Gamatoto Mechanics

Contents


Key Results Summary

Foreword and Disclaimers

Gamatoto is a very old part of Battle Cats that has, until recently, been woefully unexplained. Attempts have been made with varying success and accuracy in the past, but no known treatment of the topic before this has made as comprehensive a study as this. This represents about six months of on-and-off work by some of the best analysts in the Battle Cats community.

We can’t be 100% sure any of the mechanics here are perfectly accurate; datamining is often not a source of absolute facts, but instead a matter of guessing what the numbers mean and validating them with comparisons to data. Most of the results here are backed up as being statistically consistent with a test sample of some 700+ expeditions, so we are pretty confident overall. This is the best explanation we currently have, but further research may change this in future.

Note from Feanor April 2024 : This document requires updating to represent Gamatoto's max level now being 130 (13.3) in the XP table and level-dependent calculations, as well as inclusion of the presence of the new "Raisin' the Bar" area. Various images that were being hosted on discord are now broken links and need recreating or retrieving. If someone would like to work on this, get in touch.

A document of this size invariably contains errors and the original writers do not claim otherwise in this case. Let them know if something is off.

And finally, before we begin, an observation made in the early stages of studying this topic:

Gamatoto is complicated.

Don’t say you weren't warned.

The Basics

GAMATOTO Report
GAMATOTO Report

The outcomes of a Gamatoto Expedition are described in the GAMATOTO Report Screen shown above. We begin with some observations about it.

  1. Each line is either yellow or white depending on if a drop was obtained or not.
  2. The number of lines you get depends on the expedition's length.
Expedition Length Number of Lines
1 hour 6
3 hours 18
6 hours 36
  1. You can get different amounts of the same drop on different lines (e.g., Cat Food×1, Cat Food×2 ; XP+1115, XP+1050)

Other things like what the different white lines say, which Helpers' names comes up, and the time it shows for each line, are random choices shown for style and do not have any useful meaning.

Lines and Number of Drops

Each line in the GAMATOTO Report is an independent chance to get any of the potential drops in the area. First, the game rolls to check which item you can get on that line. The base chance to choose each item depends on the area. See a table of these chances in Item Choice Base Rates. For example, we can look at Traitor’s Trench:

Traitor's Trench
Item Choice %
XP 83%
Cat Food 15%
Super Rare Catseye 2%

These probabilities always sum to 100%, as every line is assigned one of these item drops. However, there is a second check to determine if you actually get the item. The base chance to get an item is 32%, and it is increased by your Helpers (as described in Advanced Details). When this check succeeds, you get a Yellow Line and the item chosen in the previous step. If instead this check fails, you get a randomly generated White Line and no item.

  1. Randomly choose which item to try for (rates depend on area)
  2. Randomly choose if you get the item or not
    1. 32% chance of getting the item
    2. 68% chance of White Line instead

With this, we can multiply the chance that the item is chosen with the chance of actually succeeding in getting it, which gives us the chance that any individual line will drop a particular item.

Traitor's Trench
Item Choice % Success Rate Chance For Drop Per Line
XP 83% 32% 26.56%
Cat Food 15% 32% 4.80%
Super Rare Catseye 2% 32% 0.64%
White Text Line 68%

To then calculate the average number of drops across a whole expedition, we multiply these Drop Per Line chances by the number of lines you get (6, 18 or 36 depending on the length of the expedition).

Traitor's Trench
Item Chance Per Line Average Drops 1h Expedition Average Drops 3h Expedition Average Drops 6h Expedition
XP 26.56% 1.59 4.78 9.56
Cat Food 4.80% 0.29 0.86 1.73
Super Rare Catseye 0.64% 0.038 0.12 0.23
White Text Line 68% 4.08 12.24 24.48

That is, the GAMATOTO Report for an average 6 hour expedition to Traitor’s Trench will have about 24 White Text Lines, 10 XP drops, 2 Cat Food drops, and no Catseyes, for a total of 36.

Drop Amounts and Caps

So when you get a drop of an item, how many do you get?

This also depends on the item and area. Each item has a minimum and a maximum drop amount, and all values in that range are equally likely.

The rules for drop numbers are:

Using this information, taking a 3 hour expedition in Traitor’s Trench with the above data as an example, we find the average amount of each item dropped per expedition (multiplying the average number of successful drops / yellow lines by the average amount of each drop) to be:

Traitor's Trench 3h Expedition
Item Average Yellow Lines Range Average Drop Per Line Average Drop Over Expedition
XP 4.78 950 - 1150 1050 5020
Cat Food 0.86 1 - 2 1.5 1.30
Super Rare Catseye 0.12 1 1 0.12

However, each item type in each area also potentially has a cap. If your total drops of the item exceed the cap, the excess will be lost.

The rules for caps are:

For example, if you get 5 drops of Cat Food ×2 in a single expedition, this exceeds the cap of 9, and so you only get 9 Cat Food from the expedition.

Inari and Collab Helpers

Having Inari from the Cat Shrine present doubles the drop amount of items (except for Cat Food) for a single expedition. That is, the chance of each line dropping an item stays the same, but you get twice as many as usual (e.g. 2 Catseyes per line) when successful. Certain collabs (Merc, Shoumetsu, Miku) also have bonus helpers who act as a permanent Inari (you can’t have both at once), having the same effect on your drops.

These also double the caps on the relevant items. (Catseye Cave can now drop 2 of each Catseye!)

Engineers and Helpers

At the end of an expedition, Gamatoto has a chance to find a helper. The rates differ between Early Game and Regular expedition areas, defined here as:

Early Game Mellow Fields
Shaolin Kingdom
Dusty Desert
XP Harvest (Easy)
Grand XP Harvest (Easy)
Regular All other normal, event and collab areas.

The chance to find a Helper in an area depends on which of these categories you are in, the length of the expedition, and whether or not you have a full team of 5 Engineers.

First, the area you are in determines the Base Helper Chance:

Next, the expedition length determines how many Attempts Gamatoto has at finding a helper:

The chance of each Attempt succeeding is the Base Helper Chance above. If it succeeds, then you get a helper. If it fails, you move onto the next attempt and repeat. If you run out of attempts with no Helper drops, you get no helpers for that expedition.

If an attempt succeeds, the chance of it being each type of helper is as follows:

Type Early Game     Regular    
    Engineer*     86.67% 86.67%
White 9.73% 7.73%
Bronze 2.13% 3.20%
Silver 1.07% 1.60%
Gold** 0.4% 0.8%

*If you have 5 Engineers present already, you cannot get more, so the current Attempt "fails" and you move on to the next Attempt.

**Note that when Legendary Helpers are unlocked, you get them instead of Gold Helpers at the same rate. In other words, all drops that would otherwise be Gold Helpers become Legendary instead.

Putting all of this together, we can calculate the chance of any given expedition giving each rarity of helper:

Recruitng Helpers

From this, we can see that doing more shorter expeditions will yield more helpers on average than doing fewer longer ones. For example, six 1h expeditions in a regular area with full engineers will give six 0.14% chances at a Gold helper (average 0.84 dropped total) while one 6h expedition will yield just one 0.62% chance (average 0.62 dropped total) making the shorter expeditions about 35% better.

In fact, even if you are inattentive and in a 6 hour span only manage to send out four or five 1h expeditions, this will still yield an average of 0.56 to 0.70 gold helpers, which is still slightly better than the 6h case.

Levelling Up Gamatoto

Gamatoto begins his life at Level 1, and with every expedition, gains Experience Points which allow him to level up. This changes the chances of choosing each item for a line and is explained in Effect of Gamatoto Level. It also unlocks new areas and costumes.

Higher level Gamatoto areas drop more Gamatoto Experience, tabulated in Appendix C, and longer expeditions also increase the amount as follows:

Expedition Length Gamatoto Experience Multiplier Efficiency
1 hour 1× 100%
3 hours 2.75× 92%
6 hours 5.5×

That is, if you wish to maximise the rate at which Gamatoto gains Experience to level up, doing multiple 1 hour expeditions is slightly better than 3 or 6 hour expeditions.

Additionally, sometimes (20% chance) Gamatoto will randomly gain a bonus 50% Experience (×1.5) for expeditions.

The cumulative experience Gamatoto needs to reach a given level is as follows:

      Level       XP To Next
1         600        
2 2,400
3 10,900
4 16,900
5 23,000
6 44,100
7 65,300
8 86,500
9 107,700
10 168,200
11 228,700
12 289,200
13 349,700
14 444,000
15 538,400
16 632,800
17 727,200
18 821,600
19 1,003,100
20 1,184,600
21 1,366,100
22 1,547,600
23 1,729,100
24 1,917,600
25 2,106,200
26 2,294,700
27 2,483,300
28 2,671,800
29 2,860,400
30 3,102,400
31 3,344,400
32 3,586,400
33 3,828,400
34 4,070,400
35 4,312,400
36 4,590,700
37 4,869,000
38 5,147,300
39 5,425,600
40 5,703,900
41 5,982,200
42 6,260,500
43 6,575,100
44 6,889,700
45 7,204,300
46 7,518,900
47 7,833,500
48 8,148,100
49 8,462,700
50 8,822,700
51 9,182,600
52 9,509,300
53 9,836,000
54 10,162,800
55 10,489,500
56 10,816,200
57 11,142,900
58 11,528,500
59 11,914,200
60 12,299,900
61 12,685,600
62 13,071,300
63 13,457,000
64 13,842,700
65 14,228,400
66 14,614,000
67 15,088,320
68 15,562,640
69 16,036,960
70 16,511,280
71 16,985,600
72 17,569,380
73 18,153,160
74 18,736,940
75 19,320,720
76 19,904,500
77 20,539,750
78 21,175,000
79 21,810,250
80 22,445,500
81 23,080,750
82 23,716,000
83 24,630,760
84 25,545,520
85 26,460,280
86 27,375,040
87 28,289,800
88 29,277,967
89 30,266,133
90 31,254,300
91 32,242,467
92 33,230,633
93 34,218,800
94 35,376,367
95 36,533,933
96 37,691,500
97 38,849,067
98 40,006,633
99 41,164,200
100 43,000,000
101 44,835,800
102 46,671,600
103 48,507,400
104 50,343,200
105 52,179,000
106 54,014,800
107 55,850,600
108 57,784,600
109 59,718,600
110 61,652,600
111 63,586,600
112 65,520,600
113 67,454,600
114 69,388,600
115 71,322,600
116 MAX (v10.7)

Advanced Details

Effect of Gamatoto Level

Levelling up Gamatoto increases the Item Choice Rate of Cat Food, Catseyes, Battle Items and Bulk XP Drops (XP Harvest 10k XP, etc), while decreasing that of regular XP drops.

Each item in each area has a "Choice Rate Modifier" which indicates how much the Choice Rate of that item changes for a given Gamatoto Level. To be specific:

Final Choice Rate = Base Choice Rate + Choice Rate Modifier × Level Factor

where Base Choice Rate is the value discussed in the Basics section (and found in Appendix A), the Choice Rate Modifier is found in Appendix D, and the Level Factor is a number that increases as Gamatoto Levels up, which is given by:

Level Factor = 0.02% × (Gamatoto Level - 1) for Gamatoto Level 1 to 99
and
Level Factor = 2% + (0.02% × Gamatoto Level) for Gamatoto Level 100+

To be clear, it is 0% at Level 1, and increases by 0.02% per level until reaching 1.96% at Level 99. At Level 100, it suddenly becomes much larger and jumps to 4%, then continues increasing by 0.02% per level.

For example, going back to the case of Traitor’s Trench from before, for a Level 100 Gamatoto:

Traitor's Trench At Level 100 Gamatoto (Level Factor 4%)
Item Choice Modifier Choice % + modifier × Level Factor Success Rate Chance For Drop Per Line
XP -1.36 83% – 1.36 × 4% = 77.56% 32% 26.56% ➙ 24.82%
Cat Food +0.8 15% + 0.8 × 4% = 18.2% 4.80%➙ 5.82%
Super Rare Catseye +0.56 2% + 0.56 × 4% = 4.24% 0.64% ➙ 1.36%
White Text Line 68%

Note that the total chance of getting an item at all is still bound to the 32% success rate — you still get the same number of White and Yellow lines — increasing Gamatoto’s Level only turns some amount of your drops that would have previously been XP into Cat Food or other items in the area.

Converting these modified rates into average drops per expedition, we then find:

Traitor’s Trench At Level 100 Gamatoto (Level Factor 4%)
Item Chance Per Line Average Drops 1h Expedition Average Drops
XP 26.56% ➙ 24.82% 1.59 ➙ 1.49 4.78 ➙ 4.47 9.56 ➙ 8.93
Cat Food 4.80% ➙ 5.82% 0.29 ➙ 0.35 0.86 ➙ 1.05 1.73 ➙ 2.10
Super Rare Catseye 0.64% ➙ 1.36% 0.038 ➙ 0.081 0.12 ➙ 0.24 0.23 ➙ 0.49
White Text Line 68% 4.08 12.24 24.48

And then the average amounts of each item from those drops in a 3h Expedition:

Traitor’s Trench 3h Expedition Level 100 Gamatoto (Level Factor 4%)
Item Average Yellow Lines Range Average Drop Per Line Average Drop Over Expedition
XP 4.78 ➙ 4.47 950 - 1150 1050 5020 ➙ 4691
Cat Food 0.86 ➙ 1.05 1 - 2 1.5 1.29 ➙ 1.57
Super Rare Catseye 0.12 ➙ 0.24 1 1 0.12 ➙ 0.24

We see that because the Choice Rate modifier for Catseyes is so high compared to the base Choice Rate, increasing Gamatoto Level to 100 effectively doubles the number you will get from expeditions in this area compared to Level 1 Gamatoto. Although it has a less pronounced effect on the other items, since the modifier is a smaller fraction of the base rate, giving you about 20% more cat food and 6% less XP. All in all, a good tradeoff!

Effect of Helpers

Each Helper you recruit has a Helper Score depending on their rarity/colour:

Rarity Helper Score
White 1
Bronze 2
Silver 4
Gold 6
     Legendary      7

The amount your helpers affect your Gamatoto Expeditions is dependent on the sum of your Helpers’ Scores. This is a number between 0 (no helpers) and 70 (ten Legendary Helpers). Each point of Helper Score adds 0.27% to the base Success Rate (32%) of obtaining an item after it is selected on a line.

Final Success Rate = 32% + (Helper Score × 0.27%)

For example, with 10 Gold Helpers, your Helper Score is 10×6 = 60, and your Final Success Rate is 32% + (60 × 0.27%) = 48.2%.

This means that you get fewer White Lines and more Yellow Lines. Unlike the effect of increasing Gamatoto’s Level, Helpers actually give you more drops in total, not just shift the ratios of one drop to another.

However, there is an exception to this: Cat Food.

Effect of Helpers on Cat Food

The success rate for Cat Food technically increases by 0.27% per point of Helper Score too, but a second effect also occurs. Each point of Helper Score’s 0.27% extra chance for a Cat Food drop is cancelled out by adding a chance for Cat Food drops to turn into XP drops. In effect, this means that the Cat Food success rate stays at 32%, but an extra source of XP is added to the drop table, like this:

Traitor’s Trench With 10 Gold Helpers (60 Helper Score)
Item Choice % Base Success Rate + Helper Score × 0.27% Chance For Drop Per Line
XP 83% 32% + 60 × 0.27% = 48.2% 26.56% ➙ 40%
Cat Food 15% 32% 4.80%
Cat Food ➙ XP 60 × 0.27% = 16.2% 2.43%
Super Rare Catseye 2% 32% + 60 × 0.27% = 48.2% 0.64% ➙ 0.96%
White Text Line 68% ➙ 51.8%

That is, now the total Chance of an XP Drop Per Line is 40% from direct XP drops + 2.43% from additional Cat Food being turned into XP, so 42.43%.

Turning this into expected drops per expedition type:

Traitor’s Trench With 10 Gold Helpers (60 Helper Score)
Item Chance Per Line Average Drops 1h Expedition Average Drops
XP (incl. CF ➙ XP) 26.56% ➙ 42.43% 1.59 ➙ 2.55 4.78 ➙ 7.64 9.56 ➙ 15.27
Cat Food 4.80% 0.29 0.86 1.73
Super Rare Catseye 0.64% ➙ 0.96% 0.038 ➙ 0.058 0.12 ➙ 0.17 0.23 ➙ 0.35
White Text Line 68% ➙ 51.8% 4.08 ➙ 3.11 12.24 ➙ 9.32 24.48 ➙ 18.65

and then the average amount of each item per 3h expedition.

Traitor’s Trench 3h Expedition With 10 Gold Helpers (60 Helper Score)
Item Average Yellow Lines Range Average Drop Per Line Average Drop Over Expedition
XP (incl. CF ➙ XP) 4.78 ➙ 7.64 950 - 1150 1050 5020 ➙ 8019
Cat Food 0.86 1 - 2 1.5 1.30
Super Rare Catseye 0.12 ➙ 0.17 1 1 0.12 ➙ 0.17

We see that the main effect here is to increase the XP drop, due to both increasing the success chance for it, and converting some Cat Food into extra XP, though Catseyes are also respectably boosted.

We conclude this section by noting that with both a higher Gamatoto Level, and a higher Helper Score, the net effect will be to increase everything. With Level 100 Gamatoto and 10 Gold Helpers, the combination of the effects of Gamatoto Level and Helpers will be:

Traitor’s Trench 3h Expedition With Level 100 Gamatoto (Level Factor 4%) and 10 Gold Helpers (60 Helper Score)
Item Average Yellow Lines Range Average Drop Per Line Average Drop Over Expedition
XP (incl. CF ➙ XP) 4.78 ➙ 7.26 950 - 1150 1050 5020 ➙ 7622
Cat Food 0.86 ➙ 1.05 1 - 2 1.5 1.29 ➙ 1.57
Super Rare Catseye 0.12 ➙ 0.37 1 1 0.12 ➙ 0.37

The Catseye drop is enhanced by both Level and Helper bonuses to be triple its base value, the Cat Food is only enhanced by Level, and the XP is enhanced by Helpers but decreased by Level (though still increases overall).

Cap Corrections

In the Basics section and then later in Effect of Gamatoto Level and Effect of Helpers, we obtained final average amounts per expedition by multiplying the average number of successful lines by the average drop per line. However, as explained above, some items have a Cap on the maximum number you can obtain from a single expedition. While the above calculations are correct in the case of no cap (XP, Catseyes in regular areas...), they are inaccurate in the case of capped amounts (Cat Food, Catseyes in Catseye Cave...) as they do not factor it in.

Take for example, an Imaginary Gamatoto Area which only drops Imaginary Catseyes. Each line has a 50% chance to drop one. In a 1 hour expedition (6 lines), you would then expect (50% × 6) or 3 Imaginary Catseyes if there was no cap.

However, if there is a Cap of 1, then clearly this is not possible. To then calculate the average, we have to consider the probability of n lines yielding a Catseye using the binomial distribution.

        n         Chance Catseyes Gained Catseyes × Chance
0 (1 - 0.5)6 = 1.6% 0 0
1 6 × (1 - 0.5)5 × (0.5)1 = 9.4% 1 0.094
2 15 × (1 - 0.5)4 × (0.5)2 = 23.4% 2 0.47
3 20 × (1 - 0.5)3 × (0.5)3 = 31.3% 3 0.94
4 15 × (1 - 0.5)2 × (0.5)4 = 23.4% 4 0.94
5 6 × (1 - 0.5)1 × (0.5)5 = 9.4% 5 0.47
6 (0.5)6 = 1.6% 6 0.094
Sum 3.00

The Expectation Value (average) number of Imaginary Catseyes is then equal to the sum over each possibility (n = 0 to 6) of the chance of that possibility multiplied by the number of Catseyes you get in that event, which comes out to 3, the same as just doing (50% × 6) as expected.

Now, consider the same area, but with a Cap of 1 on Imaginary Catseyes:

    n     Chance Catseyes Gained Catseyes × Chance
0 (1 - 0.5)6 = 1.6% 0 0
1 6 × (1 - 0.5)5 × (0.5)1 = 9.4% 1 0.094
2 15 × (1 - 0.5)4 × (0.5)2 = 23.4% 2 capped to 1 0.23
3 20 × (1 - 0.5)3 × (0.5)3 = 31.3% 3 capped to 1 0.31
4 15 × (1 - 0.5)2 × (0.5)4 = 23.4% 4 capped to 1 0.23
5 6 × (1 - 0.5)1 × (0.5)5 = 9.4% 5 capped to 1 0.094
6 (0.5)6 = 1.6% 6 capped to 1 0.016
Sum 0.98

This clearly reduces the expectation value of the number of Catseyes gained per expedition.

This is only really of consequence for Catseye Cave where each Catseye has a cap of 1, which you will realistically reach often. The cap of 9 on Cat Food only very slightly affects the average Cat Food gained as the probability of gaining over 9 in a single expedition is low anyway. The Battle Items in collab areas, and the XP Harvest biggest drops are also affected by this, but are rarely used for farming.

The main consequence of this is that as 1h, 3h and 6h expeditions all have the same cap, six 1h expeditions will yield more Catseyes in Catseye Cave than either two 3h expeditions or one 6h expedition on average. In regular areas with unlimited caps, all expedition lengths are essentially equal, but for farming Catseye Cave you should prioritise 1h expeditions whenever possible.

The exact amount of improvement doing 6×1h vs 1×6h depends on the area, your Gamatoto Level and your Helper Score, but for a nominal Catseye drop rate of about 2% per line, doing the six short expeditions will get you about 30% more Catseyes on average than a single long one.

Intuitively, this is obvious from the fact that if you do six 1h expeditions each with a cap of 1, you might get 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 total, but the single 6h expedition still with a cap of 1 can only yield 1 or 0. Even though the long expedition is more likely to yield 1, the small chance that you can get more than 1 from multiple short expeditions outweighs the higher rates of the 6h expedition.

The full analysis of this for Cat Food with a cap of 9 is much more complicated, as unlike with a cap of 1, there are multiple ways to achieve a cap of 9. You could get 9 drops of 1 Cat Food, or three drops of 2 Cat Food and three drops of 1 Cat Food, etc, and enumerating all these possibilities requires complicated combinatorial calculations.

Best Area For Each Item

So what is the best area to get Super Rare Catseyes? Or Cat Food?

Putting together everything we’ve learned, the answer is it depends on your Gamatoto Level and Helper Score.

For example, for Super Rare Catseyes, the following graph illustrates the main points:

Graph

Along the x-axis is your Gamatoto Level from 1 to 116, and the y-axis is the average number of SR Catseyes dropped. Each shaded region represents the range of averages you can get for different Helper levels. Note the following:

The main factor here is that the Single Catseye area has a much higher Item Choice Level Modifier than the others, so the drop rate of SR Catseyes there increases faster with growing Gamatoto level.

XP and Battle Items

Please do not use Gamatoto to farm these.

Cat Food
Cat Food Drops
Levels Best Areas Reason
1 - 99
  • Pacific Waves
  • Kotatsu Tundra
  • MEGABANK
  • Hidden Armory
  • Rattlin' Caves
  • Cumulus Peaks
 Two-Catseye Areas have the highest base CF
choice rate at 15.2% and win at low Gamatoto Levels
100 - 116
  • Mellow Fields
  • Tomb of Gold
  • Eagle Fields
  • Traitor's Trench
  • Mt. Parabola
 One-Catseye Areas (and Mellow Fields weirdly)
have lower base CF choice rates at 15.0% but they
have the highest CF Modifiers at +0.8 and thus give
the most CF at high Gamatoto Level
Special Catseyes
Special Catseye Drops
Levels Best Areas Reason
1 - 99
  1. Catseye Cave (1h)
  2. Tomb of Gold
  3. Pacific Waves /
    Hidden Armory /
    Rattlin’ Caves
 Catseye Cave has the highest base Catseye
choice rate (2.8%), followed by the One-Catseye Area
(2.0%), then the Two-Catseye Areas (1.8%)
100 - 116
  1. Tomb of Gold
  2. Catseye Cave
  3. Pacific Waves /
    Hidden Armory /
    Rattlin’ Caves
 The One-Catseye Area has a huge +0.56
modifier, compared to Catseye Cave’s +0.25
and the Two Catseye Areas’ mere +0.10
Note: 1h Catseye Caverns (Anniversary) is always the best area but is not included above
Rare Catseyes
Rare Catseye Drops
Levels Best Areas Reason
1 - 116
  1. Eagle Fields
  2. Catseye Cave
  3. Pacific Waves /
    MEGABANK /
    Cumulus Peaks
 Catseye Cave has the highest base Catseye
choice rate (2.8%), but the One-Catseye Area is
only slightly less (2.7%) and isn’t capped, but the
Two-Catseye Areas (2.3%) is still worse
Note: 1h Catseye Caverns (Anniversary) is always the best area but is not included above
Super Rare Catseyes
Super Rare Catseye Drops
Levels Best Areas Reason
1 - 99
  1. Catseye Cave (1h)
  2. Traitor’s Trench
  3. Kotatsu Tundra /
    MEGABANK /
    Rattlin’ Caves
 Catseye Cave has the highest base Catseye
choice rate (2.8%), followed by the One-Catseye Area
(2.0%), then the Two-Catseye Areas (1.8%)
100 - 116
  1. Traitor's Trench
  2. Catseye Cave
  3. Kotatsu Tundra /
    MEGABANK /
    Rattlin’ Caves
 The One-Catseye Area has a huge +0.56
modifier, compared to Catseye Cave’s +0.25
and the Two Catseye Areas’ mere +0.10
Note: 1h Catseye Caverns (Anniversary) is always the best area but is not included above
Uber Rare Catseyes
Uber Rare Catseye Drops
Levels Best Areas Reason
1 - 99
  1. Catseye Cave (1h)
  2. Kotatsu Tundra /
    Hidden Armory /
    Cumulus Peaks
  3. Mt. Parabola
 Catseye Cave has the highest base Catseye
choice rate (2.0%), followed by the Two-Catseye Areas
(1.3%), then the One-Catseye Area (1.2%).
The One-Catseye Area catches up at Lv 12,
before which this area isn’t even unlocked...
100 - 116
  1. Catseye Cave (1h)
  2. Mt. Parabola
  3. Kotatsu Tundra /
    Hidden Armory /
    Cumulus Peaks
 The One-Catseye Area has a huge +0.56
modifier, compared to Catseye Cave’s +0.2 but this still
isn’t enough to catch up. The Two Catseye Areas’
mere +0.10 gets left in the dust.
Note: 1h Catseye Caverns (Anniversary) is always the best area but is not included above
Multiple Catseye Types

If you are in need of all types of Catseye equally you get the most total drops from:

Catseye Cave (1h) > Two-Catseye Areas > One-Catseye Areas

If you need two specific types of Catseyes you almost always get the most drops of those two combined from:

Catseye Cave (1h) > Two-Catseye Areas* > One-Catseye Areas*

The * marks here are because there are some tiny exceptions:

At Gamatoto Levels ≥ 100 , the Two-Eye area is technically better or about equal but gives you fewer Uber/Super/Special eyes and more Rares which may not be desirable if you need many Uber eyes but only a few Rares for example. Doing the One-Eye areas gives you more control of what you get, and lets you get more of exactly what you need, so you can do whichever you prefer or whatever fits your needs at the time, or a mixture. It does not matter much.

At Gamatoto Levels < 100 the Two-Eye areas win by a large margin. This is because the sum of their Base Choice rates is far higher than the single areas, but because their Modifiers are so low (two +0.1s instead of one +0.56) they lose most of that advantage by high levels.

Regardless, Catseye Cave (1h) is always the best choice for 2 or more types of eye, when it is on.

To summarise:

Table

Make a copy of the Gamatoto Calculator spreadsheet to play around with exactly what works best for your level and helper combination if the above general rules are not enough information.

Optimal Use Of Catamins

We can relate the value of one type of Catamins to another by how much Cat Food they cost to purchase in the store, even though you shouldn’t actually be wasting Cat Food on them.

Catamin Type Cat Food Value (for 3) Cat Food / Hour
A 30 10
B 80 8.9
C 150 8.3

If a Catamin A is used to essentially claim a free 1h expedition, a Catamin B is used for a 3h expedition, and a Catamin C for a 6h expedition, which gives the highest return per Cat Food value? The more expensive Catamins cost less Cat Food per hour, but sometimes shorter expeditions are better, so what is most efficient?

For maximising Regular Drops (no cap) all expedition lengths are equally profitable and so Catamin C with the lowest CF/hour rate is the best choice.

For maximising Gamatoto XP, the low CF/hour of Catamin C beats the fact that you only get 5.5x the XP from a 6h expedition compared to a 1h one, so they are again optimal.

For maximising Helper Drops, the fact that you get so many more helpers from 1h expeditions compared to the others means that even at the higher CF/hour rate, Catamin A is the best choice.

Finally, for capped drops in Catseye Cave, the balance between shorter expeditions being more efficient and the CF/hour cost of the Catamins happens to be just such that Catamin B are slightly more rewarding than the options either side!

None of these differences are too huge, and you shouldn’t be spending CF on Catamins anyway really, but a wise strategy for spending Catamins in the places they do better than the others might be:

Catamin Type Best Way To Use
A Grinding for Helpers
B Save for Catseye Cave
C Regular Drops, Power-Leveling Gamatoto

Other Gamatoto Features

Ad Bags

Up to three times per day, a bag will appear on the floor when Gamatoto is not away on an expedition. Opening it requires watching an ad, and it will not reappear until Gamatoto has completed another expedition of any length (and will only appear if an ad is available).

The rates of items from this bag are as follows:

Item Rate
Cat Food ×1 42%
Special, Rare, or Super Rare Catseye ×1 6% each
Uber Rare Catseye ×1 5%
Building Material (excluding Ammonite) ×1 5% each
Shrine Donations

Shrine appears at random around every 2-5 days, and gives you the opportunity to take a Fortune for 5 XP, as well as to donate 100k, 1M, 3M or 5M XP to receive an item (up to 5 times each per appearance).

The drop tables are:

Table

When you donate to the Shrine, it levels up depending on how much XP you’ve given it. When it reaches a multiple of Level 10 it disappears. It can also disappear when you leave and re-enter the Gamatoto screen at random (though will sometimes stay until the end of the day too).

In addition to the above drop rates, there is a pity mechanism that every 30th 1M donation is guaranteed to drop a Gold Catfruit. It doesn’t matter if you donate to other tiers in between, or how many shrine appearances you do it over. It doesn’t matter if you get a lucky 1% Gold Fruit in those 30 donations either, the 30th will still be a Gold Fruit.

It is not usually recommended to donate XP to Shrine unless you already have most of your important cats at Level 30, at which point you may wish to use the 3M tier for Catseyes.

Donation Tier Use When:
100k Never
1M You own Lasvoss and want to True Form him
3M All good cats are Lv 30+ and you need more Catseyes for late game
5M Only if you need Legend Catseyes the most and have spare XP
Shrine Fortunes

Fortune Slips cost 5 XP and give you one of 6 Luck Ratings (Uber Luck, Super Luck, Li’l Luck, No Luck, Bad Luck, Disaster). Higher luck ratings only affect the chance of getting Inari and Big Bag from your fortune, and do not affect any other Gamatoto events or anything else in the game in any known way.

As with the GAMATOTO Report itself, the white lines in your Fortune are meaningless, and the Yellow Lines describe the actual effect.

Yellow Line Meaning
"God’s servant brings good tidings." Inari
"Your blessings shall multiply!" Big Bag
"Will to fight: RESTORED! Gain 1 Leadership
"Good fortune will surely come..." No Effect

Inari’s effect is to double amounts of all non-Cat Food drops for one expedition (so doing 6h is advisable to maximise this effect).
The Big Bag changes your next Ad Bag to have the following drop table:

Item Big Bag Rate
Cat Food ×1 11.2%
Random Catseye ×1 (Special, Rare, Super, Uber or Legend) 11.1% each
Treasure Radar ×1 11.1%
Rich Cat ×1 11.1%
Leadership ×1 11.1%

Appendix A: Item Choice Base Rates

Table

Appendix B: XP Ranges Dropped Per Line

Table

Appendix C: Gamatoto Experience

Table

Appendix D: Item Choice Level Modifiers

Table

Appendix E: The General Formula For Capped Drops

Math

This is the probability of getting exactly S (>0) drops from n lines (6,18 or 36) with a drop chance per line of p (including effects of helpers and level), when they can drop 1 to D items per line with equal chance. This can be used to calculate expectation values for Gamatoto Areas with caps without having to enumerate all possible ways of reaching the cap by hand, which is tedious for caps greater than 3 or 4 (relevant for Cat Food Cap = 9).

A document with the derivation of this is here.

With the parameters of a 6h expedition (n=36) and Cat Food drops (D = 2) for a typical late game area and Helper build, you might find this predicts around 0.5% less cat food per expedition than the naive calculations which don’t account for cap. Thus, doing 1h expeditions to avoid reaching the Cat Food cap is rather pointless as the difference is minimal.

For Catseye Cave with Cap = 1, the complex approach above is not required as the probability of hitting the cap is simply:

P(1 or more drops) = 1 - P(0 drops)

and the resulting expectation value is trivial (if tedious) to compute.

Credits

ThanksFëanor#8162 (writing, analysis, datamining and testing)
obafgkm#7789 (proofreading, datamining and testing)
ITstumbler#1797 (datamining and testing)
Waran-Ess#9801 (web conversion)