Overflow payouts (Guide)

Many carousels (repeatable multi-action sequences) have a mechanism in which they track progress by some quality, provide a primary payout after some threshold of that quality has been reached, and reward any excess of that quality with a secondary payout of another item. Since it is possible to keep taking actions to raise the quality, in many cases indefinitely, this can be an effective way to earn the secondary item. However, additional actions are typically required to enter/leave the carousel, and those along with actions spent to receive the primary payout reduce the efficiency of the secondary payout in the short term.

For example, in The Spider Symposium, the tracking quality is Chelicerae Clicked in Applause, and the smallest available primary payout is 1 x Volume of Collated Research, for 10 x Chelicerae Clicked in Applause. The secondary payout is Silk Scraps, paid at a rate of 10 per Chelicerae Clicked in Applause. Besides actions spent earning the tracking quality, the carousel requires 1 action to enter, 1 action to receive rewards, and 1 action to leave (mandatory after cashing out). Thus, if a player can average 10 Chelicerae Clicked in Applause per action, they can earn 100 Silk Scraps per action, with 4 actions of setup; if they can average 30 Chelicerae Clicked in Applause per action (close to the maximum possible), they can earn 300 Silk Scraps per action, with 3.33 actions of setup. This is because at 10 CCiA per action, the first progress-gaining action is used entirely for setup, but at 30 CCiA per action, the first progress-gaining action is divided into 1/3 setup (providing the minimum for the primary payout) and 2/3 secondary payout.