Grinding Methods for Boss Strike
by Rggcd
4 min read
Boss Strike 1 is over! Congratulations to the top 3 guilds - Tier 14 is no small feat.
Many people were caught off guard by Firemod and struggled to clear waves efficiently. Future strikes may be even harder and as such can cause unsustainably high losses. This analysis looks at methods that allow you to play Boss Strike without playing Boss Strike.
Playing Normally
This is the intended method to earn points in Boss Strike. This varies based on Boss Strike difficulty, but it serves well as a point of comparison to methods discussed later.
| Player | Points per Hour |
|---|---|
| Prepared Player (Dragons, Lightning Dragoon) |
~70,000 |
| Non-Nano Limit | ~90,000 |
| Optimized Spender | ~100,000 |
The presence of Firemod was surprisingly beneficial as it evened the playing field between paying and free players at the higher end of scoring. Dragons were especially strong and were instrumental in bridging the gap between spender and F2P formations.
Unfortunately, it also made the vast majority of recommended damage dealers pointless. Many players were not able to take advantage of Firemod, yet suffered instakills from enemy fire units.
| Metric | BS Points | Time at 70k/hr (Hours) |
Time at 90k/hr (Hours) |
Time at 100k/hr (Hours) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Million | 1,000,000 | 14.29 | 11.11 | 10.00 |
| Tier 10 | 12,970,915 | 185.30 | 144.12 | 129.71 |
| Tier 11 | 24,944,355 | 356.35 | 277.16 | 249.44 |
| Tier 12 | 48,891,235 | 698.45 | 543.24 | 488.91 |
| Tier 13 | 96,784,995 | 1,382.64 | 1,075.39 | 967.85 |
| Tier 14 | 192,572,515 | 2,751.04 | 2,139.69 | 1,925.73 |
| Tier 15 | 384,147,555 | 5,487.82 | 4,268.31 | 3,841.48 |
| Hikari (Top Player) |
7,509,906 | 107.28 | 83.44 | 75.10 |
| PWar Phalanx (Top Guild) |
245,068,854 | 3,500.98 | 2,722.99 | 2,450.69 |
Nanoing Donations
Donating resources is the other intended method to earn points. This won’t make too much of an impact unless you have an immense amount of storage.
There is however a “less honest” aspect to this mechanic: You can purchase Tier 1 or Tier 2 resources at a rate of 1 Nanopod for 49 resources.
This is typically used by whales on top of grinding normally to bolster their scores, but what if you were to replace grinding completely with buying resources?
The best value purchase is the Airlift of Nanopods, costing 200 USD and giving 5600 Nanopods. This gives an exchange rate of 28 Nanopods per USD.
| Points per Airlift | Points per USD |
|---|---|
| 274,400 | 1372 |
If you were to work instead of grind Boss Strike, here are the hourly wages you would need to reach certain hourly point income thresholds:
| Point Income | Hourly Income (USD) |
|---|---|
| 40,000 | $29.15 |
| 50,000 | $36.44 |
| 60,000 | $43.73 |
| 70,000 | $51.02 |
| 80,000 | $58.31 |
| 90,000 | $65.60 |
| 100,000 | $72.89 |
Clicking the donate button and confirming the Nanopod purchase takes time. I will assume it takes 2 seconds. Though insignificant in low quantities, the time taken is quite noticeable when donating large amounts.
| Metric | BS Points | USD Needed | Donations Needed | Time to Donate (Hours) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Million | 1,000,000 | $728.86 | 1000 | 0.56 |
| Tier 10 | 12,970,915 | $9,454.02 | 12971 | 7.21 |
| Tier 11 | 24,944,355 | $18,181.02 | 24945 | 13.86 |
| Tier 12 | 48,891,235 | $35,635.01 | 48892 | 27.16 |
| Tier 13 | 96,784,995 | $70,543.00 | 96785 | 53.77 |
| Tier 14 | 192,572,515 | $140,358.98 | 192573 | 106.99 |
| Tier 15 | 384,147,555 | $279,990.93 | 384148 | 213.42 |
| Hikari (Top player) |
7,509,906 | $5,473.69 | 7510 | 4.17 |
| PWar Phalanx (Top Guild) |
245,068,854 | $178,621.61 | 245069 | 136.15 |
As of writing, there is an Epic Games Store promotion which provides 20% cashback on some purchases. This applies to Airlifts, so multiply the USD values by 0.8 to see the discounted costs.
The amount of money needed is quite insane, even for small donation amounts. Unless whaling for leaderboard spots, that money is better spent on buying or repairing units to increase grinding efficiency. Hiring someone to grind would be far cheaper, though it would be against ToS.
Greenborough (Pre-Nerf)
This doesn’t apply to Boss Strike 1 as the donation resource was Concrete rather than Lumber, and will never apply as Greenborough got nerfed.
Greenborough used to give 30 Lumber every 5 seconds. This means 300 a minute, or 18,000 Lumber per Hour. If Lumber was the donation resource, this means you could very reasonably get 18,000 BS Points an hour from exclusively farming Greenborough.
It would take 55.56 hours to reach 1 million points with this strategy.
Probably not the best idea unless your units are horribly underleveled. Not that it matters anymore, considering it's no longer an option.
Doing BFC for Stone
The most stupid idea. Bigfoot Country gives 150 Stone per encounter, and you can turn this Stone into concrete at a Concrete Plant.
A run at BFC takes 21 seconds on average (19 normally, +10% for Striker placement RNG). This gives a Stone income of 428.57 Stone per Minute, or 25,714.29 Stone per Hour.
| Stat | Concrete Plant | Adv. Concrete Plant |
|---|---|---|
| Input | 688 Stone/hr | 922 Stone/hr |
| Output | 344 Concrete/hr | 605 Concrete/hr |
| Conversion Ratio | 2:1 | 1.52:1 |
| Score per Hour | 12,857.14 | 16,873.26 |
| # of Plants Needed | 38 | 28 |
| Time to Reach 1 Million (Hours) | 77.78 | 59.27 |
It’s... something? You’d need an absurd number of Concrete Plants of either kind, but it’s technically a way to earn points.
You could skip building 25+ Concrete plants if you were spending Nanos to rush the Concrete jobs. Doing this, you could go from 1 Nano for 49 Concrete to 1 Nano for 605 Concrete. This means 16,940 points per USD, up from 1,372 points per USD. But given that you’re still grinding, just buy Nano units instead and play the actual Boss Strike.
If you didn’t raise the right units, your units are all dead, and/or you don’t have R6 Wimps, this is technically something you could do.
Just take a break.
Don’t build 30 Concrete Plants.