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%.

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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 number of shards received is:
$Shards=(N+1)\times M\times C\times G\times S$

where:

• N = Number of Catalysts for a randomly selected source
• M = Catalyst income multiplier from trials, legacy, realm upgrades, shut-in triumph and daily offer buff. Only this number is shown in the total statistics menu
• C = Catalyst income multiplier for this colour from catalyst memetics
• G = Global catalyst income multiplier from weekly bonuses and events
• S = Multiplier specific to the Catalyst source. Ex: it is 0.7 for auto expedition

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 Archon. 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.