Is there a better way to complete Chapter 10?

[brod.roy]

So after completing chapter 10 I looked at the discussions about chapter 10 and saw many comments saying that it is better to wait for mushroom until late chapter 11 which does not match my experience.

For me i completed chapter 11 by going the river route, turning off funnels, and adjusting my route to get as much food as possible to take to the main square to turn into mixed salad(and later 2 packed meals), then girded to unlock mushrooms.
This worked because mixed salad is eaten after Koi which meant that ever completion of mushroom school only required 1 mixed salad until i had 4 billion farming, and then the pack meals combine with my total 2.5 million hp let me complete the task.
Having mushroom made getting all steel items and completing chapter 10 easy(I did not catch any items from the cleaner as i have all the items he gives with the exception of the X2 hp multiplayer which i don't have the ability to complete yet).

According to my generation history it took me 35 generations to complete chapter 10 like this but if people have a better way i would love to hear what it is for my next run.

[Fel]

I included mushroom in all of my runs through chapter 10 (and 11) and focused mainly on raising my max HP (mines route, as many doublers as possible, skipping a few tools in early chapters to make tasks take longer) rather than clearing the chapter itself due to the door blocking my path at the time.

Once you understand how the blacksmith section works, that part isn't too bad, and you can get a good amount of extra food from the mid section.


If you wanted to push the clear of chapter 10 above anything else, skipping the mushroom makes sense (assuming you can't clear it yet of course) since it allows you to take your extra food from the mid section to the door.

It is also true that leaving the mushrooms grind for later makes it take less runs to clear for the first time since you get there with a much lower decay and usually a higher max health, meaning that you can "clear" it more times per run.
The downside being that you don't get access to mushrooms until fairly late in chapter 11's progression and those mushrooms can be very helpful to get more food and tools from the mid section, which means an easier time through the early parts of chapter 11.

[rognik]

Here's the thing for me: there's a statue after the soles and cart tossed at the waterfall that'll double health earned, and there's 2 full loads of steel behind the dog and crow each, so I'm trying to figure out how to get both of those and still pick the middle path as the final route, but I don't think I'll be able to arrange that in any way that'll make progress fun.

I actually finished Chapter 10 without unlocking mushrooms, and can currently only get mushrooms if I do lower path last. I get the steel belt and then powerload on food before I start the lessons. Not a lot of farming tasks in the later chapters, I learned.

[Fel]

The only farming task in chapter 11 requires that you cleared the mushroom task so there isn't really a way to bypass the fairly lengthy grind on the mushroom sadly.

[␥]

There really doesn't seem to be any good method for reducing the mushroom grind outside of heavy perk investments. That being said, I wonder if using an insane perk spread heavily focused on food cooldown reduction would shift your XP gain distribution heavily enough towards farming to make a difference by the time you get into early chapter 10.

[thefollowingcharacters]

Yes: Don't do mushrooms at all.

With chapter 11 being the end, Mushrooms are 100% optional. You do not need mushrooms to beat chapter 11. So what are mushrooms for?

1. Buying all of the items in the store

The only one needed is sling shot and possibly the other tool you're missing. Yes, you lose the 10% bonus, but that just lowers your success by a few generations. Not at all worth grinding mushrooms.

2. Getting the fork easily

The fork is once again, not necessary. It saves you a few generations of grinding, but not much more.

Opening the door easily

Unnecessary. You can use salads very early on then switch to the market items once you're more powerful and you need them during the Titan fight.

3. They are useless at the final phase of the fight

The final phase of the fight has titan regenerating. Farming mushrooms there is a waste of time. Save your back shots and burst him down, you won't need food.

At that point you beat the chapter and do ng+, or wait until the next chapter. There may be a farming job you can grind on early in chapter 12 that makes mushrooms a normal grind.

[pac230]

Originally posted by thefollowingcharacters:

Yes: Don't do mushrooms at all.

A use of mushrooms that you're overlooking in your list:

-- When doing a Belt run and using up most/all of your food getting an Hourglass level somewhere in Ch 6-8 and doing Ch 9 buildings, thus arriving in Ch 10 with no food, having unlocked Mushrooms and got the skill high enough that you can get them with Koi only then allows you to get the Soles and Cart, all Steel items and then trade 'shrooms and Koi at the Market which should be enough for Pearl Necklace, Slingshot and a few Salads.

This lets you do runs where you add another Hourglass level and also do some Ch 11 boss grinding coming in at a pretty high level of strength.

[Fel]

Mushrooms are not "strictly required" but they are a significant boost to your healing abilities and let you get a lot more from the mid section (between twice and thrice as much depending on your food value multiplier).
They are key to getting more max health from surviving longer as well, especially when combined with the food at 20% health in chapter 11.
Allowing the titan to heal also means that your run lasts longer regardless of if you intend to clear the chapter or not and it allows you to get a lot more attacks in for a fairly significant chunk of exp.

It's the same old question again of "are you simply trying to get to the end as fast as possible or are you trying to get the most out of each run?".

[thefollowingcharacters]

Originally posted by pac230:

Originally posted by thefollowingcharacters:

Yes: Don't do mushrooms at all.

A use of mushrooms that you're overlooking in your list:

-- When doing a Belt run and using up most/all of your food getting an Hourglass level somewhere in Ch 6-8 and doing Ch 9 buildings, thus arriving in Ch 10 with no food, having unlocked Mushrooms and got the skill high enough that you can get them with Koi only then allows you to get the Soles and Cart, all Steel items and then trade 'shrooms and Koi at the Market which should be enough for Pearl Necklace, Slingshot and a few Salads.

This lets you do runs where you add another Hourglass level and also do some Ch 11 boss grinding coming in at a pretty high level of strength.

That's an option, not a requirement. Run river so you don't have to do cart. Saves you a lot of time again when you're just focussing on Iron Works and Market then zipping straight to hour glass.

[pac230]

Originally posted by thefollowingcharacters:

Run river so you don't have to do cart.

Much easier to add more Hourglass levels from Ch 6-8 when getting Belt. If you're always going river, your Hourglass bonuses are always going to be weaker.

Saves you a lot of time again when you're just focussing on Iron Works and Market then zipping straight to hour glass.

But I don't want to be saved time ... I want long runs to maximise Max HP gain.

[thefollowingcharacters]

Originally posted by pac230:

Originally posted by thefollowingcharacters:

Run river so you don't have to do cart.

Much easier to add more Hourglass levels from Ch 6-8 when getting Belt. If you're always going river, your Hourglass bonuses are always going to be weaker.

Saves you a lot of time again when you're just focussing on Iron Works and Market then zipping straight to hour glass.

But I don't want to be saved time ... I want long runs to maximise Max HP gain.

Then that's not really addressing the op. They're looking to complete the chapter faster than they did the first time around.

[Fel]

It kind of is adressing OP.
Maximizing your max HP gains and instinct exp is also a way to progress faster through the content.

[thefollowingcharacters]

Originally posted by Fel:

It kind of is adressing OP.
Maximizing your max HP gains and instinct exp is also a way to progress faster through the content.

Maximizing important intuition gains while maximizing hp is. If Mushrooms are optional then you shouldn't spend any extra time farming. Instead of spending generations to get 150 intuition points farming, you can Focus that 150 points of time elsewhere.

Its like skipping fishing in the beginning. The fastest way to get through the early chapters is to skip fishing after spider until you get to the temple area. You then set it up right to where you catch up in fishing through around 4-5 gens. You can gain 100+ intuition in one run doing it that way. Overall it saves you hours of time.

Now, this is all in theory. At the end of the day, we'll need numbers. The community could use the Dev's save he gave out on the chapter release as the starting point, with one game optimizing for mushrooms, while another optimizes for skipping mushrooms. I would bet on the mushroom skipping being the faster completion time however because of the reasons above.

[pac230]

Originally posted by thefollowingcharacters:

Then that's not really addressing the op. They're looking to complete the chapter faster than they did the first time around.

As the OP put it: "According to my generation history it took me 35 generations to complete chapter 10 like this but if people have a better way i would love to hear what it is for my next run."

So they seem to be talking about number of generations not *time*.

Either way, you have not convinced me that skipping Mushrooms (and the Pearl Necklace?) provides any significant advantage.

[brod.roy]

As i apparently didn't do a job explaining what i wanted let me try again.
What i want to know is the route you would recommend for chapter 10 and what makes you say it is the best route(this could be the generations it took, better training in an important skill, that it let u get a hp multiple or something else).
Note that anything that occurs after you "Enter the Vault" is only relevant to the discussion in the sense of this skill will be more important or less important. As you can change your route to adapt to the new possibility chapter 11 gives you after you get to it.

So to use my own experimentation as an example:

I first tried using the mine route, adjusting chapters 6, 7, 8 to get a much food as possible, and got all hp multipliers except for "Reject shield", "Bronze dragon", and "Fight poachers" as i could not succeed at any of these.
I would go to the top layer build the hut and belt and fight dog but couldn't beat the crows. i then when to the lower layer and got the soles and cart but couldn't get the statue. Then got as much food as i could from the main square before dying to "Open vault door".

The second thing i tried was using the river Route, adjusting chapters 6, 7, 8 to get a much food as possible, and got all hp multipliers except for "Reject shield", "Bronze dragon", and "Fight poachers".
I first took my food to the main square to turn into 30+ mixed salads, I then used them to grid mushroom school(each salad was 1 failed attempt) until I succeed I would only create the belt before dying the to "Open vault door".
When I passed mushroom school ~8 gen later(I was not counting) i could catch the soles and the cart to use mushroom(more farming exp) but the statue was not possible. Then i could fight the dog and the Crow(more fight exp) build all steal items(fork added) and as the Koi and mushrooms heal more then the Vault door i only died 1 time before succeeding.

So comparing the two ways:
The mushroom would result in more food(full stack of mushrooms and koi) for both vault and chapter 11 which was boosted by fork, more fighting exp and way more farming exp.
Meanwhile going steel first might have gotten me though the vault faster(but based on my experience I don't think it would)

This is why i feel mushrooms is the better choice of the two things i tried. But there are more possibilities then these 2 and i would like hear what u would recommend and why you think it is better?

[pac230]

I don't think using one method every time is the best approach. There are times when going to any of the layers first can make sense. Breaking down a few Ch 10 situations:

1. First barely reaching Ch 10. It takes you 25+ mins to get there. If you try to go to the Market you will starve before you get in and have nothing left to trade anyway. You can't hope to unlock Mushrooms or even make much progress with them. You probably went River/Cart as it's the best for getting through Ch 9, so you can't get anything useful from Waterfall. Therefore, you go Upper Layer first, build the Steel Hut to extend your rebirth time as much as possible, possibly beat the Dog/build the Belt, then do whatever remaining things you can until you're out of time.

2. River/Cart route, arriving with lots of food. Thanks to skill growth, you can now reach Ch 10 faster with a significant quantity of food. Go Market first to trade this in (Necklace, then Salads). You can then either use the market food to grind Mushrooms or to help you build everything on the Upper Layer (I think the former is the better option with a view to situation 3, below). (Also, Steel Hut is not helping as much at this point, since it is mostly the big door that is killing you at this point rather than health decay.) By this time, you should be starting to reach the big door at the end and be dying making attempts on it.

3. Mine/Belt route, gaining Hourglass levels in 6-8. Thanks to the XP gained from attempts on the door, your Hourglass instincts will soon allow you to succeed in getting more levels from the Funnels in 6-8 (probably only one per run, switching up the order so the one you are attempting comes last). Getting the Belt is a better option than the Cart when doing this as the higher HP is worth more than cart space when funnelling. Between the funnelling and the volcano, if you reach Ch 10 (switch off Shrine if necessary) you may get there with no food at all. This means that going straight to Market is no good. Instead you can go Lower Layer, grind/unlock Mushrooms, get Soles/Cart. If you now have Mushrooms, they should provide enough food to do everything on the Upper Layer next. Now the Market comes last, and with Fork and enough Hourglass levels, Mushrooms should provide over 1 M food value and be worth 1 chip each, giving you enough for Necklace and plenty of salads. You can then take these to the door (and should be getting through it by now).

This may not be the fastest way (either in time or reincarnations) to get through Ch 10 alone viewed in isolation. However, I think it is a good way of succeeding in continuing to add Hourglass levels, while also making Ch 10/11 progress.