I completed the Balance challenge, but couldn’t even hope to beat the first cell of any of the Void maps at level 45 like I could last time. I’m going to slog on to 55 to try Decay. I chose Golden Battle when I reached 50, since I figured Battle was 100% of play, but Void and Helium happenstance would be much more rare.
Peter - Yes, the game will start from your last autosave. Mistakes are generally pretty easy to recover from, since Upgrades will make those errors moot. Sometimes I export and save to a Google doc before I do something major like respec, but you’ll eventually get to the point where you can just Portal and start over without too much wasted effort, because you’ll have learned a better method through trial and error.
I didn’t really do anything different for Balance. Sometimes the maps are impossible unless you do more World zones and get Upgrades, and vice versa. I couldn’t really follow the algorithms, so I just switched from World to Map and back whenever the fights got too tough. Just stick to maximizing Block and Gyms as usual and you’ll do fine.
When I make a blatant mistake I immediately close my browser window and reopen. That’s worked for me the few times it’s happened, though I suppose there’s the chance the autosave will fire in the interim.
You can also save the long text string that is your save file as text somewhere safe as a last backup.
Pretty much what I’m doing. It’s been pretty easy and fast so far, but I had it backwards. Doing world maps increases production and sub maps decreases it. Got my second Void map a little while ago so I did the sub maps to bring up my health for that.
The thing about balance is that you want to have 250 stacks as much as possible, and the rules are that zone squares add one and map squares subtract one.
So, assuming you’ll eventually need the equipment prestiges, it’s generally best to do them each level on minimal sized maps, taking your stacks from 250 down to 200 or 175. Doing this twice is not nearly as bad as dropping your stacks to 150 or 125 by doing two levels worth at once.
Exception: when you do the Wall, you’re going to lower your stacks by another 100, so you might want to procrastinate on doing other maps to balance things out. It’s all about balance, no pun intended.
Also, if you don’t have Scientist II yet, you might want to put off starting Maps until you first get to 250 stacks.
The Balance challenge is just a bonus He run; you don’t get any new perks or anything from it and it’s repeatable. So when you first get it, it’s not necessarily a good idea to run it if it’s going to more than double the time it takes you to get to Z40. Once you are progressed enough that you can overcome the negatives fairly easily, then it’s worth it to run as long as it’s taking you less than 2x the time to get to Z40 as you would without it.
A similar, but much harder challenge opens up at Z80 (Electricity). Doesn’t seem remotely worth it until you are much further progressed and can get to Z80 again fairly easily.
Yeah, but Balance seemed to me to be faster than a normal run, even right after I got it. Your mileage may vary. I haven’t even tried Electricity yet, but that one doesn’t have anything like the massive production bonus of Balance. I probably won’t run it for quite a while, as I have a number of regular challenges queued up once I finish my current long slog to level 100. 4 levels to go.
I hit zone 25 and it’s time to let the game sit and resource build so I battled it up to 250. When I come back I can always knock the stacks back down by battling a lower level map. The name “Balance” is very apt. Fun too. I’m looking forward to the extra helium.
I like how every portal and challenge makes you do things differently, tweaking this or that you didn’t pay attention to much before.
Well, I made it to zone 33 this am. That’s pretty fast for me, in roughly 24 hours or so. Things are slowing down now of course. Coordinations will start getting painful soon.
Zone 37 will be decision time. How much further do I want to push? Question, the He I both earn and spend doubles at zone 40 (Balance). Does that mean if I buy three Wormholes for 30 He I will have actually spent 60 He, or will I have spent 30 He and get back another 30, making them essentially free? If the latter, it’ll be worth pushing to zone 45 or so.
Well, I don’t know if calling it ‘free’ is quite right, but from looking at the code it appears that it adds to a pool at challengeObj.heldHelium all the applicable times you earn helium, and then gives you that much when you complete the challenge. So I think you’d get the full amount, not just a doubling of helium held on hand.
In other news I made it to level 100 in just under a week, getting ready for void maps now. I just have 4, a little below odds considering my previous deepest run was level 80 and I mostly ran with a +6.5% void map dropping heirloom equipped.
Yes, you get double the amount of He you’ve earned, regardless of whether or not you spend any on Collectors.
Grats on getting to Z100… that must have been absolutely brutal at your He level. I’m now on Z82 which is the highest I’ve been yet… was thinking I’d see if I could push 90 but still don’t know if I’m ready for 100 yet.
Yeah, 100 was rough though I feel like guessed about right on gigastations, I had a fairly smooth curve. One last comment, with the level 100 gymystic and the block formation void maps seemed like they wouldn’t be too bad; three hours of wood farming later I had the block to survive non-critical hits, and I set it to repeat void maps and slept for six hours.
I come back and I’m on the Cthulimp of the first void map- killing imps was just that slow. I just bought six hours worth of metal in weapons, hopefully things will speed up for the other three maps. Oh, and I’m regretting not having done Decay yet.
Seems like conditions always vary somewhat when I do Portals in general. I guess there’s some sort of butterfly effect. Something I consider a minor adjustment early on can make things much more difficult later. I was able to do the Void maps after zone 45 before, but had to wait till 53 to do them this time around.
I’m considering doing a minimal amount of Wormholes next time around to save Helium. Collections are much bigger, only use Gems to make, and enable me to catch up on late game Coordination requirements.
Trading Bones for Heirlooms doesn’t seem to amount to much considering they drop when Void maps are completed. It’s like in WoW where you work your ass off to get the fat loot, then in the next expansion, the green drops make them look like Cracker Jack toys.
If it’s any consolation, Garden maps are loottype Any or Gems, so there’s a high chance that even if you had gotten 25% more loot two thirds of it would have been resource types you didn’t need.
I guess it may be worth it in late game when you’ve bought everything else and would rather just buy a Magnificent heirloom than slog through a level 180+ void map.
Well, the only official change I know of after reset is that void maps drop rate per square can drop once your record for highest level exceeds 80.
I only bought Wormholes a few times, my lifetime Wormholed Helium is 207. Skip them once it’s only a little painful to do so.
Yeah, the Imp-orts are clear winners for where to spend your first 500 bones. Anything that lasts indefinitely is going to help more than single run stuff, and as you say heirlooms will be replaced by higher quality ones soon enough. I expect to be done with all the Imp-orts well before actually getting to the top-end heirlooms.