[Tips] Enrage or not enrage; this is how you get XP -OR- How to improve your XP gains (WL 300+)

No enraging - low WL player don't like tougher monster and they don't have fury

Shy enraging - sure, a little bit, but not so high and leave it be for a while. The monster get stronger really fast

Aggressive enraging - you go full crazy and enrage the waves as fast as possible, high and lower it bit by bit if they push forward

Preparation

The setup

The playstyle

No enrage - obvious. I did nothing and played the game



Shy enrage - At wave 30, I used a G4 gem in the enrage slot. After that, I played the game until the mobs push slowly forward. If I see that, I removed the gem. No lower gem was used after that.



Agressive enrage - At wave 30, I used a G4 gem in the enrage slot. I upped this grad as much as I could with my mana, while still upgrading the other stuff. The max was ~G8. If I see, that mobs push slowly forward, I removed the gem and used a gem one grad lower. I repeated this until I died or completely removed it. You can see it as the max enrage for every wave at every time.

The data

No enrage

Shy enrage

Agressive enrage

No enrage

Shy enrage

Aggressive enrage

No enrage

Shy enrage

Aggressive enrage

Switch Adaptive Carapace with Haste 12

Remove Adaptive Carapace

Conclusion

Hello there,in this forum, we talked about a lot of stuff. Which traits should you use, the talisman and the bingo bonuses, wich gems are good, mana farms, kill setups and even about achievements. But one topic was never really mentioned - wave enraging. Wave enraging is a feature, that is underestimated by low WL player and even higher ones. There are ~3 types of enraging.But what is the right choice? Is agggressive enraging only for high WL player? Is the Shy enraging better, because you maintain it longer? Is no enraging a thing as long as you don't have fury? To answer that, I did a lot of different test runs with different setups an noted down the XP values. Now, I want to share my data with you.But first, the boring stuff... If you don't like it, skip to "The data" further below.I was curious, how enraging on low WL performs, so I simulated a low WL to a certain extend. My goal was a WL of 250-300 -ish. If we get here a clear winner, it will be better on high WL, because mana farms, your damage and fury scales everything up.Talisman:I removed everything. No bonuses for me. No +X% XP gain; no +X% dmg to enemies, no initial mana and so on. I had only high fragments with really good mods. You don't have that at WL200-300.Skills:I restricted myself to 1741 Skillpoints. This is a WL~250. You probably have more points at WL250, because of the achievements, the achievement reset and trials.Ignore the poison, pylon and lantern skill. I don't use them in my tests. I dumped my points into it, so that I don't start with 200k+ mana.Without my talisman, I have 1574 starting mana (skillpoints + 300 from the map). That's a tower and maybe one G3 gem.The skill distribution is not optimal. No, even worse. It's bad. A real mana farm doesen't really work at this WL. Usually I would skip mana here and increase my damage and mana stream. So I made it harder for me.But why all those restrictions and and bad skill distribution? Well, I still have one big advantage. My real WL is 5000+ and I only simulate a WL 250. As a WL this high, I get this:It's huge. 5000 mana per minute? That's more mana generation than a real WL250 ever can hope for in early waves even with a mana farm, early wave calls and monster kills. So my data is a little off. Still, I think we'll get a rough ideaI did three groups with the three different enrage stratagies no enrage, shy enrage and aggressive enrage.Without traitsThis is a base. We can see here, how the different enrage stratagies affect the XP gain.Only with OvercrowdFirst, Overcrowd is a little special. It's the only trait, that makes the game easier. Now we could argue, that Corrupted Banishment, Dark Masonry and Ritual are easy too, but in real they make the game harder.Corrupted Banishment - once you leek, it's over. A Shadow, two swarmling waves with speed mod or something like that, can kill you.Dark Masonry - The beacons that spawn from that are not the problem. A gem, 3 grades lower than your killgem, is enough to destroy them. The real problem are late giants with buffed HP and a beacon mod. You won't destroy a single beacon, that they spawn. A shield or speed beacon at the wrong place, and it's over. Yes, there are counter for that with building on every space, but again, we are "WL250".Ritual - Ritual is also a little special. You get 12 "boss mobs". But those boss mobs appear near the end of your max endurance. You won't kill that shadow or spire at a high wave. They can end your run ~10-20 waves early.Second, Overcrowd is the only trait, that synergies with enraging. You get 120% more monster per wave and that is multiplied with X% monster from enraging. They all get the full XP bonus from enraging. Swarmling parasite doesn't do this. The parasites aren't affected by the enrage XP. If a normal swarmling nets you 10k XP, a parasite with 100XP is just annoying.A usual trait setup - the normal runWe've seen the base, how overcrowd affect your game, sooo... let's do a normal run. All the traits from above are activated and at 12 (no swarm para, tho). I also added Adaptive Carapace.No Adaptive Carrapace and Haste runsI did 2 bonus runs with no Adaptive Carrapace and switching Adaptive Carapace with Haste. Both traits are mention often, when it comes to XP runs. I like them too, but they aren't that good, that early.All runs were done at W1. It has the lowest starting HP and an easy layout.This is my layoutIt's just a showcase. I can't build it right away with ~1500 starting mana. The grades of the gems will rise of course. I used 3*3 mana farms with slow, a slow+bleed and a 1Tower8Amp setup. The other yellow gem is for early shadows, beacons and so on.The mana farm was pretty much useless for a while. So it was a nice mana dump for my natural mana regen.I tried consistent runs. So until wave 30, I always did the same. I build the same, had the same grades and so on. After wave 30, I started with enraging in enrage runs. In a real run, you would start earlier. So I lost XP. I never used whiteout on my mana farms. Spells were only for killing stuff. I did enchant my traps with beam or barrage. You should always do that.So after wave 30, I played my best. There were no milestones, I just played normally. So to get good data, I wanted three valid runs per group and enrage stratagie. A run is valid, if I can't kill the mobs anymore. A death by a shadow or spire (again, you can't kill them near your max endurance), didn't count. So, 9 setups, 3 valid runs each = at least 27 runs.But how did I enrage?Now finally the intresting part. The data is the average of the 3 valid runs. So keep +-5% XP in mind. It was nice to see. The three valid runs for a setup had the same the ending wave and XP every time (+-3 Waves and +-5%XP). Also intresting, every group had almost the same ending waves with the three setups. It wasn't like: "Ok, no enrage? 10 more waves. Aggressive enrage? 20 less waves". I did noted the XP values for wave 130 and for their ending waves down. Wave 130 was intresting, because I started the real play at wave 30. So 100 waves in.No traitsWave 130Wave 146Wave 130Wave 145Wave 130Wave 146I couldn't sustain the enrage gem for long - for both enrage strategies.OvercrowdWave 130Wave 170Wave 130Wave 169Wave 130Wave 171I could sustain the enrage gem for much longer and had a way higher grad for the aggressiv enrage. Also, look at the number of the "No enrage" run. Overcrowd only is a 2.2 multiplier. But is almost tripeld my end XP. You get way more mana just from killing stuff. More mana, higher kill gem, higher wave.The "normal" runWave 130Wave 150Wave 130Wave 151Wave 130Wave 149Booom. The XP explodes for that WL and idiotic skills+talisman. 2.5 million XP? How many levels would you gain?Adaptive carapace kicked me really in the butt. We now, that Overcrowd gives you lot more waves. Adaptive Carapace... yeah, it reduces this advantage. Also, I had to reduce my enrage gem way earlier as I liked. It didn't feel right. I mean, the XP gain is still nice and aggressive enrage wins the third time, but.. can I push the numbers even higher? So that's why I did the special runs.I didn't do "no enrage" or "shy enrage", just "aggressive enrage"Did not finish.I leaked at round 80-100 everytime. And with Corrupted Banishment, a leak is game over. It was aweful. I couldn't even enrage much. That's why I always say: "Hast is a beginner trap"Don't. Use. It. Early.Enrage higher. You'll have enough mobs on your roads with that. Hast is later a no brainer.Wave 130Wave 160That felt goooood. I sustained my enrage gem way longer. I still died early, but I had always a stupid Shadow+Spire combo at this stage. And after all those runs, I didn't wanna try it until I had three valid runs. I mean, We already see a good XP raise just by removing Adaptive Carapace.What did we learn? Enrage, enrage, enrage. Don't be shy, try it out. Go ham on it. You get a feeling for it, after a few runs. You'll see, what you can handle. The mobs push forward? Remove one or two levels. This works early WL and the gap between the three stratagies only continues to grow with fury, a proper mana farm and more dmg.Later, the thumb of rule: enrage gem grade = kill gem grad. You won't do that early WL, because you don't have the mana for it. The thumb of rule here: Your kill setup still one shots the monster? Raise the gem. Don't increase or decrease the gem every wave, because if you switch it out, the next wave won't be enraged.Also I want you to remember: I simulated my WL and had a high natural mana regen. You won't pull off the same numbers with WL250. I'm pessimistic here and say, cut the XP values down by 50% and that is what you can expect. Still, the fact that aggressive enraging wins, stays.Cheers