It kind of develops spurts. Sometimes an upgrade will lead to a better weapon or armor that is cheap to produce, so you buy buy buy and dominate. Then things level off, and you discover something like superhuts, so you buy buy buy, then zerg zerg zerg. Like the tooltip says, the trimps understand.
I’m on my second run, zone 33. I have plenty of block now, but low on damage and always low on Trimps. I’ve got two Coordination upgrades I have to make but don’t have the Trimps for it yet.
Has anyone done the Metal challenge? I gather you can’t mine. Seems like it would be a hard challenge.
No, but I am trying out the training challenge. So far, it’s not so bad. I’m not running through the zone as fast as before, but I should be able to develop more resources before the crunch period, where you can only play a few minutes then wait a half hour before making anything new.
It’s not too bad, you can use the Mine button and since your own output doubles every level you can still do all the weapon research.
All I can say is fuck.
I ran sandcastle builder for about 12 months, manually playing at least a little bit every day, some days for more time than I’d like to admit. I forced myself to stop early this year, although I kept the save file.
This is reminiscent of that, although more straightforward.
Just. Fuck.
It’s pretty tough, but the perk it unlocks is well worth it for reducing the ridiculous/unattainable costs of the higher level weapon & armor upgrades.
I forgot about the button. Cool. I’m on level 34 or 35 now, and things have gotten really slow, so I think it’s time to portal and start my third run-through.
Yeah, zone 36 has been like a brick wall for me so far since I can’t keep up with Coordination research. Last game I even focused on Trumps and housing and was still short a good 2,500 trimps when I got there.
Trying out No Miners now. This is going to take a while, but I think I’ll get to the point where I can block any attack. 
I’m doing the Size challenge and it hurts even more than I had expected because with the work force halved you still need the same amount of trainers to block effectively.
What’s even worse is that the new housing unit you unlock at zone 37 (wormholes) are basically unusable, because they cost helium to build, and it’s not worth it to spend any of such a precious resource on them until much later (I just bought one wormhole last run to get the achievement, and portaled shortly after). According to the Wiki, this is the only housing structure that uses helium, and the next level of housing doesn’t require it. But it also doesn’t come until zone 50.
Makes for an extremely tough bottleneck since as you observe, it’s not possible to build enough housing to keep up with Coordination.
At least the perk from the Size challenge houses an extra 10% per level, so that should help. I’ve got Tauntimp too, but so far I haven’t seen much of a boost from that.
No Miners is boooooooring. I made it to zone 12, and it’s either wait for the trimps to take 5 minutes to kill a monster, or zerg zerg zerg constantly to do any damage.
I’m doing it now. So far it’s okay. I’m just cranking up my block and cruising through maps. Only at zone 9 at the moment though. I just don’t like having to leave the game running in a separate window to mine.
One thing that helped was to make maps with metal and run through them a few times for the bonus and to be able to afford weapon upgrades.
I’m at zone 32 and I think it’s about time to do my first portal - what are the best things to spend on early? It seems like Bait and Looting are both good choices.
That’s what I wound up doing, and I finally completed the run. Now it’s my strategy for the next run. I used to have 3 times as many miners as farmers and carpenters. Now half my Trimps are farmers, 1/3 are carpenters, and I have more trainers than miners. I choose Mountains for maps to get my metal & gems. I otherwise build to increase block rating, which means wood for gyms and food for trainers.
I mainly have been using helium to increase productivity, and traded my first 50 bones for Whipimps, which increase productivity when defeated. I bought the The Artisan/Heirloom feature after completing the No Miner option, and the purple tag shows up, but I haven’t seen any further development from that.
When do we get to go past zone 25?
Looting is definitely the go to early perk. It affects the helium you gather in each zone (except the zone 20 Blimp, that’s a constant value of 45 helium).
I’ve always been a fan of Trumps, especially when doing the size challenge.
Power and toughness are also good to have.
Congrats on getting to 32 on your first portal though! When I’m starting a new game, I usually portal at 25 the first couple of times to build up my looting, trumps, power and toughness.
I am self-imposing a rule where I am only able to use the portal on Mondays Its really slowed the progression down, but it’s kind of fun watching how much further I can get the next week.
My progression through 7 weeks is 35, 48 (metal challenge), 48 (size challenge), 63 (scientist challenge), 65 (Discipline challenge), 76 (scientist II challenge), 78 (Meditate challenge).
I am currently up to zone 68 for this week and am running the Trimp challenge.
I am a big fan of wormholes, once you are progressing to level 40+ regularly. To get to 50 in any meaningful time, I spend all helium I’ve earned up to 37 on wormholes, then never buy another one. The helium is the helium earned after buying wormholes. (Week 5 and 6 I accidentally bought extra worm holes after 37 :()
Week Zone Bone Helium Wormholes
1 35 23 234 0
2 48 4 410 17
3 48 28 567 19
4 63 13 3321 19
5 65 42 6102 25
6 76 21 14.2K 25
7 78 45 16.5K 24
OK, I’ve been playing this for about a week and have portaled twice. Sorry if I’m missing something obvious here, but what exactly does “respec” mean? The game doesn’t tell you, and the wiki doesn’t either. It seems like it just assumes the player knows, but as far as I can tell from context, it means resetting your perks to zero. But why would I want to do that? Perks are more powerful; what good would it do me to reduce them?
I haven’t tried it myself, but based on other games I’ve played, “Respec” means you’re reimbursed the helium points you earned and can spend them in a different way. As you play the game more often, you might figure out a more optimal way to spread your points and want to do a little tweaking.