Lancer Knightz (Guild)/Missions

This page is part of the Lancer Knightz data collection project. Its goal is to quantify the crown payouts of all missions. These particular data were collected by Vanzanz, Epoxee, Bopp, and Donkeyhaute. The "Classic" data were collected between April and July of 2013 — just before release 2013-07-30. Since then, we have been collecting Normal, Advanced, and Elite data. Thus far we have run the 51 missions an average of 18 times each.

Procedure

For missions that exist on multiple strata (danger missions, Operation Crimson Hammer, etc.), we always measure on Tier 3 / Stratum 6. The tester carries out the entire mission, from mission lobby to mission report. The tester goes down every side path, killing every monster. Slashing plants and lamps to get extra crowns is optional. The tester does not spend any extra energy opening treasure rooms, danger rooms, etc. After the mission, the tester examines the mission report, and sends this information to Donkeyhaute:

1. The difficulty: Normal, Advanced, or Elite.
2. The number of knights in the party. If the number changes over time, then an estimate of the average (1.5, 2.3, etc.) is fine.
3. The total crowns earned by the tester (not the other party members). This figure appears at the top of the mission report.
4. The total number of Forge, Grim, and Primal Sparks earned by the tester. These appear at the bottom of the mission report.
5. Any Orbs of Alchemy or Radiant Fire Crystals found. (We've been tracking these since 2013/12/26.)
6. The date.

The tester may optionally add a note at the end. For example, the note could indicate which branch of depth 26 of the King of Ashes was taken, or it could report that many rarities or materials were found. (Crowns earned by selling lucrative materials do not enter into our other calculations.) Donkeyhaute enters the data into a computer program that outputs the wiki markup for the table below. Each mission is measured multiple times, to give a better idea of the crown and spark payout.

Average Crowns and Sparks

Here is a summary of the crown and spark data. The columns are:

• Name, Rnk: Name and rank of the mission.
• Cls, Nrm, Adv, Elt: Average crowns earned on each difficulty level: Classic, Normal, Advanced, Elite.
• n: The number of spark data for each difficulty. The number of crowns data is always at least this large. More data mean that the estimated average is more reliable. For the sake of tidiness, the table does not include confidence intervals.
• Cls, Nrm, Adv, Elt: Average sparks earned on each difficulty level.

Earnings per Level

Forge, Grim, and Primal Sparks are worth at least 100 crowns each, because 100 sparks can be traded for a 5-star trinket that can be vendored for 10,000 crowns. Similarly, three boss tokens are worth at least 225, 700, 525, or 3,000 crowns, depending on the boss. By incorporating the value of tokens like this, we get a better idea of the total earnings of a mission. Dividing the total earnings by the number of levels gives us an idea of the overall crown-earning efficiency of the mission. The following table summarizes the average earnings per level computed in this way.

• Name, Rank: Name and rank of the mission.
• Levels: Number of levels in the mission, excluding treasure levels, core terminal, and other trivial levels.
• Classic, Normal, Advanced, Elite: Average earnings per level, on each difficulty level.
• n: The number of spark data for each difficulty, exactly as in the previous table.

Other Analyses

Party size does not appear to affect crown payouts. To see so, examine the plot at right. Each dot is a non-solo mission run. The x-axis is party size. Fractional party sizes arise from knights entering and leaving parties. The y-axis is the run's normalized crown payout. (This number is computed by dividing the payout by the average of the solo payouts for that mission and difficulty.) The fact that the dots are scattered about the line y = 1 suggests that all party sizes produce about the same crown payouts.

Difficulty does affect crown payouts. To see how, examine the second plot. Each dot represents a mission on Elite (purple) or Normal (blue) difficulty. The x-axis is the average Advanced payout for the mission; the y-axis is average Elite and average Normal payouts. Best-fit lines are superimposed. Based on the slopes of the best-fit lines, we conclude that Elite payouts are about 121% of Advanced payouts, and Normal payouts are about 81% of Advanced payouts. By the way, a similar analysis implies that Classic payouts are about 102% of Advanced payouts, but the difference is not statistically significant.

A glance at the spark data suggests that Advanced difficulty pays more sparks than the other difficulty levels. However, the difference is not statistically significant.

Prior to release 2013-07-30, each level cost 10 energy. A natural question to ask was: "Do 10 levels of this mission earn enough to buy 100 energy? Is the mission self-funding?" The table below shows some benchmark energy prices, from 5000 to 9500. For each price, the table shows how many Classic missions were self-funding at that price. As you can see, the King of Ashes was not the only profitable mission in the game.

Data that We Don't Collect

Many players are interested in crowns per minute. However, we do not collect time data, because they would vary so much from player to player. Anecdotally, rushing through the King of Ashes to get the tokens and treasure boxes as fast as possible seems to be among the most profitable strategies. For players who have many Eternal Orbs of Alchemy, another strategy is to run Operation Crimson Hammer, craft Perfect Mask of Seerus, and vendor it.

Many players are also interested in Orbs of Alchemy and Radiant Fire Crystals. Because these are rare drops, many runs are needed, to estimate their frequency. We have been collecting data on them since 2013/12/26, but we don't have nearly enough data yet.