Proposed buy (no explanations but may still be spoilery; there is a lot I still don’t understand so I suspect one can do better):
WH o Ju, Pl o Pl, Ha o Ca, Pe o Ho. I expect a little under 130 mana, for a cost of 144gp.
Explanations (definitely spoilery):
Yellow-glowing things get 18-21 mana; I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Green-glowing things get 2-40 mana, always an even number; I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Red-glowing things get 2^a 3^b 5^c mana; other than the fact that somehow we never get >96 even though we separately get 64, 27, 5, I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Blue-glowing things get highly variable mana, also favouring small prime factors though 7 occurs; for these (and only these) the thaumometer gives plainly useful information, yielding the true mana gain +-1 except that items you wear yield a number too high by 22. So the two cheaper yellow items are pretty good value, as are the highest-thaumperature blue ones even though one of them is overrated. We should get at least 18+18 for the yellow ones and at least 34+54 for the blue ones.
But
I suspect there may be more going on than I yet understand with the red and green items, for which at present I don’t think I know anything useful. And maybe the finer details of the yellow and blue ones are predictable too.
Red or green weapons i.e. swords, longswords, battleaxes (not axes or hammers though) seem to have a mana scaling dependent on their +n modifier (although green weapons have a drop-off at higher modifiers. It appears to be a clear enough pattern that it’s not a statistical artefact. I’ve not found anything else about the tools or jewellery though.
Proposed buy (no explanations but may still be spoilery; there is a lot I still don’t understand so I suspect one can do better):
WH o Ju, Pl o Pl, Ha o Ca, Pe o Ho. I expect a little under 130 mana, for a cost of 144gp.
Explanations (definitely spoilery):
Yellow-glowing things get 18-21 mana; I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Green-glowing things get 2-40 mana, always an even number; I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Red-glowing things get 2^a 3^b 5^c mana; other than the fact that somehow we never get >96 even though we separately get 64, 27, 5, I haven’t found patterns beyond that. Blue-glowing things get highly variable mana, also favouring small prime factors though 7 occurs; for these (and only these) the thaumometer gives plainly useful information, yielding the true mana gain +-1 except that items you wear yield a number too high by 22. So the two cheaper yellow items are pretty good value, as are the highest-thaumperature blue ones even though one of them is overrated. We should get at least 18+18 for the yellow ones and at least 34+54 for the blue ones.
But
I suspect there may be more going on than I yet understand with the red and green items, for which at present I don’t think I know anything useful. And maybe the finer details of the yellow and blue ones are predictable too.
I came up with the same answer, though I just excluded the
colors
that weren’t amenable to nice linear models and didn’t notice the patterns you did.
Meta: there’s one word in that comment that’s kinda spoilery and you should maybe spoilerize it.
Good catch, thanks!
Red or green weapons i.e. swords, longswords, battleaxes (not axes or hammers though) seem to have a mana scaling dependent on their +n modifier (although green weapons have a drop-off at higher modifiers. It appears to be a clear enough pattern that it’s not a statistical artefact. I’ve not found anything else about the tools or jewellery though.