I finally reached a point in WZI where I never stop digging, and I got curious about a strategy about the dig sites to select.
I found that people usually recommend to avoid the dig sites with a possibility for a poor artifact.

So I got interested in checking if these dig sites had some potential, and it turns out that actually all dig sites are precisely balanced at an average of 15 poor artifacts per day (given 1 common = 5 poor ; uncommon = 25 poor ; rare = 125 poor ; epic = 625 poor).

Then my strategy and the one I'd recommend would be to just constantly select the cheapest dig site, so as to also finish the current level the fastest. Sure, the poor artifacts almost amount to nothing, but the increased chance for epic and rare precisely compensates for that effect.

Has this kind of work been done properly elsewhere ? Did I do something wrong ?

Edited 5/11/2023 00:04:15

Yes, it is known that all dig sites have the same average return. There’s two other considerations I like to think about:

1. I like to choose a dig site that will complete when I am awake, after taking into account potential Time Warps

2. Early in a super ascension if I am looking for a particular artifact, I try to choose the 100% common (fastest) dig site to churn through digs quickly

Cost is less important to me because I have excess money on most levels as a long time player

If we talk statistics here, there are two concepts, not just one. Instead of only looking for the mean (which yes, all digging sites on average produce a fixed amount of value per time) you could also check the standard deviation. Without laying out any real maths here but if you have a 100%C site then you won't be surprised by a comon artifact, right? And with a C-U-site the difference between what you might get is quite small. But from a P-E-site most of the time you will get a poor artifact for way longer than a 100%C site would have taken. So that might be a objective reason why most players would rather prefer any other site over a P-E one. A smaller deviation limits the frustration, because - as we all know - when you gamble, you almost always get the worse outcome. ;)

Edited 5/11/2023 06:44:04

I also chose my site so that the it is finished right before I want to go to bed and then schedule one which is ready when I am awake next day. Thats the most efficient strat for me.

But when we are speaking of disappointment and deviation, I would also like to throw in predictability. For instance, I am always keeping track of which artifacts I have at which point in time. Then, after a week, for instance, I note down the artifacts which I have then. And so forth. Using that method, I can compute when I will have reached some certain goal.

Real example:

legs	day		poor	common	uncommon	rare	epic	legendary	insane
6	17.04.2023	0	0	0		0	0	1		1
6,401	11.05.2023	1	1	0		5	1	1		1

Using this method, I can compute my current digging speed and predict that I will have my 2nd legendary around mid June.

If you do many poor/epic digs, you probably dig poors for a long time and the prediction will rather say September for a long time. When you then finally hit the epic, the prediction will jump by months and say June again... Its just a bit harder to plan and align with other goals, like reaching certain wzib rewards (I will reach the epic from wzib around the first week in June, aligning perfectly with the digging).

If you are relatively new to the game (first non-super ascension, say), it's worth considering that even if you get lucky with an epic dig, the epic artifact may end up being completely useless to you until you are ready to make a legendary. So while the eventual value of that dig averages out, the immediate value is substantially lower. Whereas with commons and uncommons you can be pretty confident of getting use out of them in the near future.

(Rare digs are, unsurprisingly, a bit of a middle ground there. Building an epic out of rares is obviously going to happen a lot sooner than building a legendary.)

For the most part, like other people here, I manipulate my digging choices around the time when they will finish and how that compares with my waking (non-working) hours and time warps. Subject to that, I have a preference for commons overall so that I can get a larger spread of artifact types, making it more likely I get the ones I want (which I will then build up). This holds true even when I'm making legendaries, as I make backup artifacts (at a lower level) for the epics I'm about to sacrifice so that I don't lose their functionality entirely.

I took 2 approaches that are opposite-ish of the ones most present here, and 1 that aligns with others.

Case 1) new to the game, don't have a lot of good artis [sounds like you're here]
- Dig 100% C and some high % UCs
- balance them out
- doing the R/E digs may not pay off even if you get the R/E results from them - unless it's a good arti (~6/41 chance = ~15% chance), then you're waiting until you get other R/E artis to upgrade something else to E/L
- at this stage, you need to build up the artis you want to use/upgrade

Case 2) experienced but pre-ability to dig all digs on all levels I complete [you're probably months away from being able to leverage this succesfully]
- at a point where I still have to choose a handful of digs do on a given map, few to no 20% dig speed buffs from SAsc rewards
- I focus on the Rare & Epic digs, blasting the dig speed down with Insane TW
- timing of dig completion and activation of TW typically doesn't align, so goal is waste as little digging time as possible given the +8 hrs jump
- digging the R & E digs gives a longer dig time which means less coming back in 8 hrs to micromanage the digs
- eg:
- if you have 3 hrs dig time remaining (doesn't matter what type of artifact you're digging), it makes more sense to wait 3 hrs, start a new dig and the blast TW
- if you're stepping away from the game for 10+ hrs and TW isn't up, you want a dig that will take 10+ hrs, not 8 hrs and then me idle waiting for you to collect & start another = not a C dig
- if TW is up, then you can for example pop a 3% E dig, blast TW, come back later
- it's a matter of how often you play, how often you _want_ to play, how much to like to micromanage your digs, etc; I'd rather have a handful of better digs than an army of lesser digs
- this may change if you are searching for a specific artifact, in this case doing C digs makes more sense
- but if you have everything you need and are just upgrading, I prefer to hold out for the R & E digs, notably using TW to speed them up
- notably if you have the CW artifact dig speed buff on, C takes 5 hrs to finish, so dig a C + blast TW is wasteful of 3 hrs, so I avoid that

Case 3) post ability to dig all digs on all levels completed [you're probably >12-18 months away from being able to leverage this method]
- with ~50x 20% arti dig speed SAsc reward buffs, now I just get auto-dig dig and dig absolutely everything on every map
- the key now is just upgrading all E/R/U digs, toss the C/P digs, SAsc again and repeat
- with this strat, can get a few E/R digs every few days (every Hex clear for sure), then a couple L's in a week, an insane in a few weeks/month