It took me almost a month, but I finally got one of my monsters to lvl 1000. The question is, is resetting to lvl 0 and sacrificing all the bonuses really worth it just so I can start another (slightly shorter) slog back to lvl 1000?

I am absolutly NOT a pro at this game, I just let it idle on the side, so I only prestige like once every other day. In other terms, i'm not playing this game correctly. But to each his fun. Anyway, to me, as a casual player, the ascending thing is not an option. And it doesn't appeal to me badly enough to even try to reach lvl 1000. Maybe I look at it the wrong way, and maybe players prestiging every hours will use this feature to their advantage, but it seems like a very, very long run from the start for practicly nothing.

Ascension is kinda meh to casuale player but it wont hurt you much and with the XP boost you can recover quickly

Ascending is definitely worth it in the long-haul. It took me about a month and a half to get to level 1,000 (I didn't prioritize exp gain early on, intentionally because of this). After ascending, I started boosting my exp gain research and was able to get back to level 1,000 in a week. The next ascent is at 1,250, so the slog from 1,000 to 1,250 took a while. Then I boosted exp gain research again and was able to get to 1,500 (third ascent point) in a week. I'm now working on ascent 3 (1,750) and am expecting to be there in the same 1-week interval. Here's the key to remember, though: your initial levels fly by much faster. On the first day, I'm usually back up to level 750 at this point, as it takes much less exp to gain levels (I have my exp skill maxed and my auto-skill timer at 0, so overnight that skill is firing non-stop). Within the first hour, my power/accuracy/agility attributes are maxed. Those first 750 levels also give me something like 3,500% damage (strength attribute), wich is 36x damage compared to level 1. But to get 2x damage from there, I'd have to go from level 750 to 1,750 (some of the levels are going into alchemy and not just strength). In other words, the vast majority of your damage is coming from the first few hundred levels because of the number of levels it takes to keep doubling. Assuming even distribution of attribute points, the first 100 levels should put your strength stat at 20, which is a 200% damage boost (i.e. 3x damage). By level 125 you will have maxed accuracy/agility with strength at 25 - 250% boost (i.e. 3.5x damage). By level 200 you should have power maxed at 50 with strength at the same, which is 500% damage gain (i.e. 6x damage). So, from monster level 100 to 200 you've doubled your damage. From then on, assuming alchemy boosts are up to date, 50% of your attributes go into strength. So, to double again (i.e. reach 12x damage), you need another 600%, which is 60 attribute points, or 120 monster levels, which occurs at monster level 320, at which point you'll have 110 strength. It takes another 120 strength levels to double your damage again, which is 240 levels, occurring at level 560, having 230 strength. To double again, you'd need another 240 strength, which is 480 monster levels, or monster level 1,040. To re-word and simplify this, your damage at level 1,040 (assuming you went past 1,000) is double what it was at level 560; 4x what it was at level 320; 8x what it was at level 200. Remember that: all of the gain from level 200 to 1,040 is only 8x damage. For ascending the first time, you get 10 points (1 point for every 100 levels). The most efficient use of this first ascent is to put 5 points into damage and 5 into elemental damage. This gets you 250% (i.e. 3.5x) damage base increase plus 175% damage increase (i.e. 2.75x) from your elemental bonus. Multiplied together, this is 9.625x damage. This means that by level 200 you will have already surpassed your level 1,040 damage pre-ascent. With the exp gain bonus and the fact that you're presumably gaining exp at a faster rate now than when you first started the game (gem upgrades, research upgrades, etc.), instead of the days it took you to get the first 200 levels, you'll probably be back there in a single day. At this point, for me, I think the first 200 levels takes about 30 minutes. _____ From there, I did not spend my next 2 ascents on damage gain. As such, I have to gain much larger quantities of my levels to get back to where I was pre-ascent for ascents 2 and 3. But I've maxed so many of my essence uses that most of my essence spending has been dumped into the Kill Exp research (I'm at level 125 right now; 27 on my Kill Exp relic), getting me back to usable levels much, much faster, so there's really only one day where I experience a dip, which I try to time to be immediately after a tournament, so I'm not losing out on tournament points. By the next tournament (i.e. within 2 days), I've already surpassed what I was doing pre-ascent, still making the ascent worthwhile. Conclusion: It's incredibly unwise to refuse to ascend, unless you spend your ascent points and essences foolishly.