So apparently Kabam decided to change how revives spawn in the game. You might have heard about this, there was some discussion about it recently. I'm not going to get into the specifics of why this change was made, I'm going to save that for the other thread and I direct anyone who wants to discuss that topic to head there as well. I'm just going to look at the numbers themselves, and what the consequences of those numbers were.
First, the Apothecary itself.
The Apothecary has relatively simple numbers, they boil down to this (as I understand them):
* Events will be available five days a week and presumably reset once per day.
* Two difficulties can be run, with rewards for completion and exploration.
* Fights can be done with autofight mode, but there will be no option to autocomplete the entire map (ala the daily quests).
Setting aside the healing potions for the moment (as revives are the critical resource being discussed here), we have one level 1 revive for exploring hard tier, a 1% chance to drop a level 1 revive in the easy tier, and a 5% chance to drop a level 2 revive in hard tier.
Most of the discussion surrounding revive farming has centered around being able to go beyond inventory caps and build up a temporary stash of them in overflow. So while they can have some benefit in terms of filling inventory quicker, for all intents and purposes we can disregard the random drops as being too unreliable to significantly impact revive stashes. A 5% chance to drop per day is statistically only 0.7 revives cumulative during the 14 day expiration window. In other words, less than one and thus negligible.
Essentially this means the best you can do is fill inventory (fifteen) and then get about ten more before revives start to expire from the overflow, which means twenty-five on hand for any content you might want to use them for. That's ... not a lot.
Separate from farming the Apothecary, there are other sources of revives, and they will continue to drop for the player. So they won't be limited to only twenty. If we account for other sources of revives that the player can gather during a fourteen day window, it is likely they could reasonably expect to have some number between 27 and 35 before they start to expire. For most players, probably less than 30 is the likely outcome. How does that compare to what's possible with Act 3 farming?
Let's consider the best case farming scenario without spending. The best source of revives within the content Kabam has announced adjustments for is 3.2.6 (3.2.4 also works, but I'm going to go with 3.2.6 here). If you follow the optimum strategy for farming revives, you can average one level 1 revive for every 32.9 energy spent (at least, that's what I measured the overall rate at). This requires following the optimum strategy: it is possible to get less than this, but let's assume this rate of drop. Assuming you don't subscribe to the Sigil, and assuming you sleep eight hours a day, the total energy budget for a player is 230 (that's 10 energy per hour for sixteen hours, and then a maximum of 70 energy overnight due to the energy cap). This means you can get 230/32.9 = 6.99 revives per day, which we will round to 7. If you do this every day until overflow starts to expire, you can have up to 14x7=98 revives in overflow. Including the fifteen in inventory, this is 113 revives.
You can do better than this. You can have ten energy refills in inventory, and you can also have energy refills in overflow. Let's assume you're saving up, and have ten energy refills in overflow accumulated over time. If you convert all those energy refills into revives, you end up with an additional 20*70/32.9 = 42.6, or at least 42. This means you could have 140 revives in overflow, plus ten in inventory, for a total of 155.
This is before any spending is accounted for, like subscribing to the Sigil (which among other benefits gives you more energy budget per day). And having ten energy refills in overflow is a moderate estimate. I've had a lot more. If you are an arena grinder, you will periodically open arena crystals. Every once in a while you'll get ten energy refills from the higher arena crystals. I've had thirty energy in overflow at times. Waiting for that to happen could get someone easily to 200 revives in inventory and overflow.
I am not judging the practice of farming those revives here. That's a discussion for another place. You could take these numbers and make the argument that the farming amounts are so high they are ridiculous and obviously must be curtailed. Or you could compare the farming potential against the Apothecary and conclude the Apothecary is way too low. For right here and right now, I'm just presenting the numbers themselves for others to use in their own way.
Since this is all going away, I will share what the optimal execution strategy is for running 3.2.6 that generates the maximum return on time and energy. You have a few weeks, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things any more, so go nuts (you probably won't be alone):
1. If there are no revives and no full energy refills, find a path with a small energy refill and do that path all the way to the end, and reset the map.
2. If there are no revives and no full energy refills and no small energy refills, run any path (you can grab small heals if you want - if you are a Sigil subscriber you can trade those in periodically for better potions).
3. If you see one or more revives or full energy refills, do this:
3a. Find the path that has the refill or revive closest to the entrance, and pick that path. Note: if a path has more than one of these, choose the path whose *last* revive or refill is closest to the entrance.
3b. As soon as you've collected all the refills and revives from that path, if it is the last such path run it to the end and complete the map.
3c. If there are more paths with refills or revives, stop immediately upon collecting the last revive/refill from the path you're on and exit the map. This preserves the rewards on the other paths so you can reenter and get them as well.
This will get you one revive per 32.9 energy, if you count all the energy you will get back from grabbing full and small energy refills. My recollection is that while 3.2.4 is comparable on the surface, its optimal running strategy generated slightly less return. But the difference is not large.
You might say I've had some time to refine this process precisely.
