Magic Research 2 – Time Pieces Guide

This guide I’ve made to help you more effectivly use your Time Pieces that you get when not playing the game.

Ultimate Guide to Time Pieces

By Aurora Lucias.

How do you get Time Pieces?

Time Pieces are obtained when you are not in the game. On desktop, this is when you don’t have the tab with the game open, while on mobile it’s when it’s not the active app.

Normally, any time period up to 10 minutes (600 seconds) will warp you through that time in real time, but if you have the option to get Time Pieces instead, or if you are away for longer than 10 minutes, you instead get Time Pieces at a rate of 1 per second away from the game, up to a maximum of 100k Time Pieces should you leave the game with no Time Pieces [the equivalent of 1 day, 3 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds of not playing]

100K? I thought you only started with a cap of 30K in MR1 – what happened to the time related storylines from that game?

They don’t exist, but you start with the benefits that they would give – the ability to speed up time by 2x or 5x; the ability to warp through time; the ability to get a burst of research… and new to MR2, the ability to instantly trigger the next random event!

So which of these should I use?

That depends on how many Time Pieces you have, as barring the speeding up of time, all of them have a fixed price tag.

• The 2x Time Speed can be used with any number of Time Pieces, but will drain them at a rate of 3 pieces per extra second. This means for every real time second that this is used, 3 Time Pieces will be used, and 2 in game seconds will pass. If you have the Time element and am using Time Contraction, the boosted speed from that is also applied, potentially allowing for up to 5 in game seconds to pass per second with the right setup.
• The 5x Time Speed can also be used with any number of Time Pieces, but it comes with the cost of 4 pieces per extra second, or 20 pieces per real life second in return for 5 seconds of in-game time. Again, Time Contraction can boost this up to potentially 12.5s of in-game time per real time second that passes.
• The cheapest of the three boosts outside of speeding up time is the ability to use Time Pieces to instantly trigger the next random event, but this costs 1800 Time Pieces [30 minutes of offline time] to use.
• Another use of the Time Pieces is to instantly warp forward 10 minutes of real world time for 3000 Time Pieces. [50 minutes of offline time] This does take into account if you have Time Contraction active.
• Finally, for the same 3000 Time Piece price tag, you can instead get 25 minutes real world time’s worth of Study Experience. Again, Time Contraction can boost the XP gained by using this.

As such, here’s the value you get out of 150 minutes worth of Time Pieces (9000 Pieces). As all but the event one can be boosted by Time Contraction, I won’t be including that into the effects.

• 2x Time Boost – 50 Minutes worth of 2x speed, which is 50 minutes worth of boosted time
• 5x Time Boost – 7 Minutes, 30 Seconds worth of 5x speed, or 30 minutes worth of boosted time
• Time Warp – 30 Minutes worth of boosted time
• Study Warp – 75 Minutes worth of boosted Study time
• Event Warp – 5 Events (due to the time between events varying, the real world time used can vary, especially when Time Warp Event is a spell you can cast with the Time element and the Time Boost and Time Warp can trigger events)

The best value for Time Piece use is the Study Warp, which trades away any progress in combat or other things to give you a 50% boost compared to the 2x Time Boost, and a 150% boost compared to the 5x Time Boost and the Time Warp.

The 2x Time Boost is decent value, and if you’re intending to play a long time for the session or don’t have many pieces, I’d recommend that – but if you have a lot of pieces and little time, I’d say you should go for the 5x Boost, as you can’t act during a Time Warp.

As for Event Warp, the value of that only applies during a long run, so I wouldn’t recommend using it.

Just a note regarding Time Dilation – don’t use it while using Time Pieces. Just like why you wouldn’t want to use that and Time Contraction at the same time.

Also, if you have Time Warp Study improved enough (so that you get enough XP equal to half the Cooldown length or more) you may get more experience per Time Piece by using the 2x (or 5x) Time Boost. This means 10+s worth without any Spellcrafting applied which may modify the cooldown for 2x speed, or 20+s worth at 5x speed.