Since manowar has slowed in updating the basic guide, and has little there on the trials section, I've decided to produce my own so that people can link it in chat. Thank you manowar for the beginner's guide and the nice formatting thereof. If you have any suggestions, please let me know here or over pm. ___ ### **When to use this guide** This guide is meant for those who have ascended at least once, or have hit e15 gold and bought the speed and unity upgrades. If you have not reached that point, I would direct you to [manowar's introductory guide](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1058760-incremental-adventures/topics/1868557-basic-guide). ___ ### **Table of Contents** **1.2 Armory Upgrades and Their Effects** **Team Composition List** **Ascension Layer 2+ Paths** **Ascension Trials** ___ #### **1.2 Armory Upgrades and Their Effects** The new armory upgrades as of 1.2 are the Mithril Greaves (10% floor change speed), Wand of Resurrection (10% respawn speed), Gloves of Swiftness (10% combat speed), and Tome of Unity (1-4% additional speed). These upgrades increase the speed at which the game runs by decreasing the time certain actions take, decreasing how long an auto-prestige run takes. ___ **Unity upgrade explanation** What Unity does is increase increase the effect of the other speed upgrades based on the number of classes in your party. As a base those 10% speed upgrades mean that they multiply the amount of time required for floor change/respawn/combat by 0.9. With a paladin in the party that 0.9 multiplier decreases by 0.1 for each class and paladin in the party by the formula: 0.9-(0.01 * # Unique Classes * # paladins). Ex. 1: with RRRRRP each of those rangers multiplies the combat speed by 0.9 - (0.01 \* 2 \* 1) = 0.88 Ex. 2: with RRCCPP each of the rangers/clerics multiply combat/respawn speed by 0.9 - (0.01 \* 3 \* 2) = 0.84 Ex. 3: with RCWPPP the ranger/cleric/warrior multiply combat/respawn/floor change speed by 0.9 - (0.01 \* 4 \* 3) = 0.78 ___ The amount of time the each type of action in the game takes is listed below: Combat actions (attacking): ~700 milliseconds Changing floors : ~600 milliseconds Respawning/Prestiging: 5 seconds ___ ### **Team Composition List** ___ #### **Early-Game Team Compositions** The following are the team compositions that you should be using for all of Ascension Layer 1 as well as the starts of Ascension Layer 2+. **NOTE: If you have not bought the Heirloom of Legends (e25 gold), make sure to put a warrior in the front of the party** *For short runs (under 23 seconds or 18 attacks per respawn):* **RRWCPP** combat actions = 0.6724x = 470.68 ms floor change = 0.82x = 492 ms respawn/prestige = 0.82x = 4.1 seconds total clear time = 470.68 + 492 = 962.68 ms *For long runs (over 23 seconds or 18 attacks per respawn):* **RRRWWP** combat actions = 0.658503x = 460.9521 ms floor change = 0.7569x = 454.14 ms respawn/prestige = 1x = 5 seconds total clear time = 460.9521 + 454.14 = 915.0921 ms ___ #### **Late-Game Team Compositions** Once you hit Ascension layer 2+ your characters will attack less and less as your ascension stat bonuses increase until you attack only once per respawn (when a layer is unlocked). The following are the compositions that are optimal when the average number of attacks per respawn is within the range given: **NOTE: Do not put a cleric in the front of your party, they will try to heal instead of attacking and slow your run** *For very short runs (averaging 4-7 attacks per respawn/prestige):* **RWCCPP** combat actions = 0.82x = 574 ms floor change = 0.82x = 492 ms respawn/prestige = 0.6724x = 3.362 seconds total clear time = 574 + 492 = 1066 ms *For near-instant runs (averaging 3 attacks per respawn/prestige):* **CCCCRP** combat actions = 0.87x = 609 ms floor change = 1x = 600 ms respawn/prestige = 0.599695x = 2.998 seconds total clear time = 609 + 600 = 1209 ms *For instant runs (averaging 1-2 attacks per respawn/prestige):* **CCCCCP** combat actions = 1x = 700 ms floor change = 1x = 600 ms respawn/prestige = 0.527732x = 2.639 seconds total clear time = 700 + 600 = 1300 ms ___ #### **Further Comparison of Team Compositions** I created a spreadsheet showing the time it takes each party composition to prestige or respawn based off the number of attacks that they do before prestiging. [You can find it in this post](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1058760-incremental-adventures/topics/1891167-1-2-armory-trials-and-al2-guide?page=1#posts-13326743). The best three compositions for each number of attacks per prestige are listed in green (1st), yellow (2nd), and red (3rd). ___ ### **Ascension Layer 2+ Paths** ___ #### **Ascension Layer 2 Path** ___ As covered in manowar's guide, there is no point in grabbing more than one AL2 point when on AL1, mainly due to the rapidly escalating cost (400 AP for point 2 compared to 100 for point 2) and the usefulness of getting AL2 all stats. On your first run of AL2 with 2^6, you will find that by around 6^4, runs to L20 earn more AP/H than longer runs. Up until this point, I would recommend timing your runs to go until you can buy the next AL1 all stats upgrade. The layers you will use to do this are: 1 (L20), 2 (L24), 3 (L27), 4 (L28), 5 (L29). After this, runs to L20 or whatever layer you can reach without prestiging (speedruns) will be your primary runs due to AP/H. ___ **First Two Runs on AL2** For these first two runs of AL2 you are going to want to save up 3 and then 7 points in AL2 to buy the second and third all stats upgrades for AL2. (1->3->7) This is faster despite the fact that every point you go for past one more than the number you've spent in all stats cost exponentially more. Reaching 3 points in a 2^6 run is faster than starting another 2^6 run and rushing to 1 AL2 point, and will catch up to the strategy of going for twice as many points as you did previously (1->2->4->8). **NOTE: I have tested the above for speed versus other strategies, however, what is listed below is a mix of what I did due to my thoughts on the above and what other people in chat have done.** ___ **Getting from 4^6 to AL3** From this point (11 AP in stats) you have two options (which have not been tested comparatively) that will get you to AL3 while grabbing the AL2 unlocks. The first path is what I used and gets you to the 400 AL2 points it takes for the first AL3 point in one less run, trading that for a final run to grab the last few unlocks. I believe this is faster due to the large impact of stat boost on AL2, and the vastly higher AP/H you can reach with the 16^6 you'll have at 400 compared to getting the unlocks as you progress. 1 (2^6) -> 3 (3^6) -> 7 (4^6) -> 14 (5^6) -> 28 (7^6) -> 56 (9^6 and iPP + RPPR) -> 106 (12^6 and RPDR) -> 201 (16^6, 400 AP reached) -> 83 (IFS + ISP + IFSS + IAPG) The second path sticks to the N+1 method (getting one more point that you have available or spent in stats) and gets the unlocks that matter for speedrunning (IPP/RPPR/RPDR) earlier along the way instead of leaving them to the end. 1 (2^6) -> 3 (3^6) -> 7 (4^6) -> 12 (5^6) -> 24 (6^6 and IPP + RPPR) -> 42 (8^6 and RPDR) -> 74 (10^6) -> 148 (13^6) -> 188 (16^6 and IFS + ISP + IFSS + IAPG, 400 AP reached) Note that for the above you can shift ISP which may be useful as early as 10^6, you'll just need to get more on your last run to afford all the other unlocks. The reason we leave IFS/IFSS/IAPG until the end is that with speedruns do not use the first two, and you will not hit above L30 with speedruns on AL2 which is where IAPG on AL2 starts working. ___ #### **Ascension Layer 3 Path** ___ All I can say at this point is that like AL2, going for 3 and 7 points on your first two AL3 runs to grab 3^8 adn 4^8 remains the best strategy. This section will be updated as I and others get farther in AL3. If you have input here or for AL2, this is where I would most appreciate outside input. ___ ### **Ascension Trials** ___ #### **Ascension Layer 1 Trials** The general order of difficulty (or for the non-speed trials length) of the trials on AL1 are as follows: Speed -> Even/Odd -> Quickfire/Highroller -> Scarcity **First two trials: Speed -> Even/Odd** The speed and even/odd trials have the rewards that will most effect your progress in AL1 as well as being the easiest, and should be done before the other three. **The Three remaining trials** The usefulness of the rewards for the other three trials depends on where you are in AL1 and your perks. Whether you have the improved prestige perk determines whether highroller (which improves based off of having points in every layer) or quickfire is more useful. Without Improved Prestige Perk: Quickfire -> Highroller With Improved Prestige Perk: Highroller -> Quickfire The usefulness of the scarcity reward depends on how long your ascension runs are. With IFSS and runs to Layer 35+ you'll probably find scarcity more useful than the other two trials. Without IFSS: Quickfire/Highroller -> Scarcity With IFSS/L35+ runs: Scarcity -> Quickfire/Highroller ___ **T1 Speed Trial** The speed trial is a good benchmark of your ability to do other trials on AL1. As the speed trial imposes no penalty, you should enable the speed trial before you ascend every time until it is completed. Since there is no penalty, you can follow the generally recommended 4/3/2/x autobuyer setup or whatever setup you prefer. ___ **T1 Even/Odd Trial** NOTE: I would recommend having the first two all stats upgrades as well as IFS and RPPR before doing this challenge, but it should be fine to do it directly after Speed trial. The even/odd trial is the easiest of the remaining trials as it only disables every even or odd autobuyer. The general strategy on even/odd is to prestige only to odd layers (1->3->5->7->9->11->13->15) so that the even layer autobuyers are disabled. This is due to the fact that the L1 autobuyer has the largest impact on your progress and you want it enabled. Due to the fact that some of your autobuyers are disabled during the trial you want to alter your settings so that your first ~4 even or odd layers autobuyers act like L1-4 usually do. To do this you want so spread your preferred autobuyer settings out like in the following example: 4/3/2/x becomes 4/4/3/3/2/2/x/x. This allows L1/3/5/7 to act as L1-4 usually would as well as keeping you from stalling if you accidentally prestige to an odd layer. ___ **T1 Quickfire Trial** NOTE: I would recommend having the first 2-3 all stats upgrades as well as IFS, RPPR, and RPDR before doing this trial The quirk of the quickfire trial is that as long as any autobuyers that can prestige will with every floor change. If you try to run the trial on 4/3/2/x, you will likely see L1-3 prestige once, then L4 continue to prestige with each floor change for little gain. There are two ways to circumvent the quirk of this trial: manual prestiging, and autobuyer setup changes. **NOTE: After completing Speed, Even/Odd, and Quickfire you may see your autobuyers stop prestiging layer 3 on 4/3/2/x. Switching to 3/2/1/x should see you prestiging L3 again and speed your progress.** *Manual Prestiging* If you chose to manually prestige your layers, you do this by changing the autobuyer setting from small floor change to never. Also, I would recommend grabbing eQueline's plugin from one of the links on [this post](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1058760-incremental-adventures/topics/1891167-1-2-armory-trials-and-al2-guide?page=1#posts-13326743). The script provides a menu on the battlefield screen that inclused buttons to manually prestige your layers while showing how much multiplier you will gain by prestiging that layer. I would recommend either prestiging each layer once for ever four prestiges of the layer below it, or whichever gives the highest multiplier. Remeber to only prestige once your floorskip is no longer using the highest amount (ex. the floor changes from 5.00e6 to 5.02e6 it's time to prestige) *Idle Prestiging* If you choose to idle through the trial, you are going to need to change your autobuyer settings. The first thing you need to change is setting the default autobuyer multiplier to current^100 (right click if your default is currently 1.01x). Past that you want to set your first three layers to 3/2/1 and leave everything else as default. This prevents other layers from triggering on floor change and should trigger closeish to small floor change instead of every floor change. Note, however, that if you do quickfire early enough, this may stall and stop prestiging for you. If you stall, you can adjust the above to have more roots (ex. 3/2/1->4/2/1->4/3/1->4/3/2) until it stops stalling and starts prestiging again. ___ **T1 Highroller Trial** NOTE: Like with quickfire, I would recommend having the first 2-3 all stats upgrades as well as IFS, RPPR, and RPDR before doing this trial The quirk of the highroller trial is that it disables the autobuyers on the first two layers. Like with quickfire, you can either do highroller by manually prestiging or altering your autobuyer settings. *Manual Prestiging* Manual prestiging through highroller is just like doing it with quickfire and you should follow the advice given there. *Idle Prestiging* If you choose to idle this trial, you will need to change autobuyer settings for maximum speed. With highroller in AL1, this is fairly easy as you can simply shift your autobuyer settings over 2 layers so that 4/3/2/x becomes EE/EE/4/3/2/x where the EE settings of L1/2 don't matter. NOTE: Make sure to buy soft prestige for layers 2 and 3 as the transferred multiplier to L1/2 will greatly speed your run. ___ **T1 Scarcity Trial** NOTE: This trial is worth much less before you have IFSS and can reach L30+ easily. It's reward does not push AP rewards up by more than a point or two usually before L30 and might not even do that pre-L25. The scarcity trial is probably the hardest (longest) trial of AL1 despite it's description *looking* like it removes 10% exp. What it actually does is halve the exp you get for every 1000x your exp increases (1000 becomes 500, 1,000,000 becomes 250,000 etc.) This challenge is very idle-able, but without changing your autobuyer settings you will likely hit a point where your run stalls and L4 continues to prestige for very little. This can usually be solved by lowering your settings by one right click (ex. 4/3/2/x becomes 5/4/3/x, and 3/2/1/x becomes 4/3/2/x). ___ #### **Ascension Layer 2 Trials** The general order of difficulty (or for the non-speed trials length) of the trials on AL2 are as follows: Speed -> Even/Odd -> Quickfire -> Highroller/Scarcity Like with AL1, Speed and Even/Odd remain the trials whose rewards are worth the most. Highroller and scarcity become the trials whose rewards are worth the next most, and quickfire comes in last. Despite this, you likely want to do the trials in order of difficulty as will be explained below. **NOTE: You may test highroller and scarcity and come to the conclusion that they can be done earlier. If you do, let me know and I'll update this section.** ___ **T2 Speed Trial** Unlike with AL1, the AL2 speed trial is completable on the very first AL2 run after AL1 even though you will only have 2^6 from the first AL2 point being put into all stats. I would actually recommend you do this run at 2^6 as it is the only time where you will be losing comparatively little time and thus AL1 all stats. To do this trial within the time limit on with only the first all stats (2^6) there are a few conditions: First, you should set your autobuyers to either the 3/2/1/x LLP setup or the x/2/0 or x/2/0/^2 HLP setups. 4/3/2/x will slow down your run too much. Second, you should be skipping a layer each time you go to a new prestige layer starting on either L12 or L14. Thus going 14->16->18->.....->38->40. Third, you need to decide how many AL1 all stats upgrades you are going to get, either 0 (1^4), 1 (2^4), 2 (3^4), or 3 (4^4). Getting AL1 stats will slow your time to L40, but will increase the number of AP you have after completing the trial. I would recommend 2 (3^4) as it seems to be the best compromise between time on the challenge and the AP increase you get from having AP spent in stats. (4^4 may be better, however I was not able to test this, let me know if you do) If you are grabbing AL1 stats, the following list the layers you need to hit to get from one stat upgrade to another: 1^4: L20 (2^4), L26 (3^4), L30.5 (4^4) 2^4: L24 (3^4), L28 (4^4) 3^4: L27 (4^4) If you do not finish speed for AL2 on the first run, I would recommend waiting either until the end of AL2 like highroller and scarcity as it's a siginificant time investment no matter when you do it in AL2, or waiting until your first AL3 run and activating it once you have 16^6-20^6 and will make it most of the way there with your instant runs. ___ **T2 Even/Odd Trial** Like AL2's speed trial the even/odd trial gives a good boost and can be reasonably completed early, either in the AL2 run after the speed trial, or the run after that. Like with the AL1 version, all that is needed to complete this trial is to adjust your autobuyers to be spread out over the even/odd layers (x/2/0 -> x/x/2/2/0/0). I would recommend either rushing to L30 on the odd layers (1->3->5->...->27-29->30) immediately or grabbing the first AL1 all stats at L20 and then rushing to L30. Any higher stats than the first AL1 all stats (2^4) will slow your run and at 3^6+ on AL2, any time spent not doing runs to L20 lowers AP per hour. ___ **T2 Quickfire Trial** Now, on AL2 since you will be doing more and more runs to L20, the quickfire reward is rather lacklustre. However, like even/odd it is a fairly easy trial to do and doesn't take that much time to complete. Quickfire can be completed any time between 5^6 and the end of AL2. Like with AL1 quickfire can be completed manually, although I wouldn't recommend it until high AL2 all stats due to the time it takes to reach L30. To complete quickfire using the auto-unlock perks, you need to change your autobuyer settings to keep them from prestiging every floor change. With 5^6+ you can accomplish this by setting your default minimal multiplier to current^100 and setting the first three layers to 2/1/0 with HLP or LLP. As with quickfire you can either go directly to L30, or grab one AL1 all stats at L20 and then head to L30. If you want to try setting up your autobuyers on your own, remember to set the default to current^100. Other than that, with quickfire you want to set your settings as high as you can (ex. 2 roots over 3 roots) while not stalling. For 5^6, I did testing and found this to be 2/1/0 HLP or LLP, if you don't do the trial then, you may need to raise or lower your autobuyer settings for speed or to prevent stalling. ___ **T2 Highroller Trial** Unlike on AL1, highroller is rather difficult and slow compared to its reward for AL2. This is mostly due to the fact that the number of locked autobuyers increases with every ascension layer. Thus while you can manually run this trial it will still be very slow compared to the amount of progress you can get by focusing on AL2 run progress. If you're going to idle this challenge I would recommend waiting until your last AL2 run or running it right before you ascend to AL3. This allows you to close to instantly reach L20, and build up some AL1 all stats while idle to allow a quick run to L30 (< 1 Hour with 16^6 right before AL3). Like with AL1, for idle prestiging you should simply shift your usual autobuyer setup over 4 layers so x/2/0 becomes EE/EE/EE/EE/x/2/0. ___ **T2 Scarcity Trial** Like the highroller trial above, the scarcity trial becomes much harder at AL2 mostly due to the much higher level and layer required to complete it. Thus it should probably be left to your last AL2 run or right before you ascend to AL3. Due to the above recommendation there are no specific things you should need to do to complete scarcity as you should be able to or close to hitting L20 with AL2 all stats alone. Like with highroller it can be comleted in less than an hour at 16^6 due to being able to hit L20 immediately. ___ #### **Ascension Layer 3+ Trials** With AL3 (and likely AL4+ unless things change), the trials lose a great amount of difficulty as the cumulative all stats bonuses make reaching L20 simple, and will carry you most of the way to L45. Thus, while trials may essentially be completed at any time, it's more helpful to order them based on the usefulness of their reward. This ends up mostly as follows: Speed/Even/Odd -> Scarcity -> Highroller -> Quickfire. **NOTE: While the bottom four below list hitting L40 as a good cutoff for switching off auto-ascend and going to L45, if you start the trial with enough AL3 stats, you may hit L45 in the normal course of your run and should do so if possible.** ___ **T3 Speed Trial** Like with AL2, speed trial can be completed on the first AL3 run and is likely either optimally done there where time matters less or with 6^8-8^8+ when your regular ascension runs will carry you to L44-45 anyways. If you decide to do speed trial the first run of AL3, while you can get to L60 fairly quickly with only a few AL1 stats and liberal use of skipping one or two layers at a time, I would recommend waiting towards the end of the run when it takes much less time. Since it can take hours to hit L60 even with skipping, a good rule fo thumb is that you should stop auto-ascending and make your way to L60 when you have 6-10 hours left on the challenge and either were just about to ascend AL2, or are close to doing so. (You want high AL1 stat boost) ___ **T3 Even/Odd Trial** Like with AL1/2, the easy way to set up your autobuyers is to spread them over the even/odd layers (x/2/0 -> x/x/2/2/0/0). This should carry you to L20 and allow you to build enough ascension stats to continuously do L20+ runs. When you reach L38-40 on your ascension runs, you should be within range of easily hitting L45 by turning off the auto-ascension perk without losing too much time. ___ **T3 Scarcity Trial** The scarcity trial for AL3 is almost like a normal run. You should be able to follow your usual path through an AL3 run without stalling if doing this with 3^8+. Like with Even/Odd, once you hit ~L40 you should be able to easily hit L45 after turning off auto-ascend without losing much time. ___ **T3 Highroller Trial** Like with the other non-speed trials, once you hit L20 runs they will carry you to ~L40 at which point you can easily make it to L45 in a short time. Although, if you do this trial early enough you may need to manually prestige a few times to hit L20 the first few AL1 stats. You can also shift your autobuyer over 6 layers (x/2/0 -> EE/EE/EE/EE/EE/EE/x/2/0) although this will be much slower than manual prestiging of L1-3. ___ **T3 Quickfire Trial** If doing quickfire last, you'll have noticed a pattern here. All you need to do is hit regular L20+ runs which should carry you to ~L40, putting you in easy range of L45. However, as you may need to do prestiges if you do this trial early enough, you can use the same autobuyer settings as AL2 (2/1/0 LLP or HLP with default multiplier current^100). ___ #### **Feedback and Comments** While I am currently keeping up with the leader's, this means some of my advice, particularly on AL1 trials, is weeks back for me. This means that some of what I've said above is absorbed from people in earlier ascension layers after the 1.2 change. If you try something and it works better than what I have above, let me know and I can change it. Also, if you don't want to test something yourself, pm me a save, and I'll test it myself if I have time.

Thanks for taking the time to help others out by writing this guide! I'm just gonna go ahead an sticky it so it's easier to find!

External Links for the guide: [My spreadsheet with the timing for all team compositions.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-GoHnJzY05p8731r2-Up72zkrz3NChr_uDNaCr91HLU/edit#gid=0) [Manual installation link for eQueline's plugin](https://equeline.github.io/QoL/) [Tampermonkey installation link for eQueline's plugin](https://openuserjs.org/scripts/eQueline/IA_QoL)

Hi Sean, Great guide so far, I don't think I'll be able to offer anywhere near as good advice for the ascension trials especially! I am also curious about your team composition calculations - not having a great deal of information on this I may have used the wrong base timers... 600ms combat actions 700ms floor clear 5s respawn/ prestige Please let me know what you used/ where you got the information from so I can update my guide accordingly. As a side note on... Formatting: You have a very good overall structure for your information, but when *speed-reading* through it can be difficult to understand your **key points**. Since my guide has several thousand words and no one is going to read it all carefully, I try to **bold** or *italic* the most **important parts** of a given sentence. Of **course**, this **can** be **misused**, such **as**, if **you** were **to** bold **every** second **word**, or if your subheadings use bold. Generally however it's a good idea for all this bulky text we end up with. While you are **bolding** some ***paragraphs*** to emphasize them, this can make it hard to **distinguish** these paragraphs from your ***subheadings***, which are also bolded. For subheadings, since bold is used for so many things, I sometimes use the indent instead Such as for questions in the FAQ section. If you ***REALLY NEED SOMETHING TO STAND OUT*** you can use some combination of bold, italics and caps to do it. This can be used for subheadings if they are important or unique in some way, such as a **DISCLAIMER** or **WARNING**. > For things which people may need to scroll over to quickly, I use the >quote format, so people can navigate using the green box as a guage for how far they have gone. > E.G for floor numbers, most people will only want to see one given floor number and won't want to have to read through the rest to figure out where theirs is. Great work on the guide!

> *Originally posted by **[manowar999](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13327017)**:* > I am also curious about your team composition calculations - not having a great deal of information on this I may have used the wrong base timers... > 600ms combat actions > 700ms floor clear > 5s respawn/ prestige > > Please let me know what you used/ where you got the information from so I can update my guide accordingly. Hey manowar, Part of the numbers come from other people, partly they come from the fact that the base time for attacks is 2 seconds and with the 10 10% upgrades on layers 1-10, this rounds out to 697ms. I've also dropped you a pm with a save someone gave me for testing quickfire that shows that the attack time is longer than the floor change time. Also: >JAN 26 - 1:38PM >Gniller: Yes, with a "cap" of 700ms. Floors are 1500 > 600. Having tier 4 as the exception to overrule those caps ___ The spreadsheets numbers come from plugging these numbers into the resultant formula below and copy-pasting it for all of the 84 party compositions and a wide range of # attacks. ((# attacks) \* (700 \* (Unity mult)^(# rangers) + 600 \* (Unity mult)^(# warriors)) + 5000 \* (Unity mult)^(# clerics))/1000 where Unity mult = (0.9-(0.01 \* (# paladins) \* (# Unique classes)))

Thanks so much for this super helpful guide! I have a question about this line: > NOTE: After completing Speed, Even/Odd, and Quickfire you may see your autobuyers stop prestiging layer 3 on 4/3/2/x. Switching to 3/2/1/x should see you prestiging L3 again and speed your progress. Does this mean 3/2/1/x becomes the new best settings after these trials? Also, can you share any rough references on how long a trial should take? E.g. I'm doing Highroller tier 1 and it's taking forever, wondering if I'm doing something wrong when manually prestiging or it's meant to be this time-consuming!

> *Originally posted by **[TheMouseHunter](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13331775)**:* > Does this mean 3/2/1/x becomes the new best settings after these trials? > > Also, can you share any rough references on how long a trial should take? E.g. I'm doing Highroller tier 1 and it's taking forever, wondering if I'm doing something wrong when manually prestiging or it's meant to be this time-consuming! At the very least 3/2/1/x is definitely better than 4/3/2/x after those trials. When x/2/0 HLP beats 3/2/1/x, I didn't really test in the short time I was on AL1 after trials came out. ___ As trials only came out right while I was getting the last AL1 unlock my AL1 trial times probably aren't representative of what you can expect (~45 minutes manual on highroller with speed and even/odd done). If I had to guess, highroller shouldn't take you more than a ~3-4 hours? at absolute worst when manually prestiging (assuming you use the plugin instead of switching to the prestige tab and back). I'm not sure how long you mean by forever.

How long did it take you to idle highroller by chance? It seems like a multiple day project and i'm at 4 stats and have improved floorskipper scaling and all cheaper upgrades. Kthx.

What do you mean with 0 in autobuyer setting ? 1.1x?? I.E: first three layers to 2/1/0... where 2 is √√ and 1 √ i didnt get the 0

> *Originally posted by **[batsuki](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13353873)**:* > What do you mean with 0 in autobuyer setting ? 1.1x?? I.E: first three layers to 2/1/0... where 2 is √√ and 1 √ i didnt get the 0 > it means no sq rt or ((current)+1e10000)x

> *Originally posted by **[EjrenzV](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13354353)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[batsuki](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13353873)**:* > > What do you mean with 0 in autobuyer setting ? 1.1x?? I.E: first three layers to 2/1/0... where 2 is √√ and 1 √ i didnt get the 0 > > > > it means no sq rt or ((current)+1e10000)x Thank you so much!

I've been doing a good deal of testing with different AL2/3 autobuyer settings, and have come to the conclusion that 1.3x is generally always better than 1.4x. You should of course be using 1.01x for AL1, since there's no reason not to as long as you're only doing instant runs First of all, let me add a caveat: The best strategy for AL2+ remains ascending when your gains equal your current AP on that layer. Diminishing returns beyond that are harsh and begin almost immediately. This means that ideally, you set autobuyer to 1.4x and manually ascend before it gets to autobuy. However, if you're letting the game idle and not micromanaging, 1.3x is better. Every test I've run on the AL2 autobuyer at every point in AL3 shows that the extra stats for going to 1.4x are not worth the amount of time invested in going into DR every single ascension. The results were pretty uniform: it took around 40-50% longer to double AL3 points with AL2 autobuyer set to 1.4x than 1.3x. This remains the case going into AL4. The AL3 autobuyer, at least until where I am (38 AL4P, all trials except stagnation, RPPR4) shows pretty much identical results: it takes 40-50% longer to double AL4 points set to 1.4x instead of 1.3x. I haven't had the free time to compare 1.3x to the optimal strategy of doubling AP, but I suspect it's around a 15-20% gain. Some people have reported better gains at 1.4x much further into AL4 and AL5 than I am, but I have yet to see 1.4x even begin to close the gap with 1.3x through early/mid AL4. It's possible that AL4 stagnation and/or kred multipliers (I have zero) alter the math such that the DR isn't as bad. I'd also like to say that, past AL1, you shouldn't be using the AL2+P/H metric on the ascension dashboard to decide when to ascend. This gives your average gain over the entire AL2+ ascension; because it takes some time for you to begin gaining these points, the average takes some time to catch up to your current speed. This means that when DR starts cutting your gains, your average will continue to increase for some time even though your actual speed has decreased drastically. By the time your average starts going down, you've already gone well past the point where you should have ascended if playing optimally. Ideally, instead of having an average over the entire higher-layer ascension, a points per hour only based on the most recently completed ascension would give a much better indication of when to ascend. One last thing: because of the way the autobuyer rounds up, even 1.3x ends up going far into DR at the start of a new AL2+ ascension. If your multiplier isn't high enough to make this section of the run very fast, I'd suggest a couple manual buys to greatly speed things up. 1.3x tries to buy at 1, 4(+3), 11(+7), 34(+23), 72(+38). In particular, the jump from 11 to 34 stat points is very, very slow if your multiplier is low (though not as slow as the progression it uses if you're on 1.4x). I mitigate this by manually buying at 11+13, then letting it autobuy at 51(+27), then manually buying again at 97(+46). This still means going a bit into DR, but spreads it out to only be a little between two separate buys (the +13 buy and the +27 buy) to avoid any significant delays. After this, the 1.3x autobuyer never goes into DR.

I don't disagree with 1.4 being inferior to 1.3, but I find often enough that getting a new stat point after 2n is optimal according to my heuristic. This is what I do (with thanks to sean and varlane for a number of suggestions). 1. For current hourly gains, do (log(newMultiplier) - log(oldMultiplier)) / time spent. 2. For next stat hourly gains, do (log(nextStatMultiplier) - log(oldMultiplier)) / (time spent + points needed/gain rate), for some educated guess as to gain rate. Usually current al1 run rate is enough, though it is advisable to take a cut off if you are deep into DR. 3. Pick largest of the two. I did some maths that indicates that maximising growth in ap/h is roughly equivalent to maximising the metric above directly in multipliers; will not bother you with it. Bottomline, for next stat "not too far", it does pay off.

I'd really appreciate it if the guide was updated with the Stagnation trials. I'm currently in the middle of AL 4 and Stagnation trial tier 3 seems impossible, it's too slow. It would be nice to know when it's safe to start this trial, what autobuyers settings are optimal etc.

> *Originally posted by **[Lleyo](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13359003)**:* > I'd really appreciate it if the guide was updated with the Stagnation trials. I'm currently in the middle of AL 4 and Stagnation trial tier 3 seems impossible, it's too slow. It would be nice to know when it's safe to start this trial, what autobuyers settings are optimal etc. You CAN complete it with 9 al4 stats, but it'll take you a while. Try doing right before you go to al5. Once you're in al5+, you can do the trial successfully pretty early on (I did al5's version at 3 al5 stats, for example).

Hi, I tried to use x/2/0 for T3 highroller, with only 3 AL3 stats(4^8) and I had almost no progress in 3 hours with hitting floor 6.97e7. Basiclly it seem almost impossible to hit PL 20 in resonable time without manual prestige or better stats. Auto-prestige with this setup can save only few clicks without stat or other trials done.

> *Originally posted by **[Potok3](/forums/1058760/topics/1891167?page=1#13369036)**:* > Hi, I tried to use x/2/0 for T3 highroller, with only 3 AL3 stats(4^8) and I had almost no progress in 3 hours with hitting floor 6.97e7. Basiclly it seem almost impossible to hit PL 20 in resonable time without manual prestige or better stats. Auto-prestige with this setup can save only few clicks without stat or other trials done. You've also spent a month on this trial which should take no more than a few hours.

As should be mostly clear to the other long-time active players at this point. I have for the most part stopped playing IA and popping into chat occasionally. At this point the chance of me updating this guide to account for the new trials and changes that have been rolled out in march and april is basically nil. Thus, I've popped in to let people know that **everyone is free to take, re-use, and modify whatever they wish from the guide itself and the spreadsheet.** Keep the guide alive or make it better if you feel like it. Finally, thank you Gniller and the rest of the community for the months of playtime and chat conversations.

I have an advice for doing T1 highroller/quickfire trials manually: Gather up some idle progress first, and then do the trial when the game is processing the idle progress. Some time may be wasted but this hugely reduces grind and doesn't require a script.