Or rather the Gold Black Hole. Assuming the Treasure Hoard starts out at level 1, donations required to get it to max level look like this:
Best case, donating only mythic treasures in chunks of 5:
1001 mythic treasures and 133,422,400 gold required.
Donating only mythic treasures in chunks of 1:
1001 mythic treasures and 133,832,000 gold required.
Donating only common treasures in chunks of 5:
50050 common treasures and 6,696,200,000 gold required.
Worst case, donating only common treasures in chunks of 1:
50050 common treasures and 6,696,640,000 gold required.
Donating treasures one by one or in chunks of 5 makes next to no difference for the total cost, so there’s no reason at all to hold back. There’s a new Faction each month, requiring the same amount of donations to max out, so completionists should better get started farming right away.
I can’t help but wonder at the scope of the task at hand. Is this really intentionally so way past impossible to achieve? Or is there a design bug in the cost formula? Meaning we should hold back on improving the Treasure Hoard because costs will get lowered significantly once the devs realize 6 billion gold might be a bit much to ask for?
I also did the math in the beta section and came to the same conclusion. However, you only need to get to Hoard level 100 to maximize your Renown. Anything beyond that is bragging rights and making life easier for yourself at high Delve levels.
There is a benefit to using 5 at a time. It’s more cost effective to make sure you have 100% quality chance so you can raise the quality level to max eventually.
Stupidest way to reach Hoard level 100: adding Coin Purses one at a time. This means you are always adding the least possible amount of XP, and you are always paying the highest cost to add it. You will pay nearly 7 million gold to maximize your Renown in this manner.
Marginally smarter way to reach Hoard level 100: still Coin Purses, but five at a time. You save 44,000 gold in this way! Yay!
Most efficient route to Hoard level 100: Sacred Treasures, five at a time. It will take just two such rounds to get you to level 99, at a total cost of 77,000 gold. The next treasure, which should be a Priest’s Chalice or better (if you’ve got 10 Sacred Treasures sitting around, you probably have a few Chalices/Crowns/Lamps also), will cost you 10,400 gold but push you over the 5049 XP required for level 100. The minimum possible gold cost to reach Hoard level 100 seems, then, to be 87,400 gold.
Stupidest way to reach Hoard level 1000: Coin Purses, one at a time. I had to switch to 8-byte integers for this, since I ran into overflow issues using standard 4-byte ints. Check out that gold cost!
Most efficient way to reach Hoard level 1000: Sacred Treasures, five at a time. Still absurdly expensive, but a factor of 50 times cheaper than the dumb way. Note that you’ll still need to come up with 1000 XP of treasure, at a cost of 200,400 per treasure, for that final level.
(edit: not?) The most efficient way to reach Hoard Quality 10: ten rounds of five Priest’s Chalices. This means you will always have a 100% chance to increase your quality, and you do so with the lowest total XP accumulated. You wind up at level 70, at which point you should switch back to using sets of 5 Sacred Treasures to earn that sweet sweet Hoard XP.
Another contender for most efficient way to reach Hoard Quality 10: ten rounds of two Sacred Treasures each. This winds up costing less gold than row 6, and puts you above Hoard level 100. The drawback, of course, is that you need 20 Sacred Treasures.
Edit: corrected with row 7, which is an alternate candidate for most efficient route to Quality 10.
The cost difference is really much less than it appears to be at first glance. Getting to level 100 with common treasures is 6,964,000 gold when donated one by one, 6,920,000 when donated in chunks of 5. That’s 44k gold saved, which somewhat pales compared to the 7 million required.
I strongly suspect we are not expected to get our Hoards much past level 100 at all. I’m somewhat curious about the design choice. If there were a leaderboard for each Faction, bragging rights could be a reason. There’s no leaderboard planned though, right?
As I said, I’m discussing getting to Quality level 10. It is far better to use 5 chalices at a time to ensure a 100% chance at upgrading quality than sticking in 1 chalice with a 20% chance. It’s more gold cost effective too.
Since @Grundulum already posted the math proof of that, I won’t bother repeating it.
Based on treasure rarity distribution a far better approach might be to first donate several 5-packs of coin purses though. Donating treasures is cheap at low hoard levels, and you will get at least some quality improvements out of it. If chalices are rare enough they are better saved for higher hoard levels.
You’ve played XCOM, right? Would you take a bunch of 25-35% shots in the hopes that some will hit, rather than positioning yourself for 95%+ shots? The gold cost climbs quickly, so I don’t want to make my “sure thing” upgrades expensive.
Edit: there’s no in-game leaderboard for cards ascended to Mythic, but that didn’t stop GoWDB from making one. And people certainly compete to place on that! And come on, you know the first person to hit level 1000 on a Hoard will be plastering that screenshot all over the forums and social media.
Exactly this. Leveling the hoard will be an exercise in patience. The person that goes off half cocked throwing coin purses at it will pay dearly in gold over time.
Depends on how many 95% shots I have available, if they are limited I’d save them for the boss fight and use the cheap shots for the the trash mobs.
Since the gold cost climbs quickly, I wouldn’t want to use my “sure thing” upgrades early. I’d save them for when it gets expensive, to have as little donations as possible at high cost. As an example, if I have to donate 200 purses and 20 chalices, first donating the purses and then the chalices is much cheaper than first donating chalices and then donating the purses.
It really boils down to rarity distribution. If it’s anywhere close to the ingot distribution, not donating purses (and rings) won’t be an option, because those would be 99% of the treasures obtained. I didn’t participate in the beta, so I don’t really know what to expect.
From what I understand, using gold efficiently will be your last worry. What you want at first is to upgrade your hoard quailty to level 10, so you should always bring in 5 treasures in any combinations that result in 100% quailty upgrade success rate. You have to make the best of what treasure you have, without worrying too much about gold, which can come in any modes, while treasures are exclusive to Delve.
Sacred Treasure Ă—5 = Awesome!
Most effective way. You got maximum exp and % quailty chance by using minimum gold
Sacred Treasure x2 = Okay.
Maximum % quailty chance, but a bit waste of treasure and gold
Priest’s Chalice x5 = Nice.
Easiest maximum % quailty chance. Minimum gold spend, but using lowest Tier of treasures possible, so you get much less exp.
Sacred Treasure + Genie’s Lamb + Gold Ring + Coin Purse x2 = Nice.
A bit complex, but still get maximum 100% quailty chance. Minimum gold, but lacking in exp.
Coin Purse Ă—5 = Not good.
While you spend the less gold, your quality chance is only 25%, so it bound to fail. You get a grain of exp. as well.
Coin Purse x1 = Bad!
You just waste your gold on entry fee, and get screwed by 5% chance. Better save it for later and combine with other Treasures.
By reading some of you, it seems that it will be easy to get Mythic Treasure…
I just remind that the most difficult achievement for Renown is to finish a Delve level 500 with only Faction’s troops. I guess that we could need bonus coming from the Treasure Hoard leveling up and a level 100 could not be enough…
