There is a glitch/bug that happens with the way total earnings are calculated once you start getting enough power in the "pop" section of the tree.
The in round display for your earnings can climb into the 70,000g + range easily due to aoe damage and the way packs nest, then the actual gold you earn at the end of the round is much lower usually somewhere around 10% of the total.
You can see this in the image qwer has posted.
The whole effect has something to do with the way the game calculates cards while ending a round, while also having a huge a mount of lag. Because you can get better ratios off lower level rounds, and use it to fast gold farm...
This leads to a unsatisfying optimal gold earning loop of starting on round 4 or 5, let the interns trigger a cascade that clears the board, get 6,000g in earnings or so, then manually end the round for 3-4,000g in real earnings. The whole cycle takes about 2-3 seconds, so you can get a lot of gold very very fast.
One thing that would potentially fix this, would be to add an upgrade to the tree alongside the "start at a higher stage" which allows the player to opt into "selling low tier packs" so that as the nesting mechanic for boxes and packs keeps expanding you can stop rendering and spawning all of them on the board.
Give the player a flat value for the packs. Have it be based off some % of the expected value of a pack given the upgraded card price values, and pull ratios, which would keep those upgrades relevant. Additional upgrades could allow us to potentially increase that % via more upgrades.
Another nice inclusion would be the addition of stage specific ultra rare cards. Give the bosses a 1% chance to drop a special card that would be kept and collected in a "gallery" access able through the main skill tree. The cards could give minor boosts like +1 tear/level, something that is ultimately inconsequential if you wanted. However, that would not necessarily be needed, and it would be something fun for the player to aim for while grinding out gold, and mitigate the desire to go for my reset strategy when gold farming.
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dude thank you for writing all this out, seriously. super helpful.
on the gold thing — you were right that the big in-run number vs what you actually walk away with felt broken. wasn't lag or a calc error though. higher stages intentionally nerf you (including how much gold gets banked), and i just did a bad job showing that, so it read like a bug. cleaned that up and made the modifiers clearer.
separately, your suggestions were really good and i ran with them. added the bulk-sell / skip nested packs upgrades so the board doesn't have to explode, and the boss gallery cards (secret rares — cosmetic for now). hopefully that gives people something to chase besides the mid-stage reset farm.
appreciate you taking the time on this