I recently unlocked the AP upgrade for Desert Collector and it was rather underwhelming. The way the playe's total cash bonus is calculated is as follows: *TOTAL CASH BONUS = MONSTER LAUNDERING (SUM OF CRAFTING BONUSES + EVENT BONUS + DESERT COLLECTOR)* Or, if you are using the percentages shown in-game: *TOTAL CASH BONUS = (1 + MONSTERLAUNDERING%) (1 + SUM OF CRAFTING BONUSES% + EVENT BONUS% + DESERT COLLECTOR%)* If you compare that value to the value the game displays it will be of by 100% and this is because the game displays it as an increase (+XX% and not as the overal amount XX%, with no plus). The total cash bonus amount can be found here: *Fighting Screen > Grey Half Circle in Upper Right Corner > MISC > Cash Bonus* The problem here is how crafting bonuses, event bonuses, and the Desert Collector portal bonus are all additive with each other, meaning player's with an already high event bonus and crafting bonuses will not notice a great increase from Desert Collector. My last run's total crafting cash bonus, all the crafting cash bonuses summed together, was +1,150% (or 1,250%, overall). Adding the 36% from the event bonus to that is a really slim increase to +1,186% (or 1,286%). Now, this does multiple with Money Laundering (mine is at 950%), so my last run's total cash bonus was +13,403% (or 13,503%). My bonus from Desert Collector is 78.40% total (taken from 2.8% per desert card level, with a 28 card level). Incorporating my Desert Collector bonus only increases my total bonus to +14,226 (or 14,325%). **It might look like a lot, 823% more, but it only boils down to a *6.09%* increase in cash income.** I really thought this bonus would be multiplicative with the others, just how Monster Laundering is. What it currently is, is rather underwhelming. Desert Collector functions identically to being another tier of crafting cash bonus, due to it being additive with them. However, it makes liitle sense to be such a weak bonus considering the effort needed to unlock it. Not only does the player first have to unlock Desert Collector by doing contracts and earning medals, they also have to invest AP into it, earn cards and card levels. However, the bonus is basically negligible by the time the player unlcoks it. The returns are the player's investment are very poor too. It's commonplace to have diminishing returns in an incremental game, but in this case, with the weakness of the upgrade, and the icreasing cost in AP it becomes obvious the invest in Desert Collector is nearly worthless. At my current upgrade level, it will cost me 597 AP to increase Desert Collector 1 level. Assuming card level remains the same, one 597 AP upgrade will only increase my total cash bonus from +14,226 to +14,285%. That only increases my income by only 0.41%. ___ Unfortunately, Desert Collector is not the only upgrade that gives quickly diminishing returns, for example: Yesterday I purchased another Overlord Mining Kit gem upgrade. The upgrade description says it will double the miners speed and ore output. However, the values of my miner barely increased (speed went from something like 558 to 604 and something similar with the ore output) . I beleive this has to do with how the upgrade works, the gem kit probably doubling the base speed and output of a miner, which in return makes the kit not much more of an increase over the manifestation kit, but again another upgrade, this time costing gems, that gives marginal benefits. That are several upgrades in the game that have similarly poor returns: - All of the cash per minute *investment* upgrades from crafting, give negligble gold and aren't worth upgrading other than for crafting experience and even then crafting experience isn't that hard to come by. - The Gold Coin Rift doesn't seem to give enough cash compared to actual fighting. - Event gold Bonus is just as weak if not weaker than Desert Collector. Although I don't mind dumping tokens into it. - Skillers and Miners have the same issue. They are speed capped at level 100, at which point only rep upgrades can push this further, but the additive nature and increase craft cost of all rep upgrades but a softcap on it.As well, the cost to increase skillers and miners value rises enough to also feel like a soft-cap. ___ My closing thoughts, I want to point out Desert Collector as it is a solid example of the issue I'm highlighting. It is an extremely weak AP upgrade with drastically increaseing AP costs. The fact that it functions identically as another *crafting +% from enemies* upgrade makes it very dissapointing to unlock. The game still feels balanced, but I'm wondering how this will pan out in the future. Clearly if the upgrades were made too powerful right now we'd run out of content. However, if new zones and content are added in the future, but new upgrades remain so underwhelming, what happens? ___ **TL:DR** Basically, AP upgrades should be multiplicative with other AP upgrades and non-AP upgrades, they should feel powerful. (But it should be done at a time when there's new content to push forward in to).