Catalysts

**Catalysts** are a special resource you can apply to your various sources via Catalyst Shards, which are in turn earned via Trials, Bats, and Experiments. In particular, Trial of Valor and Trial of Talent guarantee to give you catalysts.

When you assign Catalyst shards to a Source they will stay there semi-permanently (can only be reclaimed via relics) on that Source and buff the mana production given by that source. There are three types of catalyst:

* Green catalysts, or "Additive" catalysts grant an additional 12.50% to the profits of this source.
* Red catalysts, which increase the quantity you have of a certain source.
* Blue catalysts, or "Multiplicative" catalysts, multiply the profits of this source by 4%.

[Toggle Notation]
Percentage
Multiplier

So the production given by that source is as such:

```
(Base Profit) * (1 + Additive Catalysts * 0.125) * (1 + 0.04)Multiplicative Catalysts

```

So the production given by that source is as such:

```
(Base Profit) * (1 + Additive Catalysts * 12.5%) * (1 + 4%)Multiplicative Catalysts

```

## Catalyst Shards

We receive catalyst shards from trials, bat drops, expeditions and experiments. The base number of shards received is equal to the number of *Catalysts* for a randomly selected source, plus 1. That base number is then multiplied by your Catalyst Income for that specific color.

Note :

The Catalyst Income from the statistics menu does NOT include color-specific increase NOR global bonuses (such as the weekly bonuses, who are color-specific anyway, rewards from events or bonus for special occasions such as Christmas, the anniversary of the game....)

To get the correct Catalyst Income you must thus pay attention to those values that are not shown in an unified place.

The cost to increment the number of Catalysts for a Source by 1 is equal to:

```
price = level + (growth^(level - 1))
```

level = amount of Catalysts in that source plus one

growth = 1.01 (green), 1.02 (red), 1.04 (blue)

*Example:* if you have 80 green Catalysts in a source, you will need 83.22 Catalyst Shards to reach 81 Catalysts (of proper color) in said source.

It has been proven (mathematically!) that the best way to maximize your Catalyst Shard drops is to have an even distribution (all sources should have the same number of catalysts). This strategy will be referred to as *Generation Configuration (**GC**)*.

For Myst generation, it is obviously optimal to spend all catalysts only in the sources that matter. E.g. only in Arcanaspring when playing . This strategy will be referred to as *Burst Configuration (**BC**).*

**You do *NOT* need to use BC, but it can help if you are stuck, typical cases are near e300, or when pushing as high as you can.**

### Configuration Swapping

Since you can fully refund all your catalyst shards at the cost of 2 Nullification Cores, it is possible to swap configuration, depending on need.

The idea is to swap from **GC** to **BC** when you are ready to burst at the end of a *long run*. You swap back after exiling. With this approach you are almost always in **GC** but you get the benefits of **BC** when you need it.

Note that you spend most of your time in **GC**, hence you are maximizing the catalysts drops from bats, trials, expeditions and experiments.