Chest Boosting

Many aspects of the game are based off of your Chest Value. Learning how to maximize chest value will help you progress more quickly and break through walls you hit.

## What is Chest Value?

Chest Value is based on your expected shells/second that you could earn by mixing and selling the highest value ink you have unlocked. In the top right of the Mixers tab is an image of a chest that shows the ink currently being used to determine your Chest Value. By default this is done automatically, but later in the game you will be able to manually select which ink to use. 99.9% of the time the automatically selected ink is the one you want though.

In the game options you can enable the Chest Optimisation Helper which will add a display on your HUD that shows which ingredient of your current Chest value ink is limiting the value.

## What does Chest Value affect?

These item values are based off your chest value or highest chest value of your current run. Increasing chest value will increase all of the following:

1. Chests - current chest value
2. Bail Out - current chest value
3. Ink Order Shell Rewards - current chest value at time of order generation determines base reward value (there are also several modifiers to increase this further)
4. Mission Shell Rewards - highest chest value of your current run (shell rewards can be increased after a mission is started if you increase your highest chest value)

## How do I Chest Boost?

Chest boosting gets more and more complex as you climb business levels and unlock new game features. If you can't complete everything in this list, simply do what you can as every little bit helps.

1. Feed the squid that produces the limiting ink displayed in the Chest Optimisation Helper. Remember feeding to a x25 weight gives a large boost to ink production so try to feed in increments of at least 25 before moving to a new squid.
2. Re-assign lumens to boost the limiting ink displayed in the Chest Optimisation Helper. There are different strategies for this depending on how many lumens you currently own. Remember LED/Glowstick artifacts affect lumen values so if you have enough you'll want 15 on each active squid and then start assigning the rest based on limited ink. If you don't have enough lumens you may see a higher chest boost by simply assigning all to your limited ink. Assign in small increments and watch the helper to see when you need to add the next lumen(s) to a different squid.
3. Use buffs that increase color ink production. The best combo for maximum increase is Seafood Chowder, Gumbo, Crumbed Lobster, and Bisque.
4. Use Neptune monument to pray for Opulence. Once the opulence column is unlocked you can use Neptune to increase color ink production. It is recommended to reset your current prayers and put all points in Opulence when trying to chest boost.
5. Drop bait. Dropping a crumbed lobster bait will increase color ink production by 100%. This is extremely useful for boosting your max chest value of the run. If you have squids at mission level 100, try to drop the bait during their special boosts for maximum affect.
6. Use blue tokens. To get the highest possible chest value, assign blue tokens to Colour, Lumen, Value, and Chest Value.

## Other Tips:

1. Chest value does not take strokes into account so you only want to use items that affect base color production and ignore items that increase color produced by strokes.