Should One Sell Experience Books?

[UPDATE: this post is wrong.  See the first comment.  The general method is right, so I have updated it in a newer post.]

Clashers are always asking that question.  Since a new one just popped up at reddit, and I have this blog now, I thought I'd take a stab at it, since my answer is different from the traditional one.

The traditional answer is yes, sell some books.

My answer is no.  The reason I say that is because I have been tight on experience and not HB for months now.  Take a look at my top heroes in their altar:

Five shinies, one capped.

These are my top heroes by level.  None is at his cap except Immo, and I only use him in the Lost Battlefield.  Santa and Warlock are both evo 1, waiting for dupes (or spare shards) to evo twice.  Harpy Queen I also rarely use, although I probably will in the future, unlike Immo.  But experience is tight.  I do use Dread Drake, but he is my current experience project, since his talent is Enlightenment 1.  Hey, 20% is better than nothing.  I will evolve him soon, when he hits level 200.

Meanwhile, I have uncapped Griz and others not shown above.  I have 1.3m HB waiting for use.  800000 will go into DD when he evolves.  But after that... well, we'll see.

Perhaps I am weird?  Well, let's consider some data and do some math.

First, experience.  To fully max out a hero at 200ee, you need 3 full sets of level 200 experience.  Level 200 takes 208918850 EXP; 200ee thus takes 626756550 EXP.  Similarly, 200ee takes 3 full sets of honor badges to 200, minus a handful of the little ones.  (When you evolve, you don't have to do the small levels.)  The total required is 814,000 + 800,000 + 780,000 = 2394000 HB.

Thus, in terms of outlays needed to max heroes, the ratio of EXP:HB is ~262.  If we earn more than 262 EXP per HB earned consistently, then books will pile up unused (and heroes will be blocked) and we should sell some books to equalize.  If things go the other way -- we get less than 262 EXP per HB over time -- then we have no easy way to address the problem.  HB will pile up; there is no way to turn HB into experience.

So what rates do you earn?

We can guestimate rates by looking at the major sources of experience and HB.

Most non-book experience is coming from two sources: dungeons and HBM.  With dungeons, one gets 3 per hour; thus in theory you can get 72 per day but in practice you probably sleep.  I do, anyway.  I usually use up my dungeons before bed, so, the next 6 hours and 40 minutes I am not maxxed out.  But if I sleep for 8 hours a day, I lose 3 dungeons per day there.  Also I occasionally have my dungeons max out when I am not paying attention for some reason.  I probably lose another 3 dungeons per day there.  So call it 66/day.  Since I three-starred ID4-10, I get 124971 experience (+14% for pets); that comes out to 9.4m EXP/day.

Now, HBM.  I am sweeping HB-S, and I almost never miss any.  You get 8 HBMs per day.  HBM-S is said to average about 600k EXP by a guy with data.  So, that's another 4.8m EXP/day.

The total experience per day is thus roughly 14.2m/day.  (You can see here why getting to ID4-10 is such a big deal.)

OK, now HB.  Non-book HB sources are more varied, but they largely come from these sources: nobility title bonus, boss 3, torch battle, guild wars, arena, expeditions, and quests.  My nobility title bonus is 8800, and I get another 14300 from boss 3.  My guild runs two torch battles per week and always gets the maximum reward, which is 10000 HB; this averages to 2857HB/day.  There are also two Guild Wars, in which I usually get 11-20th in my guild, for 3400HB each; this averages 971HB/day.  I am holding pretty steady at the 90/day level in arena, with perhaps 15-20 battles per day, maybe a third wins.  Call it 2400 HB/day.  Expeditions, I am currently getting about 28000 HB/day.  And finally, quests; this one is hard to estimate but I run 2-3 quests per day, and get perhaps 8000 HB/quest (not counting books).  Here's a reference on that.  With 2.5 per day, that's 20000HB/day.

So the total HB per day I am getting is about 50000 from all sources.

Now let's put the numbers in perspective.  9.4m/50000 is ~188.  This is far below the breakeven point computed above, namely, 262.  The books I am getting don't make up the difference.  And that explains why I never ever sell any books any more, and all of my heroes that matter are uncapped.  I need all the experience I can get!