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• Summons a golden leech that attaches to the reptiles for 30 seconds.
• Each time you tap while Golden Leech is active, you accumulate gold from the reptile.
• Each level of this ability Increases the multiplier of reptile gold received per tap of the leech.
• Begins at 15% and goes up by 5% per level.
• Uses "normal reptile gold" as the base, regardless of whether you are leeching from a golden reptile, normal reptile, boss or golden boss reptile.
• The amount of gold per tap is locked in when the ability starts. In other words, if you advance 30m while leeching, you do not get extra gold towards the end. It continues to feed using the initial amount.
• See this article for more information on gold.
• Mutations Cerulean Walkers, Stalagmite Walkers, and Stalagmite Carapace have influence on this.
• The gene Gilded Leech significantly increases the gold received - many multiples depending on how fast you can tap.
• The mutation Red Devil Pincers cuts the ability cooldown in half.
• Tapper Crab in the store does not work with this ability. The original Tapper Crab did.
• There is no mutation to increase duration (yet).

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When it's good

24/7/365. Gold is delicious.

Commentary

20% extra gold isn't a game changer. You can only buy a couple extra levels of a queen or ability. That doesn't mean this talent sucks, it's just the nature of an exponential game. For the math curious, the 20% is indeed an extra 20% on top of every other bonus (1.2x) not just added in to an already high percentage.

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When it's good

If you're able to "instant kill" reptiles and can't tap very fast.

Commentary

It only impacts gold dropped from reptiles killed while Leech is running. The most reptiles that you can kill in 30 seconds is around 25, so this talent would give you +50x reptile gold in the best case scenario. This can be more gold than Enhanced Metabolism depending on how high your Leech ability is at the time. There is a breakeven point (math is involved) to find out where Absorption starts to fall behind EM but it is very low in terms of your level of Leech. Keep in mind as you raise your Leech level, you gain more % of reptile's gold every time you tap. If you have Gilded Leech gene, this breakeven point would be even lower. See below for a table.

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When it's good

Facing a boss that you can't possibly kill before the timer runs out. Usually this is only a tournament thing.

Commentary

This talent doesn't provide any extra gold. The damage is enormous though and usually is enough to kill any reptile if you can even just scratch it. It's also fun to kill a reptile in an explosion.

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Metabolism Versus Absorption

At what Leech ability level does Enhanced Metabolism become better than Absorption? This assumes you are able to "instant" kill reptiles while your leech runs. If you cannot "instant" kill a reptile, Absorption isn't going to do you much good. This table shows, based on how many times you can tap per second, at what point Metabolism will yield more overall gold.

Taps / Sec	Leech Level
1	233
5	45
10	21
15	13
20	9
25	7
30	4

Which Talent Should I Choose?

Enhanced Metabolism for the +20% gold, especially once you get Gilded Leech. Power of Gold is tempting, but mostly is only good if you're in a tournament and absolutely need to kill a few extra bosses that are beyond your normal ability. Absorption is a red herring unless you can't tap very much in 30 seconds.