• Dear forum visitor,

    It looks as though you have not registered for a forum account, or are not signed in. In order to participate in current discussions or create new threads, you will need to register for a forum account by clicking on the link below.

    Click here to register for a forum account!

    If you already have a forum account, you can simply click on the 'Log in' button at the top right of your forum screen.

    Your Elvenar Team

Dwarves Chapter: Portal First?

Gladiola

Well-Known Member
After playing since March, I've made my meandering way to the beginning of the Dwarves chapter. (And you thought I would never get here!)

I consulted elvengems, which is a great resource. In terms of upgrading settlement buildings, Gems' advice is "UPGRADE PORTAL OR MINES, FIRST? Portal first."

While that is probably good advice for later chapters (like Fairies where you have to have a certain level of portal to even be able to collect certain goods -- which I know thanks to Elevengems), it does not seem to be useful for the Dwarves chapter. The granite mines and copper foundries can be upgraded with just coins and supplies, so they don't compete with the Portal for resources -- it's not an either/or proposition. You have to upgrade the portal to at least level 2 in order to research copper foundries, but after that there is no barrier to fully upgrading them. The only resource that is in conflict is builder time, and since everyone has at least 2 builders, that is not really a conflict.

It makes the most sense to me to at least fully upgrade the granite mines while you're waiting to accumulate enough granite to upgrade the Portal to level 2. Of course this will delay your accumulation of granite a tiny bit (because of the time the mines are out of service while being upgraded), but you can upgrade 5 of them to level 4 in the first two days after you complete the research, which will result in much faster production than if you had left 10 of them at level 1 and waited to accumulate enough granite to upgrade the portal. (At 400 granite per level 1 mine per day, times 10 mines, 4000 granite per day, it would take a little more than 2 days to accumulate enough granite to upgrade the portal to level 2. Some time would still be required to build those mines, so it would probably be more like 3-4 days.)

I have a tiny city (30 expansions) so I'm making a go of it with just 5 granite mines, at least to start. I estimate they will each produce about 1200 granite per day, or 6000 total. Even with the additional building time (2 days to build five to level 4), I will have accumulated enough granite after the first 4 days to upgrade the portal to level 2, nearly as quickly as I could have done with 10 level 1 mines, and I will have 5 level 4 mines plus a level 2 portal in about the same time as I would have had just a level 2 portal and 10 level 1 mines.

This post is not a complaint about elvengems, which is a terrific site. I'm pointing out that there is a different way of calculating the cost/benefit for upgrading the granite mines first. Upgrading the portal to level 3 requires copper, and I think a similar calculation can be made that it makes sense to upgrade the copper foundries while you're waiting to accumulate enough copper to upgrade the portal.
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
I actually think hitting dwarves within 6 months is great progress!

The trouble is, you can't store more goods from the mines and foundries without the Portal. They have no place to go. So if you don't upgrade the portal first, you'll be stuck with being unable to use the mines and foundries. At least that's how I remember it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. The portal is the storage facility for those items, so the bigger storage, the more you can hold. No sense in making more items from the mines unless you have some place to put them.

Oh and one more thing ... a bigger portal allows you to make more from the mines, etc. So in other words, upgrading your portal means ALL of your mines will produce more goods, not just one. So that's a plus too. Yeah, I'm definitely with Elven gems on this one.
 

Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
Portal to 2
Granite mines to 2
Portal to 3
Copper to 2
Granite to 3
Copper to 3
Portal to 4
Granite to 4
Copper to 4
Otherwise it takes too long to collect enough resources.
 

Gladiola

Well-Known Member
I am interested to see how my way of doing things works out. So far I have 3 level 4, 1 level 3, and 1 level 2 mines. My portal is still at level 1. I am upgrading level 3 to level 4 and level 2 to level 3 now. I've accumulated 2301 of the 8100 granite required to upgrade the Portal to level 2. My granite production is minimal since my mines have been mostly upgrading rather than producing granite. (I have 3 builders, so I upgrade 3 of them at a time.)

I will have enough granite to upgrade my Portal to level 2 tomorrow, so I'll get the 20% boost to production. At that time my daily granite production will be approximately 7700 granite per day (5 mines times 1200 per day)*1.2. The upgrade to Portal 3 requires copper, so I will need to research the copper foundry before doing that upgrade.

The first researches that require granite are the manufactory upgrades, which I have to complete before I can research the copper foundry. They require a total of (10200 + 12000 + 9000) = 31200 granite to complete (which my level 2 portal will have the capability of storing because the granite limit is 33,000). They also require (60 + 63 + 56) = 179 kp to complete. Assuming I gain about 30 kp per day (24 daily plus some miscellaneous from tournament, crafting, etc.) it will take me 6 days to accumulate enough kp to complete those researches. During that time I will have accumulated (7700*6) - 8100 for the portal upgrade = 38100 granite.

Of course I can't store all of that at once, but I will be spending it little by little to complete the research. However, I may reach my granite capacity on the way to researching the copper foundry (66 kp and 25k granite), building a copper foundry and producing enough copper to upgrade the Portal to level 3. I would not have gotten there any faster by not upgrading the mines, but I might have avoided topping out the portal. I would have deferred some of the spending on coins and supplies, which have taken a big hit from those mine upgrades. Maybe I'll leave my last 2 (of 5) mines at level 3 and level 2 and save some of those coins and supplies. It is still not an either-or proposition though. Having fewer copper mines and upgrading them to a higher level sooner seems to be an entirely feasible strategy.
 
Last edited:

Gladiola

Well-Known Member
@Iyapo1 and @Enevhar Aldarion I might decide to use PPs, but I don't think I'll need them for dwarves. Almost certainly not for granite, and probably not for copper. Dwarves is such a straightforward chapter that I think my PPs will be better used in other chapters down the road. I know that the situation gets complicated with some goods not being limited by Portal capacity and thus not available through PPs as well as some goods balancing challenges in later chapters, but in general I am a hoarder and my general approach is not to use an item unless it will substantially improve my game experience.

I am not in a hurry to complete the chapter, and I think that my KP production and settlement goods production will be pretty balanced just through normal gameplay.
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
I took one of my cities through dwarves with nothing but the portal. But to be fair when I started they were giving PPs in events and the spire to players below chapter 6, so I had 5 chapters to build up my inventory. I think it ran me around 700% PPs total. But that included enough to put in the roads.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
@Gladiola
I think your plan will work now.
Those guides were made when granite/copper bldgs required guest race goods to upgrade, so all bldgs were competing for granite and copper for the upgrades. Though it was cheaper to upgrade a mine/foundry, the upgrade to the portal increased production for all mines/foundries and the 'upgrade portal first' recommendation made sense. Inno has since changed that to coins/supplies for upgrading mines/foundries; no granite or copper needed.
 

Gladiola

Well-Known Member
@samidodamage That makes sense. I was wondering whether something like that might be the case, since the idea suggests that there is a tradeoff that means you would have to do one or the other. It also clarifies why people originally complained about Dwarves being such a long slog, when it seems to me to be pretty straightforward. Thank you!
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
@Gladiola
I think your plan will work now.
Those guides were made when granite/copper bldgs required guest race goods to upgrade, so all bldgs were competing for granite and copper for the upgrades. Though it was cheaper to upgrade a mine/foundry, the upgrade to the portal increased production for all mines/foundries and the 'upgrade portal first' recommendation made sense. Inno has since changed that to coins/supplies for upgrading mines/foundries; no granite or copper needed.
Oh, gosh, I didn't realize they'd changed that. Yeah, then my original advice goes out the window, lol.
 
Top