This guide assumes that you've already reached a certain point in the game: "midgame". At this point, challenges start to get very hard to complete, and you need some extra boost to get you past them. Ideally, this would be after you've unlocked most of the skills in the 3rd ring, and have at least 300 PP. For a guide on how to get to this point, see my earlier guide: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1698160-a-guide-for-early-game-and-challenges Note that this guide might not be completely optimized or even correct. Because my save started many updates prior to these entering the game, I've never actually followed the advice I give here. So, some of what I say may be misguided or downright wrong; however, I've done my best to make sure the math checks out. If anyone has ideas on how the guide can be improved, comment below and I'll try and incorporate them. # Boss Battles Once you've unlocked Boss Battle, a new button should appear next to Stats, labeled Boss. It should unlock once you have 401 PP. In order to fight the boss, you buy weapons by spending generators. Doing so increases the DPS of your weapons, killing the boss more quickly. Each time you kill a boss, you will move to the next stage, which will have even more HP. The stage of the boss is listed in the top left. **Important**: the cost for a weapon upgrade is a fixed number of generators. However, generators get exponentially more expensive as you buy more. Ideally, for minimum cost, you want to buy a weapon upgrade with exactly enough generators to do so. However, if you're also relying on those generators for income, this could leave you with zero income to get them back. At this point in the game, Gen I should be the most productive generator for you, due to the power of E5. Thus, my strategy for buying weapon upgrades is the following: For any upgrade other than Gen I, wait until you have exactly enough generators AND enough pixels saved up to buy one more. This will let you buy back most of your generators, losing only about a dozen or so. Since they weren't earning you much anyway, this really only affects the B6 skill (and D9 if you have it). For Gen I, you want to make sure you never go below a multiple of 25 once you're above it. So, you should have exactly enough generators, and enough pixels saved to buy exactly 5 more after that. This will let you buy all of your generators back once you spend them, reaching the same multiple of 25 you were at previously. I recommend upgrading your weapons whenever possible. This is because when you Prestige^2, your weapon damage matters a lot more than your prestige pixel totals. # Prestige^2 At the top right of the Boss screen, there should be a button for Prestige^2. Similar to Prestige, Prestige^2 (P^2) will RESET all of your PP/SP, as well as generators and pixels. On the current update, P^2 no longer resets challenges, so you will be able to keep your unlocked skills. However, you will need to get the SP in order to use them again. Once you P^2, you will be able to spend the Prestige Squares(PS) you have earned so far. Every 5 bosses you DEFEAT, you earn more PS. Note that this means it should say the stage 1 higher in the top left: if you have beaten 5 bosses, you should be fighting Stage 6. In addition, reaching certain amounts of PP will give a small multiplicative boost on top of this. However, the difference between tiers is small (14% vs. 15%), if you have more than 700 PP it shouldn't really matter. This spreadsheet(not mine) contains the amounts of PS you get from beating each tier of boss, as well as the damage required. Note that Moczan might change these in a future update. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13IrMzvJIDYtbz9zVTWwnToM_SxzL7kSGncr26eKJnUg/edit#gid=1901863343 This spreadsheet also has a ton of other useful information, like skill locations, cost for generators, DPS for weapons, and some of the promo codes. Some of it might be out of date though. You can use PS to unlock permanent boosts, which will persist through P^2. These multiply with your other multipliers as usual, and are thus very strong. The boosts increase in cost exponentially, approximately doubling. Thus, you want to be careful not to spend too much in one boost, leaving not enough PS for the others. There are 3 kinds of boosts: Gen boosts, Weapon Damage, and permanent SP. Each level of Weapon Damage and Gen boost is +100% damage, and each level of perm SP lets you start with one more SP. In addition to boosts, you also get 1% increased income per PS. This adds up, especially once you reach the higher tiers, as PS gain increases exponentially. For your first P^2, you can either P^2 after beating Stage 10 or Stage 15. I recommend waiting until Stage 15 for the better rewards. However, I've heard people P^2 at Stage 10 and it working out fine. You should also ideally finish as many challenges as you can comfortably, so that you can use those skills during the next run. However, it's important to P^2 early as well, so don't wait too long. Beating Stage 10 for the first time should give you around 46 PS. I recommend you spend it as follows: 3 levels Gen I boost (17 PS) 2 levels Weapon damage (14 PS) 1 level all other boosts (8 PS) 4 permanent SP (6 PS) Spend any extra SP on either Gen IV boost or more permanent SP. Beating Stage 15 for the first time will give you around 142 PS. I recommend you spend it as follows: 4 levels Gen I boost (37 PS) 4 levels Weapon damage (74 PS) 2 levels Gen IV boost (7 PS) 1 level all other boosts (6 PS) 7 permanent SP (18 PS) Spend any extra SP on either Gen IV boost or more permanent SP. After this, you should P^2 at every increment of 5 Bosses defeated. For spending later PS, prioritize Battle Boost and Gen I Boost highest, then Gen IV boost, then permanent SP, then the rest. Once you have enough artifact SP, you can pretty much ignore permanent SP. Note that after you beat a stage for the first time, you will get less PS for beating it again in the next run. So you should try and reach a higher stage each time. Around Stage 13, make sure you go back and pick up some artifacts (see next section). Especially important is the high tier weapon damage from Stage 7 (+40%), which will make beating Stages 14/15 a lot easier. Also, P^2 resets your weapons, so you want to grab artifacts with them before you P^2. Once you get to around Stage 20 or 25, make sure to keep 100 PS spare for an extra Garden plot (see below). Similarly, around 30-35, you should be able to afford getting another Garden plot for 500 PS, and then the last one for 2500 PS whenever you feel you can afford it. # Artifacts Whenever you beat a Boss, there is a small chance (20%, 10%, and 5% for unlocking the first, second, and third ones) to unlock an artifact.(EDIT: these may have been changed to be slightly higher.) Artifacts give bonus SP, pixel income, bonus starting generators, and importantly, weapon damage. For a list of the artifact benefits, see: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1795369-artifact-list With update 15.2, artifacts have been nerfed, make sure to scroll down to see the nerfed values. Currently, Mystery Artifacts do nothing, except count towards your total number of Artifacts found. In order to get artifacts that you missed, you can use the white arrow to the left of the boss name to go back one boss. Keep in mind, however, that **this will abandon all progress on the current boss.** Also, if you are backtracking, you should set the Auto Progress button in the top left to say Auto Progress Collect. This setting will repeat the same stage until you have collected all artifacts for that stage. For collecting artifacts, I recommend going back to stages around 10-12 stages before your current highest stage, and collecting as many artifacts as you can. Once you're 5-7 stages below your highest stage, turn Auto Progress On, go to your highest stage, and continue to progress. # Lab Once you've collected 20 artifacts, Lab will unlock. The button for Lab is to the left of Boss. Lab sacrifices a percentage of your pixel income from each tier of generator, in exchange for permanent boosts. All the boosts are powerful, but the most important ones are Combat Damage and Income. When you first unlock Lab, set all the sliders to 100% and leave the game alone for a bit (overnight). After this, since Gen I is the most productive gen, set it to 0%, and leave the rest at 100%. Every once in a while, you can set Gen I Lab to 50% and leave it for a bit. But the difference between the levels of Gen I Lab is minimal: you won't notice the difference between 35% and 36% increased research speed. Note that Lab progress is based on pixel income, not just number of generators. Thus, at minimum, make sure you get the skills D6, C7, and B8, since they lead to exponential gains in income for gens II, III, and IV. # Garden When you've reached 40 artifacts, Garden will unlock. In Garden, you grow 'plants', which give you rewards when you harvest them. These rewards come in 3 tiers of rarity, Common, Rare, and Legendary. A table of the rewards can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13IrMzvJIDYtbz9zVTWwnToM_SxzL7kSGncr26eKJnUg/edit#gid=2039982149 There are 4 types of plants: Meat, Steak, Pizza, and Books. You unlock the latter 3 by getting enough Meat points. In short, Meat rewards help you get more Garden points, Steak rewards give bonus starting gens (and a lot of pixel production), Pizza gives extra weapon damage and extra Prestige Squares, and Books give extra research speed. You also unlock extra plots as you get more Meat points. The speed of each plot increases with the amount of points from each plant (Plot 1 gets faster as you get more Meat points, Plot 2 Steak, etc.) You do need to spend Prestige Squares to unlock these extra plots, so it's a good idea to save some when you Prestige^2. The second plot costs 100 PS, the third costs 500 PS, and the fourth costs 2500 PS. Generally, you want to invest a lot in Meat first, to increase your Garden speed. However, as you unlock the other tiers, invest a bit in each one to get at least the first plot speed increase. Also, a highly successful 'strategy' is to export your save right before harvesting, then reload if you get a bad result. Since rare and legendary plants give orders of magnitude more points than common plants and much better rewards, it's 'worth' rerolling to get at least one legendary plant per harvest or multiple rares. # Endgame Challenges Once you have Lab unlocked and progressed a decent amount, congratulations! You've reached what I consider the current endgame. Of course, at some point in the future, this will change as more content is released. At this point, almost all of the challenges should be within your reach. Some of the outer ring (that pesky E0) might be nigh impossible, but many of the easier ones should be doable, and most of them give great rewards. You can probably even do the easier challenges without Lab unlocked, as long as you've P^2'd at least once. Here, I'll list challenges based roughly on difficulty, along with some tips, starting from the end of my early game guide: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1698160-a-guide-for-early-game-and-challenges This guide includes all the outer ring challenges, and a few of the harder 4th ring ones. For my thoughts on what outer ring skills are worth getting, see my breakdown of all the skills: https://www.kongregate.com/forums/982279-pixels-filling-squares-3-0/topics/1596656-breakdown-of-all-the-skills I will also put approximate amounts of pixels required, when possible, for a somewhat objective sense of difficulty. ## Easy Challenges B5: 4.4e20 pixels This is here as a comparison. 75%, so multiply by 4 for the true difficulty. I1: 2.1e20 pixels Got to complete F2 sometime ### Time Grinders These challenges don't really require strong pixel production, just a lot of time spent. H0: Hacks active for 25 hours Easy, this counts per hack, so if you can keep 4 hacks up for 6.25 hours, it's done. C9: 300 hours played Depending on how long you expect to spend, this one may be much easier. With ~200 Gen V's, this is 250 hours or around 10.5 days. J2: 2500 hacks Needs G9/D0 for the bonus gens, but just sit and autocast. A3: 450 hacks Use D1, autocast Buy(get all the energy cost reducers, but don't get the top tier buy MAX skill), get an autoclicker for crit collects (or just use Auto Crit). ## Medium Challenges I6: 8e23 pixels This one is about 50 times as hard as the number stated, due to no hacks and no idle boost. F0: 6.9e24 pixels This is essentially just no idle bonus, and you get 100% crit chance. F9: "3e15 pixels" Can't buy generators or use Limit Hack is pretty ridiculous. Obviously get all the bonus gens you can. J4: 5.7e25 pixels Use autocollect, and grab Buy Hack. Turn autocast off, cast Buy Hack, turn it back on. Easy. I0: 6.2e26 pixels D9: 1.1e26 pixels This one is harder than the stated value due to limiting you to 270 Gen I's. Most of your income will come from Gen IV instead, so switch skills accordingly. About 40 times more difficult than it looks. J3: 1.9e27 pixels Much easier with J4 skill: Idle Hack. At worst, it's no hacks no energy. G0: 1.8e27 pixels This one is just no hacks ### Bonus Generators G9: 1.1e26 pixels Just don't use autocollect, and get a lot of bonus gens. D0: 1.4e25 pixels Turn on autocollect and use G9 to get more bonus gens to replace the ones you lose. H9: 320 bonus generators Obviously requires other skills giving bonus gens: these are D0, G9, and J2. Set up an autoclicker to get the D0 ones, or just click once every few seconds for like an hour. ## Hard Challenges J1: 9.5e27 pixels J6: "3.9e20 pixels" Follow Elund's build: https://pastebin.com/XT8a6XZT. Some of the skills are optional, just make sure to at least get B5/B6. If you don't have B9 finished yet, then skip B8. J7: 1.2e29 pixels A2: 3.1e28 pixels Autocollect A1: 5.0e29 pixels Get A3 or B0 first. A7: "1.1e26 pixels" No prestige bonus is a factor of ~10^4-5, depending on your current prestige of course J8: 4.1e30 pixels I9: 8.2e30 pixels B9: "1.2e29 pixels" Only collecting 15 times is obviously restrictive, but not as hard as it seems at first. Always wait until you have enough for the next 25 Gen I's. ### General Progress These challenges get easier as you progress through the game. B0: Easy once you have all 6 hacks (F0, J4, and F4/G3/H2/I1). A6: "8.9e33 pixels" Goes down with unused skill points. Use Elund's build for J6, should be super easy. A5: "3.3e31 pixels" Goes down as you complete challenges, with 60 complete it's roughly 7.5e27 ## Impossible Challenges Technically only very hard. Note that these are 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than the Hard challenges. E9: 1.3e32 pixels No bonus gens. E0: 8.9e33 pixels If you manage to beat this one, congratulations, you win Pixels Filling Squares 3.0... at least until the next update. Enjoy your red crits. ## Hellish Challenges A8: "1.0e30 pixels" All the skills at lowest level. Losing higher levels of E5, most idle bonus, hacks due to energy running out, and loads of other stuff makes this much, much harder than any other challenge. Will take you longer than it takes Moczan to release the next update. EDIT: This is much easier after Garden got released (and also because Moczan is really slow at pushing out updates :P). Depending on your Garden progress, this could be easier than some of the impossible or hard challenges, due to the number of extra bonus generators you can get. (Pixel production doesn't actually affect how hard this is, since difficulty is relative.) ## Useless Skills These challenges have varying degrees of difficulty, but the skills they give are useless and not worth getting until you can complete them very easily. G8: 3.0e22 pixels J5: 400 hacks. D1, autocast Buy(get all the energy cost reducers, but don't get the top tier buy MAX skill), get an autoclicker for crit collects (or just use Auto Crit). C0: Autocast Limit. Buy gens in multiples of 25, and buy across the board. A4: 4.6e26 pixels. Just use an autoclicker.

Agree completely about A8. Even with over 30k Prestige Squares and level 11 Gen boosts, that challenge was impossible.

Nice! Just wanted to note: G0 is basically "no hacks, but we'll let you zoom to 150 first if you'd like." Edit: Also of note... because of how prices increase in Prestige2, if you follow a pattern of just Buy Battle Bonus until you can't afford any more, Buy Gen 1 Bonus until you can't afford any more, Repeat down the line, Spend remainder on SP ... you'll still end up with a very even distribution of bonuses AND plenty of extra Skill Points for your Prestige Squares amount, while still focusing more on the early generators that will see bonuses most quickly. It doesn't take any real decision-making. SP would be a higher priority in early P2s, but boss artifacts kind of devalue the importance of the P2 boost for them into "the catch-all for whatever is left", where they still contribute nicely because they're cheap, so you get plenty.

Why is this not stickied?

PP required for Boss is now 401, according to Dev.

Thanks, updated it.

The easy way to beat J5 is to get rid of "Buy hack buys max you can afford." As soon as you are gaining G5s from your Auto-collect, auto-cast Buy. Every Buy will give you more Energy than it uses and you're be done in a few minutes.

> *Originally posted by **[PuzzleMage](/forums/982279/topics/1796360?page=1#13025199)**:* > The easy way to beat J5 is to get rid of "Buy hack buys max you can afford." As soon as you are gaining G5s from your Auto-collect, auto-cast Buy. Every Buy will give you more Energy than it uses and you're be done in a few minutes. Oh yeah, I kind of assumed you wouldn't ever get the top tier of Buy Hack because of how useless it is. Like, if you're progressing fast enough to buy more than 1 gen with it, it's better for you to just click for yourself. But it's probably good to spell it out in the guide.

An actual description of each challenge would be beautiful. Just what it shows in-game. The game won't show the descriptions of other challenges while you're in a challenge, which makes it harder to help other players.

D9 is much easier than you think it is. Just use a build focused on Gen IV, which has around 10x the base income of Gen I and hence is much better when you have 270 of each. I've done it and I'm not done with the challenges you listed as medium.

> *Originally posted by **[LaVacaMorada](/forums/982279/topics/1796360?page=1#13047502)**:* > D9 is much easier than you think it is. Just use a build focused on Gen IV, which has around 10x the base income of Gen I and hence is much better when you have 270 of each. I've done it and I'm not done with the challenges you listed as medium. Makes sense, I've updated the math and changed its position in the list. Still think it's harder than a lot of the other medium challenges though.

point of interest on Elund's J6 build: on Tier V, he's added B7 to get to B8, but he didn't add B8 on tier IV, so I don't think that works (I'm thinking the tier II B8 requirement is a typo, probably should say tier IV B8). so I would recommend dropping those two, making it only 239 needed to win.

> *Originally posted by **[DavidM165](/forums/982279/topics/1796360?page=1#13061935)**:* > point of interest on Elund's J6 build: > > on Tier V, he's added B7 to get to B8, but he didn't add B8 on tier IV, so I don't think that works (I'm thinking the tier II B8 requirement is a typo, probably should say tier IV B8). > > so I would recommend dropping those two, making it only 239 needed to win. You might not have B9 challenge completed, he uses tier V B8 to get to B9. If you don't have B9 yet, then yeah, just skip B8.

Have the skills for H9 and J2 been swapped since the writing of this guide? The guide recommends H9 for J2 even though the skill H9(max idle stack for every 200 bonus gens) isn't helpful for this challenge, while the guide only recommends only D0 and G9 for H9 even though J2(bonus gens on hack) would be very useful for completing H9 so you can just use bonus generators you get from G9 and J2 instead of sitting there clicking for D0 generators like an idiot like I did.

If anyone is going to try the A8 challenge, be warned. I have completed every challenge except A8, 26k PP, 75k PS, and I'm 29 days into this run, with probably 29 more to come. It's taken this long to get to 326/335 Gen V. Edit: It took 33 days to finish A8

> *Originally posted by **[restafval](/forums/982279/topics/1796360?page=1#13086352)**:* > Have the skills for H9 and J2 been swapped since the writing of this guide? The guide recommends H9 for J2 even though the skill H9(max idle stack for every 200 bonus gens) isn't helpful for this challenge, while the guide only recommends only D0 and G9 for H9 even though J2(bonus gens on hack) would be very useful for completing H9 so you can just use bonus generators you get from G9 and J2 instead of sitting there clicking for D0 generators like an idiot like I did. Not sure if it changed or it was just a mistake, but should be fixed now.

Been a while since anyone has replied to this thread, but with 45k PS distributed accordingly, gen 1-4 lvl 11, gen v lvl 8, battle boost(not important but lvl 12, SP 29. 26696 PP, 763 SP, labs at lvl 55, 59, 59, 65, 50, 12 days into A8 and i'm maybe 2-3 days away from finishing it. It really isn't that difficult and would be even less so if i were to reset p^2 remove all battle damage and put it into the different generators and SP. This is with all other challenges completed and the most efficient way of getting all skills bought in their respective teirs and using an autoclicker to help activate abilities with the c0 ability rather than use energy. EDIT:Ending time 13 days 15 hours 28 minutes 35 seconds, with boost time it doesn't take that long to finish the challenge, not even 2 full days.

How you unlock boss battles?

@sagadragon Get 401PP

Thanks for the garden, I completed A8 challenge in about 19.2 hours. 132k PS, 33.9k PP Lab Levels 63,68,68,75,56 Got all Pixel Income bonus from meat, steak, pizza Edit: For this challenge, Gen IV is main pixel gain, and estimated difficulty is about 100 million