If you’ve read our Basic Trading Strategy guide, or simply been playing the game for a little while, you’ve likely already learned that each player is randomly assigned one of each type of good that has a production boost, based on where they are located on the map.

These “boosted” goods can be produced much faster than any other good.

This article takes a deeper dive into the boosted goods strategy, and how to best use it to your advantage.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

• Identifying your boosts
  • Possible Boost Combinations
• How production boost works
• Sell your non-boosted manufactories!
• Reasons to produce non-boosted goods

IDENTIFYING YOUR BOOSTS

First things first, let’s review how to identify what your boosted goods are.

There are 3 ways:

1. View the provinces around your city at the 12:00, 8:00, and 4:00 positions:

View your own boosts from the map, or use this method to determine the boosts of your neighbors and fellows.

2. Check the “relics” tab in your Main Hall.

View what your boosted goods are, as well as the % boost that has been earned so far.

You can also get to the relics tab anytime from the world map:

3. Hover over the goods icon at the top of your screen, and your boosted goods will be highlighted in the display:

Boosted goods are highlighted in the goods inventory at the top of your screen, whether they have been unlocked or not.

POSSIBLE BOOST COMBINATIONS

There are 9 possible boost combinations in Elvenar. They are:

Possible Boost Combinations

HOW PRODUCTION BOOST WORKS

You’ll unlock your first production boost for your “Basic” (a.k.a. “tier 1”) good type very early on in the game in the research tree.

Your boost % is fueled by relics; the more you earn, the higher your boost will go (up to 700%!) You can check anytime to see how many more you need to earn the next increase.

The production boost adds the earned boost % of the base production on top of itself. Therefore a 200% boost means one is earning 300% of, or 3x, their basic production rate.

(This is unlike culture boost, which gives you your bonus % OF the basic rate, not on top of.)

Example:

When we view the production amounts in the steel manufactory window, we can see each option has a small green arrow with the production amount in green font, showing us it is being boosted by something.

When we hover over this from any of the production options, we see a breakdown of what the production amount is composed of:

Similarly, for a manufactory that is already mid-production, you can click on it, and hover over the production amount to see the breakdown:

In each of these views, we can see that the regular production is only 42.

And this is very early on in the game! Check out this city, towards the end of chapter IV, with a 337% steel production boost:

And as you continue collecting relics, it just keeps getting better and better!  The maximum boost that can be earned is 700%, which can be achieved with 500 relics.  Mountain Halls Ancient Wonder can add an additional boost on top of this maximum.

SELL NON-BOOSTED MANUFACTORIES!

Many players start out building all manufactory types, because, well, we need all the types of goods, so we need all the types of manufactories, right?

Wrong!

We can trade! So there is no need to produce goods that we cannot make as efficiently (just like in the real world – specialization and trade helps us ALL do better!)

We can get into the merits of self-reliance vs. dependency later on, but for now, let’s just take a look at the costs for production involved with trying to produce all of the factory types.

PRODUCING ALL GOODS

Let’s start with a simple example. Let’s look at a relatively newer city. Human race, just past beginning chapter IV, with a steel boost at 291%.

Let’s take a look at the costs and benefits for a city at this size to produce each type of first tier good.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume the highest advanced manufactory level for each good has been achieved, but for steel, to keep things more or less even, we’ll look at the costs and outputs for level 9 (human steel can be upgraded through level 10 before unlocking superior manufactories in research, but planks and marble only 9, and 8 respectively.)

Let’s take a look at the total goods production that this city can achieve with an “average” amount of space dedicated to having some of each factory.

Note: We know that manufactories aren’t all apples to apples; they vary in size, and they vary in level ranges for each stage (basic, advanced, superior).  However, one thing that is relatively consistent among them throughout the levels is cost and production per square used, which is why we’ll be sure we’re comparing total squares used in both examples to keep things fairly even.

This city will produce 603 total goods every three hours, and still be quite unbalanced. This player will still either need to trade or use the wholesaler to supplement for planks and marble.If trying to stay relatively balanced, this player would have about 200 steel to trade to their fellowship every 3 hours.

PRODUCING ONLY BOOSTED GOODS

Next, let’s take a look at what could be achieved if this player were to sell off the 2 planks and 3 marble, and replace those factories with 4 more steel factories, for a total of 6, which would take up the same amount of space.

This city will produce DOUBLE the amount of goods every 3 hours, for roughly the same cost in coins, supplies, population, and space!

And that’s with only 291%! It gets even better as the game goes on!

It goes without saying, this player will need to trade a lot of goods to stay balanced. But this player will also be able to help their fellowship out with a LOT more trades, helping themselves and their fellows to have far more goods overall.

This player will have roughly 800 goods to trade, if trading away 1/3 (400) of total production for planks, and 1/3 (400) for marble.

That’s 4x (800 vs. 200) the amount of goods available for trading, compared to what this player would have if they were trying to produce all the types of goods themselves.

The bottom line is that factories are expensive. Why spend precious resources, time and space on anything that is only worth 1/3 of an alternative that costs the same!

REASONS TO PRODUCE NON-BOOSTED GOODS

Let’s take a look at some reasons one might want to hang onto non-boosted manufactories.

DON’T WANT TO BE RELIANT ON TRADING

“I don’t want to be reliant on trading to get the goods I need.”

Did you see the comparison? You’re going to need to trade either way if you want to get enough goods.

DON’T WANT TO WAIT FOR TRADES

“It takes too long to wait for trades, and if I make at least some on my own, I won’t have to wait all the time.”

How many 3 hr cycles will it take to produce 300 (The difference between the boosted output and each non-boosted output with factories at the level used in this example) of each non-boosted good?

It will take 3. That’s 9 hours. Or 3 times as long.

Can you get trades picked up in 9 hours? If yes, boosted only is still better. If no, get into a more active fellowship or recruit more active members for your fellowship, because you’re going to struggle without doing that regardless.

Sure, you’re waiting for trades. But would you rather wait 0-24 hours for trades and have 3x the amount of goods? Or wait 9 more hours for production (IF you’re resetting every 3 hr on the nose, or it will take longer) that will keep using up your tools and coins but spit out goods at a snail’s pace?

With boosted only, you will definitely have more goods overall. It won’t be long before you’ll have so many you won’t be waiting around for trades at all. All one needs to do is stay ahead of their needs by a day or so, which is easy to do when one is producing 3x as much! Post trades after every collection. Every time you collect your boosted goods, post trades for 1/3 of what you collected for each of your non-boosted goods, and you’ll have more than enough in no time.

WANT MORE GOODS FOR TRADING

“Producing all types of goods, I can help with all trades in my fellowship, and not just the ones for my boosted good.”

You saw the chart that shows how little one can produce with a non-boosted factory, right? You’re going to need those for yourself, how could you possibly afford to trade them away? And with fewer goods produced overall, that’s fewer goods available for trading.

The more you produce, regardless of what you’re producing, the more you can trade with your fellowship, and the more helpful you can be. A good trader can facilitate trades between neighbors and fellows to help as many people as possible regardless of what their boosted good is and what it is that they themselves are producing.

FELLOWSHIP SHORTAGE OF GOODS

“My fellowship is short on a particular good, so I’m helping out by producing some of it.”

Go ahead and re-read the answer above, the same applies here, too.

Help your fellowship by balancing your production among your boosted goods. If your fellowship is over-producing your 1st tier good for example, but short on your 3rd tier, consider building fewer of your 1st in favor of more of your 3rd. It’s not very cost effective for anyone to try to produce goods they can only produce at 3x the cost and time, or at 1/3 of the speed.

Surely there’s a more effective way than to waste space, population, and upgrade resources on a manufactory that contributes so little.

Work with your fellowship to find the goods you’re short on through facilitating neighbor trades, and/or to recruit members who produce them.

IT LOOKS COOL AND I WANT IT

“I’m not all that concerned with how quickly I progress or build my city up, I just want to have a cool city, or I just really like the variety or the look of other manufactories.”

Well, that’s as good a reason as any! Fair enough, no arguments, here. Build your city in whatever way makes you happiest! That is, after all, the whole point!

CONCLUSION

We hope you found this guide helpful in understanding how boosted goods work, and why it is more efficient to only produce boosted goods.

This article should in no way, however, be taken as any sort of declaration of the best and only way to play – there are many goals in the game of Elvenar, and not all of them revolve around efficiency!

If, however, one’s goal is to have the most efficient city and the easiest time progressing through the game, there’s simply no debate about it, it’s a fact – Boosted-only IS the best way to go.

For yourself, and for your fellowship. It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s just math. 🙂