Yeah, what I am currently seeing is.... It's like 9999 vitality for one screaming? then assume they repeat the save every time for at least 9, one left for selling. you get practically 90000 points there.
I would recommend checking if the percentage points are multiplicative? Either way, I did a virtue less run, and only ~3 screaming drakes cheese. Based on the scores, I can confirm my theory. The players with high score likely cheesed their drakes, went virtue for both heroes, and an early foxified. Followed by getting arcanophobia at the very end of the run to multiple all magic by 4x. They could have also gotten more mandrakes via fox den or idling with the "harem" (silly idea, equal opportunity harem, recruit both heroes to manor
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Multipliers from the same source stack additively, while multipliers from different sources stack multiplicatively.
The 600k score is more than a week old at this point. At the time, there was no alchemy and only one hero available. Cheesing for 9 screaming mandrakes seems absurd to me. That's like (0.06 x 0.05)^9 (probably a little less rare since the correct calculation would use a binomial distribution?) Even 3 screaming mandrakes is already super rare, having all those 3 trigger +9999 vitality is just so astronomically unlikely... unless I made a mistake and accidentally set the chance to something like 95%. (Yeah, there will be a recruitable hero in the future.)
I've been doing tests. If you're willing to wait it's feasible to get 6-7 in three hours if you wait and refresh. I am VERY certain that is what the guy's score came from because I had 130k without the first guy giving the 500 virtue. ( and 130k approximately 5x is 650k, without doing the grind. So yes, I can very much confirm that whoever did the the 600k score very likely just spent a long time retrying a save point every few minutes.
Truthfully, I could keep going, get all 10, grab everything and send proof. But I admit to being worried a new update will come out before I can send picture proof this is what the guy did.
If that’s the case, then there must be some quirks in the random number generator, because getting 6–7 screaming mandrakes shouldn’t be feasible with a stated 0.6% chance. Even 6–7 normal mandrakes would only be around a 0.55% chance. I think having 1 screaming mandrake triggering +9999 vitality (0.03% chance) then getting 500 virtue combined with a good run should already be enough.
If you are certain, I do know what the guy may have did however. I am still trying to test. In summary, your auto-save just saves every 60 seconds. And you can save when you have a second or less on mandrake. Then you just reload the page until you get a screaming mandrake.
Honestly, I'd recommend removing the chance based nodes regardless if you want more legit runs on the board. Because even if the top guy did not use it, someone eventually will. (Heck I was testing random based nodes and calculating the points percentage today before I discovered that glitch, because of the small controversy over how it happened in first place.)
That's a plausible explanation. It's possible to manually save between each step, so you could technically spend a really long time hitting 10 0.6% chance. However, I probably won’t balance around this strategy, because it’s only possible on the web version, where saves aren’t triggered automatically on exit.