Is there a mana return cap on the Genie pet?

I have a nice genie with 13k mana bonus and like 100 ups left. Should I continue to increase the Mana Collection Bonus (damage) or does the genie have a cap of how much mana it can collect?

Thanks!

yeah, there is a cap where it stops scaling well I believe.


I don't give a ****, so my genie is 40k (started with around 30k, Palantir) named him "MORE ****ING MANA"

I am curious too. Hopefully dingle can shed some light. If I could I'd rather use those up points to make some stats stronger since I get negative HP on my genie.

There's two kinds of cap at work with genie.

There's a hard cap on the scaling with actual damage dealt, but that's mostly irrelevant because almost nobody goes into NM doing less than 10k damage per attack. That factor only determines where in your genie's range you get mana from.

Then there's the soft upgrade cap. I don't have DDDK available, so I can't really do the actual math here, but if I recall correctly, it takes over ten thousand of "damage" upgrades on the genie to go from 400 to 500 (less than 1 mana per hit per upgrade spent) - 400 mana per hit is more or less the soft cap where it's better to invest elsewhere. In theory it goes up indefinitely, but it's not particularly worth it in terms of stats to go much higher.



If you're interested in the same for Djinnlets, they have a mana return hardcap of 90, which is achieved by around 5k base damage (or less depending on difficulty)

Here is a study someone did concerning Genie mana returns: http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?32590-Some-Math-on-Genies

The thing I am curious is how genie mana gain apply to multiple projectile shots/aoe hits? I may generally get ~400 mana per attack but sometimes gain a full 1.6k+ (especially when using a staff) since it is not exactly consistent

Thank you for responding dingle. Your Djinnlet response was very clear. But as far as genie, what you are saying is 10k is a solid number to stop caring about upgrading the damage?

Here is a study someone did concerning Genie mana returns: http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?32590-Some-Math-on-Genies

The thing I am curious is how genie mana gain apply to multiple projectile shots/aoe hits? I may generally get ~400 mana per attack but sometimes gain a full 1.6k+ (especially when using a staff) since it is not exactly consistent

Whether or not the genie will give mana is dependent on whether it's currently doing the give mana animation. Seriously - the check is "if genie is doing mana animation, do not give mana"

Of course, that means there's a chance you can cause multiple hits at the same time, before the mana animation kicks in. It should be immediate, but animations may not always trigger perfectly.

Thank you for responding dingle. Your Djinnlet response was very clear. But as far as genie, what you are saying is 10k is a solid number to stop caring about upgrading the damage?

I actually meant if the player's dealing 10000 damage per attack, the genie's mana is capped based on a scaling factor - however, improving the genie's damage stat can improve the damage further. There's this thing where the game scales mana by damage dealt, but that bonus stops at around 10000 base damage.

However, 10k is also a fairly solid stopping point for a genie, with the amount of mana per hit per upgrade massively falling off after that.

Sweet thanks Dingle. That's the answer I wanted. You need your own Sticky where we can leave random questions so you know where to look to see what has been asked.

Makes sense Dingle. I guess it would be more noticeable with staffs that have much higher projectile speeds as it is more likely to hit multiple times before the activation due to the crescent projectile positions. I assume the genie may have an "if hit occurs... perform animation after a message has been sent in .5 or some type of clock delayed event).

There's no hardcoded delay on the event - it should be instantaneous. However, there might be an issue with the way animations are handled which potentially introduces delay.

There's no hardcoded delay on the event - it should be instantaneous. However, there might be an issue with the way animations are handled which potentially introduces delay.

I'm not sure how much insight the DDDK gives in regards to this issue, but unless they did something unusual the animation should have no impact on the chance of gaining much more mana then usual hits as graphics are (should be) completely seperated. Ex: Hit -> Genie animation begins (graphics code runs while a delay based on animation being completed or a timer prevents further mana gain). I only emphasize how this is odd because I am not sure how familiar you are with grahpics programming (as you seem to have knowledge of programming in general) and so there should be no issues with a delayed animation unless some type of message/event system is being used. Then again... I wouldn't be suprised if you are right and they somehow tied in gameplay code to graphics in a poor manner considering some of the stuff I have seen in this game. (Must say though, they actually have some pretty sick graphic techniques at work here for an Indie game)

I'm not sure how much insight the DDDK gives in regards to this issue, but unless they did something unusual the animation should have no impact on the chance of gaining much more mana then usual hits as graphics are (should be) completely seperated. Ex: Hit -> Genie animation begins (graphics code runs while a delay based on animation being completed or a timer prevents further mana gain). I only emphasize how this is odd because I am not sure how familiar you are with grahpics programming (as you seem to have knowledge of programming in general) and so there should be no issues with a delayed animation unless some type of message/event system is being used. Then again... I wouldn't be suprised if you are right and they somehow tied in gameplay code to graphics in a poor manner considering some of the stuff I have seen in this game. (Must say though, they actually have some pretty sick graphic techniques at work here for an Indie game)

I said - specifically - that the activation condition for the genie's ability checks if it's doing the animation. There isn't a flag for it, it's a check for the animation itself. That means if for any reason the animation isn't running, the ability can proc any number of times until it is.

I said - specifically - that the activation condition for the genie's ability checks if it's doing the animation. There isn't a flag for it, it's a check for the animation itself. That means if for any reason the animation isn't running, the ability can proc any number of times until it is.

I see what you are saying. I would like to know what the conditions controlling the animation from a hit are. The only reason I could see any hiccups here would be for a guest in a match in which the animation and mana gains are being controlled client side and not handled by the host or something close to this nature. (Not sure if I get the extra mana when I host, don't really recall atm.) Any ideas? Would like to make more consitent use of it if a standard method could be developed. Love upgrading with my lil' app.

So would a good rule of thumb be. Like upgrade damage to 10 K and the rest of the upgrades into hero damage. Or what is the good rule of thumb be?

Sweet thanks Dingle. That's the answer I wanted. You need your own Sticky where we can leave random questions so you know where to look to see what has been asked.

That's a great idea! I was just saying that to a friend yesterday.

What does Dingle think?

After all an Ask Dingle Sticky would have to be Dingle Approved.

Well and Trendy.

Off-topic, but I have a curious question. Rarity aside, does the cube suck as a pet? The damage seems negligible and it's better to collect mana with genie. Knocking back ogres doesn't seem to be much help in practice. So is there really any reason to use a cube?

So would a good rule of thumb be. Like upgrade damage to 10 K and the rest of the upgrades into hero damage. Or what is the good rule of thumb be?

3-4k is a good rule of thumb unless you are a barbarian in which case 10k might be a better choice due to slightly higher max mana achievable during an animation. In all reality you should almost never need in excess of 4k on anything other then a barb (nothing to use that much mana on at that rapid of a rate before the exponential climb screws you, along with the poor mana gain scaling).

That's a great idea! I was just saying that to a friend yesterday.

What does Dingle think?

After all an Ask Dingle Sticky would have to be Dingle Approved.

Well and Trendy.

This would be convenient. He is quite familiar with the DDDK and provides detailed explanations in a lot of threads.

Off-topic, but I have a curious question. Rarity aside, does the cube suck as a pet? The damage seems negligible and it's better to collect mana with genie. Knocking back ogres doesn't seem to be much help in practice. So is there really any reason to use a cube?

It pretty much sucks... Monkey/Seahorse/Mega chicken or even a dragon if you want raw damage. Genie/Djinnlet if you want mana collection. The cube just kinda sucks overall by today's standards.

That's a great idea! I was just saying that to a friend yesterday.

What does Dingle think?

After all an Ask Dingle Sticky would have to be Dingle Approved.

Well and Trendy.

It's great that you guys love me and all, but I'm not so sure it's a good idea...

Firstly, something like that would be best off as a sub-forum; having a sticky means lots of different questions all get asked in a single thread, which gets difficult to read. When you're answering questions from multiple people and your post gets sandwiched between a lot of unrelated posts and the asker misses it, or you get caught up answering one question and forget about the rest... a single thread would be annoying and difficult, for everybody involved.

Secondly, I'd certainly hope I wasn't the only person asked to answer questions in such a subforum. There's a lot about the game I'm not an expert in. I can dissect the game mechanics and code, but I hardly play the game anymore, so I wouldn't be good at answering questions about how best to play. I can't do tech support (people have asked me to help them fix their game when it breaks. I'm not that kinda expert) An "Ask The Experts" subforum would need a bunch of people specialized in different areas.

Thirdly, if I'm given that responsibility in any official capacity - and a subforum or thread dedicated to people asking me questions would be that way - people would think that I'm speaking for Trendy, and anything I say must be true. It's happened quite a number of times now, but I can be wrong, and if what I'm saying is misinformation, it'd be better if I'm not saying it with any degree of official-ness.

I'm also not sure if I want that kind of responsibility - having people expecting me to answer - without some form of compensation. I need a life somewhere along the lines. I'm already getting at least one person a day laying into me with questions about DDDK, item generation, whatever, and the conversations can go on for quite a while. Having a public forum with lots of people asking questions at once, I'm not sure I could keep up with that. Certainly if I manage to get a job I just wouldn't have the time for it.

I'm happy to help where I can, but making a subforum just for me/people like me to answer questions kinda turns it into a job; and of course, if Trendy hires me, I have to sign a bunch of stuff that says "There are things you must not talk about without permission" and suddenly I'm legally obligated to be unable to answer certain questions. Even now, I've been asked by Trendy on one occasion not to share certain information.

tl;dr edition - Not sure if it should be kept to a single thread or single question answerer, not sure if it's a good idea to give me an official capacity like this, and not sure if I could do it full-time for free.

Off-topic, but I have a curious question. Rarity aside, does the cube suck as a pet? The damage seems negligible and it's better to collect mana with genie. Knocking back ogres doesn't seem to be much help in practice. So is there really any reason to use a cube?

Functionally, the cube is pretty solid. it protects the user via knockback, generates mana at the same rate as a Djinnlet in the right situation, and deals generic damage, so it's good against anything.

The problem is purely down to the numbers, and of course Cubes spawn with fixed stats. A random drop version would fix that and give cubes a potential use, but whether Trendy want to kill off the Cube-based economy (and truly annoy a lot of long-time players) is another question, best left up to them to decide.

@ Dingle that's cool I understand it would be a lot of responsibility and quite the potential headache.

I myself and may others just appreciate all the help you give to all of us here on the forums.

Thanks again for all that you do for us.

If you are mid-level or higher nightmare player, then I'd put it all into mana production, but here are the numbers so you can think for yourself:
At 13k, you generate 349 mana
At 21k, you generate 389 mana (100^ at 80 per upgrade)
(mana produced = 70*(x/12)^.23, where x is the base damage of the genie)

That's 40 more mana every genie cycle. If your genie dances 20 times during a wave, that's 800 extra mana. That seems much better than 100 stat into nightmare characters with 1k-4k stats.