Gotta respectfully disagree on this one. Since we’re certainly discussing late game considerations, let’s look at a shed of Crystalariums.
Money wise: if you buy the gold for them from Clint, that’s 750x25 = 18750 per. For 137 that’s 2,568,750. Using the bombs, it’s 250x25 = 6250 per, or 856,250 for the lot. A savings of 1.7 million. If you use the treasure hunters, that’s 2,500 per, or 342,500 for the lot, a savings of over 2.2 million, and more importantly a whopping 86%. For me at least, that’s certainly not chump change.
Time wise: 2 ways to look at this. From a smelting standpoint, since treasure hunters are pre smelted, you’re actually getting 10 hours of smelting in 1 hour of deconstructing. Relative quantities come into play of course but it’s certainly high efficiency. From a resource gathering standpoint, 250 gold per day seems like a fair assessment. For the 3425 total ore needed then, that’s 13.7 days of ore gathering replaced with 342,500 of expenses. If you can earn even just 25,000 a day elsewhere, it’s worth it.
Now certainly I’m not saying don’t gather or smelt ore. But from my perspective there’s no reason not to supplement with this. Just like furnaces I plan on sticking this at the top of the mines or elsewhere where I have easy access, and interacting with it when convenient. But from a “worth it” perspective, in a day I can gather 1500 to 2000 stone from the volcano and not even spend half the day. That’s 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 in avoided expenses. Compared to saving 25,000 in expenses by harvesting gold? I know which I’d prefer. I’m getting 10 deconstructors as soon as I get home tonight.
Sorry, but dealing with large numbers of deconstructors and treasure hunters is just super horrible, for so many reasons.
Tackle doesn't stack and each individual tackle takes up an inventory slot. So, you can only carry a maximum of 36 for each trip to Willy, and that in itself is a massive time loss, going somewhere you otherwise have no reason to visit.
It also makes loading them into machines a massive PITA because you can't just run along a line of them while holding a mouse button; you will need to manually switch to the next slot for each machine. You also need to reload them every hour. If you want to save on numbers of machines then this is another massive time sink compared to smelting furnaces, because you basically have to stand next to them all day to keep them going.
OTOH, if you don't want to babysit them all day, you have the additional infrastructure cost of all those deconstructors, even though you'll already have a suitable amount of furnace infrastructure, because you've been building them up since week one. If you're at the stage where you're new target is a shed of crystalariums, I'd say 50 furnaces is the bare minimum of a realistic number to have, but by this stage you're probably into triple figures tbh, because you've still got to smelt all the iridium you get from Skull Cavern. One load in the morning, and another load in the evening, with minimal interruption to the day, and your furnaces have provided enough gold for a minimum of least 20 Crystalariums, more likely 40+. And it's already sitting there just waiting for you to use.
Assuming that it only takes twice as long to load a deconstructor as it does for a furnace (which seems a lowball tbh), for similar output with deconstructors, you need
100+ deconstructors, which will cost you 2,000+ Qi gems, which is more time lost acquiring them
3 to 4 round trips to Willy's because of inventory constraints (that's the best part of another whole day gone right there)
Hoppers are virtually useless here, because you still have to unload the machine output manually, and although you save on clicks to load the deconstructors, you lose the same on clicks to load the hopper, as each tackle needs to be individually moved across to the hopper. But if you wanted a hopper for each machine, well, that'll be another 1,000 Qi gems (which is even more hours lost)
And as this is supposed to be a money thing, there's no point stretching it out over the course of a few weeks, with fewer machines, while you hunt Qi Gems, because for every day that you don't have your Crystalariums running, you're losing 195g in earnings per crystalarium per day, which adds up to a lost opportunity cost of around 27,000g per day across that whole shed.
With all the time losses that deconstructors incur, and the consequential opportunity cost of that, the argument for mass use of them just doesn't add up. They're kinda cool for casual play, but utterly impractical in industrial quantities
