Now, before I get too into this, I should clarify that I am not a speedrunner myself. I will be writing this general guide about what is going to get you the most consistent results, and what has been tested time and time again by actual speedrunners. I’m mostly rewriting the speedrun guide so it’s a bit more concise and can be updated with future changes since the old author no longer plays.
Guide summarized
- The best early game strategy is to completely ignore heroes and focus on your lightning ring. This strategy starts to lose steam pretty fast at 500 and above, and it may be worthwhile considering to start using heroes more at 400+.
- The next great setup is Vexx/Sam hybrid, which uses Sam’s reflect and heals to provide waveclear speed and sustain, and Vexx to carry as usual.
- Ring strat is now useless. Seriously, just do not even bother with it. The guides that talk about it are VERY outdated.
- Mythical artifacts scale very poorly compared to regular artifacts. The best approach to leveling mythicals is only putting a 10% drop into them when levels are cheap.
- Leveling hero items is **SUPER IMPORTANT** as they are the only stats that applies to **EVERY MODE, EVEN IF THAT HERO IS NOT SELECTED**! The best value is to upgrade all items to legendary, then raise them to mythical little by little if possible, otherwise, leveling carries and tanks is the priority, followed by trinkets. Trinkets guide
- Prestiging too often is bad. You gain a lot of mythstones from clearing epic bosses, use this to push as far as you can before it becomes too slow and painful. This is usually when merchant items run out or don’t give a meaningful boost.
- Leveling hero items and regular artifacts during your runs is the key to making it far on your runs. Try to keep your TAL as high as possible by leveling everything that gets cheap. This is particularly important before you get Broken Teleporter and a few Time Warp bonuses.
- You can use gems to buy chests for vexx items, but be aware that the resource value is very low in them, and it’s best to just wait for free chests
- Don’t bother trying too hard to max your regular artifact slots. Just keep them a good 1-2 slots ahead of what you can actually afford to craft in mythstones.
- Spending 50 gems to buy trinkets can be a decent source of scrap. But be careful, maxing artifact slots is really expensive now.
- As you unlock them, it’s more time efficient to focus GoG and Seasons and use any extra heroes in adventure for passive mythstone gain. Mines will become your biggest source of stats in adventure so you’re not missing out there 😉
- Side quests now offer free trinkets. You absolutely need to get these as often as you can.
AT ALL TIMES MAKE SURE
- That you watch gem ads whenever they’re available. 10 gems adds up a lot faster than you think
- BUY SCRAPS FROM FLASH OFFERS. THE BIGGER THE BETTER. scraps are your biggest bottleneck in this game
- KEEP 500 TO 1000 GEMS FOR RUNES so that you can buy them any time they’re available. many of the best runes are found there, and the more you get, the faster you can find what you need.
HOW TO SPEND GEMS (PRIORITY LIST)
- Any notable runes {Bounce(Lightning), Cold Wind(Ice), Stinger(Ice), Nova(Ice), Creep(Darkness), Shroud(darkness), Opaque(Darkness)
- Rare chests to get Vexx items
- 1-2 Regular artifact slots ahead of what you can hold
- Flash offer scraps
- Other runes to thin the pool
- Trinket forging for seasons(wait on adventure set until you get the progress quests and have cast from seasons)
- Double prestige if you feel like you have to, but this is not a good way to spend gems
HOW TO SPEND SCRAPS (PRIORITY LIST)
- Spend all scraps leveling up Vexx until she is legendary
- Level Sam to Epic
- Level hero items some while farming GoG at 795+. Prioritize items that boost used skills when possible
- Level GoG heroes(Lia and Lenny are the big names in GoG as they have lots of wave clearness and self-sustain)
- Level seasons heroes (Sam, V, Nanna, Vexx, Jim)
- Level seasons trinkets
- Unlock any important pets
- Level Charms
- Level Ron to mythical
- Level Oy to legendary
- Level forged trinkets. 3 effect trinkets can be left at around halfway to save scrap
- Level hero items to legendary
- Level Oy to mythical
- Max your Oy trinket
- Max your Ron trinket
- Max your Jim’s adventure trinket
- Max hero items
- Max the remaining 2 support trinkets
HOW TO SPEND MYTHSTONES
FOCUS ON YOUR REGULAR ARTIFACTS. For the most part, mythical artifacts are focused on utility, and therefore will not push you as far as the regular ones. level your regular artifacts as evenly as possible, leaving ring boost a little lower as those are basically only there for the TAL(Total Artifact Level).
Rerolling cheap stats to get some of the really good ones, like Mythstones from Epic Bosses, Hero/Ring upgrade cost reduction, Regular artifact upgrade cost, Crit, Timewarp, and whatever else seems good to you. The new stats are a lot better than the older ones were on average, so there’s very few bad stats, but Offline Earnings is often an obvious candidate for rerolling. late game, the ones to reroll off of are ring damage effects(BUT NOT RING CRIT CHANCE), effects that boost merchant items you don’t use, and regular artifact cost reduction once you have fully completed them
SPENDING REAL MONEY?
for the most part, there’s no real reason to spend money on this game. but if you do, the best options would be scrap mine boost(by far the best bang for your buck in the entire game, ESPECIALLY if you get on daily), and the deals that unlock ron and oy at legendary. Otherwise, you’re best off buying deals that focus on gems and scraps
BEST ADVENTURE COMPS
Stage 1 – 400
This is where ring is king, but don’t worry too much about your fingers, it won’t last long. this is where you can completely ignore heroes, and focus everything on your ring. V/Vexx can help you get more gold to level faster, and wendle/hilt can increase ring damage while they’re alive, but don’t worry too much about these guys just yet
Stage 400 – 800
Spend the majority of the gems you get on rare chests to try and get all 3 items on Vexx as fast as possible. Having all 3 items on Sam is a bonus too, but you can stop as soon as you have any quality of items on Vexx. Then switch to spending most of your gems unlocking artifact slots. Once your artifact slots start getting difficult to fill out with crafts, you may choose to buy more chests, at a moderate rate.
You will find that you can progress without prestiging very much at all up until around stage 300, beyond that, you need to start planning your prestiges.
This is quite simply done by looking at the rewards on the adventure mode wiki
The thing to look out for is your next big upgrade. This could be gems (for a new artifact slot or chests, especially chests early on), but most of the time, it is mythstones.
The mythstone rewards up to stage 795 are at the following stages:
- 115
- 160
- 330
- 430
- 510
- 595
- 620
- 705
- 775
If it’s at all possible to reach one of these stages within reasonable time (less than 1 hour of pushing), do so. It will often end up giving a large amount of mythstones that give better effect than the prestige would, and you don’t have to claw your way back. Beyond 795 you will get to a point where restarting runs is super fast, and prestiging more often is better.
Apart from milestones, you want to pay attention to Vexx levelups (and sometimes even Sam levelups) as these will increase your power considerably, pushing you many stages forward.
If you are pushing a wall with Vexx dying a lot, and you don’t have something like a gold bag to carry you forward, just prestige and get the run back there. Don’t push against a wall, regular artifact stats scale incredibly well right now, so painful pushing isn’t recommendable.
REMEMBER to have a swing at time challenges every time you prestige, and stop as soon as you clear one that seemed even the slightest bit difficult. You can come back later and clear more with no effort. The key to time challenges is to spend as little time on them as possible (ironically).
Typically at around stage 500 you may want to swap to focusing completely on Vexx over your ring. I recommend having Vexx at Epic at the very least before doing this, as she is otherwise not really strong enough to warrant it. Having Sam at Rare is also highly recommendable, but don’t level him beyond that for now.
For Vexx carry, I recommend the following setup, follow these skill levels exactly (requires Vexx reaching level 12 before it starts getting good, get to that point using Ring):
Vexx Carry farmer
Skill leveling order:
- Fast and Cheerful (1 point)
- Concentration (1 point)
- Fast and Cheerful (Max)
- Mad Girl (1 point)
- Chill Down (1 point)
- Collect Debris (Max) (Don’t spend any points except the above until you can level this)
- Chill Down (1 point)
- Mad Girl (Max)
- Forge (1 point)
- Shock Wave (Max)
- Recycle (Max)
- Earthquake (Max)
Beyond this: Whatever you feel like.
Sam Reflect/heal support
Skill leveling order:
- Slam (1 point)
- Shield em All (1 point)
- Repel (1 point)
- Transcendence (Max)
- Punishment (Max)
- Revenge (Max)
- Arrogant (Max)
- Block (Max)
- Shield Em All (Max)
- Master Shielder (Max)
Beyond this: Whatever you feel like.
V Gold support
max City Thief, Emmet and Treasure Hunter (In that order).
Jim Shield support
Max out Divided we Fall and otherwise level whatever you feel like.
“Rotten” Lenny support
Keep at level 5 or whatever level needed to access the below skills.
Skill leveling order:
- Bombard (1 point)
- Eat an Apple (1 point)
- Rotten Apple (1 point)
- Reloader (Max)
- Rotten Apple (Max)
Gold Redroh (Replaces “Rotten” Lenny around stage 645)
Max Loose Change and spend the rest of your points in Easy Targets. Keep Redroh as low level as you are able to while still having access to Loose Change. This reduces his revive timer and gives you more gold overall.
Oy (Can be bought early to replace Sam)
If you wanna rush Oy and replace Sam with him, you can. He will provide far more tankiness than Sam, but you will lose out on some waveclear.
Rushing Oy is not really needed, but if you do, I strongly recommend that you focus on the skills that boost his Scarecrow.
You will gain a bit of mythstones here and there, spend them as you get them to reroll and upgrade your artifacts, also make sure to craft new ones as you open up the slots.
The push from stage 600 to 795 will feel a bit hard and long. Just keep at it, you will get there, but it may take a few prestiges beyond stage 600. Keep leveling hero items, regular artifacts, and TAL to ease the progress.
Once you start unlocking mythical artifacts, drip a few mythstones onto those as well, but keep it to a minimum. I recommend never upgrading mythical artifacts outside of the 10% of mythstones upgrading option (which is a generally great tool for leveling TAL as well).
Once you hit stage 795 and unlock the Token Mine, you are ready to devote your life to GoG.
GOG / SEASONS FARMING TIME
As of patch 3.2, it is now possible to play one mode while another is running in the background. Use this to slowly push your way through adventure while farming GoG, but keep in mind that leveling mines is your main priority.
During this period of time, you will be mostly farming mine levels in GoG and gathering scrap from seasons. Pushing too much in adventure is largely a waste of time. You may choose to drop into adventure for about an hour or two every day, just to smash your way through hundreds of levels and get the free gems and scraps to upgrade your heroes and items for further GoG strength. Likewise, you may choose to do a few time challenges at some point, but other than that, try to stick to a routine of GoG farming for as long as possible. I recommend raising your mines to at least level 40 before going into adventure with the intent to push to the end.
Make sure that you don’t neglect your ad gems and item chests while farming away
The 800 – 3700 setup
You’re going to want to optimize waveclearing speed for your run towards 4080. The end of this setup is going to change based on when you get Oy and Ron unlocked and Leveled to Legendary/Mythic
Here’s the recommended heroes:
Vexx:
Max everything. Use the same order of spells as before for smoothness.
Sam:
Max everything. Use the same order of spells as before for smoothness.
Ron:
Max everything. Prioritize spells that boost his ultimate. This largely means avoiding his 2x Stampede spells and 3x animal friend spells. Once those are the only 5 left, prioritize the animal friends over stampede. Giving a spell order isn’t necessary given how high level Ron will get by the time that you unlock him. Just use common sense and try to spread out your points a little at first.
Gold V (Keep at the lowest level possible to put points into CITY THIEF):
- Max City Thief
- Max Treasure Hunter
Gold Redroh (Keep at the lowest level possible to put points into LOOSE CHANGE)
- Max Loose Change
- Max Easy Targets
Prior to unlocking Ron, you may want to use Jim instead:
Shield Jim (Best left at level 5, but not a problem to level more as he doesn’t trigger DwF)
- Max Divided We Fall
- Put the rest in whatever you want, but Battlecry/Lullaby/Pretty Face would be my options
The general gist of playing between 795 and 3700 is that you want to level up all of your 3 carries (Vexx, Ron, Sam/Oy) and push as fast as you can until they simply start dying. Start out by hiring only these 3 heroes and turn on Lazy Finger (if you have it). Once you’re past about 3000, you can even start using random spells on the 3.
Then once killing waves starts to get slow, you use a golden horseshoe. Once that starts being too slow, you turn off Lazy Finger (and random spells) and hire your 2 supports, then kill your way with horseshoes and Time Warp until you can’t reasonably get a levelup on Vexx (as she gets it earlier), and reset the run.
The setup is best played by spamming all 3 ultimates whenever they are off cooldown. Vexx will clear waves extremely quickly, while Ron will tear apart the bosses.
If you get stuck in a loop trying to kill an epic boss, while the next major upgrade seems really far away, consider prestiging. You can easily end up losing time by being stubborn, especially in lategame, where catching back up to your progress takes a few minutes with a time warp.
When it comes to leveling artifacts, when you unlock Dig Dig and Curio Hoard, you can ignore the 10% upgrade rule and dump however much you want into these, as the bonuses are HUGE
THE ENDGAME COMP
Once you get Ron and Oy evolved properly, congratulations, you can swap to the end-game comp!
This setup consists of Ron, Oy, Jim, Vexx, and V. You can find the trinkets to use for this setup in Cespie’s TRINKET GUIDE.
If you wish to continue focusing your good heroes on GoG and Seasons, then you should know that core of this comp is Ron, Oy, and Jim so you don’t have to worry much about overlap. Just toss in Boomer to replace vexx(this is a swap many people do anyways, and it’s just as viable), and Tam or Arbara to replace V(NOTE: these two are not good options in the real comp, but they can provide the best utility while you have your better units in other modes)
This build far outclasses the previous build, but requires you to level up 2 heroes unlocked a bit later on the game to function properly. This build may end up giving you an overall slower waveclear so your runs will be a bit longer, but will push you much farther by the end of the run.
The goal is to always have Oy leveled to a point where his Scarecrow isn’t in danger of dropping off, and to keep Ron levelled as much as possible. Overpushing with him is no longer a major worry since he was rebalanced.
In this build, you can keep autolevel on until the run begins to slow down, giving you more utility from your supports as you can level all their nodes. Then you switch over to levelling just the two big names
And that’s about it!
