Peglin – Chip Relic Analysis

Chip Relic Analysis: Unveiling the Double-Edged Sword of Peggle’s Damage Multiplier

By Critty Katie.

I did a bit of programming and math because I was curious as to how good the chip relic actually was. For the longest time, I felt like it was a negative take but I never had the data to back it up. So here are the results from my calculations!

Note: I consider chip ‘failing’ or ‘detrimental’ if it results in a shot dealing under half of its regular damage. It’s arguable that a shot doing 1/2 damage isn’t really that bad against regular enemies, but once you start doing less than that, then your fights go on way too long and chip is actively ruining a battle.

Chip Values: [2, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.5]

• Multiball 0 Outcomes: 5
• Multiball 0 Expected Value: 1.2
• Multiball 0 Positive (>1): 2
• Multiball 0 Neutral (=1): 1
• Multiball 0 Negative (<1): 2
• Multiball 0 Detrimental (<.5): 0
• Chip Fail Rate: 0.0

• Multiball 1 Outcomes: 25
• Multiball 1 Expected Value: 1.44
• Multiball 1 Positive (>1): 8
• Multiball 1 Neutral (=1): 9
• Multiball 1 Negative (<1): 8
• Multiball 1 Detrimental (<.5): 4
• Chip Fail Rate: 0.16

• Multiball 2 Outcomes: 625
• Multiball 2 Expected Value: 2.07
• Multiball 2 Positive (>1): 240
• Multiball 2 Neutral (=1): 145
• Multiball 2 Negative (<1): 240
• Multiball 2 Detrimental (<.5): 136
• Chip Fail Rate: 0.2176

• Multiball 3 Outcomes: 390625
• Multiball 3 Expected Value: 4.3
• Multiball 3 Positive (>1): 164960
• Multiball 3 Neutral (=1): 60705
• Multiball 3 Negative (<1): 164960
• Multiball 3 Detrimental (<.5): 109840
• Chip Fail Rate: 0.2811904

Analysis

• Chip’s expected value is actually positive in every scenario! So if you just go off of that alone, then it seems like a no-brainer to always take chip.
• This also scales with Multiball, as more appears to be better!! With Multiball 3 (or just a Matryorbshka), you’re on average dealing 4.3x damage!!! This makes chip insane vs boss fights that have tons of health, such as Demon Wall.
• The real weakness is in normal fights: there’s an equal number of positive and negative outcomes, but it’s important to understand what this actually means. I made sure to track the detrimental outcomes as this is how chip really screws you up. While the Matryoshka Shell seems like a no-brainer to pick up with chip, it ends up ruining 16% of your shots. Across many fights this really starts to add up and you start taking loads of chip damage in fights (the number one killer of runs). Simple low health fights end up becoming a problem mostly because you took chip.
• Assume that you have 1 really good piercing orb along with chip: 40% of the time that orb is negatively impacted by chip, which could end up ruining what would’ve been a really good aoe turn and potentially the entire fight!! This only gets worse with Multiball as you start getting shots that are detrimental to the run pretty frequently.
• Consider that even if you’re doing positive shots, how often does dealing 4x damage matter compared to a standard 1x shot? Most of the time you’re killing anyways so the positives end up never actually mattering and the negatives only make fights harder.