Wow, about a month since part of this topic got me to pay attention again to where I was at in the climb through the bosses and I had a run end with me at boss 264... And now boss 293 is the highest one I've beat. Yikes, 301 isn't looking all that far away here. Still haven't done any more challenges though. Just been pushing this boss climb out of curiosity to see how far it will go, and it just keeps going. Wish I had more progress to speak of in adventure mode though. Looks like about a month ago I was saying that I had Beast v1 on autokill. I've been autokilling Beast v2 lately but I don't think I'm ready for Beast v3 or Chocolate Zone just quite yet. Anyway, yeah... > *Originally posted by **[slay0mithos](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=2#13177746)**:* > guaranteed drop at level 10+ is because it ends up being the way to get most of the levels on your candy cane I think that when I was working on leveling the drops from Walderp I only actually saw a candy cane drop maybe 3 or 4 times in total (or somewhere around there, I didn't really count) while ALL the other levels all the way to 100 came from transforming L100 canes into L0 candy canes. It takes some time to max out the candy cane under the best circumstances, and I think it'd be massively slower to level if someone was relying only on the direct drops of the candy cane and not making use of the regular canes.

Yes, I will be taking his cane for some time. Speaking of Walderp, I'm now trying to minmax the best combination of Walderp + Predlaw + Bearded items, to get most out of it. Best about candy cane is, it made every previous weapon obsolete (yay for free inventory spaces). Do you generally trying to max E/M bonus equally, or do you have any bias toward E or M resp. power VS bar VS cap ?

When I was at that point I went for the full wanderer set because I was preparing my dive into the challenges and energy is worth a lot more there than magic. Both boot slots are really potent but the wanderer's boots tend to win (NGU speed and wandoos speed, good for both normal rebirths and challenges) over the stoob s'rerednaw (seed gains and beard speed, not bad in itself but the seeds are only good when eating/harvesting fruits and beards are overall less potent than NGU in my opinion). I never bothered about the balance of power/cap/bar in the equipment bonuses since they change with every single set but if you want to min-max there is definitely quite a bit you can do with equipments and cap is always much lower than power and bars.

I don't think I was ever really certain on what was "ideal" there and it's possible that what I settled on was NOT ideal, but... I think I favored cap bonuses in my selections and stuck with the chest and shoes from the bearded set while upgrading the hat and legs specifically to the reverse Walderp set. Looking over the wiki for what the stats maxed out at on all of the options there... Yeah, the bearded chest had both ecap and mcap (but no other special bonuses) and it had them in stronger amounts than either of the Walderp chests (energy/magic caps: 124/120 VS 0/60 VS 60/0). Although the Walderp ones do have other bonuses besides the cap. And the bearded shoes have all the energy stats while neither of the Walderp shoes have anything energy or magic related. Then there's the hat and pants... Still looking at the wiki for a reminder of what the situation had looked like... So the bearded hat/pants both had magic cap, the regular Walderp pieces were energy cap, and the reverse Walderp pieces were magic cap. The reverse Walderp pieces provide better bonuses for magic cap than the bearded pieces (96 and 86 VS 170 and 170), so I went along with that upgrade. Otherwise you're trading the 96 and 86 magic cap bonuses for 170 and 170 energy cap bonuses. I seem to recall my selection getting me relatively close to splitting energy and magic as evenly as possible while trying on the regular hat and pants instead would tip the balance heavily in favor of energy over magic. Personally, I thought the even split made more sense.

It is kind of crazy, how many boosts I will need to max the Walderp set though. One thing - when the area description shows 100% boss drop rate, does that also include McGuffin drop chance (or is that separate from boss drop chance) ?

Macguffins are not a drop chance, they drop after 1,000 consecutive kills in that zone (and unlike itopod it completely resets when you change zones), and only after the "set" of that zone is marked as "maxxed" in the item list. For the boosts, they definitely take a lot to max out, but you have a few things you can do to make that easier. In itopod you have "boosted boosts" perks that greatly increases the value your boosts give. If you didn't do it already you can get 100% boost recycle chance (50% from exp, 50% from the basic challenge). The final clear for the 100 levels challenge lets you turn all boosts into the type you want (you can choose what type you want in the settings after that clear), meaning that you can focus all of your boosts on toughness, then all on power and finally all on specials for example, making it easier to boost your equipments without losing too many to the cube. The no equipment challenge unlocks auto boost at the first clear (same thing as auto merge but for using boosts), each clear of that challenge will make the timer shorter (down to 30 minutes) and you can divide that timer by 2 from the AP shop for a minimum of 15 minutes. The newly introduced "auto merge slots" also accept auto boost, meaning that you don't have to equip your items to benefit from it.

So I need to get back to challlenges. TODO list: - complete basic - complete 100-level - complete no-aug - troll : as much as sanely possible (any guide?) - no-rebirth: continue until rebirth gets over 24-hours ? - first no-timeMachine : how many NGU/adv stats do I need? Conditions prior to challenges: - all fruits L10 - DONE - yellow heart L100 and fully boosted (now L89) - get all possible achievements done (now +23.2%) - Wanderer set fully boosted (?) - complete BoostedBoosts 1 perk , Quicker Power Fruit Beta perk Current stats (base): EP 972 EB 1946 EC 38890k MP 335 MB 670 MC 13400k P 96165 +ICP 19126 T 97773 +ICT 20358 NUMBER 9e131 (max boss 192) NGUs (in 1000): E Aug 8.2 Wan 5.3 Res 2.8 Gld 8.9 Adv 5.0 Pow 8.1 Drp 0.3 Mag 0.08 PP 0 M Ygg 1.21 Exp 2.02 Pow 0.71 Num 0.26 Tim 0.12 Ene 0.02 Adv 0 Diggers: 117.75% bonus total. 60/59/60/60 31/31/20/20 7/7/0/0 max levels. Beards (in 1000): A/D 5.13 Drop 4.34 Number 1.13 NGU 1.28 Wand 1.01 Adv 1.09 Diggers: 4 , Beards: 2, Daycare: 2, Acc: 4 Maxed both Walderp sets (missing tons of special boosts), no rares. L31 UUG rare, L12 cane + boosting L100 normal cane. So far I am still wearing Bearded set, need to calculate when (based on spec. boost) to switch Walderp (E-hat, M-chest, E-pants, Bearded boots). Perks: newbie, all Gen E/M1, Crapy, Want-Seeds, First-Harvest, Digger-Slot, now doing Boosted Boosts 1 McGuffins: So far only L9 drop-chance (from farming boosts in Beardverse for items). Not sure if I want to waste ADV idling for EP mcguffin.. . . Any recommendation for perks / stat checkpoints I should get? Maybe invest some experience into adv. stats?

Investing in adventure stats doesn't help for challenges (at all), the only part of your adventure stats that help are the ones from your equipment (minus the cube) since those translate in percentage boost to attack/defense. The no augmnentations challenge offers a nice bonus to use in the other challenges but if you can't clear it in a decent amount of time you can also skip it. Outside of challenges the effect is a bit limited since attack/defense is usually not something you need to worry about too much until you start thinking about the evil mode. For the troll challenge you want to squeeze as much from time machine, augments, blood magic and wandoos as you can in the first 3 minutes and not forget to frequently go to the fight boss screen to click the "nuke" button. Technically you can try to extend your rebirths to 5 minutes but it's the only challenge where you want to limit your rebirth time as much as possible (it helps to shorten the clear time on others as well but it's not vital). For no rebirth challenge, you can either go for a 1h target (when the fruits are ready, eat them to activate both fruits of power alpha and beta) or 30 minutes (with the itopod perk "quicker power fruit beta activation"). In theory you could go for even longer times to squeeze a few more but it is usually better to come back later when your fruit of power beta has a stronger stack and you have more energy and magic to get higher multipliers. No time machine challenge is really meant for the people that are near the end of the normal mode since you need your gold drops bonuses (NGU gold, equipments, golder shower perk) as high as possible in order to get enough gold from early zones to feed your augments and blood magic. Your aim at this point shouldn't be higher than the 5th clear because the boss target jumps by 15 bosses every time so it quickly becomes hard to reach the goal in a decent time without gear from later zones to help.

> *Originally posted by **[MuljoStpho](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=3#13178025)**:* > Wow, about a month since part of this topic got me to pay attention again to where I was at in the climb through the bosses and I had a run end with me at boss 264... And now boss 293 is the highest one I've beat. Yikes, 301 isn't looking all that far away here. Still haven't done any more challenges though. Just been pushing this boss climb out of curiosity to see how far it will go, and it just keeps going. > Almost two weeks after that comment and 300 is the strongest one I've beat. Kinda been going on something closer to 36 hour rebirths instead of 24 hour rebirths to be able to push that record up +1 each run (instead of just finishing at the same one as my record) over the last few runs, though. Currently in hour 21 of a rebirth, so maybe in another 15 hours, give or take, I'll take down 301. So... Yeah... Probably almost time for me to stop procrastinating on finally getting around to doing a bunch of challenges... Imagine how much quicker a climb like this could've been with certain challenge rewards helping. I think specifically the augment speed and power from the No Augment Challenge and the fruit tiers cap increase from Troll Challenge 3 and the Fruit of Numbers unlock from Troll Challenge 5. (Oh well.) Man, my fruits right now, after all this time running without getting the bonuses from the Troll Challenge. After those first eight fruits all at tier 10 and the still locked fruit of numbers, I've got the fruit of rage at tier 8, fruit of macguffins alpha at tier 2, and fruit of power delta at tier 2. Gonna be crazy when I can finally start throwing upgrades at the first page of fruits again.

> *Originally posted by **[MuljoStpho](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=3#13189352)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[MuljoStpho](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=3#13178025)**:* > > Wow, about a month since part of this topic got me to pay attention again to where I was at in the climb through the bosses and I had a run end with me at boss 264... And now boss 293 is the highest one I've beat. Yikes, 301 isn't looking all that far away here. Still haven't done any more challenges though. Just been pushing this boss climb out of curiosity to see how far it will go, and it just keeps going. > > > > Almost two weeks after that comment and 300 is the strongest one I've beat. Kinda been going on something closer to 36 hour rebirths instead of 24 hour rebirths to be able to push that record up +1 each run (instead of just finishing at the same one as my record) over the last few runs, though. Currently in hour 21 of a rebirth, so maybe in another 15 hours, give or take, I'll take down 301. > > So... Yeah... Probably almost time for me to stop procrastinating on finally getting around to doing a bunch of challenges... Imagine how much quicker a climb like this could've been with certain challenge rewards helping. I think specifically the augment speed and power from the No Augment Challenge and the fruit tiers cap increase from Troll Challenge 3 and the Fruit of Numbers unlock from Troll Challenge 5. (Oh well.) > > Man, my fruits right now, after all this time running without getting the bonuses from the Troll Challenge. After those first eight fruits all at tier 10 and the still locked fruit of numbers, I've got the fruit of rage at tier 8, fruit of macguffins alpha at tier 2, and fruit of power delta at tier 2. Gonna be crazy when I can finally start throwing upgrades at the first page of fruits again. Bro the fastest way to gain exp is to cap FOK at 24, which requires POM 24 first. I did some challenges after beating Beast for first time and they flew by, like 5 minute basic challenges, 12 minutes for no aug etc.

Yeah, I make absolutely no claims to playing this game in any way that can be called efficient. And I'm usually going to be more comfortable with longer runs, not shorter runs. I don't like anything that sounds like "speedrunning" to me (the thought of it always sounds annoying / irritating to me), and my line for what counts as "speedrunning" is a couple hours or faster per rebirth. Digging through some old posts I'd made on here for something... Looks like somewhere around January or February of this year I did a single run of the Basic Challenge, and around that time I was at a point in the game where I was only dealing with the first three titans. To this date that's still the only thing I've done in challenges. My time in it was 8h14m. I kept meaning to continue with challenges several times since that first one but then I'd break through what had seemed to be a wall in whatever point I was at in adventure mode and then pushing forward with that would be more interesting to me than the challenges.

That's also why this game and itrtg are great, even if you are not stressing a super efficient and optimal approach you can still progress at a decent pace (admitedly nowhere near the speed of the efficient and optimal approach). As long as you don't mind not reaching the end as fast as other people it's fine to play how you want. The only challenge that heavily punishes not using fast rebirths are the troll challenge and the 24h challenge (due to the massive amount you have to clear to finish it entirely). On the plus side though, you are already at a point where you can blast through the troll challenge with just a very small amount of those short rebirths, so if you just pick a time and day where you won't mind the activity as much you can be done with the troll challenge in barely any time and not have to worry about it for a long time (evil mode's troll challenge requires fairly high stats after all). Once you are done with that you can just start doing the rest of the challenges at your own pace, maybe with the exception of the 24h challenge at first, if you just chain those challenge without minding the "losses" from not beating titans and such it will take some time but since you don't mind being slower anyway it shouldn't matter too much to you. Of course you can clear pretty much all of the challenges in no time with your stats if you are willing to do short rebirths, but it's not eactly needed, and you will be able to continue levelling your fruits to the newly unlocked rank 24. If you even just decrease your rebirth time (say 12 hours instead of 24 for example) your macguffins will also give you a lot more than usual. Your beards will potentially suffer quite a bit (especially if you did get the "bank" perks for it since starting a challenge resets that banked amount to 0), as will your exp (until you get fruit of knowledge up at least, after that you will be earning a lot more than before even without titan kills), but once again you are not forcing yourself to play optimally anyway so it shouldn't hurt you too much. You can even use challenges to farm macguffins, greatly increasing their levels, which will be good anyway.

So I realized I can, with some investment to training (~15k P/T), manually snipe BadlyDrawn bosses. My current dropchance is maxed around 21k% in 24hr rebirth though - so that will need improving I think. I have some time until I max BoostedBoosts1 (now 32/60) - this will allow me to level NGU drop chance (388), fruit of luck (258%) and NeckBeard passive (5143) a bit more. Then I want do few-day rebirth, and try get BadlyDrawn set / Looty / another A+4 maxed. How high drop chance do I need, to get reasonable chance on drops? . . Also still doubting whether get Red Heart, or more beard slots. I will max Yellow Heart soon, and prob replace it with the A+4 copy from the farming rebirth. And I got the Dorky Glasses drop, that's really good +EMbars. More beards? I still only have 2 daycare slots, and no upgrades for it..

> How high drop chance do I need, to get reasonable chance on drops? This way of thinking is very close to a trap. In most cases the biggest increase in drops comes with an increase in adventure stats, because it is much easier to be killing things 2-3 times as fast compared to increasing your drop chance by a similar amount. Of course, drop chance does matter, but all of the sources for it grow very slowly compared to adventure stats, no matter if it's equipment (don't forget your ring of greed as well for both drop chances and gold drops and potentially your infinity cube), blood magic's bloody spaghetti, NGU, fruit of luck, neckbeard, drop chance digger, drop chance macguffin (and much later hacks). You will absolutely want to continue to increase your drop chance of course, but it should be something that goes up in the background as you continue your main focus on adventure stats. I know it sounds weird at first but if you went back to say the sky zone and look at the insane rate at which forest pendant and looty are dropping you will notice that most of it comes from 1-shooting enemies and a reduced respawn time more so than an increase in drop chance since the last time you were there. (Obviously I'm not telling you to farm there, it's just an example, you can go back to any other zone even just beardverse should be dropping things including the macguffins much faster than before) > Also still doubting whether get Red Heart, or more beard slots. I will max Yellow Heart soon, and prob replace it with the A+4 copy from the farming rebirth. And I got the Dorky Glasses drop, that's really good +EMbars. > > More beards? I still only have 2 daycare slots, and no upgrades for it.. The red heart means +10% exp permanently after putting it to level 100, so it should be fairly easy for you to see if it's worth delaying the levelling of something else for a while or not. Beard slots are always a good option as long as you have a lot of bars since the formula for permanent levels significantly decreases as the temporary levels rise. You still earn more from higher temporary levels but usually unless your bars are low you tend to earn a lot more from having more beards even if it reduces the amount for each individual beard.

The plan was not to max the set, but get 5-10 levels of each items from BadlyDrawnWorld. But checking the stat totals, it does not surpass Walders items by critical amount (maybe except boots VS bearded-set boots). I've got +1 beard slot from AP shop, so now leveling FuManchu + drop chance + adv-stats. Now for some item stat numbers. |**OTHER ITEMS**|EP|EB|EC|MP|MB|MC| |----------------------------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----| |DorkyL11, Strand, WayE/M| 1400 | 741 | 80 | 1200 | 741 | 80 | |CaneL14| 1140 | 1055 | 100 | 1140 | 1055 | 100 | |**TOTAL**| 2540 | 1796 | 180 | 2340 | 1796 | 180 | |**ITEM SET -WEAP -ACC**|EP|EB|EC|MP|MB|MC| |----------------------------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----| |Bearded | 800 | 660 | 164 | 580 | 940 | 282 | |Bearded, no boots | 360 | 0 | 124 | 580 | 940 | 282 | |Wanderers with boots| 3100 | 2800 | 340 | 400 | 400 | 60 | |Wanderers + BeardBoots | 3540 | 3460 | 380 | 400 | 400 | 60 | |Srerednaw with boots| 400 | 400 | 60 | 3100 | 2800 | 340 | |Srerednaw with BeardBoots | 840 | 1060 | 100 | 3100 | 2800 | 340 | Now combinations: |**ITEM SET -WEAP -ACC**|EP|EB|EC|MP|MB|MC| |----------------------------------------|----|----|----|----|----|----| |Wanderers + BeardBoots + SreHat | 2440 | 3460 | 210 | 1500 | 400 | 230 | |Wanderers + BeardBoots + SreChest | 1940 | 2260 | 440 | 2000 | 1600 | 0 | |Wanderers + BeardBoots + SrePants | 3540 | 2060 | 210 | 400 | 1800 | 230 | |Srerednaw + BeardBoots + WanHat | 1940 | 1060 | 270 | 2000 | 2800 | 170 | |Srerednaw + BeardBoots + WanChest | 2440 | 2260 | 40 | 1500 | 1600 | 400 | |Srerednaw + BeardBoots + WanPants | 840 | 2260 | 270 | 3100 | 1600 | 170 |

Well, the badly drawn set at level 100 is above even the "specialized" stats of the wanderer and srerednaw sets by a bit, but the biggest thing is that it boosts both energy and magic stats instead of heavily favouring one over the other. It does take level 50+ in it to be really worth wearing like most sets when compared to previous ones though (which is the main reason why I never bother trying to manually snipe bosses for the first few drops long before reaching the stats to idle the zone, it is more efficient to start farming it early but it takes a lot of manual work before it amounts to anything). One thing to note is that the "head" piece has advanced training speed (+160% at level 0) and gold drops (+1200% at level 0) so depending on circumstances it could be a good thing to try and grab it (since more gold drops mean higher diggers). I already said it before but I am a big fan of the wanderer's boots since the NGU speed is worth a lot more than EM stat boosts in the long run, especially when comparing them with the boots from beardverse. You should be close to getting a lot more levels from NGU with your EM stats rising from your exp (and gear), to the point where you will be able to start heavily grinding NGU yggdrasil, NGU exp and NGU adventure alpha (among others).

Good point about the +adv-training + gold-drops item. I should definitely try to get that for buffing. Otherwise from the item combinations, so far I like Wanderers Chest+Pants and Srerednaw Hat. EP 2000 EB 2800 EC 170 MP 1500 MB 400 MC 230 seems as much balanced as I can get. And it keeps EP/EB reasonably high so I might as well replace the Bearded Boots (EP 440 EB 660 EC 40) with NGU boots when in NGU phase, and use them only for other buffing phases. I still need to complete the Boosted Boosts perk though, before jumping to maxing the items.

Some progress: - completed Boosted Boosts 1 perk, More Inventory space 1. Quicker Power Fruit Beta activation (raised ITOPOD level to 330+). - maxed Badly Drawn World set (maxed the dual EM stats of chest/pants/boots, otherwise left on base value) - yellow heart boosted to 100 (didn't maxed gold bonus yet, but AP gives 120% even without boosting) - L4 A+3 L0 KingLooty equiped, L0 A+3 and KingLooty in daycare - maxed 200 P/T boosts, effective boosts from 200 to 876 - got few more diggers, total bonus now 119.9% - achievement bonus now 25.7% - L22 Dorky Glasses, L10 Fanny Pack Few questiong regarding next progress (before challenges) - I have 4 acc slots - which accessories would you prefer for GPS/train/NGU phases (DorkyGlassesL22, FannyPackL10, KingLootyL0, InfyStrandL100, WayTooE/ML100) ? - For head slot - focus on boosting SmileyFace, or Srerednaw's hat ? - For weapon - boost (special) Cane over Gun? Not much I can do now with XP (500k for daycare slot still seems too expensive). I've bought 3rd beard slot for AP, now saving probably (?) for 5th accessory slot. 250pp for acc-slot seems out of reach now - any other specific perk I should get before going for challenges?

I kind of like the training and GPS bank. This looks like something that can significantly speed-up any challenge (except norebirth). Are the 'saved' levels in training/timemachine active from beginning? Do they actually count in the '100' for 100-level challenge?

Banks don't affect challenges all that much since they are reset to 0 when you start a challenge, the only exceptions are the later clears for 24h challenge, troll challenge, no NGU challenge and no time machine challenge since those later clears require more rebirths, but even then the impact is not as big as you would think. The beard bank would have a more direct impact, but only if you have enough bars to fill your cap quickly and level beards quickly. Admitedly if you use the 30 minutes (or more) rebirths instead of 3 minutes ones the time machine and beard banks can have a larger impact (the advanced training banks are really not that impactfull for challenges, it is even better than the other two for normal rebirths though as it lets you have a lot higher adventure stats and wandoos that cost a lot less to cap). They do work for the 100 levels challenge and do not take from the 100 levels (oddly enough it was hard to test since just leaving auto nuke on clears the challenge at the 1 minute mark so it took me a few tries to confirm it), so they help a bit, but advanced training bank has absolutely no impact on it since you really don't want to waste levels on something that doesn't give you multipliers.

> *Originally posted by **[armzzz](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=3#13195244)**:* > Few questiong regarding next progress (before challenges) > - I have 4 acc slots - which accessories would you prefer for GPS/train/NGU phases (DorkyGlassesL22, FannyPackL10, KingLootyL0, InfyStrandL100, WayTooE/ML100) ? > - For head slot - focus on boosting SmileyFace, or Srerednaw's hat ? > - For weapon - boost (special) Cane over Gun? > Well, none of the six accessories you named there have the bonus for gold drops. You might be looking at items like the ascended pendants (Ax3 or lower), ring of greed, regular tie, dragon wings, or (after you boost it up some) yellow heart for some gold bonuses. (Of the seven I just named, the Ax1 pendant, tie, and wings are tied for having the weakest gold boosts.) If you really wanted to, you could also consider using the magitech blade (if you still have it) and the badly drawn smiley face for extra gold boosts. (And then of course swap back to a stronger weapon and head after you've secured your high gold kill to set up your GPS.) As for looking at other bonuses besides gold... The dorky glasses cover multiple bases with their bonuses for EM bars (which helps beards a bit on top of generating your energy and magic faster), NGU speed, and wandoos speed. The fanny pack gives EM cap, EM power, and drop chance. Cap gives you more stuff to allocate to wherever you want to use it. Power helps a few features work better as well. Drop chance is conditionally useful. (Good when you're in a zone to farm drops, irrelevant when you're just farming itopod for PP.) King Looty also gives EM cap, EM power, and drop chance. I'm looking at a L100 pack compared to a L83 king, both boosted as much as possible for their level, and the king provides more cap and more drop chance but it provides less power. The infinitely long strand provides EM power and beard speed. The amount of EM power is... kind of comparable to King Looty, I guess. (Slightly better for energy and slightly worse for magic. Comparing the L100 strand to the L83 king.) The bonus for beard speed is a bit more specific in application than a bonus for EM bars would have been. The amount of bonus for beard speed here is at most 20%, which is equal to other beard speed items you might have (Uug's "special" ring and the bearded axe). With the "way too much" rings you've got EM power, EM cap, and EM bars... split across two accessories instead of being all in one place. The amount of power on them is less than King Looty. The amount of cap on them is better than the fanny pack and better than my L83 King Looty. (Although I think a L100 King Looty might pull ahead?) The amount of bars on them is much weaker than the dorky glasses. Only one of those had a bonus specifically targeted at NGU. To get more help with NGU beyond that... Well, there's the regular tie and the ring of utility and Uug's "special" ring. Or you can look at your EM cap options. (I don't know to what extent either more cap or more NGU speed bonus might prove to be more helpful for that. Might depend on the amount of each bonus and how much base EM cap you're building up from?) For the candy cane compared to the badly drawn gun... You're looking at EM power, EM cap, and EM bars all in one place on the candy cane vs having EM power, EM cap, and augment speed on the gun. The gun is better if you need power/toughness but it's worse than the candy cane for the EM power and EM cap. Augment speed is almost a unique bonus for this item though. (The only other item with that specific bonus is something that you won't see until one of the titans in evil mode.) And augment speed could be useful if you're trying to build your attack/defense faster. (So it's something that might help with challenges, basically. How useful would it really prove to be in challenges though? Since the item effectiveness would be reduced before reaching a certain boss, probably 100.)

Ad perks - maxed GPS bank 1 , continuing with Beard bank 1. Gear - at this moment I run following setups (chest/pants/boots always BDW): 1) Gold drops (early Adv. bosses, first titan kills) - A+1, A+2 (replace by yellow heart when buffed), A+3, Greed, SmileyFace, Cane /dont use magitech yet, need P-T from weapon/ 2) Early game (GPS / blood) : KingLooty , FannyPack , WayTooMagic, Strand, Sre-Hat, Cane - all E GPS, 1/2M GPS, 1/2M blood (counter + spag. setup) 3) Training - Amulet of Helping, Ring of Utility, KingLooty, FannyPack, SmileyFace, Cane - all E Wand+train (~1k each Wandoos, 1k T, ~10k P), all M Wand+blood (make stack for Pill) 4) Augments - KingLooty, FannyPack, WayTooM-E (depends if I need blood for Pill/rebirth), Strand, Sre-Hat, Gun - all E Wand+aug , all M Wand+blood 5) NGU - DorkyGlasses, UggSpecial, Strand, KingLooty, Sre-Hat, Cane 6) Drop chance - KingLooty , A+2, A+3, Greed I still need to max buff many of the items - so far only Strand, SpecialRing, A+1, A+2 and Greed are maxed. L100 Yellow Heart, L46 DorkyGlasses, L12 FannyPack, L25 Cane, plus all BDW items and Sre-Hat have maxed P/T but will need TONS of special boosts.

Don't worry about special boosts, when you will have cleared the 100 levels challenge you will be able to set all boosts to be any type you want (so usually special boosts unless you need another type at that time), that function changes everything because you basically multiply by 3 the amount of special boosts you get. If you also clear the no equipment challenge the auto boost (and auto merge) will be at 30 minutes, you can divide it by 2 once more with AP for 15 minutes, and with the new inventory merge slots as well it makes merging and boosting significantly simpler. Soon enough itopod will start dropping the same boosts as the zones you can idle if not higher, and it has a stable 12% boost drop chance, meaning that boosts will come in large amounts. Every 50 floors the boost dropped goes up by a rank (it stops with boosts 1000 appearing at floor 450, after that it's floor 700+ for boosts 2000 and 850+ for boosts 5000). Once you reach the point where itopod is your main source for boosts, combined with the challenges and the inventory merge slots you will find that boosting is no longer a problem, it can take a bit of time but that's it.

> *Originally posted by **[armzzz](/forums/984525/topics/1831965?page=3#13197763)**:* > but will need TONS of special boosts. Yep. That's going to get to be pretty normal where you're at, if it isn't already. Power and toughness on the items can be relatively easy to top up, and then you'll still be way short on the special bonuses. I completed all of my troll challenges and all of my basic challenges, and I was thinking about tackling the 100 Level Challenges next (or at least one). One run would get boost transformation unlocked, at least. And doing the last one would remove the cost for boost transformation (and also unlock a setting to let it be automated when they drop). With that unlocked I could allow the power and toughness boosts through instead of filtering them and then I could just transform them all to special boosts to help max out some new items a little bit quicker. Edit: ... I still have a few older items that I'm still holding onto that haven't actually been fully boosted yet, and there have been many armor pieces that got discarded when I got something better which I hadn't fully boosted before they became outdated. Just the way it worked out for me, with the crazy scaling on how much special the items could take.

For the challenges - can you suggest any specific order I take them on, chronologically ? So far , the plan is : complete basic complete 100-level complete no-aug troll : as much as sanely possible no-rebirth: continue until rebirth gets over 24-hours no-timeMachine : at least first done (?)