Talk:The Sixth Element (v6.6)/@comment-35745775-20181110153211/@comment-35745775-20181114120828

SoLaX, IMO Speed Junkie‘s approach to SEs doesn‘t necessarily lead to the cheapest way of finishing the SE, but then, I also don‘t think that is completely his intention. He shows us how to achieve the goals when they are challenging.

If you ‚starve‘ yourself of upgrades from the very beginning (like SJ does) you will invariably get more difficult targets than necessary in later stages!

I believe the most efficient way to do an SE is to stay in the green PR level as long as possible, then start ‚starving‘ yourself of upgrades when you think you have got to a PR level which will allow you to hopefully complete the SE. This way you will not be driving up the bots from day 1.

This is not a criticism of SJ, since as I say, I believe his motivation is slightly different and he has the skill (and gold if required!) to meet the challenges later on. The problem is when other less skilled players (99.9% of the rest of us) try to copy him. This can sometimes lead to unnecessarily difficult targets later on, which would have been easier by having green PR in the first few days of the SE!

Having said all that, there are if course also fixed targets which are the same for everyone, and every SE is different, so my points above are only generalisations.

I tend to play SEs somewhere in between, i.e. often under PR, but being careful in the early days not to take this to extremes, because I am fearful of getting too hard targets later on.