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 Post subject: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 9th, 2014, 6:30 am 
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Most people believe that daily challenges are always worth doing for the "free xp", but this argument only works when a challenge bag is received. So, for those challenges that don't give bags, let's try to figure out what challenges are and aren't worth the effort, both time and price wise. The only ones that I really know of are the firemaking challenges (seriously, 320 elder logs for a handful of xp?) but I want to open this up for everybody so that we all have a reference of which ones we should do and which ones we should skip.

For anybody wondering how much this challenge would cost:
Elder Logs currently average 4091 coins on the Grand Exchange. Multiply this by the 320 logs you have to buy and you're looking at a cost of 1,309,120 coins for (assuming you have flame gloves, ring, and a bonfire with 5+ people) 156,800 experience.

For comparison, let's assume you have level 99 firemaking with the same criteria, but you are using maple logs instead. That money can buy 43,637 logs, which equates to 8,339,030 experience at 191.1 xp per log. Surely nobody has that kind of patience, so we will look at Yew Logs instead.

3305 Yew Logs for the same amount of money times 283.8 experience per log gives 937,159 experience. In reality, most people would probably use Yew logs for firemaking training. With that being said, for this challenge to be cost efficient it would have to give roughly 780,000 xp upon completion.




TL;DR
Unless you are made of money, don't do challenges for burning Elder Logs. You're better off spending an extra 3 hours burning Yews.

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 Post subject: Register and login to get these in-post ads to disappear
PostPosted: September 9th, 2014, 6:30 am 
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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 9th, 2014, 11:40 am 
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Here's one spreadsheet (http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1569759-w ... ly-challenges-to-do/) nicely formatted with some data, and a more complete, less neatly formatted list (http://www.xp-waste.com/daily-challenge-xp-t3770.html) that I could find.

I'm also interested in collecting data on the frequency of which different items from mystery bags received from challenges occur. I'll probably make a thread on this forum regarding that soon but if you would be interested in contributing to that effort send me a PM :).

P.S. is there a way to hyperlink directly to something through a word rather than pasting URL's here (i.e., <a href = "URL">click here</a>) on this forum? I don't see it in the tags.

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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 10th, 2014, 2:38 am 
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Good analysis for cost efficiency. You are right that you need to be able to make some good money for it to be worth doing that challenge. I'd like to expand your analysis to show the conditions under which doing this challenge would be worth your money using opportunity costs.

It takes approximately 105 seconds to burn 28 logs at a bonfire with resetting inv, that is 960 logs per hour. Keep in mind that XP/log varies based on your level with bonfires; the following is based on my firemaking level: 96. Therefore (with bonfire boosts and fire ring + gloves):
LogXP/logGP/logXP/hrGP/hr
Elder492.24,047472,512-3,885,120
Magic340.81,039327,168-997,440
Yew286.6400275,136-384,000
Maple190.330182,688-28,800

Now for the Elder logs challenge, you burn 320 logs for normal experience and then you get about 50k extra experience for handing in the challenge. Lets expand that bonus into XP/hr and Cost/hr to directly compare it with the above. It takes 20 minutes to burn 320 logs, and I will add another 30 seconds for handing in the challenge. That works out to 207,504 XP and -1,295,040 GP in 20.5 min, which expands into:
-XP/hrGP/hr
Burn Elder Logs Daily Challenge607,329-3,790,361

Now you can compare the time efficiency of the base training methods to the daily challenge and estimate time saved based on doing the challenge as it comes up compared to regular training methods:
LogXP Efficiency to dailyExtra time required for same XPTotal GP spent to meet XPGP SavedGP Saved/Extra Hrs
Elder0.77817.1 min4,993,621-1,108,501-3,885,119
Magic0.53951.4 min1,851,5692,033,5512,374,752
Yew0.45372.4 min847,6333,037,4872,515,772
Maple0.301139.5 min95,7433,694,6181,589,489

First of all, elder logs compared to doing the challenge for elder logs is wildly inefficient, which is to be expected since the only big difference between them is the extra XP for handing in the challenge. But if you look at the last column for the other log types, you can see how much money you'd need to be able to make with other methods for doing the challenge to be worth the extra money.

For example ignoring the challenge and doing yew logs instead will save you 3.04mil GP, but cost you 72.4min of extra time for every hour you would have spent doing elder log daily challenges. If you have a money making method that can make you more than 2,515,772 GP/Hr, it would be worth it to do the challenge and instead use your money making method in the time you have saved to make that money back. (And it's a bonus if that money making method earns you XP as well. Then you are getting more XP and saving more time!)

If you can kill the QBD without using a lot of food, it is usually at least 4mil GP/hr profit and you gain XP in combat skills while you are doing it. There are also other monsters that can earn you a decent profit such as frost dragons or glacors. Therefore, doing this elder logs challenge can be worth it to a lot of people.


Arceus wrote:
P.S. is there a way to hyperlink directly to something through a word rather than pasting URL's here (i.e., <a href = "URL">click here</a>) on this forum? I don't see it in the tags.

You can use the url tag:
Code:
[url=http://www.google.com/]Google[/url]


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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 10th, 2014, 5:12 am 
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I should make it clear that neither of those links are my work. I just remembered coming across one and searched Google to find the other :P. And thanks for the URL bit; I must have misunderstood how the tag worked at first.

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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 16th, 2014, 6:43 pm 
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For anybody wondering, I did a cooking daily for 498 rocktails. I ended up getting 168,115 xp for it. Not bad for a little under 30 minutes.

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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 19th, 2014, 3:53 am 
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I woudln't go out of my way to do a slayer task, that's for sure.

Also, a lot of tasks are quite expensive to do, like construction at the moment. Also the challenge bag doesn't really give you as much as it costed because you have to pay a lot more than the ge price,

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 Post subject: Register and login to get these in-post ads to disappear
PostPosted: September 19th, 2014, 3:53 am 
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 Post subject: Re: Daily Challenges: When They Aren't Worth It
PostPosted: September 20th, 2014, 10:51 am 
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I got an adamant daggers challenge, and was greeting with a mystery bag of P2P items (frost dragon bones if I recall correctly). I went and blocked Smithing straight away!

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