Mathematical Analysis of the Locus of Corruption (Version 2)

TL;DR at the end (for the lazy ones)

These days I made a post here talking about the math involved in the profit of the Locus of Corruption mechanic. After the discussion, I thought about redoing the “theoretical calculations” and reaching a conclusion about the best strategies in this mechanic.

Let’s go to the calculations. Let’s suppose that you are going to run 100 maps with Locus of Corruption (we will ignore other rooms for now), each run, you will take items worth 10d. It’s quite important to take expensive items, because if you profit 2x on 10 of these items, it would already pay for the 100d of the maps, now if you profit 4x on 10 items of 1d, you don’t even pay half the cost of the maps. In summary, the higher the cost of the item taken, the easier it will be to pay the cost of the maps. This does not mean that it is easier to pay for the purchased items. Some 100d items will NEVER sell for 1000d just because of two implicit.

So far we have, -100d from the maps, -1000d from the items in total.

50 of the runs you will lose the items, this already gives a guaranteed loss of -600d (items + maps), your other 50 runs need to pay for themselves and this loses.

If you take a bow or armor, there is a 25% chance of turning all white, although this is good, let’s agree that late game changing the color of the sockets is not so difficult, of course, an all-white equipment will sell for more, but not by much. Most of the time, it will sell for 1.5x or 2x the investment price. Let’s take a middle ground and say that your 250d of items in these runs can be sold for 400d, your profit is actually 150d, because you invested 250d in the items.

If you have taken an item like rings, amulets or belt, your item just got corrupted, you will PROBABLY be able to sell at the same price you paid, but often loses a little value. So let’s guess that on average you can sell them at -20% of the price you paid. In this case, your 250d would turn into 200d, having a loss of -50d

If you have taken Bow/Body Armour: -600d + 150d = -450d
If you have taken accessory: -600d - 50d = -650d

Your 25 runs that will give implicit ones need AT LEAST, to pay these losses, which I must say is relatively easy. Even if an item gains 2 bad implicit ones, there is a good chance that you can still sell for 2x the “base” value.

Here it is very difficult to calculate, I have already managed to transform a 1d item into 30d, obtaining a profit of 30x, on average, I would say that it is relatively easy to get at least 2x. Let’s do some calculations taking into account if your average is:

2x (20d each item): 500d, profit of 250d. It still wouldn’t pay the -450d and -650d. That is, if on average you are selling at 2x, your earnings do not pay the losses.

3x the base value (30d each item): 750d, profit of 500d. Here you would already pay for the first case, just by +50d. You need to be SURE that you will sell at 3x to have a meager profit of 50d

4x: 1000d, profit of 750d, would easily pay the -450d (total profit of 300d) and even the second case by little (total profit of 100d).

6x: 1500d, profit of 1250d, in the first case it would give a total profit of 800d and in the second case 600d

10x: 2500d, profit of 2250d, in the first case it would give a total profit of 1800d and in the second 1600d

On average, I would say that you need to have a guarantee that your 2 implicit runs are paying for at least 3x the invested value, otherwise you are having a loss. Many people end up having a huge profit once (like 40x) and forget that in the other 24 times they made a meager profit of 2x. And as I said, not every item has the ability to gain more than x10.

In this post I did a lot of theory, there is no way to know the condition of the market, just like in real life, you need to look for good opportunities (cheap items with high multiplication potential).

You have to take into account your chance of profiting from the boss drop, the drop in T3 Pools of Restoration, your profit in Doryani's, your lucky or guaranteed profit in Apex. I would say that is it easy to profit from this mechanic consistently.

TL;DR

-Try to use expensive items that have the potential to make a profit of up to x10 and consistently at x3, otherwise you will make a loss.

-Use items worth at least 10d, it's easier to pay for the maps' investment

-Use items that most of the implicit are good on them.

-Even if you follow all of this, you need to analyze the market, see if the item you want to make is actually being sold and the cost of the base items you are going to buy.

I see you also corrected "mathematically" to "mathematical". :o)
Nice.