With the new v14 update and Prestige2, a lot of people are starting the game over again. So, I figured I would make a guide on how to start out in PFS: what skills to choose, what challenges to go for first, and so on. EDIT: Now that Prestige2 doesn't reset challenges anymore, this guide is a lot less applicable for veterans, but hopefully it is still useful for new players. Note that this route might not be completely optimized. If anyone has ideas on how it can be improved, I'll try and incorporate them. Another note: though what I'm about to say should be applicable for people starting the game for the first time, I've only tested it on Prestige2 runs with 520 PS, +600% Gen I income and 15 extra SP plus 20-40 more from promo codes. While it may take much, much longer for some challenges, but the route should be about the same. So, without further ado, # Starting the game: For the first run, we just want to buy more generators. Get more Gen I's, then start increasing your limit to get to zoom level 2 (red pixels). This happens once you have a 10x10 grid of level 1 pixels (white). Then, switch to collecting level 2 pixels (click the 2 on the left under zoom), and use them to buy Gen II's. You want to prestige fairly early, around 20 PP. Each PP gives 5% additional multiplier, so this doubles the speed you collect at. After you prestige, go through the same process (only twice as fast), and go further than you did before. As you get more PP, you'll also get SP, which you can spend on skills. The first skill to get is autocollect, which will automatically collect pixels for you. Note that it will collect whatever level of pixels you currently have selected; if you're looking at white pixels, it will collect white pixels. Prestige and collect a few times, until you get 11 SP. This is the minimum amount required to get the F7 skill, which gives you 5 Generator IV's at the start of each run, a massive boost in the early game. (This is done by grabbing the tier I F5 skill, tier II F5 and F6, and tier III F6 and F7) Buy generators and prestige as required to get there. If you accidentally spent some skill points on the wrong skills, you can use the Edit Skills button to remove them and prestige. If you're ever stuck, remember to look at how much PP/SP you could gain by prestiging. If you're less than halfway to a goal, it's worth it to reset everything for a 2x speed boost. And if you're only 10% of the way, an 11.1% speedup is worth prestiging for; in general, if you're k% of the way to a goal, it's worth it if you increase production by a factor of 100/(100-k) # Post-F7 Skills: For now, the main portion of your income is going to come from the highest tier generator you can afford. Thus, you should invest in skills that increase the production of those generators i.e. C5, the 10% additives (C6, D7, etc.), and possibly Idle Bonus(G6). Do a few runs of prestige until you get to around 60 SP and have Gen V's. This is enough for an overnight run; the game has finally become an idle game. For the first idle run, you'll want autocollect(F5), Buy Hack(H4), Auto Cast(H7), and energy/s (E4). Turning on Auto Cast and activating Buy Hack will automatically buy generators as you can afford them, allowing you to leave the game alone and still progress. Remember to set autocollect to collect zoom 5 pixels so you can buy Gen V. Sample skill tree(60 SP) for an overnight run. You can cut a few skills here, but you need F7, autocollect, autocast buy, and energy. >eyJ0aWVyMSI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCw0LDMsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDMsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyMiI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMiwyLDIsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMiwzLDMsMywwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwyLDMsNCw0LDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMiwzLDQsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyMyI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMyw0LDQsNCw0LDQsMCwwLDAsMCwyLDMsMywzLDMsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMiwyLDMsMyw0LDAsMCwwLDAsMiwyLDMsNCw0LDQsMCwwLDAsMCwyLDIsMywzLDQsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMyw0LDQsNCw0LDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyNCI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMCwwLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwwLDAsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDAsMCwxLDEsMSwyLDMsMSwxLDEsMCwwLDEsMSwxLDMsNCwxLDEsMSwwLDAsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDAsMCwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMCwwLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyNSI6WzEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwyLDIsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDIsMywxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDEsMSwxLDFdfQ== To import a build, go to your skills screen, click Edit Skills, click Export/Import, replace the code in the box with this one, then click Import; this will do a prestige and change your skills. Note: you don't lose any SP when you change skills, so feel free to switch builds whenever you want. If you have extra SP, good skills are G5, C2, and the other additives. Leave the game in a window (not minimized and not an unfocused tab, or it won't run!) and go do something else for a few hours. Sleep, go outside, get some exercise, whatever. Just don't do them all at once. # First Challenges: We want to go for the easiest challenges first; these are located in and around the center of the grid. At the same time, though, we want to go for challenges that give useful skills that will increase production. For this route, we're going to go for a transition into Gen I, grab D7 as soon as possible, and then make our way to B5. This is because the Gen I challenges are the easiest ones, are centrally located and don't require too much SP to get between, and because B5 is an extremely strong buff to Gen I. First, we want to start hacking. Buy Hack was good enough in early game, but once we transition to Gen I, we'll want the extra 150% multiplier. Start with the E4 challenge, all it requires is for you to grab extra max energy and wait. Note that you can Edit Skills to free up some SP, and that you don't need any pixel production for this challenge. Next, do F4, which actually requires some production, but not much. Cutting our income in half sounds bad, but really isn't a big deal; the same build we were using before should work. Similarly, do D4. It's much more difficult than F4, and may require some prestiging. After you finish F4, you can wait for a while and build up prestige with the generators you've already bought. Then, do E5. For E5, you just want to allocate all the Gen I skills you have access to (all tiers of E5 you have, F4, D4, E4, E6, autocast, autocollect, additives, and G5.) Set autocast to G1 hack. Note: you can't autocast both Buy and G1, since Buy activates first and doesn't have a duration. Don't get Buy hack for this one. You can skip F5 for now, the reward is garbage and it'll be much easier to do later. At some point around now, you'll unlock Boss Battles, weapons, and P^2. See the next guide for details about these. https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1796360-a-guide-for-boss-battles-prestige-2-artifacts-lab-and-endgame-challenges Unlike prestige, you shouldn't P^2 right away, but do make sure to invest in weapons whenever it won't destroy your pixel production completely. It will pay off later on. # Tier II Challenges Now that we have all the Gen I skills, we can go full Gen I and skip over F7. By this point, you should have enough SP that building up after a prestige is near instant, and the extra gens from F7 aren't that helpful. The first challenge we want here (aside from D4 which we finished earlier) is G6. The penalty is pretty meaningless, since we don't crit collect anyway, and more Idle Bonus is excellent. E6 is next. Take all points out of starting gens; you should already have gotten rid of F7, but also get rid of E6. If you have some SP to spare, you can grab up E6, leave some for the tier IV/V versions, and convert to a prestige building run after finishing the challenge. Next, G5. Same thing as G6, but we can't use hacks so it will be a bit longer. Edit Skills and take all points out of energy gain and hacks, and redistribute to any other Gen I affecting skills you're missing. The rest of the challenges are mostly optional. E3 and F3 are easy, but you don't need the reward yet. D3 has a useless reward. G3, D5, D6, and F6 all affect Gen II only. And G4 can be finished right before D8, so we don't need it now. Your skills by now should look something like (110 SP): >eyJ0aWVyMSI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCw0LDQsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDQsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyMiI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDQsNCwzLDMsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMywzLDQsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwzLDQsMyw0LDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMyw0LDQsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyMyI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMiwzLDMsMiwyLDIsMCwwLDAsMCwzLDQsNCwzLDMsMiwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMywzLDQsNCwzLDAsMCwwLDAsMiwzLDQsMywzLDMsMCwwLDAsMCwyLDIsMyw0LDQsNCwwLDAsMCwwLDIsMiwyLDMsMyw0LDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyNCI6WzAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMCwwLDIsMiwyLDMsMiwyLDIsMiwwLDAsMiwyLDMsNCwzLDMsMiwyLDAsMCwyLDIsMyw0LDQsNCwzLDIsMCwwLDIsMiwzLDQsMywzLDIsMiwwLDAsMiwyLDIsMyw0LDQsMywyLDAsMCwyLDIsMiwyLDMsMywzLDIsMCwwLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDAsMCwwLDBdLCJ0aWVyNSI6WzEsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDEsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDMsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDMsNCwzLDMsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMyw0LDQsNCwzLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwzLDQsMywzLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMyw0LDQsMywyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDMsMywyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDEsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDIsMiwyLDFdfQ== However, you will need to build up a lot of PP/SP to take on the first Tier III challenge. I recommend ~1500-2000 PP and at least 120 SP. So, each time you prestige, you can do one of the challenges that doesn't require much build tweaking, and then convert to a prestige run afterwards. Before you tackle the next tier of challenges, you may want to P^2 at least once; they will be much harder than the challenges so far. See the next guide for details on when and how to do this. https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1796360-a-guide-for-boss-battles-prestige-2-artifacts-lab-and-endgame-challenges You don't need Lab unlocked, but at least one P^2 under your belt and a few artifacts will make things much easier. # Getting to D8: H7, G4/H5/I5, and D7 The main skill we want from Tier III is D7. Not only is it an additive (which gives a large chunk of income, since the tier IV/V versions are 25/40%), it also lets us reach D8. However, the penalty of 50% income combined with the jump to tier III is pretty steep. If you're unsure whether you can finish D7, I would do C4 first. While the reward isn't all that useful, it's essentially half the challenge D7 is, and also doesn't carry a meaningful penalty. Thus, you're not slowing down your prestige progress much by doing it. D7 can take a really long time. Even with Prestige2 income, it took me a couple days. A minor boost to speed is finishing H7. This is easy to do, since all you need is enough max energy, all 3 generator hacks (F4, G3, H2), and crit collect (D3), which don't need to be any higher than tier III. Once you have H7, you can use both Gen I and Gen II hack. While Gen II hack itself doesn't really give us any income, it does trigger G5 skill more often. Remember to space it apart from Gen I hack, so the G5 triggers don't overlap. If you really have a lot of SP to spare, you can even finish G3 challenge, get the cost reduction for Gen II hack, and go Gen I, II, and III hacks every 20 seconds, along with all of E4 to get enough energy sustain. Another way to speed things up is to finish all the other Gen II challenges and allocate their skills, if you have the SP; however, don't skip out on any of the Gen I skills for it. Finally, getting I5 will help a lot since D7 will take a long time (I5 gives extra production based on run length). I5 is in Tier IV, so to allocate it, you'll need to complete H5 first (which isn't hard). Before doing H5, you might want to finish the G4 challenge (by autocasting limit) to unlock cheaper Limit Hack. Once you've finished D7, finish H7 if you didn't before. Then, if you haven't already, finish G4. Next, allocate the last 2 tiers of G4 and finish D8. Compared to D7, D8 is very easy, just autocast limit and wait. # Limit + Crit build At this point, you no longer need autocollect. Instead, each run starts with autocasting Limit Hack to get to Zoom level 150. This, with D8, gives a 225% multiplier on income, but also means you have to manually collect the pixels since you'll literally never hit the limit (we're talking longer than the age of the universe to get to Zoom 150 limit). This isn't bad, because it means we can also use crit to potentially double our gains. We're also starting to reach the point where we don't have enough SP compared to skills available. One way to save on SP is to cut out the lower tiers of E4 energy gain, since they're less efficient; just make sure you have enough to autocast all the hacks you want. Similarly, tier IV/V of H7 autocast can also be cut if you're only using Gen I hack. # Tier III Challenges The main challenge you'll need from this tier is C5. Once you've finished D7, C5 is strictly easier, and much, much easier with the new build. It will still take a couple hours, but not days or weeks. For the rest of Tier III, you'll mostly want to do the challenges that increase additive multipliers. These are C6, D7, G7, H6, H3, G2, D2, and C3 (all the ones that give 10% in tier III). You don't need to do them all; pick and choose the ones you're already using in tier III, and build up from them. We'll need C6 later, though, so it would be good to do at least that one. As for the rest, E2 is pretty easy but the reward isn't needed, C2 reward is just useless, C7, H2, C4, and E7 all affect Gen III, F7 affects Gen IV, H4 and H5 are useless, and F2 is literally impossible at this point. So they can all be safely skipped. Now might be the time for a second P^2, as B5 is much harder than the challenges so far. Ideally, see if you can hit Stage 20 or 25, get to 40 artifacts, unlock Lab and Garden, and get some Garden progress. https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1796360-a-guide-for-boss-battles-prestige-2-artifacts-lab-and-endgame-challenges # Tier IV Challenges: Additives, B6, B5 Once you have a sufficient mass of PP, SP, and skills, you can try and take on B5. Once you finish it, it's another massive boost to production, approximately triple. Before doing B5, you should do B6; go back and grab C6 if you haven't already. C6 is not that bad, just invest in Gen II instead of Gen I. Though the penalty for B6 is steeper, the goal is a lot easier: for 1001 gens, you just need 165 Gen IV's (for the total, get 275 Gen I, 235 Gen II, 200 Gen III, 165 Gen IV, and 130 Gen V). Make sure to grab the B6 skill when you unlock it, it's a ~350% multiplier. Next, do some of the easier Tier IV additive challenges. B2, H1, H8, C8, I7, C1, C7, and I2, roughly in order of difficulty, but don't do all of them (I2 is much harder than B5.) Like with C4 earlier, use these as a test of how long B5 will take you, and plan accordingly. But, also consider picking up some of these additives, they're fairly good (just don't grab too many or skip out on other multiplicative multipliers for Gen I) Once you have all that done, do B5. It will take a while. Have faith, and if it's taking too long, make sure to check if you can prestige for a speed boost or go finish some more additives. # Conclusion Once you've finished B5, you're well on your way out of early game and into the midgame. With these skills, you should be able to finish out your Tier IV's and start on the Tier V's, and even finish I1 and get that pesky F2 out of your inner square (and you can stop complaining in chat about how impossible it is). Hopefully, this guide has helped you get through the early part of PFS. For more on what skills to look for in Tier IV and V, you can look at my [breakdown of all the skills](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1596656-breakdown-of-all-the-skills) for my thoughts on what the better mid-endgame skills are. I've also included a guide to the remaining challenges in the next guide: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1796360-a-guide-for-boss-battles-prestige-2-artifacts-lab-and-endgame-challenges which should give you an idea of what challenges you should tackle next.

I found this way too late. Tank you so much, especially because of the Tier IV challanges that was really helpfull.

Both this guide and the advanced version kept me from ragequitting after I started stalling early in the game. OP and everyone who contributed to the guide are credits to this community, thank you so much.

Advanced guide thread is locked, and the main post is covered by an "administrator review" notification. just a heads-up.

> *Originally posted by **[arceus_morphlvl0](/forums/982279/topics/1698160?page=1#13184162)**:* > Advanced guide thread is locked, and the main post is covered by an "administrator review" notification. just a heads-up. Yeah I noticed, looks like it's back up now though.