strategy-logbook.md

The logbook strategy

What every strategy shares — bounds, options, merged stats, the hidden section — is in item-layer.md. This is the one item in the game that is up to three items at once, and everything below follows from that.

An Expedition Logbook lists up to three destinations. Each names an area, the faction whose land it is, and the two or three implicits that apply there. The player takes the book to Dannig and travels to exactly one of them, and the faction is what decides what that is worth — so one logbook has up to three prices, and a query asking for all three destinations at once prices the single copy in the league that leads to that exact trio.

Parsing (item/parse)

A destination is a section of its own and is recognised by shape, not by a table of factions (is_logbook_destination). There are four factions today and the areas run to dozens; both are game data a league can add to, and neither is a vocabulary this layer could keep honest. What is matched instead is the two leading lines being bare names — no digit anywhere, no Label: colon, no mod-type suffix, not an info line — which nothing else a logbook prints in a section of its own is.

Two checks and both are load-bearing. The leading pair is what keeps the block of affixes a magic or rare logbook prints below its destinations out, because an affix opens with its roll. And the tail has to read as modifiers (looks_like_mods), which keeps a stray pair of prose lines out and is the half that still holds with Advanced Mod Descriptions on, where each implicit gains an info line above it. The number of implicits is deliberately not fixed: the captures show two and three.

The implicits stay in Item::mods, and LogbookArea::mods holds their indices. Which implicit belongs to which destination is the whole of what a logbook is priced on and nothing about the modifiers themselves says it — the rare capture grants "increased number of Explosives" from two different destinations at two different rolls. The area and the faction go nowhere near the mod list, where they used to arrive as six unmatchable lines.

"Take this item to Dannig" needed a usage needle. A logbook is gear, so prose needs a positive signal before it stops being read as a modifier, and that sentence opens with no click instruction — the same shape a chart's "Take this item to Valerie" already had a needle for.

The join (item/plan, logbook_stat)

The faction and the area are searched as pseudo.* stats, and nothing else in the game is searched this way: the item prints the two as bare names and the site words them as Has Logbook Faction: Druids of the Broken Circle and Has Logbook Area: Scrublands. So the join is by exact stat wording, through two lexicon terms (Term::LogbookFactionPrefix, LogbookAreaPrefix) — the same shape and the same argument as SanctumEffectPrefix, which is also why the four faction names are nowhere in this codebase. A name the bundle has no stat for is a note, as an unknown sanctum boon or beast species is: the area list grows with the league.

What is searched

• One destination at a time. SearchPlan::choices is one group per destination and StatFilter::choice files each row under one; select_choice keeps exactly one group live. The faction is the choice itself — choice_primary, drawn as the alternative's own row and never a second time as a tickable one, because it is the single filter that follows entirely from which destination was picked. Everything else in the group is offered unticked: where it goes, because a buyer picking a faction is rarely picking an area with it, and what it grants there, because an implicit is one of two or three numbers that came with the area rather than something anybody chose.
• The faction is asked on presence, never on a count. The pseudo stat does take a value — how many destinations belong to that faction — and it is not what decides the price: a logbook with two Druids destinations is still bought for a Druids run, and bounding it drops every single-destination copy of the same thing.
• The first destination is live by default, and it is the first on purpose. Nothing here can rank the four factions, the ranking changes with the league and with what the player is farming, and a default dressed up as an answer would be read as one. The panel puts them in the game's own order and the choice is one click.
• A destination's implicit is a floor and never a ceiling (group_logbook_mods). Trade indexes an item's implicits as one total per stat and all three destinations feed the same total — the rare capture's two Explosives rolls, 14% and 16%, are indexed as 30%. A floor still matches under that, since the total can only exceed one destination's own roll; a ceiling seeded from one destination's roll asks the other two not to exist. Which side is the floor is the stat's own better, the same question to_filter asks of an open bound.
• The area level, map_filters.area_level, a floor and ticked. Unlike a map's tier, a chart's area level or a sanctum's floor — all exact, because a different number there is a different product — a higher logbook area level is strictly more of the same one, and a buyer at 80 takes an 83.
• The item level, offered. It bounds what the affixes can be crafted to, which is a question about crafting the book rather than about running it.
• Quantity, rarity and pack size, offered, and all three unticked on purpose — decided, not deferred. They are the same three properties a map is searched on and come off the same map_filters keys, and this is the one place a logbook deliberately parts company with the map strategy: a map's quantity and pack size are the whole of what it is run for and are ticked, where a logbook's are a second-order bonus on top of the artifacts, which the destination decides. They also only exist on a magic or rare book, so ticking them would make the same logbook searched two different ways depending on whether it had rolled affixes at all. A secondary reason to leave them alone: nobody has measured that the site indexes them for this category, and a filter it accepts and indexes nothing under empties the search exactly as heist_max_escape_routes does. Unticked is the state that cannot do that either way.
• The type is sent only where the bundle resolved the base. The category is the whole search on its own — one base type is filed under logbook — so the type says nothing it does not, and a magic logbook's printed line is "Buffered Expedition Logbook", which as a type matches nothing and reads as nobody selling one.

What is not

The affixes the book prints below its destinations are the map argument and get the map's answer, which is what the maintainer asked for: they apply wherever it goes, a logbook is craftable and a currency redoes them, and a query naming them finds the one copy in the league that rolled that set. So they are hidden — offered under the section at the foot of the list rather than dropped on the floor — and, as a map's are, not notes either.

Split is not parsed, not filtered and not mentioned. It is a flag line like Corrupted and the site has a filter for it; neither is wanted here. (The flag itself is read by parse_flags for every item in the game and has been since long before this, which is a different thing from the strategy having an opinion about it.)

Measured

The rare capture, searched as the plan builds it — category logbook, type Expedition Logbook, map_filters.area_level at min 80, pseudo.pseudo_logbook_faction_druids on presence, plus the three ordinary booleans — returned 983 listings in Allflame. So the category, the type beside it, the area level and the faction pseudo are all indexed for this category and none of them is a filter the site accepts and answers with nothing.

map_iiq, map_packsize and map_iir are not measured, and are not waiting on a measurement either: they are unticked because a logbook is not bought for them, and a measurement would only decide whether a row the search does not send is safe to send.