@Master Jz

* Alloy Values (112%), Bonus Money Boost (160%), Mercenary Discount (32%)
It is quite easy to get the Phase 2 advancement Increased Alloy Sell Values. With +100% Increased Alloy Sell Values, most levels provide enough money, and we can simply skip the levels without enough money.

* Army Camp Boost (160%), Supercharge Army Camp (4 Hours)
The levels where the market strategy work could be finished in reasonable time, and these two artifacts will help a lot on the levels where the market strategy is not viable. They also help to reach the first market much more quickly. For players with a lot of Supercharge Army Camp power, the artifact Army Camp Boost is better, and for players without, the artifact Supercharge Army Camp is better.

* Army Cache Boost (32%), Hospital Boost (12%)
Similarly to the situation for the money generation artifacts, most levels have enough mercs once we get +150% Additional Mercenaries, and we skip other levels.

* Quadruple Strike (192%), Triple Strike (160%)
We can get a free epic Tripe Strike (80%) every super-ascension. The advantage of a legendary Triple/Quadruple Strike over an epic Triple Strike is not that big, especially considering that there are enough mercs.

* Time Warp (4 Hours)
This is on par with +25% AP, at the cost of increased effort per time. While it can speed up digs, I feel that the best way to get insane artifacts is to get dig speed super-ascension reward.


With epic Army Camp Boost, epic Supercharge Army Camp and +25% AP, my estimate now is that, once the new levels are unlocked, a super-ascension could be done at a pace of one level per day in 2 months.

With epic Army Camp Boost, epic Supercharge Army Camp and +25% AP, my estimate now is that, once the new levels are unlocked, a super-ascension could be done at a pace of one level per day in 2 months.

How many regular Ascensions does that map to? Is 1 level/day reasonable given no Adv's, no AP, and all your have is 2-3 artifacts and maybe +25% AP? From KP-X and on, won't the levels start taking >24h?

@krinid

> How many regular Ascensions does that map to?

Maybe, 5 - 10 regular ascensions.

First Ascension
* Tutorial, ..., Netherlands
* Regio Coquus, ..., Hex Earth (skip the difficult levels)
* Hardened Copper Creek Castle
* Europe Huge

Ascesions after the first
* Tutorial
* Sengoku - Rise of Oda Nobunaga
* Orbis Veteribus Notus
* Netherlands
* Plateau Assault
* Hex Earth (possibly multiple times)
* Europe Huge

Warning: I do not know exactly how to trigger regular ascensions in 5.16. Here I assume that Europe Huge has to be finished. Otherwise, we can skip Hardened Copper Creek Castle and Europe Huge.

> Is 1 level/day reasonable given no Adv's, no AP, and all your have is 2-3 artifacts and maybe +25% AP? From KP-X and on, won't the levels start taking >24h?

Army Camp Boost and Supercharge Army Camp can help finish early levels. By the time we reach more difficult levels, we would have +100% Increased Alloy Sell Values. Considering the 8-hour Africa run I did before, I would guess that most levels would not take longer than a day.

Edited 12/5/2021 07:24:19

This whole one level per day business makes me think you guys are a bit out of touch with exactly how long it takes to rev up to 100% alloy values and 150% mercs. When levels were comprised of 20% mercs it was significantly easier to get the required amount of mercs to beat a level. Now you need about 35% just to be at the original 20% level.

A level a day may very well be possible for a dedicated player who uses a few powers. I had enough money on most non-hardened levels with a Rare Alloy Values and maxed Alloy Sell Values, but I also had the +50% boost to hospitals, which saved me quite a lot of money on hospital upgrades. If you skip the expensive levels at the end, as functor suggests, it may work out. Even so, I'm carrying over my alloy values (and army camp boost) to help with the beginning. This will let me put all my early AP into JS/mercs.

It seems like most players here agree that +25% AP is probably the best choice for a first reward if your goal is to super ascend more quickly, even if it means losing an epic or legendary artifact.

Edited 12/5/2021 17:31:19

@Chief Rollie

We do not need to reach +150% Additional Mercenaries to clear the levels quickly.

If we finish all levels up to Asia exactly once with +25% AP super-ascension reward, then we can get about 6.6K AP. We could get the following advancements with this much AP.
* Joint Strike: 25%
* Additional Mercenaries: 80%
* Increased Alloy Sell Values: 100%

It may take 20 days.

> When levels were comprised of 20% mercs it was significantly easier to get the required amount of mercs to beat a level. Now you need about 35% just to be at the original 20% level.

If we do not have enough mercs, then we just wait 20 hours for the army camps or drafts.

Tbh I'm skeptical of the 1 level/day estimate but as functor stated, he's talking about active & optimal play. Which means knowing where the markets & hospitals are, etc. I can't speak to the tweaks since mercs were reduced, but I recall on my 1st playthrough everything up to KP-X was <24 hrs to clear, and that's pre-Artifacts, so hopefully having 1-2 good artifacts will help keep it under 24 hrs for those levels even with the merc nerf.

Now that I think of it ... just not having Stats to show the Tech tree & enough Idle time to not feel chained to the game may be enough of a deal breaker for some so that if they were to SAsc, they might lose interest and stop playing altogether. This and a number of other QOL upgrades are what I consider necessary to go from grueling grind to pleasant progress forging.

Missing stats, idle time, JS, additional mercs can be a dealbreaker, and missing all the level 2/3/4 advancements even a bigger one. That might be a deterrent to SAsc, and some players will choose to never SAsc. For these players, the +100AP reward and extra artifact are meaningless, since skipping Super Ascension mean they keep all their AP and artifacts. Even +25% AP has little importance, since by this time AP has little meaning for them, when digging time is what holds them back.
So, for those who plan to SAsc only once, just to unlock the new levels, the most "rewarding" reward would be faster digging.
For those who plan to SAsc many times, faster AP in order to get to 134k AP quicker is the preferable reward.

https://imgur.com/a/HnowCrh

super-ascended.
chose the 25% AP bonus
artifacts: Legendary Alloy Value and Legendary Supercharge Army Camp.

Tried to start a dig before the ascension, but even digs don't carry over. sad.

It's a true zero-start but I still managed to finish the tutorial within 1 minute, so yay (?)

Interested in your progress back up to EH and the new levels. Guessing you'll invest in Increased AP so you'll get +50% AP total, and with the knowledge of the levels and how to play (and the 2 Leg artifacts), should be a much quicker run than 1st playthrough, but still slow enough to be frustrating, notably without the nice QoL items like Idle Time, Auto-Draft, Merc/Market Visibility, etc.

Also - does WZIC also reset after SAsc?

Edited 12/8/2021 18:47:11

ok, so digs don't carry over, but the notification "your artifact is ready!!" does.
thanks game!

HAHAHA

Nice. Just that last gut punch on the road of Descension ... hey, remember that dig you started before you Super Ascended? Well yea, you already know I killed the dig, but just wanted to let you know that had I let it persist, it would have finished just now.

Another thing I'm pondering on - is it actually possible to upgrade a net new artifact to Legendary in 1 SAsc playthrough without going way past the SAsc AP requirements just to have enough time to do enough digs? I suspect it's not, and you'll have to keep on Asc'ing before SAsc'ing just to not lose the fodder.

So seems like once you get Leg's, it's probably best to just skip digging for the most part and focus on the +AP perm benefits to make SAsc'ing quicker, but this also means less digs. Then when AP is no longer an impediment to repeat SAsc's, work on Faster Digging, then do multiple SAsc's so digging is quick (but you'd need to do this at least 3 times to match and 4 times to exceed the benefit you already get from just foregoing SAsc at all and just continuing to dig in late phase 4 with +10% digging speed from Hardened Level rewards & +50% digging speed from the phase 4 Advancement, so if digging is in fact the priority, it's best to just stay in late phase 4). Then upgrade all Artifacts you like/have slots for, maybe do a couple SAsc's to add carryover slots ... but I guess the problem is that by that time you've "finished the game" again (first time was being late phase 4, not having a need for AP anymore, nothing left to do but dig), so there's not really any purpose of upgrading artifacts.

Or ... maybe there will be an Ultra Ascension feature in a future update where it wipes out out all your "permanent" SAsc upgrades and starts you back at the beginning again, in exchange for some other Ultra Ascension upgrades.

You get an epic Triple Strike for hardened level reward. Then another epic from battles placement.

Upgrading an artifact to legendary before reaching the super-ascension requirement doesn't sound that unlikely.

You get an epic Triple Strike for hardened level reward. Then another epic from battles placement.

Upgrading an artifact to legendary before reaching the super-ascension requirement doesn't sound that unlikely.

Ok, so 1 free Epic, then with digging, do you think we can get 4x more Epics to combine to 1 Leg? Thinking back to my own progress, I didn't start getting Epics until well into late phase 4 (past the point where I could now do a SAsc). Then again, I was keeping around 1 of every artifact type, so maybe if I consolidated asap, might have been possible. Hard to say.

I didn't start getting Epics until well into late phase 4

How come? I had a legendary Bonus Money Boost in mid phase 3.

I entered phase 4 in mid-August shortly after the update that introduced hardened levels. According the old screenshot I posted in the Idle discord channel on 7th July, I had:
-Legendary Bonus Money Boost
-Epic Army Camp Boost
-Epic Territory Money Boost
-14 rare artifacts

BTW it's 2 free Epics, not 1. One from battle placement, and one from hardened level.

Interesting ... ok, so maybe with proper consolidation 1 Leg is possible - but you'd have to chuck those 2x Epic & 14x Rares way. (;

I don't know that you're going to be able to actually get the WZIB placement Epic one though ... you'll be competing with late phase 4 players, will be tough to get top spot.

Edited 12/10/2021 07:29:03

I got my place epic while barely in phase 2. You just have to keep joining battles and every once in a while everyone’s asleep or something.

you need 8 hours for a common, 40 for an uncommon, 200 hours for rare, 1000 for epic, 5000 for legendary. Speeding up is possible, but dead times between digs are inevitable, so let's assume the above times are realistic. Getting the second "free" epic shaves off 1000 hours of digging. You need 3000 hours of digging, 115 days, to craft a legendary between 2 SAscs.

For first SAsc, most players scores a free legendary, and managed to dig up well past a second legendary, but are short of an insane (which is equivalent to 25000 hours of digging). I'm at ~12700 hours, and far from being able to SAsc. Once SAsc becomes available, I, like most players, will face the choice of:
- carrying over 2 legendaries (10000 hours) plus a bonus;
- carrying over 3 legendaries (15000 hours);
- carrying over an insane (25000 hours).
Choosing 2 legendaries drops a large amount of artifacts;
Choosing 3 legendaries drops a smaller quantity, but forfaits a bonus ;
Choosing an insane sacrifices many more hours dedicated to digging. It might require less than 10000 hours, but a year only has ~8765 hours, and waiting an extra year to SAsc might be unappealing. However it allows 2 SAscs without the burden of dropping artifacts, assuming a second SAsc with an insane + legendary.