My way of working the black market, if you don't glitch your ink amount (which, unless it was fixed in this update, is very easy to do accidentally): * Pick an ink that's limited by an ink you don't usually need for ink orders (so if your squids aren't hitting max weight yet, something like Purple is good since you won't have much that's limited by blue or red. If they are hitting max weight, Shadow or Space are good.) * Focus on quantity first, and keep quality at 1. This lets you have a shot at volcano triggers each time the bar fills. Depending on other ink modifiers (esp stroke ink), you might be able to comfortably go to a higher level than when you get an ! on the limiter ink. * When it comes time to sell the ink on the market, reset the ink level, and pump it into quality. Using that, I could sometimes get a 12 hour ink in 30 minutes if I had high stroke ink modifiers.

You can message me on the official discord if you want more specific tips. Black market is currently my number one shell producer. I am refining my stratagy right now. But to my current understanding BM value is based on 2 things max chest and estimated time to produce. My stratagy for a very long time has been pump and dump for basically everything and anything. BM has been nothing different but I think I have a stratagy now to maximize it. In order to maximize estimated time you want to maximize stroked ink. Stroke buffs are seemily exempt from the estimations. Volcano also seems to be exempt or partially exempt. Super volcano and efficency are what I am really trying to exploit. Tempoary buffs like dropped bait are not great as they increase your estimated production without changing your real production. By having thousands of tokens stroke, choco on stroke, and a stroke buff I can get dozens of years of BM easily. I am currently focusing on asteroid belt as its very simple. It needs basically one ink and cannot really be limited by a squid off screen. If you stroke say sir ceph you can get a ton but if you have goth not in the tank you won't be able to stroke it so that will be capping you. Asteroids is simple basically only matter in and 3 stages of production so its pretty ideal IMO. Because its a 3 stage ink you can produce quite a lot more using efficency and super volcano. Efficencies doublling becomes x8 once all the stages are done for example so more stages are better. I drop in lobster and crab dumplings to push my super volcano to over 100% guranteeing it happens. With squidlings you seem to make sure the mother is in the tank. As you may not be able to stroke the squidlings mom enough to get asteroids. Just a heads up to remember who you have working wear. My previous stratagy was to produce a lot of ink. 3 way split on tokens and all my lumens on space. Then when I go to sell I do my normal chest boosting. With the lumens and tokens being removed before applying buffs. My aim is to have all the buffs like tokens and lumens counteracting the buffs from food. Lumens and tokens are easily shifted with basically no cost (latter on) so I abuse that to its fullest. I actually had 3 stages in my previous stratagy. First stage was just passive focus everything on stroked ink to get the most years possible. Because I have nothing in color production if I switch to chest boosting it will tank. Then I had color production maximized to get ink for chest boosting. Followed by chest boosting and selling. The stratagy I have theorized but have not put into practise yet is to delibertly sandbag my asteroid ink and chest boost first. So chest boost at the start then I ramp up asteroid production. Before today I was unsure if it was based on current or max chest chest. Now I think I understand better on how to switch the 2 hopefully getting the benefits of high stroked with high chest value. I may even somehow remove the squidlings to delibertly sandbag it durring chest boosting.

Just a heads up about the ink you picked, eventually Asteroid is limited by stone, and Space becomes the best ink for chest. Doesn't really change your plan any since Space is limited by matter, too. Just letting you know to eventually change your chest ink.

I have not experianced asteroids by stone you just need to upgrade medusa.But I am just about to try asteroids belt for chest ink. With how squidlings stroke work I am probably going to find a new material.