Ego Sword

Warning: Buying your first Dojo buff will deactivate some of the effects of the Ego Sword (and other tiers of leeching swords). The leeched XP earned by pets outside dungeons and the extra XP generated when multiple Ego Swords are equipped on the same team will no longer work. Ego Swords will continue to steal XP from pets within the same team, but will no longer generate extra XP. So if all six pets on one team have Ego Swords equipped, they will all earn the same amount of XP as if no Ego Swords were equipped. If one pet has an Ego equipped, it will earn 100% of the XP and the other pets on that team will earn zero. This is worth it. Eventually Dojo will allow you to get much more XP than you could by having multiple Ego Swords on the same team and on outside pets.

Basics

While the Ego Sword is the Tier 3 version of this weapon, "Ego Sword" is a term used both in-game and by the community to refer to all versions of the XP-leeching weapon. The Ego Sword (as well as its T1, T2, and T4 variant) is a special pet equip that leeches XP from pets in dungeons. Many strategies exist with using the Ego Sword in less traditional methods. Normally, if an Ego Sword is equipped on a pet in a dungeon, that pet will receive up to 100% of the XP given by the dungeon, as opposed to being split equally among all pets. This is a good idea when leveling a new dungeon pet or when power-leveling your more important dungeon classes, like Mage, Assassin, or Supporter. The T3 version of the sword is able to get up to this 100% XP Leech mark. The T1 and T2 variants cap at lower amounts (33.33% and 66.67% respectively) while the T4 sword caps at 100% but also offers an increase in your god's HP Regen.

In-Depth Look

The Ego Sword not only works on pets in dungeon teams, but campaign pets as well. If a pet is in a campaign, crafting, fighting clones, or idling, they will receive "free" XP from the dungeon teams. This is not to be confused with the Free EXP pool. The magical free XP generated by Ego Swords goes directly to the pet and not to the shared pool. Any non-dungeon pet with an Ego Sword equipped will generate a certain amount of free XP depending on the level of the sword. The amount changes depending on the quality/upgrade level of the Ego and the total number of dungeon teams unlocked. The better the sword, the more XP is generated. The more teams you have unlocked, the less XP is generated per team. While getting more teams seems detrimental, the XP obtained by sending that team into dungeons is more than enough to counter the decrease in XP generated by the other teams. Essentially, don't unlock a team unless you intend to actually use that team.

What does this mean? With an SSS+20 Ego and 6 teams, outside-of-dungeon pets will generate 2.08% XP. Say your Pumpkin is in a Food campaign with an SSS+20 Ego Sword equipped. Each of your six dungeon teams brings in 1,000,000 XP each, for a total of 6M XP. Pumpkin will then get 83.4k XP, without leeching it from the dungeon teams. Dungeon pets will still get the full amount, and your Pumpkin just got additional XP. XP gained this way will only go toward Dungeon Level, not Class Level, but it can be drained from your pet for 25 GP and allocated to Class Level. Pumpkin with an Ego Sword is pretty common, since having a Magic Stick equipped does not increase the amount of Chocolate it can find.

Other non-dungeon pets that can benefit from Ego Swords are your non-growth camp Adventurers and your Alchemists. It's not recommended to put Ego Swords on your Blacksmiths, since hammers can give a major increase to crafting quality compared to a higher Class Level.

Because Dojo eventually removes the major use of Ego Swords, you could be wondering "why would I even bother with making them?" Egos help to give you a nice boost to pets in RTI and Pet Village, and allow you to powerlevel pets. Using Egos until you have enough Dojo XP to utilize its buffs is a good idea, so you can get the benefit of both XP-increasing metas.

Multiple Ego Swords

Another common strategy when using Ego Swords is to have a dungeon team fully equipped with 6 Egos. For each additional pet beyond 1 equipped with an Ego Sword, each pet in that dungeon team with an Ego Sword equipped will receive bonus XP. With a full team of 6 pets with SSS+20 Ego Swords, each pet will receive an extra ~25% XP. While this may sound enticing it is only recommended when your pets can easily survive the Depth and Difficulty you are trying to farm, since the Ego Swords have bad stats compared to other equipment. However, even just having a couple Ego Swords per team will still give bonus XP to each pet with them equipped.

Pet Prioritization

Now that we know the ins and outs of the Ego Sword's mechanics, what pets should they go to first? For dungeon pets, it is often recommended to keep your damage-dealers at a higher level than the rest of your team. This is most often your Mages and your Assassins. Mages are quite easily the strongest damage-dealing pets until you unlock the more powerful Assassins like Treasure/Mimic and Archer. Putting an Ego Sword on your Mage/Assassin to level them 10-20 levels past the others pets on that team will help you push into higher difficulties.

After getting your damage-dealers leveled, Supporters are the next ones to focus on. The biggest boost from a Supporter is their Damage Reduction passive ability. After reaching CL10, they will start reducing damage done to all pets up to 50% (1% * CL). Once you are far into D3 dungeons, and farming the Mimic enemy, pushing for CL50 on your Supporters will greatly increase your survivability in both dungeons and UBv4 fights.

Some pets have a special ability outside of their normal class ability that increases with CL. Pets like Unicorn, Vesuvius, Cardboard Box, etc. They too can benefit from running an Ego to help push their CL faster than normal in order to get a larger benefit from their special ability. Unicorn is an Adventurer specialist, and thus can't get Class XP from dungeons. However, you can evolve it into a Rogue, use it in dungeons, and then use a Class Change token to switch it to Adventurer.

The least important class to level up via Egos is the Defender class. Defenders usually have no problem surviving, given their high Defense and HP, as long as they are geared properly. The other dungeon classes, such as Rogue or Blacksmith, can benefit from Ego Swords as well but are not a big priority unless they are very far behind the other pets on the team.

Making Ego Swords for your non-dungeon pets is also important in the long run for more XP gains. Equipping pets in RTI/Pet Village with Egos, and your campaign pets who don't necessarily benefit from Sticks (ie Pumpkin), will further boost the amount of XP you are bringing in.

RTI and Pet Village

Ego Swords behave a bit differently for pets who are in the RTI and Pet Village tab. Egos work similarly here to how they work when equipped on non-dungeon pets, giving you free XP, but it will give you Class XP instead of the usual Dungeon XP. Since pets in RTI/Village increase the boost they give depending on Class Level, it is a good idea to have all these pets equipped with Ego Swords to further increase their Class Level.

In the pet's tooltip while assigned to RTI or Village, you can see an estimate for the amount of XP/hr they will receive from the dungeon teams. This is generated based on the average XP gained from the last 30 dungeon runs. So, if you're doing quicker dungeon runs, this XP/hr estimate will go down and will not be accurate if you switch to longer dungeon runs.

Gram

The unique weapon, Gram, behaves similarly to an Ego Sword. It counts as an Ego Sword in all regards within dungeons (leeches XP, increases XP if used with multiple Ego Swords on the same team, etc.) but does not work on pets who have it equipped outside of dungeons. Gram will also give an extra 20% XP to the equipped pet when used in dungeons. This can be increased by 2% each new Patreon Boss defeated. More information can be found on the Gram page. The extra Gram XP is on top of the already existing extra XP given if multiple Egos/Gram are used on the same dungeon team. Meaning, Gram can give the equipped pet an extra 25%(Full Ego team) + 20%(Gram) XP at unlock if used with 5 Egos + 1 Gram on the same team.

After Dojo, Gram will continue to work like an Ego Sword (stealing XP from other pets on the team) and will still have the extra XP earned based on the number of Patreon Bosses killed.