I found it easier to get a bunch of plagued heirlooms before attempting the spire. I was regularly doing 510 runs, and had a couple up to 525, before I beat it.
It has a bunch of new perks and abilities. I’m not actually there yet, but I messed with it a bit when it was on the test server.
I had previously said it would be interesting to more or less start over, and see how much of the previous slow start was just due to my learning curve, but I had no interest in actually starting over, so this seems like it is an interesting set up.
I like the radon universe. The new heirlooms are good, and there’s a bunch of new achievements. I’ve gotten to the point where I can beat the first repeatable radon challenge with a bit of effort, but my progress slowed quite a bit and for now I’m back in the helium universe.
I just got into Trimps as well - well, got “back into” Trimps, as apparently I had tried it briefly about 3 years ago, according to the game - after reaching a wall in Cookie Clicker. (I have a few days off coming up over Labor Day weekend; it could be time for another reincarnation.)
Are there any “obvious strategies” for the early zones? For example, is there a particular ratio of employees among the jobs I should be targeting? It seems to me that metal should be my priority, as that’s what drives the weapons and armor upgrades. Also, should I be focusing more on “more Trimps” or upgrades?
A lot of this will depend on how early these “early zones” are.
If you are pre-60, then Block is very useful so you need wood.
If your population is too low to use all your Coordinations, then you need more housing, emphasizing your most valuable housing building (except Wormholes! Wean yourself off of wormholes as soon as possible). At some stages, this makes food the most valuable resource so you can build Tributes and earn gems.
Eventually you’ll have enough population to support your Coordinations, and then metal becomes your most important base resource. Try to prestige your equipment as far as possible rather than buying levels which get reset on your next prestige.
Keep an eye on your He/hr. It’s not necessary for every run to reach a new Highest Zone Ever. If your He/hr is falling, then it’s time to spend the helium on some perks and then portal. Of course there are a hundred exceptions to this rule where it’s worthwhile to push forward a few hours to unlock or complete a new challenge. But if spending twice as long on a run will only yield 20% more helium, you’re far better off portalling and repeating the run instead.
Whatever stage of the game you’re at, there’s great guides at Wikia.
You may not be able to afford Gymystic the first time you encounter it, but it’s worth bulking up on scientists for. Up until you reach Zone 60, Block is 100% effective against enemy damage, so a high enough Block will render you invulnerable, and Gymystic is the easiest way to achieve those levels.
Conversely, once you can get past Zone 30 and buy a Gymystic or two, stop running The Block. Shieldblock becomes pretty useless past that point and the health bonus is far more effective.
When it comes to gear, in my estimation, level 10 of a given tier is roughly equal to level 1 of the following tier. I’d avoid going higher than level 10 on any item unless you’re really trying to push through to the next tier or finish a Challenge.
Run Challenges whenever you can. If there’s a Challenge that will unlock a Perk you don’t have yet, go for that one. If there’s none of those, run a Helium challenge.
If you’re going to be leaving the game to idle for any amount of time (which you’re going to want to do), buy as many Barns/Sheds/Forges as you can afford so you can best take advantage of idle resource gathering. Eventually you’ll unlock AutoStorage and this won’t be necessary, but in early runs, a few hours’ worth of idling can earn you enough metal to upgrade your weapons and breeze through the next ten zones or so.
Once you unlock it, Carpentry is going to be your best friend, as the higher you can boost your population, the more Coordinations you can unlock and the faster your breed time will be (until you get to Nurseries, Geneticists and Anticipation, at which point longer breed times can be to your benefit.)
Looting is also going to be an important perk to invest in, as it increases the amount of Helium you can earn, and in the early runs that’s the one resource that persists across runs and fuels your Perks.
Any perk that has a max level (Anticipation, Agility, etc.) is worth maxing out as early as you can afford it. In the long run, I’d avoid spending much on Bait, Trumps, or Packrat, as they become irrelevant pretty quickly.
I had to stop playing the update - my computer was heating up too much. If you are playing on a laptop, be careful, pay attention to how hot it is getting.
I got up to level 28 in universe 2 and didn’t see anything particularly new or exciting, TBH.
So, I’ve not yet reached a point where I can reliably beat Spire IV on any given run, but I have been able to farm Z510 void maps for awhile now and I’ve had a chance to play with some plagued heirlooms.
Would I be right in assuming that the ideal bonuses on a plagued shield would be crit chance, crit damage, Trimp attack, void chance, and Plaguebringer?
How about for a staff? I’m thinking Pet XP is going to be essential once I can finally buy level 10 of Capable and start evolving Fluffy, but I’m not sure what other bonuses I should be looking for to give me the best boost.
Personally, I keep two plagued shields and switch between them.
For most of the run I use a shield that maximizes void chance, with a little bit of extra damage and health.
Late in the run, I switch to a shield that maximizes health and damage. By this time the void maps are getting rarer, and having void chance on the shield makes little difference. I have crit chance, crit damage, plaguebringer, attack and health. And I prioritize crit chance first, and crit damage second.
What he said. You should have a carefully planned set of equipment for each push. And your current push should be growing fluffy. Fluffy is even better than challenge2s on the bonus scale. Train that pet!
I’ll have to keep that in mind as I’m farming heirlooms. So far, I haven’t found a “perfect” plagued shield - the best I have so far has crit chance, crit damage, void chance, plaguebringer, and trainer efficiency. I’m guessing that once I have two good ones, that the point where you stop overkilling every zone would be the point to switch from void chance to health.
Meanwhile, after my last few runs I was finally able to max out Capable, and in the subsequent run I’ve hit level 10, evolved, and leveled Fluffy back up to E1L8. I’m not quite feeling the difference to my attack bonus yet, but I’m sure it’ll become noticeable soon.
In today’s update, the daily challenge multiplier now affects dark essence, nature tokens, and nullifium recycling, which should definitely speed a lot of things up.
Can I get everybody’s opinion on how many gigastations to build at a time? I originally waited until I had at least 100 Warpstations before building them, and always bought the max amount. However, the Reddit forums recommend something entirely different.
So this one recommends buying 1 GS at 10 WSs, then 2 at 20 WSs, correct? Do you want to restart your WSs at 1 each time you buy GSs?
Ah, I’d forgotten how easy Poison Spires are. Just got my first Spire V clear without even having to do much extra aside from unlocking Z620 gear and saving all my nurseries until the end.
Now that I’ve got the Classy perk, I’m assuming I should pump as much helium into it as I can so I can get Fluffy those last few evolutions he needs to unlock Radon.
I think “10 with a +1 delta” means you buy 10 WS, then a GS. Then 11 WS, then a GS. Then 12 WS… . But you can adjust at any time if it seems too hard or too easy to buy the next WS.
When I was at that stage of the game, I wasted way too much time trying to maximize my population (and thus coordination) on each run. It’s probably best not to spend a ridiculous amount of time for a single WS, unless maybe you’re almost out of GS and 1 extra WS will earn you a coordination.
Today’s patch (in addition to some U2 stuff I can’t get at yet) turns some of the lower-level achievements into BW awards and replaces them with some new ones. Most notable are Herbalist, which gives you an attack boost based on how much Food you have on hand and should effectively triple or quadruple your damage in the late U1 zones, and Map Battery, which doubles the attack bonus for running maps.
I’ve managed my first <4 hours Spire V run with the new buffs, and did it with just the Zone 605 gear. Yay me.
I think you need to up those numbers up. One piece of advice I read was to work out how many you build before an upgrade by ones target zone. I’ve not even gotten past 150 myself, and I was starting to run out of GS upgrades doing +6, so +3 and +5 seem awfuly low to me.
For me, I seem to have gotten a glitch, autojob suddenly unlocked for me, and that doesn’t seem like it should have happened. Not that I’m put out by it, and I have no clue if it will survive past taking a portal.