delaying AP farm in deterrence to dig is one of the worst tradeoffs you can make in idle.

the better AP/day ratio you can have is always the best option here. And almost always that ratio is optimal playing each level once and in it's respective order.

You are all right and also most of you wrong at the same time.

WZI is a game after all. So, its primary goal is to cause joy for the player. What exactly causes joy for one person, might be totally different to everyone else.

Yes, optimal AP farming is only playing each level once and then ascent. Yes, optimal AP means never to wait for a digging and rather complete the level early. Yes, the main way to progress in idle is by collecting AP. That is (probably, who really knows?) all correct and fine. But if one's goal is to have a poor artifact of every single kind, despite the usefulness of this goal, this person's happiest day will be the day, he finally found his 41st poor artifact. And if this player wants to discuss how to get the most artifacts out of one's time, then please stop lecturing each and everyone about how YOU think EVERYONE should play a GAME. This isn't about someone's tax declaration, it's about fun and everyone has a different enjoyment for games.

In my first answer to this question I already stated, that by going down this route, you will miss out on lots of AP and therefore idle progress. But that isn't a bad thing in general. It you don't care for idle progress, then you can still play WZI and - at least when it comes to me - discuss publicly how you can achieve whatever is most important to you. There is no need for all of you to repeat the same OPINION over and over. If someone wants to dig, let them dig, for crying out load! I have personally so far never finished a level without having started each and every digging site, although by times this meant to wait up to one day in addition to start the next digging. And I really don't feel bad about it and no-one will be able to convince me that this was the WRONG decision because for me it wasn't and I would (and probably will) do it again.

chill man. not worried about you. you are aware of what you're doing and playing as you enjoy it.

worried about a new player that enters a thread called Artifacts guide 1.0 and starts digging everything before advancing levels only to realize it's not the most efficient way to play later on. don't see a problem in giving that type of player a few warnings.

And Master Jz also made a fair point.

But this new player must be blind to oversee the (identical) "warnings" that you all were scattering around. If players seek advise, I'd assume that they will actually and thoughtfully READ the forum and not just skim the headlines. This thread currently reads like:

• Is xy correct?
  
• Yes, but it isn't wise.
  
• Don't do this.
  
• That's the worst you can do.
  
• Never use this.
  
• There is actually some usefulness in it.
  
• But you shouldn't do it.
  
• Don't do this.
  
• How could you even consider this foolish idea?!?
  
• If you do it, do it here.
  
• Don't do this.
  

From the players who give advises I'd expect to read, too, this time the question. The question was:

Looks like fastest and cheapest way to get a lot of common artefacts for subsequent upgrades. Wrong?

Hence, any potentially correct answer should therefore, well, ANSWER the stated question and not (attempt to) explain, why the question was wrong. And the question wasn't "should I do x and y" but "Can I use this approach to dig lots of common artifacts". And the objectively best answer for this question MUST BE that if you can dig for artifacts 24/7 while only digging the 8h sites, you have maxed out on common artifacts. There is no other strategy that will give you more (or even nearly the same number of) common artifacts. It just won't help you to progress in idle.

If you say yourself that new players should be able to learn from the knowledge that we collected in the forum, then at the same time you shouldn't discourage new players from asking new questions, by telling them how dumb they are for even considering asking a question. Every question deserves a good answer, even if it wasn't a good question. That is how a good community should help everyone seeking for help of any kind. And if you can't reuse 80% of the question to formulate your answer ("the fastest and cheapest way to get a lot of common artefacts" ... is to ... "don't do it!" - sorry, that doesn't work), then you have answered a different question.

I think we can do both, answer question asked, and provide additional information which we think will be useful in making informed decisions in case they're unaware of certain aspects of the game which might change their decision.

Something along the lines of:

- Yes, you can repeatedly complete Floating Rocks or WOTW and do quick digs repeatedly to have a constant flow of digs going.
- But imho there may be a better way to accomplish what you're trying to do while also completing many WZI levels, like so by doing xyz.

I do agree with your point though, Phoenix, a lot of people preach "the proper way to play", and I think we're shown in all the forum discussions that there are certainly several ways of playing.

I think what is best if for example if someone asks: Do I need Joint Strike to finish all WZI levels? Well of course the answer is No ... but to just answer No without asking 'but why would you want to?' would likely be doing the person a disservice. But if they answer, "B/c I want to be the first person to finish all WZI levels without it just to be able to say that I did it" ... then go wild & do your own thing. (;

hey Parsifal, love your guide

I wanted to make a comment on your original thread that had the full thing but I couldn't do it cuz it was too old so I'm going to do it here, hopefully that's alright

would it be possible for you to edit how to combine a supercharge mine + free cache and the market raid, just like how you did it for supercharge army + free cache? thanks!

Does SM+MR actually work reliably? I've had mixed results with it to the point where all I can say is that I don't understand the workings.

I did some testing with 2 markets where I did a baseline of each market ... and had low results on each. This did a bunch of SMs on the stuff in the 1st market & then did another MR and had excellent results (lots of stuff, way more than the baseline MR with no SMs), and then did the same with SMs on the stuff in the 2nd market & did another MR and had almost identical results as the baseline.

Not sure what the difference is. Anyone else done this with good results?

@John Smith

thanks for your comment. I'm planning on rewriting and updating a chunk of sections in the guide around mid August...
especially the market section!

I don't think that Supercharge Mine affects either Free Cache or Market Raid.

I don't think that Supercharge Mine affects either Free Cache or Market Raid.

Not sure about FC, but did another test yesterday with MR, and still found no correlation, so think you're right here.

@Master JZ

In a previous post you mentioned "War of the worlds has a 1D9H. I can get to it in 1-2 hours. That's probably the best one."

Could you please explain how can you reduce digging time so much?
According to the information I have read about faster digging Advancement Phase 4, it allows you to go up to 50% time reduction (twice faster).

Thanks,
Arcturus

@Arcturus
He's saying that he can get to the dig (and start the dig) in that much time, not finish the dig itself. It still takes 1d9h to finish. But you can Abort the level (or finish it, whichever), the dig will keep going, and you can go start another level while it finishes.

But now that I think about it ... reducing dig times . . . going to take a hell of a lot of Money boosts to be able to keep digs going at 2x speeds.

What krinid said. I start the dig, finish the level, than continue to the next unbeaten level. The dig still takes 1d9h. That gives me a lot of time to find good dig sites on the next level.

The first few levels offer good AP/hour even with the 30% reduction. I like to replay an early level when I finish a later level and don't think I'll make it to the first dig site before my current dig ends.

ok I see. many thanks.

Arc

It's a very nice and useful guide!

Two small things to add about digs: As long as you're not on a phone, you should have your next dig site window open to one side as your current dig is finishing. As soon as you hit the claim artifact button start clicking the new dig site. It will start to dig before the window pops up that you need to clean the sand off of. Save some time that way. Also always make sure you have at least 0.5 $ above the dig price so you don't have to scramble to sell items/alloys/ore to be able to start that next dig.

Edited 7/21/2021 17:11:07

Awesome! Great job. Learned so much.

Hi guys,

I have found 4 guides so far:
- Full guide
- Economics
- Artifacts
- Advancements

Is there any other I have missed?

Also, there is a useful list of mines here:
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Mines

Is there also a list of Army Camps?
How many are them?

Thanks,
Arcturus

@Arcturus

I'm working on a guide revision (some parts are outdated, and for some parts I changed a little bit my mind) and also I will post a new chapter soon.
Probably mid-end August.

Regarding Army Camps: I think there is no full list. For several reasons:

• They all produce the same armies. There are no weaker or stronger armies, all are created alike.
  
• If all camps produce the same, what differences are still there? Mostly the names. And probably for the same reasons to why Fizzer never published a list of all recipe names (everything but the name changes from level to level), he never published a list of army camp names.
  
• The only other thing that makes up an army camp is the "Base Level" (see https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Army_Camps for an explanation). The thing here is, that I don't know whether an army camp with some name will always start with the same Base Level. If so, it might be (somewhat) advantageous to have a full list, if there is no connection between the name and the Base Level, such a list would be almost useless.
  
• There will definitely be an upper limit of army camps, though. There is only a finite set of idle levels and therefore the maximum of army camps is just the number of army camps in the level with the most army camps.
  

For other resources, I like to check the spreadsheets linked here: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/494875-artifact-database
They get updated/improved from time to time by their respective authors.

Edited 7/22/2021 20:55:20

Good luck with renewing your guide!