I expect a lot of people will be consolidating 10 Epics into 2 Legendaries over the next few days. One important question: do we need to wait until the artifact upgrade is complete to super ascend?

I’m leaning towards the +25% digging option. I’m not particularly close to 15 Epics so the tradeoff for me is a legendary Triple Strike I don’t use (even after the buff) versus the ability to hopefully push through an extra Legendary within each super ascension. Breakeven at 3.0 super ascensions?

Presumably 5.17 drops by then and this isn’t worth giving any more thought to…

I am on phone so I haven't updated yet and I can get a Leg Triple Strike.

I would really like to see something like an additional 1-2 hours of Idle time as a Super Ascend reward. The idea of having to go back down to only 2 hours makes me sad.

No powers

@Fizzer

Will the powers in level be collectable again after super-ascending?

Shouldn't you get the legendary Triple Strike if you started the level before the update? I just finished it and only got an epic one :( Great timing...

Ouch, that sucks, that is truly bad timing. Best you can do is appeal to Fizz out of the kindness of his heart based on already having started the level.

I suspect you would have still gotten the Leg TS if you had finished the level on an un-updated mobile platform (edit: confirmed, someone in this thread indicated as such), but too late for that (for you) now I suppose. But for anyone else out there considering taking on Hard Creek ... maybe hold off on your mobile update until you get this.

Getting a Leg TS the first time through is "fair", sure ... but perhaps Fizz is thinking it was too generous to begin with and is nerfing that. So rather than looking for "fair for everyone going forward" perhaps the context is "consider yourself lucky if you squeezed through in the golden era".

Overall though, it seems that this places even more emphasis on artifacts over all else, which late phase 4 players already felt was the case, b/c we didn't need any more AP, so all we do is dig. And now artifacts is all you get to carry over into the Super Ascension.

Edited 11/25/2021 16:12:45

That means I got it like 2 hours before the update. So glad I used three superpowers! Sorry for you, first time should be leg.

Tbh I’m not a fan of this. It feels like you’re losing all your progress. I like the idea of new levels but idk losing all your advancements just doesn’t sit right with me.

Wow, the +100 starting AP is seriously bad. There should be a "fail" achievement for choosing that.

Well if you do it so often that after 1 Super-Ascancion you can instantly do another then you can infinitly Super-Ascand and you can say you beat WZI

>Your level rewards are reset so you can earn them again
I hope this includes powers

So does level rewards reset mean you keep the ore bonuses and fourth boy and stuff and can get more or is that asking a bit much lol

IMO this is too small rewards for losing basically all progress. But I probably won't likely get there nearly as soon as the proes anyway.

Wow, the +100 starting AP is seriously bad. There should be a "fail" achievement for choosing that.

Well if you do it so often that after 1 Super-Ascancion you can instantly do another then you can infinitly Super-Ascand and you can say you beat WZI

+100 AP is terrible. It provides almost nothing. Considering it takes ~143K AP to get to the next SA, multiple SA repetitions to buff this to a useful level is a phenomenally long time.

Even if it were 1K AP, it's still not material even after 5 SAs, which is going to be months of grinding through levels (again).

Tbh it could be 10K AP and while it now becomes material and beneficial, I still don't think it outweighs carrying an additional Artifact over until you've done it 5+ times and get 50K AP to start with. It'd likely still be better to pump up the carry-through artifact count by 5 to get more artifacts at start than even having 50K AP to start with. B/c otherwise what's the point of digging? B/c of the way Artifacts were designed, they are pretty much useless until they're at least Rare level, and you're not likely to get many if any artifacts leveled up to Epic/Leg/Insane in a single Asc/SA cycle, and then you have to sacrifice them all over again. There really needs to be a way to "invest" the value of the artifacts dug up over months of play beyond what can fit into upgrades into 2 or 3 slots.

As someone who only recently started playing (phase 2 unlocked, finished Fort Harbor), this change to The Legendary make me sad. I feel punished for paying attention to the suggestions about when to try it. Making it legendary the first time and epic later times would obviously be nicer.

The rest looks interesting for ultra late game players, but I'm such a long way from there that I can't usefully comment about that.

One thing I did wonder about, which you late game players can probably answer: Is there any reason to Ascend rather than SuperAscend?

I feel punished for paying attention to the suggestions about when to try it.

Fair point! It literally tells you not to do it until you reach a certain degree of progress, but then pulled the reward before you were able to get there.

One thing I did wonder about, which you late game players can probably answer: Is there any reason to Ascend rather than SuperAscend?

I don't think you can get the full 143K required to clear Phase 4 requirements and be eligible for Super Ascension in 1 playthrough only, so you'll need to Ascend a couple times to clear that hurdle. I've Ascended about 10 times, and I just barely meet the needs, although I've invested more than the bare minimum in phases 1, 2, 3, so one could arguably doing in less Ascensions.

1.) I don't really see a point in those recommendations for the hard levels. There is nothing holding you back from finishing them even if you aren't that far. Honestly, the first play through is always rather slow and the hardened levels are just a bit slower because they require about three times the level time (and reward three time the APs). I'd say, just do them if they reward less then the next regular level in line. And if you want then do the higher reward levels before you ascend, or not, whatever you want. You don't NEED a specific level of advancements to be able to finish the hardened levels.

2.) As I said elsewhere, I can see reasons to lower the artifacts level in hardened CCC, that this happened now was probably just bad PR. But, given that right now no-one was able to super-ascend, I'd prefer if for the first time clearing hardened CCC the reward would be kept on legendary. It's just another update that penalizes a certain portion of the player base.

3.) No-one currently knows the level AP-rewards for the new levels, but I could definitely see a point in super-ascending once just to unlock the levels (for more variety in day to day idle playing). Whether you are up to sacrifice everything more than once is up to you. If you do want to super-ascend, upgrade the hell out of your artifacts such that you lose as few "digging hours" as possible. Everything else will be lost either way.

4.) I think I proved that you can "complete" all but the last phase of advancements with a single play through and if I remember correctly, this was even before the addition of the hardened levels (but without the AP-boosts with coins). And this would include maxing out Additional APs. Therefore, you should be able to calculate the minimum number of ascensions needed to collect 100k after that if you decide to minimize the APs spent on the first three phases. Unfortunately, the list of level AP-rewards on Master Jz's google doc are gone and I'm to lazy to add them up by hand right now.

1) The recommendations are in line with people saying "Don't skip the levels, do them in order". Sure, you can skip a bunch and go straight to Europe Huge (I did on my 1st playthrough), but instead of taking 7-10 days to finish, it took me 30 days on the first attempt. Same for the Hard levels ... nothing stopping you from taking 30, 60, 90 days to finish ... just most people don't want to, and would likely end up aborting the level and getting nowhere for 15-20 days, and that's not fun.

2) Agree, it's bad PR given that it expressly calls out to tell people to wait until Late Phase 2 to attempt it, but then bait and switched the promised prize. Tbh, even if it was a Legendary artifact each time, it's 2+ Ascensions & at least 1 Super Ascension away starting with no advancements and limited artifacts, so not like someone could even fast track farm this prize even if they attempted to.

3) It's not that no one _can_ Super Ascend, but that no one _wants_ to yet. I could right now... but the cost to do so is imho too high. Losing the Adv's, sure, it is what it is, but losing all the Artifacts just doesn't sit well with me. What's the point of having taken great care to get 3L, 1E, 6R, 4U, 24C, 11P, if I know can only keep max 3L? Even just the 1E 6R is a lot of digging. So I'd rather just keep going at the current pre-SA levels, keep digging, at least get one of the L's to Insane, and then carry 1I, 2L or 1I, 1L, 1E over. Or I might just quit WZI at this point ... seems like the grind is just getting worse over time and maybe it's time to throw in the towel. TBD, pending more info from others who do the SA and can send info back.

4) All levels together are:
29086.67 AP with no buffs = 4.9 Ascensions to reach 143K
36358.3 AP with 25% buff = 3.9 Ascensions
40721.3 AP with 40% buff (+25% AP + 15% CW buff) = 3.5 Ascensions
47265.8 AP with 55% buff (+25% AP + 30% coin @ end of level buff) = 3.0 Ascensions
52937.7 AP with 70% buff (25% + 15% CW + 30% coin @ end of level buff) = 2.7 Ascensions

So most people will be in the ~4.9-ish category, which maybe if you choose the +25% AP reward and also invest in the +25% AP Advancement can be sped up to 3.5-ish or so. And depending on how the speed of clear and AP rewards from the new levels go, maybe this could be further reduced down to 3.0-ish. Hard to say ... but it seems like it will be an ugly, hard, sloggy grind. But happy to be proven wrong by Parsifal or others who go before me.

For those willing to do the slog though, I can see that how over the course of say 3-6 Super Ascensions, things will improve vastly by for example having +75% AP & being able to carry over 5 Artifacts. But those 3-6 Supers are about 10-ish regular but full Ascensions (b/c there's no ability to just repeated do the last few levels anymore), so if we estimate the 1st Ascension as 4 months and assume they increase down to about 2 months by #10, it likely would easily consume over 2 years to accomplish that.

To answer a question I see here:
Hardened bonuses are gone
I will let you know when I can confirm Power-ups.

I SAsc with the following artifacts:
Leg Army Camp Boost
Leg Time Warp
Leg Merc Disc
(I would have preferred AV over MD if I had know about this 1 week ago. Leg MD and Epic AV seemed more useful in the endgame state I was in when I upgraded MD instead of AV. Now, I shall live with my choice.)

Why did I decide to SAsc now rather than wait for Insane?
I could have gotten a 5th Legendary in ~1.5 months. But then I would have wanted at least 2 Epics to go with it which would have pushed me further. I had literally nothing to do in-game other than dig. I would rather play and enjoy than wait for max efficiency.

A few comments I have:
+100 AP is abysmal compared to the others. Should be at least +1000 to even hope to compete.

The Legend should still be Legendary. The name for starters, but a grind to SAsc takes less time than to make your own Legendaries. It is better to leave as is. At least that is my two cents.

Anyway, feel free to laugh at me, but at least I can enjoy Idle once again.

PS. Fizzer, releasing something like this just before the Holidays is cruel and unusual. Going from 12 hrs to 2 hrs before spending time with family? Ah well, I’ll be back to micromanaging efficiently when I’m back.

Do you lose the ore bonuses from beating the levels quickly as well?