By: Jackjones on 10/1/2024
I’ve decided that tonight, I’m going to focus on grinding Natural Substances. But first, an apology: I’m sorry this isn’t a 3-hour YouTube video or stream!
Starting Natural Substances skill: 65.54.
I’m going to grind by making Healing Covers. My potency target for my Healing Covers is 15, and the materials I’ve chosen for this session are Eye (3) + Heart (5). Cover potency is calculated by the formula a x b, so my Eye + Heart gets me to my Healing Cover target of 15. I have thousands of eyes ready to go, but only a few hundred hearts. (Aside: I’m growing black mushrooms as a more renewable source of Potency 5 items.)
The quality of my materials for the grind is in the 51-52ql range.
I’ve casted CoC with 80ish power on two eye bundles of 64 eyes each. I then put 50 hearts in each of 2x backpacks. I will alternate the eyes and “mix” them across the two backpacks. I find this an easy way to keep my action queue full. Since making Healing Covers doesn’t affect (nor is affected by) stamina, I can grind without rest.
I drank some coffee to get to my caffiene to 100 power for the 2x sleep bonus skill gain.
I made 100 Healing Covers, getting my skill to:
[20:16:56] Natural substances increased by 0.0155 to 66.1716
In total, I got 39 ticks in Natural Substances, based on Healing Cover QLs between the range of 0 to 40 (which is just like Mining skill tick). I had 61 really great QL Healing Covers that got me nothing but some small Alchemy and Mind Logic gains.
For the next round, I had the same setup, but forgot SB until more than half way through. I was also distracted by workers in my neighborhood working past 7pm, which they are not allowed to do (they were working in the pitch dark with flashlights loading heavy materials). And this was when my wife decided to change mobile carriers, and since she was on AT&T, everything was jacked up. Mint Mobile referral code ;)
My gains were paltry:
[20:54:05] Natural substances increased by 0.0103 to 66.3619
I only got 28 clicks in total; it was a failed effort.
0.82 gained in Natural Substances (sad trombone)…
My options for better skill gains are:
I made a lava tile and started to bring down the quality of a batch of eyes and hearts. With the same potency target, I made 86 healing covers, at a 55% skill tick rate, with a 2x caffiene bonus, earning 0.647 points in Natural Substances.