Ten days ago we started a Land experiment with one fresh account (melon.nemesis), one $20 Forest plot and a Logging Camp. In the follow-up we swapped in a better worker from another account. Since then the plot has run on its own: a small script harvests once a day and swaps some of the wood for the grain the workers eat. It made about 0.9 DEC a day.
This week we gave it a second $20 (40,000 DEC). Before spending it we tried to work out where that money would do the most, and the answer surprised us.
The same warning as before. We are still two Land beginners (one human player, one AI assistant). The numbers are what our plot actually did, the reasoning is ours, and we may have missed things. Please tell us in the comments if you know better.
Three ways to spend it
A second plot. Our planner checked every plot for sale under $22 (141 of them). The best one, with a Power Core and the DEC stake for five workers, would have added about 0.7 DEC a day. Most of the budget goes on the deed and the Power Core, which leaves little for workers.
A totem. A Common Totem costs about $10 on the market and gives a plot +10% production. The part we had not understood before: a totem's extra production costs no extra food. On our plot food takes about four fifths of what the workers produce, so a boost that eats nothing is worth far more than it looks.
Cheap old cards. Beta edition cards count 5× for Land, and Beta commons sell for a few cents each. One seller had a single level 8 Beta Rexxie (172 copies combined into one card) for $7.23, about 4 cents per copy. Rexxie is an Earth card, and Earth cards get +10% on a Forest plot.
We did the sums for every mix and picked the totem plus the Rexxie, with the rest as DEC stake.
What we did
| Bought the Rexxie (172 BCX, level 8) | $7.23 = 14,421 DEC |
| Staked DEC in the region for it | 4,300 DEC |
| Put it in the slot of our weakest worker (a level 1 Dwarven Wizard) | one action, no empty slot |
| Bought a Common Totem | $9.90 = 19,760 DEC |
| Claimed the totem token into an item and staked it on the plot | two actions |
| Total | 38,482 DEC, about $19 |
Every step confirmed within a minute. The Wizard is cooling down for three days and stays on the account for a future plot.
What the plot does now
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Base production points | 2,562 | 4,129 |
| Production points after bonuses | 2,805 | 4,996 |
| Wood per hour | 14.0 | 25.0 |
| Food per hour (grain) | 25.6 | 41.3 |
| Net DEC a day (after tax and swaps) | about 0.9 | about 2.5 |
So the plot earns roughly two and a half times what it did, for about the same money as the first round. In real terms that is still under half a dollar a year at today's DEC price. We are not doing this for the money; we are doing it to learn how Land works, and to make sure our tools model it correctly.
Three things we learned
- The table numbers are not the game's numbers. We expected the Rexxie to count 12.5 production points per copy (the Beta multiplier on a common). The game credited 9.9 per copy, and asked for less DEC stake per copy than we had planned, so we staked about 1,100 DEC more than needed. Read the card's own Land figures before you buy; the game shows them in the collection and on market listings.
- Boosts beat bodies on a tight plot. A totem's 10% is applied after the terrain bonus and costs no grain. On a plot where food eats most of the output, that one item did as much for our daily result as the whole big card did.
- The totem comes as a token. Buying one on the market gives you a totem token. You claim it into an item on the Inventory page before you can stake it on a plot. There was no buyer fee on the totem, unlike the 6% we paid on the deed.
What we changed on archmage.app because of this
Two of the lessons above were things the Land Optimiser on archmage.app/land knew but never told us, so we fixed that the same day:
- DEC staked above what your workers need. The optimiser used to list only regions that were short of DEC. It now shows regions with too much as well, with the amount you can power down, and the amount after you make its suggested changes (unstaking a worker frees DEC too). Powering down is instant in the game and changes nothing on the plot.
- Totems. Every plot in the suggestions now shows its boosts (totem, title, Runi, plot rarity), and a new Totems section lists any totem you hold that is not on a plot, whether it still needs claiming on the Inventory page, and the best plot for it. For every plot it also shows what a Common Totem would add in DEC a day, so you can weigh the market price yourself. It does not tell you to buy one.
As always, the page only reads public game data. Any change is yours to make in the game.
The little script keeps feeding the plot, now with a bigger grain bill. If you have a cheap trick for a small Forest plot that we have not tried, we would love to hear it.
The Archmage team