Incremental Adventures – Basic Guide

Incremental Adventures Basic Guide

Settings

Early game:

Make sure you turn on timestamps.

Turn on both floor notifications and prestiges. Gold is nice to see early, but can clog the log very easily.

Later (once you’ve unlocked the prestige layer (PL) 1-4 autobuyers):

Later on only prestige notifications, and turn off floor notifications.

Enabling autobuyers on manual prestige is also a good idea in case you manually prestige one of your autobuyer layers.

For autobuyers use lower layer priority and split only (enable only damage and xp) or split + exp.
Soft autobuy should be 1.01x

Once you hit ascension:

Have only prestige and ascension layer notifications turned on.

FAQ

When I prestige layer 2, do I lose everything from layer 1?

• You lose only the stat upgrades; gameplay unlocks, autobuyers and armoury are kept.

What is the max no. of heroes/ max stat points?

• Max heroes is 6, you will unlock heroes only on floors that are multiples of 10 and from prestige unlocks. Additional heroes beyond the first six are added as a flat 1/6 additive multiplier on hero stats for your 6 heroes.

• Max stat points is 25, obtained upon reaching floor 441.

Why do endgame players recommend full Exp/Dmg, what’s wrong with defensive stats?

• Later on defensive stats, while they help you push 10-20 extra floors each run, will make your runs take several minutes longer than they should. The primary goal is prestiging as fast as possible for the most exp per time.

• 10-20 floors seems like a lot to a new player, but when you are in the millions of floors it will make no difference to you.

• Even from the start of the game, points put into HP, armor, or healing beyond the first point are largely useless.

What does ‘run’ mean?

• Prior to unlocking ascension, a run is from floor 0 until you prestige.

• After unlocking ascension, a run is how long it takes you to do an ascension of a particular layer.

What does small floor change mean?

• Small floor change will trigger your autobuyers when the number of floors you skip is a certain amount below your max floor, thus preventing you from wasting excessive amounts of time on progressing all the way to the max floor in ones or twos when you’re skipping hundreds or more normally.

• Small floor change will remain useful until you have progressed somewhat far into the game – ascension layer 4 is about where you’ll switch to medium floor change.

How many points should I save up for prestige or ascension layer x?

• See the table of contents and scroll to the appropriate section.

What should I set my prestige autobuyers to?

• Check your floor range for more info – generally for early floors use log2 and later floors use a root. Always lower layer priority, using small floor change until ascension layer 4 where you switch to medium floor change.

• Since you should never prestige layers 5+ for stats until reaching ascension layer 3, prestige layer 4 or 3 should be used as a failsafe with 1.01x

What are log2, log10 etc?

• log2 is the same as looking at 2^x and waiting until your autobuyer can increase your stat multiplier by x. log10 is the same idea but with 10^x instead.

• This means after a few layer 1 prestiges the multiplier required will become very high and is more likely to prestige a different layer (such as layer 2).

• For this reason, early on it is a great idea to use logs as prestige multipliers, since if you use a static value you might just end up prestiging layer 1 forever (for example).

• Make sure to use all the settings given in the guide (such as lower layer priority). Later on logs should be replaced with roots which serve a similar function.

What do soft prestige and improved prestige reset do?

• They serve a similar purpose, if I prestige layer 2 for 100 points, then layer 1 will also have 100 points from improved prestige reset.

• Each floor I clear after that, my layer 1 will get a % of points from layer 2 again, so before my next prestige my layer 1 might have 150 points already from soft prestiging.

• Always have your soft autobuy multiplier set to 1.01x, this will prevent problems as you progress through the game.

What does 16th root mean?

• Some players will use this notation, though it’s far more common to see 5 roots, 4 roots, 3 roots, etc. as counting the number of √ symbols is easier than remembering the math. This guide will use the root-counting notation.

• For those that wish to use the alternate notation, (√(current)+1e1000)x is the 1st root, (√√(current)+1e100)x is the 4th root, (√√√(current)+1e10)x is the 8th root etc.

Prestiging New Layers (PL 1 to 5)

Your first layer 1 prestige should have 2-3 points.

Your first layer 2 prestige should have 3-6 points.

Your first layer 3 prestige should have 7-35 points.

Your first layer 4 prestige should have 20-125 points.

Your first layer 5 prestige should have 80-1000 points.

Prestige Unlocks Priority

First 10 Prestige Layers (PL 1-10):

Listed in order of priority:

• Additional Hero (PL1-2 only)
• Respawn at floor (PL1-7 only)
• Battle Speed
• Floorskip
• Exp and damage stats (Buy stats with whatever leftover points you have after getting the above)
• Improved Prestige Reset (Only on PL1 to 4)
• Soft autobuy (Only on PL1 to 4)

After PL10:

Only buy the floorskip at this point, as all other upgrades on these layers are marginal or completely useless at this stage of the game.

Team Composition for Different Floor Ranges

These are rough guidelines, prestige when progress slows in that range.

Later prestige guidelines aren’t based on floors nearly so much as the very early game.

Floor 1 to 10:

Your first hero should be either a ranger (all points in damage) or a warrior (1 point in armor, all other points in damage).

Floor 10 to 20:

Your second hero should be a ranger. Your first should be a warrior.

Once you get 10 gold you can go to the armory and get the stat upgrade for rangers.

After you get another 10 gold grab the warrior stat upgrade.

At around floor 18 you may hit a wall. Try to avoid prestiging until hitting 2 points for the extra hero and the EXP.

Floor 20 to 80:

The floor difficulty scaling eases up somewhat at this point. After a while, you will start quickly clearing through floors. You should also go for your first prestige around the time you hit floor 20.

After your third hero you can try W(arrior)R(anger)C(leric). The first hero to attack is the one on the left of this configuration and all future configurations as well. The cleric should be 1 point in healing, the rest in damage. Grab the cleric stat upgrade in the armory.

Put your next armory upgrade into the ranger at 100 gold, followed by the warrior after 100 more gold.

For your fourth hero, use a second ranger in WRRC.

You can prestige a second time with 4+ points or so when progress slows again.

Next armory upgrade should be the 100 gold stat upgrade for cleric, then get the blessed upgrade for cleric.

After the blessed upgrade, with 4 heroes you should use CCRR. Progress will be slower until you get the overheal upgrade in armory for clerics (so they heal instead of attack). Prestige layer 1 after your first or second death each time.

Once you have your 5th and 6th heroes added, put them as clerics as well, for a CCCRR or CCCCRR build.

Prestige layer 2 with 3 points+ preferably, and the same for prestige layers 3 and 4.

Floor 80 onwards:

At this point, bless is marginal compared to prestige stat bonuses, and bless also takes a significant time investment to become useful now – remember that the goal is faster prestiging for more stats, not slowly pushing through floors.

You should switch your team composition to WP(aladin)PPPP or W5P as it’s commonly called. These paladins should have 1 stat in armor and healing and all other stat points put into damage.

Purchase the overkill armory upgrade for warrior and the banner armory upgrade for paladin at this point. The stats for the paladins are less useful as the warrior will do the majority of the attacking at this point, but you should still bring their stats into line with the warrior’s.

Continue to upgrade overkill and morale (you can deprioritize overkill upgrades after 20%) as well as stats on your paladins and warrior in the armory.

Autobuyer Settings and Setups

• log2 and log10 will be the go-to settings early on since they will increase the threshold for prestiging a layer as it increases, meaning after a few layer 1 prestiges it will prestige layer 2 etc. without any particular micromanaging.

For autoprestige options, once you get to the point where you’re able to prestige layer 1 on every run, go ahead and use:

• layer1 = log10, layer2 = 1.01x; lower layer priority; small floor change. This is commonly called log10/x.

After your layer 1 multipliers are above roughly 5e11:

• layer1 = log2, layer2 = 1.01x; lower layer priority; small floor change. Commonly called log2/x.

After you get prestige layer 4 (PL4):

• log2/log2/x; lower layer priority; small floor change.

Once the static values attributed to the roots are low enough (the multiplier of the layer should be > 5-20x the static multiplier (the 1000 or 1e10 bit at the end of the various root options in autobuyer menu), the autobuyer setup to use is:

• layer1 = √√√√√(current)+10, layer2 = √√√√(current)+1000, layer3 = √√√(current)+1e10, layer4 = 1.01x

Common notation for this setup is 5/4/3/x – just simple counting of the roots.

Later on, you’ll want to switch to a 4/3/2/x setup, but don’t switch before you can easily get more than the 1e100 static multiplier part on the PL3 autobuyer. Switching too early will lead to instances where you won’t make any progress at all as your PL3 autobuyer will refuse to trigger.

Note that you should not use any root multiplier here unless the static part (1000, e10 etc.) is an insignificant portion of your multiplier, i.e. 1/10th or less of your multiplier in that layer.

That means if my layer 3 only has a multiplier of e200, then I should not use (√√(current)+e100)x because the static part (e100) is far too high, and I will end up prestiging layer 4 earlier than I want too. Instead I could use (√√√(current)+e10)x, since this is the next best root for that layer which has a low static multiplier.

Similarly, if layer 2 only has a multiplier of e40, then I should not use (√√√(current)+e10)x in that layer, as the static is too high and would cause me to prestige layer 3 earlier than I intended. The next best root would be √√√√(current)+1000.

However if layer 2 had a multiplier of e80, then mathematically e10 will make little difference towards the next prestige.

Prestiging New Layers (PL6+)

For prestige layers 6 to 10, you’ll want to prestige each layer for the first time with 6 (7 on PL 6-7) points, then refrain from prestiging them again. You’ll purchase the battle speed, the floor skip, and the respawn at floor X (only on PL6-7) upgrades on these layers.

After PL10, the only upgrade you should get each layer until ascension is the 5-point floorskip upgrade. You should also begin skipping layers at this point. When you skip a layer, you don’t prestige that layer until you can prestige the one above it for the necessary 5 points for floorskip.

HOWEVER: Don’t forget to buy floorskip on the skipped layer before prestiging to the layer above it. If you forget, you won’t be able to buy the floorskip on the higher layer and it’ll take you a while to get your progress back to the skipped layer to buy the floorskip there.

Pre-Ascension (PL15 to 20)

By this point you should have bought the heirloom of challengers and the heirloom of champions, as well as the warrior’s mithril greaves, the cleric’s want of resurrection, the ranger’s gloves of swiftness, and the paladin’s tome of unity.

After buying all of those, you should change up your team composition based on how long your prestige runs on layers 1-4 are taking:

For runs lasting less than 23 seconds, use WRRCPP.

For runs lasting over 23 seconds, use WWRRRP.

Once you can afford the heirloom of legends, purchase it, and then you’re able to use compositions that no longer require a warrior at the front. Don’t put a cleric at the front as they won’t attack if you do.

Ascension Layer 1

What to do before ascending:

FIRST: DO NOT CLICK THE ASCEND BUTTON YET.

Before your first ascension (to layer 1), you’ll want to go into the ascension tab and click on the trials button. In there, click on “queue trial” button next to speed trial (first one in the list).

Only after that step has been completed should you push the ascend button.

You do not need more than 1 ascension layer 1 (AL1) point, and going for 4 will take you more time than getting those 3 points in your 2nd run anyway.

Once you’ve ascended:

Spend your ascension point on the stats upgrade. This will greatly speed up your progress.

You will receive a perk point. Spend this in the perks tab under ascension on the “1 cost unlocks and autobuyers” unlock.

Prestige process for first post-ascension run:

You should probably skip layers until around layer 10 (won’t take more than 30 minutes or so) and make sure to buy the soft prestige improvement up to layer 5.

I would then generally recommend skipping 1 layer, keep in mind the stat upgrade is quite significant, this provides an incentive to prestige new layers slightly earlier, since it will take so little time to catch back up to your current layer.

Then by approximately layer 24-27 it will once again be better to go layer by layer as the run length goes up so much that skipping a layer takes several hours extra.

On this run, you should aim for 3 ascension points.

Before ascending again, make sure to queue up either speed trial or even/odd trial if you completed the speed trial successfully.

You’ll buy the improved floorskipper unlock here, as well as spending your new perk point on “automatically purchase items from the armory”. Note that perk unlocks can be turned off to reclaim the perk point – you’ll turn off the armory perk after your next run to grab the floor skip perk instead.

Ascension layer 1 upgrade priority:

• First stat boost
• Improved floorskipper
• Second stat boost
• Reduce prestige point requirement
• Reduce prestige diminishing return
• Third stat boost/ soft prestige improvement
• Improved floorskipper at later layers
• Fourth stat boost
• Improved ascension point gain

After this point, simply invest points into stats until you reach ascension layer 2 at 100 ascension layer 1 points (this includes both points waiting to be spent and points spent on stats already).

AL1 3rd and Up Runs:

Prestige autobuyer settings:

Starting with your 3rd AL1 run, it makes more sense to switch up your autobuyer settings than to keep them on the 4/3/2/x you’ve been using.

At this point in the game, it’s safe to change to higher layer priority and set your autobuyers to x/5/3. PL4 is already not triggering especially much with the 4/3/2/x setting, and it’s not going to hurt your progress to have it never trigger with x/5/3.

Ascension trials:

Once you’ve completed speed trial successfully, you should aim to start a new trial each run until you’ve completed all of them for AL1.

In order from easiest to most difficult at this point, I’d go with:

• Even/odd
• Highroller
• Quickfire
• Scarcity

For a quick guide to how to efficiently do these trials, I recommend Sean_K’s guide on the Kongregate forum. Link can be found on the IA discord in the #info-and-guides section.

Ascension Perks:

From this point on, grab the perks in the top row, then “automatically unlock new prestige layers when possible”, then the limit to one layer skip perk, and finally begin working toward “automatically ascend after recovery”.