Long story short, got RoA to 100, and wiped UUG. But even with switching to drop digger (29) + using Sir Looty + A2 pend (total ~710% drop chance effective) before kill, he gave only the guaranteed items (hair, RoG). With 2% base drop chance, that means I would have to get to around 2500% drop chance to have 50% chance to drop any ring?

You should soon be able to start pumping levels into NGU drop chance, with beards unlocked you have access to "the neckbeard" (the number 2 beard, an energy beard that boosts drop chances) and you should soon-ish be able to eat the fruit of luck at a decent rank. Thanks to every bonus source multiplying each others it will allow you to boost your total drop chance modifier (in misc adventure in the stats breakdown) at a pretty fast speed. When you beat walderp (the next titan) you will also unlock macguffins, and the one dropped in the beardverse zone (just before walderp) happens to be the drop chance macguffin fragment, giving you even more ways to boost that stat to ridiculous levels. UGG also happens to have a ring that boosts drop chance (+60% at level 0, +120% at level 100) so it will help you as well.

Yes, NGU drop chance on level 10 now. It is nice the first RoG is guaranteed drop, too. For the beards - with 1 beard slot, is it better to keep active only one beard type for whole rebirth (as permanent bonus is from only active beards on rebirth)? (so neckbeard , for starters) Also, the power/cap/bar ratio changes with beards to something like 1:20:1 ?

For beards, permanent levels are only added to the beard that is active when you rebirth, so temporary levels you put in other beards are lost without giving you anything. Even worse, only the active beard(s) will provide you with bonus for temporary levels (permanent levels are giving you their bonuses regardless of being active or not). So you tend to want to keep the same beard active for the whole rebirth, and if you want to pump permanent levels in a different one you would do full rebirths with that beard as the active one instead. EDIT: 1:37.5k:1.875 for perfectly equal exp distribution, 1:40k:2 for a rough ratio based on that. your 1:20k:1 means that you are spending massively on power compared to the other two.

I am still rather low on NGU levels ( avg. 200 on first 6 eNGU , 10 drop chance, 66 yggdrasil ) - so I need to invest into eP/mP. Current stats are E 135 4M 119 , M 43 1.6M 40 . Maybe until I get to the 'diminishing' levels in NGU, 1:40k:1 might be better? Or what would be the break-point to start prefering bars? . . Another question - is it true, and I _SHOULD NOT_ level NGU beyond diminishing level (e.g. 400 respawn) - otherwise the skill will actualy lose in effect?

The further you push the acquisition of more bars, the longer it will take for your beards to start kicking into gear, so you can stick with a lower ratio on bars for as long as you want, you just need to remember that you are getting significantly less from your beards because of that, but if you are fine with it you would have a bit more power and cap instead (for NGU, blood magic, advanced training, augments, wandoos and so on). > Another question - is it true, and I SHOULD NOT level NGU beyond diminishing level (e.g. 400 respawn) - otherwise the skill will actualy lose in effect? No, the bonus just continues to go up (or down in the case of respawn), but each level gives you less. Respawn is the only entry where stopping it until later is really a valid thing to do because it follows a formula where it will at most reach 60%. That means that the first 400 levels give you half of the total bonus you can get from that NGU (0.8). Level 1,000 would give you 0.795, 10,000 levels gives you 0.76, 100,000 levels gives you 0.657, 1,000,000 levels gives you 0.608 As you can see, later on when you can pump levels into it quickly it will be worth levelling again, but just a few extra levels a day will not really bring you any visible results for a while. The other "diminishing returns" are very much worth continuing, especially the adventure, drop chance, yggdrasil and exp ones, you might be getting less returns per level but those bonuses are having such a massive impact on your progress that even a slower increase is going to matter quite a bit.

Hey Armzz, just dropping in to say I'm a day or two behind you. It's nice to have someone else in a similar position in progressing in NGU Idle

Good luck with farming RoA :) Too late I found it has really fast Daycare level speed ... wish I knew that before. While I want to start rebirthing again (now 12 days into current one) , I worry that after rebirth I won't be able to kill UUG for some time... so maybe level those rings a bit, and get more digger levels while I have good GPS from buffed TimeMachine .. Also - wonder which challenges I should go for when I start rebirthing. 1) complete all basic challenges - hope now it will be quicker 2) First L100 challenge ? 3) what else?

Doind such long rebirth isn't a good idea, you lose lot of exp and progress overall that way.

I just unlocked the beards, so this seems to be a natural stopping point. Also, I think the EXP/AP I would now get from UUG kills kind of balance EXP gain for normal rebirths.

No, it don't. You shouldn't look down on the exp you get from normal bosses. Bosses stop being your main source of exp by that points, but that doesn't make them worthless. Bosses still give you quite a good amount of exp after each rebirth. For example reaching boss 100 which is needed to unlock UGG, give you over 300 exp which is more than 1 UGG kill. Also as you rebirth more you get higher number that allow you to reach more bosses and get more exp. With the extra exp you would have been able to buy a bit more power/cap/bars which would have made you progress faster pretty much everywhere.

If you were killing him once per hour perhaps, but I doubt you completed enough no rebirth challenges for that to be the case. The base exp before bonus from UGG is 300, and if we assume 1 24h challenge that's the amount of exp you would earn from bosses up to number 84. With no "no rebirth challenge" clear you can at most kill UGG every 2 hours, which means UGG kills are only giving you more exp that bosses if you go for long rebirths. (and even with enough no rebirth challenges, 1h rebirths remain much better for exp) The reason why you see people pushing for longer rebirths (and by that I mean 24h rebirths, not half a month) is because both fruits and beard will tend towards the 24h as their optimal rebirth length. But your fruits are fairly far from reaching that just yet, and without the increase in bars your beards really give you much more progress with 6 to 12 hours rebirths. > Also - wonder which challenges I should go for when I start rebirthing. > 1) complete all basic challenges - hope now it will be quicker > 2) First L100 challenge ? > 3) what else? 1. I'm amazed you are complaining about having low adventure stats but didn't clear that challenge yet, I'm pretty sure you would have had much better results in your UGG hunt with those instead of ultra long rebirth. But anyway yes, challenges become faster as you increase your energy and magic stats, the first beard will also help (although not that much until you pump exp into bars but it's still better than nothing), NGU augment, time machine and power (alpha and beta) all help quite a bit with speeding the challenges, higher power/toughness from equipment (not the final adventure stats, just the ones from equipment) also directly boosts your attack/defense but it will be in lesser proportions because of the "sceal" that only gives you a portion of the equipment stats until you reach a certain boss number in that rebirth). 2. Clearing the first of each challenge that has a special reward will help quite a bit, level 100 challenge is definitely among them. 3. Try to see if you can get a few no rebirth challenges in 1 hour each, they reduce titan respawn time by 3 minutes per clear. It never goes under 60 minutes but you are starting to have titans with longer respawn times now so your drops, exp and AP will all go up by a decent chunk from clearing those. The first troll challenge is going to massively power up magic NGU speed so it can be worth doing it (it won't be enjoyable but the reward is worth it).

Thank you for that. I wanted to explain better, but i wasn't sure how to do it.

I've dumped some EXP to energy bars (as I am far from having 2 beard slots, and the most important seem to be energy ones) - now at 136 : 4M : 195. For killing UUG, I have no problem with that now (L30 adv digger + 1200/1345 T/P advtrain) - but w/o the adv train levels it can get tough. No rebirth challenges seem to have great value, I should try few when done with basic chal. One question - when getting to beards, do you start prefering BARS equipment over cap/power ? Considering all eq is maxed, 2 digger slots, 1 bear slot: Gaudy Shirt (76% eC 192% eP ) VS Mega Chest (340% eB + mB ) Gaudy Hat (120% eB + mB) VS Mega Helmet ( 460% eP + mP ) VS Beanie ( 106% mC 370% mP )

With only 2 beard slots you really want to have 1 energy and 1 magic beard, because when you have 2+ of the same type active it divides the speed by the number of active beards of that type (the level 100 on the armpit hair lowers that a bit but it still impacts the speed of individual beards fairly significantly). The "fu manchu" in the magic beards is probably the most useful early on as it boosts your attack/defense and it doesn't have diminishing returns (on top of being the fastest beard to level). Both the temporary and permanent levels of this are going to help you for normal rebirths as well as challenges, so it's an all around great beard to have active. EDIT: > One question - when getting to beards, do you start prefering BARS equipment over cap/power ? I'll repeat the same thing every time I guess, the only important stats on armours and weapons are the power and toughness, the rest are nice additions but ultimately do not really matter (the only real exception being the stealthiest chest because of the incredible boost it gives to NGU speed at a point in the game where barely any equipment gives that direct bonus). To ellaborate more, every time you chose one over another for one of those bonus stats, you also need to consider how the other bonus stats are affected, in most cases a later set will have more bonuses overall, and if one bonus goes down a bit it usually means a fairly substancial increase in a different one.

I don't have 2 beard slots, only one. So for example Mega Chest has limited usefullnes for me now - but I can switch between magic beard and energy beard rebirths, so can use that I guess. So far I've set 2 goals before I start rebirthing: 1) beating level 200 ITOPOD floor (now 185, but didn't try too hard on that) - this will get me close to 25 PP for the crappy perk 2) beating level 105 boss - just because I'm half way there with Wandoos leveling With aroun 5.2k base P/T + 1k/1.4k Cube P/T , 200+ NGU levels and 850%+ power beta fruit , I hope that should be enough for completing basic challenge quick, and try some others (no rebirth, 100 levels, ..)

Back to challenges - so far 3 basic, avg. 90 minutes each.

You should be able to do them much faster than that, are you perhaps using the 30 minutes rebirth style (with the fruit activation perks from itopod)?

In ITOPOD, I've got only crappy perk apart from newbie / generic1. Also I forgot to level any other beard except drop chance, so that is slowing me down. I'm now kind of climbing back up (now at Jake), and will level probably Att/Def beard somewhat. How does the beta fruit work - its bonus (~1000%) was showing as INACTIVE? This is related to the activation perk?

It's half related to the perk. Both fruit of power beta and fruit of number work the same way, their bonus is inactive at the start of the rebirth and will only activate when you eat the fruit for the first time in that rebirth. The itopod perk allows you to activate the two bonuses at the 30 minutes mark instead, which helps downing a few more bosses if you need that to reach a titan before the first hour elapsed but it is most useful for challenges, especially the no rebirth challenge. The bonus itself grows at a very rapid rate as you continue eating the fruit at high rank because it gives you a percentage of the total bonus (meaning it will keep giving you extra bosses worth of bonus). An example might give you a better idea. I ate my fruit a few seconds ago (at rank 23 sadly because it was still quite a bit away from rank 24, about 40 minutes) and my bonus went up by 3,930,943,092.05% (or in an easier to read format 3.931 E+9 %) and my total bonus is at 354.464 E+9 %. What that means is that I gained a bit over 1% of the total from eating the fruit, and because the total bonus goes up thanks to that the amount I get also goes up. (yes, it is as crazy as it sounds, as you keep eating it it becomes more and more powerful, but "thankfully" it's only at a low-ish rate so it doesn't make augments, wandoos and NGU worthless). EDIT: I obviously reloaded after the tier 23 fruit and now that I ate it at rank 24, with poop being applied this time as well I got 6.911 E+9 % which is nearly 2% of that total, of course the +50% from poop helped quite a bit in making that difference. What about 2% increase every 24h means is that you would get an increase of nearly 15% in a week and about 81% every month, you would double the bonus every 36-38 days.

Ok makes sense. I just wonder where should I get all those PP I need .. barely scraped the 25 PP from getting to 210 floor for crappy perk, and I am far from maxing the generic1 (except eP). I think I need to do more 24h rebirths before I go back to any challenges. 1) concentrate on using +respawn accessories (so far I preferred +NGU/wandoos speed, or +power, while farming ITOPOD) 2) prioritize FuManchu (which is sadly mana beard) Anything else? The 2nd extra accessory slot, or 1st extra beard slot - for XP - as still rather expensive for me. And AP will go to filger + yellow heart so that's out of question. PP as well. With crappy perk, I should probably start using poop on Pomme (now lvl 6)..

It's not your fault, it's just that the game was not really re-balanced after some of the features were added so it's much easier to out-pace the "intended" progression and as a result temporarily fall behind in multiple places (PP earned, NGU levels, base energy/magic stats, fruit's max tier and later also beard permanent levels). Only temporarily because faster progression means reaching the big exp earnings faster and getting more potent bonuses from equipments faster as well. Also, fu manchu might be a magic beard but if you kept the 3:1 ratio between energy and magic's base stats it shouldn't be slower than the drop chance beard.

One question for beards - the permanent bonus on beard is in effect, even if the beard is not actually active? E.g. I've had active Fu Manchu, but I can still see bonus from my Neckbeard in the stats overview. Also - when I go for challenge, I used to do few 3min rebirths to get EXP from the decaying number. However the number on next rebirth seems to be affected by stats from the previous rebirh. So should I dive into challenge right from 'best number' rebirth?

I'm pretty sure the lines on the rebirth page which say "(last rebirth)" are merely there for reference so you can compare your current run to your previous run. (Any difference in number of bosses killed? Rough ratio of how much shorter or longer this run has been? In which run did you get get more of a bonus from blood magic's number boost spell?) EDIT: Also, unless one specifies otherwise (are there any like that in this game?) starting a challenge tends to function sort of like a "double rebirth". It acts as if you had rebirthed a second time the instant before the next rebirth even started, effectively wiping out your NUMBER so you have to start with almost nothing there. That's exactly where the advise for quick rebirths before a challenge comes from. I don't know about here, but players of Idling to Rule the Gods call it "speedfalling". (Probably the same here. I think the two games attract a lot of the same audience, yes?) The point is to get some use out of the rebirth multiplier (several multipliers in ItRtG's case) which you know that you're about to lose anyway by sacrificing them for quick cash (meaning exp in NGU Idle or meaning GP in ItRtG). EDIT2: Laser Sword Challenge specifically mentions that nothing gets reset when you start it, so you would NOT want to speedfall before starting that one. I *think* that all of the others should reset your NUMBER back to 1 but it's hit or miss whether the description remembers to specifically mention that part.

Yes, the permanent bonus of a beard is applied even without the beard being active. Actually, all of the "last rebirth" except the blood magic one are used in the calculation of your NUMBER, but they get reset to 1 when you start a challenge. This means that there is no reason tu push your NUMBER multipliers up before a challenge. Speedfall can be used in NGU but it's a bit less interesting for multiple reasons, you can not rebirth at less than 3 minutes, and bosses don't give all that much exp when speed falling (it's definitely a nice little plus but not as nearly vital as in ItRtG). The only exception to all that as MuljoStpho said is the laser sword challenge as that is just a "normal" rebirth that also happens to start the challenge. As a rule of thumb, any challenge that has "defeat boss number X" (which is all of them except the laser sword challenge) as a goal will reset your number back to 1 even if it doesn't directly stats it.