You should join the discord server

https://discord.gg/5KwjM8j

It'll be much easier to explain on there as most of this stuff has been pinned to channels so it's easy to access/read/understand.

That's too bad that you feel that way about discord. It seems you are very active on these forums, unfortunately most of the advice you are giving is outdated/sub-optimal. Joining discord would help bring you up to speed on what can be(is being) done to push DPS through the roof.

Those images are part of an extremely swingy DPS form that is being utilized in the dungeons. Basically you create an extremely unstable DPS form just trying to get the absolute highest DPS, then you just toss in Kris to lock that DPS at the max you got, toss in roborabbit to charge up their capacitor using that max DPS reached. Then swap into a speed formation with RR where they expend 1 click per area at that insanely high DPS carrying you many hundreds of areas with the benefits of a speed form mixed with also basically being in your max DPS form.

There is a lot more involved in creating those swingy max DPS forms that I'm not going to explain here. I'm not sure what you have against discord, but if you haven't tried joining it in a while, it's quite friendly and supportive.

Your hatred towards a simple chat service is mind-boggling, but we'll ignore that for now.

> But it's an IDLE game. That's a lot of effort and babysitting for an idle game.

The unstable formations allow you to push much further while idle. Using a stable form (like I do) means you have to swap out of your speed form sooner and reset more often. Kris and/or RoboRabbit takes the unstable nature and makes it stable.

> If Jiao, despite his random waterfalls, has a formation that has STABLE DPS that beats out a Wrena formation, *THEN* I will consider using that formation and admitting he's better.

As Vingummi mentioned, Jaio has beat Wrena since he came out. The unstable formations has only been a thing for a few weeks, since dungeons came out. Wrena needs something like an L18+ amulet to compete with Jaio right now. Pools can be manipulated with propagation and even without them he beats Wrena handily, while being less of a mats hog.

My formation with Wrena: https://imgur.com/a/WTl4Aoi

Your suggested Jiao formation: https://imgur.com/a/ExQCr1a

My Karen is on a mission right now, so I just swapped her out for Billy for this. I'm fairly certain she wouldn't make e1000 worth of difference, though. Before you ask...

-Yes, all talents are maxed.
-Yes, all abilities are bought and on.
-Yes, I followed your material advice to the letter. Imani's belt is 15, Dros's middle is 12, everything else is 9/10.
-Yes, Gold-o-Rama is active.
-Yes, this is end-of-run. All I did was go back to area 1, reallocate mats, and switch saders.

Sooo...?

Karen is away on a mission until tomorrow. I'll redo all the mats again (ugh) and try it out with her and post the results.

Preface: Honestly, I forgot Karen had that ability. Whoops, my fault. Also, for absolute transparency, these results are after doing an overnight right with my Wrena formation, the switching over to Jiao when I got up to continue the run afterward. Normal runs with Wrena take about 5.5 hours, not overnight runs, obviously, for context.

Wrena average JJ run stats: Roughly area 7000, 1180 exp, 22 coins, 5.5 hours.

Jiao formation: https://imgur.com/a/v6hTsH6

Jiao formation stats for test run: Area 8462, about 2000exp, about 35 coins(wasn't paying attention to this), and added 4 hours to the end up my usual Wrena run.

Conclusion: The Wrena formation is much, much faster due to having great synergy with most of the speed crusaders and not having as many gimmicks requiring specific placement and abilities. Wrena's formation can upkeep most of it's speed even near the end of a run. Jiao formation goes much further and reaches much higher DPS but due to the massive DPS gains from non-speed crusaders, a large portion of the run is barely above normal speed, causing it to be incredibly slow. Wrena can reach ara 7000 in just over 5 hours. It takes Jiao almost that long just to insta-kill-clear slightly more than a fourth of that (~1400 areas), and that is JUST the latter ~1000 areas since Wrena ran the first 7000. No doubt the full run as Jiao would take MUCH longer, and the time:payout ratio is only BARELY staying in balance WITH Wrena's speed for the majority of the run, as-is.

Before I make any final judgements, though, I'm going to do a few days of Jiao runs trying out different ways to utilize Billy, Casey, Thalia, and Euodia in pre-DPS formation to minimize the length of time needed to reach end of run using a Jiao formation the entire time.

Plus, Wrena's formation allows constant use of Ana. Jiao's doesn't use her at all. In the long run, that amounts to far fewer chests/materials. Also, thanks to such a massive amount of DPS coming from Gold-o-Rama, there were several deaths caused by poor luck with GoR not resetting on boss areas, causing me to use a warp to keep the formation moving instead of waiting for over 10 minutes.

Like I said, I'm reserving final judgements for at least a few days worth of Jiao runs, but needless to say...I'm not impressed. So far, the only way I can see this as being "objectively better" is if dungeons actually gave bonus idols. The payout in bonus idols more than 1000 areas past where I'd get with Wrena would COMPLETELY quell any time or chest arguments I might have. But since there's no bonus idols, and the extra areas would only add .30% (less than 20% of the total buff) to the idol buff counter for almost twice the length of time spent in the run, the idol reward difference also wouldn't be worth the extra time spent. This does not look promising.

To elaborate on what grag is saying... you don't use the DPS form the whole way, just as you shouldn't be using your Wrena DPS form the whole way. As a matter of fact, that shouldn't even be your final Wrena formation. If you literally took Wrena and dropped her in place of Jaio in our formation, you'd still get more DPS than you're getting currently because your formation is using weaker crusaders and isn't taking advantage of propagation as much.

People who don't reset below 7k are getting in four runs a day, so the speed can't be that bad. That's why we use the Kris/RR trick though. Full DPS *and* full speed, more speed than you'll be getting out of that Wrena form for sure, plus less babysitting because there's zero risk of gold-o-rama falling off.

> But for the other crusaders? Casey and Euodia are there as human/female speedsters that help with the Twins' abilities.

You only need a couple of crusaders to be naturally human and female. The vast majority of the crusaders in the above Jaio formation are both due to tag propagation. Of the fifteen crusaders there:

12 are female
12 are human

Kaine is only human, not female. Milgrid is only female, not human. RoboSanta and Xyg are neither. Everyone else in that formation is human and female.

Like I said, just take Wrena, drop her in the Jaio formation, and you'll see the DPS will go up from your own formation. That means conversely, if you use Jaio with speedsters you'll do so with higher DPS than in your Wrena form with speedsters. As a matter of fact, as the form Grag posted uses a superVik setup, it is faster than your Wrena formation while being able to push further. (I originally said it was "likely" faster, but no. I'll guarantee it's faster.)

And again, you always have the option of the Kris/RR formation, which will allow you to hit your DPS cap with a single click per level while lasting much longer than a regular speed formation.

I have to ask: how fast are your runs usually? My last run I hit 6272 (Sunday Stroll, God does that map suck) in 3hr 40min while only checking in on it twice: once after sprint (probably level 3700 or so, it went a while outside of sprint), and once around the 5500 mark (at which I had been dying for a little while because I don't monitor the game, that was where I happened to be dying when my League game ended).

Alright, update time. I've been doing runs with the suggested formations for several days now while testing a few things and I've got my conclusion.

The formation sucks. Hard.

"But why, tho?" I'm glad you asked.

I applied the idea of using a DPS (with GoR active, before anyone asks) formation, locking in the DPS with Kris, then storing it with Rabbit, then using the suggested speed formation with Rabbit. My tests all revolved around that basis of Robo-storage that was originally brought up.

Issue 1: Even when babysitting the game the entire run to swap back to DPS to refresh Robo's storage and keep the speed formation going so that the entire run was done without hitting a single wall and entirely in speed formation, the run still took nearly 9 hours to get to area 8300 for a 1900 exp payout. I can get to area 8460 for about a 2000 exp payout, but that requires repeated cycles of going back to area 1, swapping to DPS, hoping the formation doesn't die mid-swap for some reason, setting up the Kris/Robo storage, swapping back to speed formation, half the formation dies mid-swap, go to area 2, wait a full minute for the full effects of the speed formation to set in, then finally continue progression, only to do all this again in about 20 minutes. With Wrena, I was averaging 1100 per 5-hour run, and this new method. 9 hours is 180% of 5 hours, and 2000 is ~182% of 1100. See how close that is? The time:payout ratio is almost identical, but the Jiao formation is much more tedious to use.

Issue 2: Overnight runs are basically pointless. With Wrena, I could start a run, level crusaders at area 1, go into my DPS formation, leave to sleep, wake up, and be at area 7000 and ready to reset. No time wasted, which allows me to either start a new run immediately or do a few chest runs if I only have a few hours before work. And then I can start a run before work, go into DPS formation, go to work, come back and be nearly at the end of the run again. I changed my sleep schedule to allow more consistently for another run before work, and if I get home earlier from work, I can even do a 4th run in the same day at night before the overnight run. NONE of that is possible with Jiao. His DPS formation is incredibly slow, the base speed form has pathetic DPS so it doesn't go very far overnight, and the storage speed form is a snapshot, so it's DPS doesn't grow through the run, meaning it still doesn't get very far. If I start a run right before bed, use just the speed form, it'll be around area 5000 when I wake up, meaning I've barely done half a run. If I do the storage form, it doesn't get much further because it's based on my DPS form's DPS at area 1, meaning fewer Aren/Xyg/Milgrid stacks and fewer crusader levels. Without the benefit of end-of-run gold to stack those abilities and increase sader levels, the DPS isn't anywhere near enough to carry the speed formation further than it can go on it's own. And the DPS form is SLOW AS HELL and makes horrible progress overnight. Even when I start an overnight run early to let the speed form get to area 5000 before using the storage form for overnight, it still only gets to about 7300. That's only 300 areas further than my Wrena can reach overnight WITHOUT needing to let her grind for several hours before leaving for bed.

Issue 3: Thanks to the length of time it takes to complete a run with Jiao even with that storage-speed formation the entire time, I'm only able to complete 1 or 2 runs a day, including overnight runs. If I babysit the game to refresh Robo's storage efficiently, I MIGHT be able to do 2 per day, but that requires...well, babysitting. As stated above, with Wrena I could fairly consistently do 3-4 runs a day. I can hear the reactions now: "Then just use the Jiao speed formation to get to area 7000 and then reset like with Wrena. You don't NEED to reach your wall in every run." I thought about that for a moment before remembering that overnight runs don't work with that, but also the fact that it takes a lot more checking in on the game to reach area 7000 at all than my Wrena does. It's just more work for less than the same payout. "Wait, what? Less? Why less? You're reaching the same area both ways, right? So it should give the same exp." Weeeeelllllll...

Issue 4: Ana. She's in the speed formation, but there are a few caveats. Firstly, she's ONLY in the speed formation. If for whatever reason I wanted to use the DPS form for progression - like if I was at area 6000 before going to bed, the DPS form might reach 8000 overnight - she'd not be available to buff my chest find. Secondly, the length of Jiao runs at their max is about 9 hours to do 8400 areas, and if I'm lucky I MIGHT get 1.5 of those in a day due to the other half being part of an overnight run. So half the overnight gets applied to one day's grind, and the other half to the next day's grind. Optimistically. Compared to Wrena who can routinely complete 3 runs at least per day at 7000 per run. That's 12,600 areas versus 28,000. Do I need to explain that further? "But dude, you could just use the speed formation to reach 7000 and reset, so it's the same schedule as Wrena and still includes Ana." With much more work involved. Same schedule, more attention needed for Jiao. And like I said, that strategy doesn't work for overnight runs.

Like I said before, it doesn't matter if your DPS is much higher if you're slow as a rock, and it doesn't matter if you have the best speed if you can't go anywhere with it. And the only suggestion this thread has provided to meld the DPS and speed together relies on a gimmick that doesn't perform well for very long by itself and needs to be babysitted because it wears itself down every time it is used and doesn't auto-scale with progression.

And before anyone in the thread says something like "You're being stubborn" or "This is what you're doing wrong" or whatever, let me remind you guys...

I'M THE ONE DOING THE WORK HERE!!!!!! I hated the suggestions the moment I saw them and yet I STILL TESTED THEM! I wasted my own time and effort to be fair and give the suggestions their fair shake. I took the advice I was given, applied it, and reached a conclusion based on actual application of that advice. I, did, the, work. You suggested stuff and I, despite my COMPLETE awareness that it would be inferior and of personal sacrifice, applied your suggestions anyway. I, DID, MY PART. What did you guys do? Demean my suggestion without even testing it? Give my suggestions ANY consideration? What WORK did YOU put into any of this that wasn't just condescension? I was condescending, sure, but I ACTUALLY did the work to earn my right to have an opinion on the thing I was being condescending about.

I've been stressed about this for a week, yet I stuck to my guns and stayed true to the unbiased, scientific method. Question: What is the best way to farm exp in dungeons? Hypothesis: My formation is better in the long run and easier to use than the formations being suggested to me. Experiment/data: Doing runs with suggested formations several times each. Analyze/report: (See above). I have the numbers. I have the information. I did the tests. I've done my part despite how awful I've felt all week because of it. I've lost progression in the dungeon because of this. I've got less chests and exp because of these awful suggestions.

And before anyone says "9 hours? Why that long? I can do a full run in 2 hours." or whatever, I DON'T KNOW! I was OBSESSED with making sure the storage/speed form was up the entire time and I never stopped progressing for longer than it took to update the DPS of my storage. I did those two runs as fast as I could possibly do them. Even the math doesn't add up. About 45 minutes for sprinting plus roughly 5 seconds per area over (8400 - 3500 sprinted) areas, so 4900 x 5 = 24500 seconds, divided by 60 = 408 minutes + 45 sprinting minutes = 453 minutes, add about 17 minutes to account for whatever time I spent in area 1 updating my DPS for storage, 470/60 = ~7.8 hours. But the statistics said "8 hours and 53 minutes since last reset", so that's what I went with.