User blog:AimeePlaysMSM/Maximum coin income and the dilemma of time

I've been working for quite a while now with my niece to get her leveled up, earning income in terms of coins (which is then food which feeds Ethereals which yield shards, etc.). She is but a young girl and so is beholden to a certain schedule; specifically, her mother has agreed with me to allow her to play after she wakes up, and again before she goes to bed.

But does that actually affect her maximum coin income? Let's take a look at some hypothetical situations, and some numbers (presuming the ones in the wiki are correct; I have not yet moved on to checking the Rares, myself), limiting things to Plant Island and its monsters.

How much you earn on a given island is a function of each monster's income.

Let's take a closer look at "each monster" first. Plant Island, if the castle has been completely upgraded, has a maximum of 90 beds. So while you could fit 90 Noggins (requiring 1 bed each), you can only fit 15 Wubbox (requiring 6 beds each). So perhaps there are situations where you can place more of a monster that has a lower income, causing the total income to exceed that if you placed more of a monster that has a higher income.

Then there's how a monster generates income. Each monster has both an income in coins per minute, but they also have a maximum number of coins they can hold. A monster that has a high coins per minute rate might have a low maximum number of coins they can hold, requiring you to play the game and tap the coin bubbles more often; something your real life situation may not permit.

Given these numbers, we can at least identify the monsters that earn fast, and the monsters that earn the most if left alone; 90 Rare Punkletons, each generating 240 coins per minute and only taking a single bed, will (not really, see end of section for the rub) generate 21,600 coins per minute, topping out at 2,527,200 coins after just under 2 hours  The Rare Wubbox will generate only 6,750 coins per minute on account of there being only 15 of them at maximum, but will top out at 9,720,000 coins after 24 hours.

However, neither of these is reasonable. Not only would it be very difficult to check the game every 2 hours (one needs sleep, after all), but every 24 hours also becomes quite tedious (and will end up shifting over time as you may check at 24 hours and 5 minutes, eventually hitting your sleep as well). In addition, Rare Monsters are very difficult to obtain, and the Rare Punkleton is extremely limited in time when it may be acquired.

So let's have a look at the regular monsters instead. We then find that 45 Shugabushes requiring 2 beds each can earn you 13,050 coins per minute, topping out at 2,031,435 after roughly 2 hours and 35 minutes. 18 Ghazts may only earn you 6,048 coins per minute, but they would top out at 5,184,000 coins after 14 hours and 17 minutes. Now we're almost getting somewhere. The Shugabush is still far too short a time period (after they max out, they earn no further coins), however. So let's look at the next contender: At 8,640 coins per minute, the Noggin... well wait, the Noggin would reach maximum after only 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That's worse! Ideally, we'd want a monster that has a high earning rate, but which maxes out at an interval that we can quite reasonably use. This immediately disqualifies almost all monsters (2 hours and 15 minutes or less)... except one; the Entbrat. With 22 Entbrats taking 4 beds each, you would be earning 6,336 coins per minute, and max out at 2,965,270 after about 7 hours and 50 minutes. Because 22 Entbrats only take up 88 beds, there's another 2 beds available for an Oaktopus (120 coins per minute, topping out at 3600 coins).

So now we have two contenders: A: 18 Ghazts @ 6,048cpm, max 5,184,000 @ 14 hours 15 minutes. B: 22 Entbrats + 1 Oaktopus @ 6,456cpm, max 2,968,870 @ 7 hours 50 minutes.

So which is better?

Going back to my niece: She wakes up at 7 and goes to bed at 8. I have no doubt that she won't be asleep during all of that time, but her gaming privileges end at bedtime. If she checks immediately after waking, then for option B, she might check again at about 3pm. Her next time to check would be 11pm; she would be well asleep. She could collect early (though she would have to manually tap and collect, as each monster, other than the Oaktopus, wouldn't be at 75% of maximum yet), but no matter what she does, she's going to end up with Entbrats and Oaktopus maxed out well before she wakes up. For option A, on the other hand, she would check at 7, collect just before bed, and 11 hours later wake up ready to collect the overnight gains. For her, option A yields the greatest income. At no point would the Ghazts reach their maximum, so we can simply take their 6,048cpm and multiply that by the number of minutes in a day (24*60) and deduce that she should get 8,709,120 coins per day.

But let's say you're not my niece, you're fine with only 7 hours of sleep each day (you lucky dog). For situation A, you'd be in the same boat. But for situation B, things change. Now say you check at 7am when you wake up, you check again at 1pm (6 hours later when the monster has reached past 75% of its maximum you can easily collect the coins during your lunch break), once again at 7pm, and collect again just before you go to bed at midnight, 5 hours later. Now things get interesting. 6 hours * 6,456cpm + 6 hours * 6,456 + 5 hours * 6,456 + 7 hours * 6,456 (while you sleep) = 9,296,640 coins per day.

So you see, depending on your schedule, your maximum earnings can vary, even if it's barely worth the difference to even think about it. Things vary even more on other Islands. This is similar to the note on baking Treats, where baking a Cake may seem to be the most lucrative in terms of amount of Treats for a given time, but its 2 days waiting period may actually make it an inferior option.

Finally, I titled this as "Maximum" coin income, which hasn't technically been covered, and which I'm not going to claim I will be able to definitively answer. But that doesn't mean I can't give it a shot. What would be the maximum coin income over a 24 hour period, on Plant Island, presuming you can schedule so that the monsters never reach their limit (i.e. you don't sleep during that period) - and assuming (and this is a big assumption, though I couldn't easily find any information on this) that you can place as many monsters as you want on an Island as long as you don't exceed the bed limit?

Perhaps a little surprisingly, this is not going to be an island mostly filled with Rare Punkletons. Instead, it's going to be an island filled almost entirely with Dipsters. Dipsters don't take up beds, only island space. A single cell, to be exact. Dipsters have a maximum income at 100% happiness of 120 coins per minute, so if we want to place monsters instead of Dipsters, we need that monster to make 120 coins per minute per cell to make it worthwhile. The Rare Punkleton has a maximum rate of 240cpm, but it takes up 4 cells (2x2), so it is only 60cpm/cell. The Rare Potbelly gives 90cpm/cell, Rare Furcorn 150cpm/cell, and Rare Clamble 270cpm/cell (each taking up only a single cell). However, the Potbelly takes up only a single bed, Furcorn 2 beds, and Clamble 3 beds. Given 90 beds maximum, Rare Potbelly gives 90*90cpm=8,100cpm, Rare Furcorn gives 45*150cpm=6,750cpm, and Rare Clamble gives 30*270cpm=8,100cpm, thus disqualifying the Rare Furcorn. Between the number of Potbelly monsters and the fact that it only likes other Monsters, it too is disqualified. Leaving the Rare Clamble. The Rare Clamble likes Clamble, Piney Tree (2x2), Harpsitree (3x3), and Crumpler Tree (2x2). Together these decorations take up 17 cells, and that's not even counting the decorations that the choice of Dipster might like, so we'll also need a Storage Shed (4x4) to store these decorations. Plant Island has 769 cells total. Besides the Clambles and Shed, 16 are taken up by the Basic Nursery (4x4) which can't be sold, and 9 are going to be taken up by a Unity Tree (3x3) so that the Monsters' Likes will work across the entire island.

Now we can figure out how many cells we would have left for dipsters. + 769 cells (total) - 16 cells (nursery) - 16 cells (storage shed) - 9 cells (unity tree) - 30 cells (monsters) = 698 cells remaining

So now we can start doing some more math: 29 Rare Clambles * 270cpm (100% happy) = 7,830cpm 1 Clamble * 189cpm (75% happy) = 189cpm 698 Dipsters * 120cpm (100% happy) = 83,760cpm total cpm = 91,779 total coins/24 hours = 91,779 * (24*60) = 132,161,760

( again, huge assumption that you can place that many dipsters on an island! Would also take a while, or a lot of money, to get all those Keys! )