After spending quite some time building up my mining setup, upgrading my Miners and reaching another 1,000 LIMITLESS, I finally decided that it was time to leave the mines and try something new.
Expeditions.
The setup is ready. All my Miners are repaired, there are no outstanding repair costs, and I'm ready to send three Legendary Miners into their first Expedition. How exactly I prepared everything and what happened during the first run is what this post is all about. And let me tell you one thing right away:
Expeditions are definitely a learning-by-doing experience.
There is an FAQ that explains how the system works, and it does provide the basic information. But understanding the different combinations of biomes, plots, zones, bonuses, tools and fighters is something else entirely. I needed several attempts just to get my head around the system. And even today I needed two attempts. My first one didn't exactly go according to plan.
I had somehow managed to set the expedition to 3 minutes instead of 300 minutes. Not exactly the grand expedition I had imagined. Fortunately, I noticed it quickly enough and was able to fix it.
So, with that little beginner mistake out of the way, I was finally ready for the real test.
The preparation
Before starting the Expeditions, I wanted to make sure that I had a clean starting point. All three Legendary Miners were repaired and ready to go. I wasn't mining at the same time, and there were no outstanding repair costs. I also checked my wallet. At the beginning of the experiment, I had exactly 686.43 LIMITLESS. That number is important for me because I want to be able to compare what I had before the Expeditions with what I have afterwards.
In other words: this time I'm trying to keep the comparison as clean as possible.
Choosing the biome
For my first attempt, I decided to go with an Ember run. Ember is particularly interesting if the goal is token production. The biome provides a +20% token reward bonus when the deployed tool has at least 5 Speed. So for this first experiment, I wasn't specifically looking for an NFT drop. I wanted to see what kind of token return I could get from the setup. I also didn't have a strong preference for the secondary token. LIMITLESS or SWAP.HIVE would both have been fine for me.
At this point, I was much more interested in understanding the mechanics than in optimizing every single detail.
Choosing the Expeditions
I ended up selecting three different Ember Expeditions.
- The first one was a Rich Ember plot with a duration of 300 minutes. I used an Epic Fighter together with a Legendary Miner, and the plot was in the LIMITLESS zone.
- For the second Expedition, I chose a Normal Ember plot, again for 300 minutes. This time I used a Rare Fighter and another Legendary Miner, also in the LIMITLESS zone.
- The third Expedition was another Normal Ember plot, running for 285 minutes, again using a Rare Fighter and a Legendary Miner in the LIMITLESS zone.
There was another nice little detail: all three had an adjacency bonus.
At this point, I had done everything I could think of. Three Legendary Miners were deployed. The timers were running. And now there was nothing left to do except wait. Five hours.
Five hours later...
Five hours later, I have to admit I was pretty excited. My first proper Expedition test was about to finish. I opened the game expecting to see the results.
And then...
Seriously?
My Expedition? For a moment, I thought the whole experiment had somehow gone wrong. Fortunately, it turned out to be only temporary, and I was eventually able to claim the Expeditions. So, what did I actually get?
The result
The first thing I noticed on the main page was the repair cost. After the Expeditions, I was looking at 50.47 LIMITLESS in repair costs. Once I claimed all three Expeditions, I received 41.02 LIMITLESS, plus a very small amount of LIMITLESSX.
And the calculation is painfully simple:
41.02 LIMITLESS earned minus 50.47 LIMITLESS repair cost equals -9.45 LIMITLESS
So my first Expedition experiment was, at least from this very simple calculation, a loss.
Not exactly the result I was hoping for.
So, are Expeditions worth it?
This is where things get interesting.
My first reaction was basically: "Well... that doesn't look very profitable."
But I also have to be fair here. I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to Expeditions. I have only just started understanding how the different elements work together. Biome, plot variant, zone, adjacency bonus, tool stats, fighters and the different rewards all seem to matter. And I clearly didn't have the perfect combination yet. So I don't think it would be fair to judge the entire Expedition system based on one experiment. What I can say is that my first attempt didn't produce a positive result when I simply compared the LIMITLESS rewards with the repair costs.
That already tells me something.
I need to understand the system better. Maybe the combination of biome + plot + tool + fighter + bonuses makes a much bigger difference than I initially realized. And then there is the NFT aspect. One of the reasons I was interested in Expeditions in the first place was the possibility of finding NFTs. But even that raises another question: how high are the actual chances, and what setup gives me the best chance?
So I definitely have some homework to do. Back to the drawing board!
But honestly, I don't think that was the most important outcome. I now have a much better understanding of what I don't know yet. And that's probably the biggest lesson from this first attempt. Mining was relatively easy to understand: put Miners to work, wait, repair them and keep track of the numbers. Expeditions are different. There are more variables involved, and I clearly need to dig deeper into the mechanics before I can really optimize them. So for now, I'm going back to the FAQ, looking at the different bonuses and trying to understand which combinations actually make sense. Maybe my next Expedition will be more successful. Maybe I'll finally find an NFT. Or maybe I'll make another rookie mistake.
If anyone can give me a piece of advice, I'm eagerly taking it ! Hit me up in the comments.
We'll see. Until then: Back to mining
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Disclaimer
All images have been created with AI