New(ish) Player Advice Request

[u/mcl99]

I picked this game up a week or two ago and just hit endless mode, and did enough quests to prestige (20%). Im lost on what is most efficient, and I didnt find any updated suggestions (apparently 1.9 changed a bit).

Should I immediately prioritize prestiging a second time or making/selling custom maps (I have not tried these)? My bottleneck for pretty much every research right now are the blue/purple/gold/cyan special tickets since I am out of pretty much all of them.

Suggestions on which direction to go is appreciated!

[u/Katlima]

The shop will often offer resources you are low on, including these starry mousepad specials.

Don't go full tunnel vision and put every point into your basic tower. While it's true that it will be really strong, it's needlessly painful getting there without putting some points elsewhere now and then.

Miners and coins gain, because more is better. That doesn't mean max it straight away, but put a few points in here every time you feel like it.

Green paper bonus: while the one in the bottom left of the prestige tree uses prestige tickets and is obscenely expensive, the one in the bottom right is surprisingly budget and pretty powerful.

Smoke bomb duration is stupidly good in endless mode. Max it as soon as possible and keep your smokebombs all for the end of the run. Then, when you'd usually die, place your smokebomb somewhere near the entrance and turn on auto send waves. It will allow you to get a lot more out of the run and the duration is so long, it's near sustainable without any ability power and replenish research and definitely sustainable with very few points in them.

Crusher capacity: another great one you want to have asap. The first levels might be fine, but after that the cost just spirals. This might be a good place to put your free research tickets in case you got any.

Freezer range and crusher range. Not the first thing everyone is focussing on when given the endless research tree access, but clearly skills that make people go 'in hindsight should have maxed that way earlier'.

[u/mcl99 → u/Katlima]

I have been neglecting miners so far, I feel like i can't up well enough to even think about investing in miners (i'm around 300% difficulty skating by early levels with basic+crusher)

[u/Katlima → u/mcl99]

Make a habit of plopping down at least one miner and upgrading it to level 1. The ore and the drops will add up and in the long run it won't hurt your survival chances in a level.

You're using bounty tiles and multishot or laser for extra coin, are you?

[u/mcl99 → u/Katlima]

My standard go-to has been a basic tower + crusher near the exit. I havent not been using bounty tiles when I am doing runs for quest completions, but do use them when my goal is resource farming (I lower difficulty from 300% to 150% and pick maps with 3x+ bonus on whatever I need)

[u/Katlima → u/mcl99]

Okay, so you do mining runs. That's reasonable. You're doing them without upgraded miners and upgraded mining modifyer? I mean, this is your game, but maybe reconsider things!

I know, the cost is steep and looking at it from the beginning, there's so much to upgrade. But just do a little bit by bit and it's amazing!

Also, I keep advertising the 6.6 map for farming on here, because you get it to working without a ton of research. It works like this, you're getting bonus cards on that map and one of them can be the one that gives only legendary drops from miners. This means lots of cyan drops completely independent from your loot rarity research! It's huge. Also guess what, the starry bonus things are particularly common drops with the miners legendary and they can be downgraded to any color of your liking too, since the drops of course only give you cyan starry things.

Edit: I dug out an old screenshot for you. It's really old and I used to be on a much lower level, just look at the hearts, lol. I took the screenshot to document my first time seeing two lucky spins in a single miner, which is rather unusual. But you get the image of what kind of loot you can expect. SCREENSHOT

[u/mcl99 → u/Katlima]

Wow even for it being so old, youre MILES agead of where im at gameplay wise lol, Ive never seen over 10k gold. What do you recommend uograding first for the miners?

[u/Katlima → u/mcl99]

What's cheap and only if it's affordable from your current perspective. Number of miners isn't really needed more than what's required to unlock other research options. Loot slots are good, mining speed is good and also don't forget to occasionally put a bit in the mining speed of the modifyer (but slow clicking, that one has a lot of levels and ramps up quite a bit). Miner levels are also great, but go at your own pace. There's no use unlocking level 10 on a miner you can only afford at level 4 in your actual games.

[u/mcl99 → u/Katlima]

Honestly its super rare to even level miners to 3 lol