is not a shortcut to more DEC. It is a way to stop paying swap fees in both directions and to learn how the last piece of Land works. Any decision to build one depends on the prices of the day.
Three things we learned
- A free card has to beat the card it replaces, and a card you battle with is not free.
- Put boosts where the points are. A totem adds a percentage, so it is worth most on your biggest plot. It costs no grain, and moving ours had no cooldown.
- Harvested is not sold. Spare wood is not DEC yet, but it can be the start of something else.
If you run a Shard Mine from your own resources, we would love to hear how you balance the three.
The Archmage team