[Unity/Minerals] Am I doing this right?

[BosoBr0]

I just want to preface this by saying, going from seeing noticeable progress every few minutes to suddenly seeing barely any progress in a week is... VERY jarring. Climbing through Unity was surprisingly fast to get to the point where I'd start minerals, but at this point it's... so slow to see tangible progress.

I'm now at a point where all my Zodiacs are Immortal+19 and 300mil quality. I have 12 Pisces Zodiacs all rerolled to optimize for high Luck and Quality, and have 3 Aquarius, Libra, and Cancer, along with 4 Aries and 2 Leo, so that I could customize for various builds.

I've been able to trim my Zodiac farming and Gold farming Macro builds from nearly using all 30 block slots to both only using 15-20, and even sped them up to reduce spots where I knew I could have been doing things a LOT faster.

But really, I haven't seen much progress. It's gotten better since I got to around 1e130 gold, and it's only taken me a couple days to now get 1e140 gold PER unity. Speaking of, sitting at around 43k unities right now, since I let these things run overnight constantly.

So, I've come to ask if maybe I've been doing something wrong. I get to attack level 1593 in 37 seconds with 1e140 gold per revolution using my current loadout of 3Aqu/3Lib/Can/Ari/Can/2Ari/Can. I did hear that at some point a full speed build using just Cancer might be better altogether, though I'm not sure if that's true, nor where in progression that occurs.

My highest mineral is a level 20, I've never polish prestiged. I've also never gotten to sacrifice a relic yet. I sort of just buy upgrades as they come along, click that 'Spawn' button to create a new mineral when I can, but that's... it. This game really has become 'AFK with it open in the background' and that just doesn't feel nice to me. I also don't have multiple monitors, so it's not like I can game with it on another screen camping that Spawn button, and my graphics card isn't the greatest either so even a game as low-intensity as this one means I can't have it open at the same time as another game. But closing it gives no progress on gold or spawning minerals.

So, what do I do?

[spidweb01]

Basically your current goal is to get to mineral level 30. And to get there your best bet is to use the all Pisces for speed and quality. Speed affects the cost fall of minerals allowing you to buy them faster, and the quality sells or sacrifices for better values. Speed also affects VP generation and it also should be able to keep up with your gold needs as long as you let the mineral cost fall.

Attacks and Relic upgrades will basically stall out until you get mineral level 30 to Polish. Also be sure to buy the VP upgrades, it's easy to miss that it scrolls down.

[BosoBr0]

Originally posted by spidweb01:

Basically your current goal is to get to mineral level 30. And to get there your best bet is to use the all Pisces for speed and quality. Speed affects the cost fall of minerals allowing you to buy them faster, and the quality sells or sacrifices for better values. Speed also affects VP generation and it also should be able to keep up with your gold needs as long as you let the mineral cost fall.

Attacks and Relic upgrades will basically stall out until you get mineral level 30 to Polish. Also be sure to buy the VP upgrades, it's easy to miss that it scrolls down.

So, long story short:

1. Sit on max speed and merge as much as possible.
2. Keep sacrificing and selling probably until 1e17 cost on each donut (currently at 2e16 cost after like 4 days of sitting on selling max quality whenever possible, so maybe 5e16 each might be more realistic)
3. Readjust my gold build to work with the max speed Zodiac setup (because on entering dilation I'm always 1 DTP short so I'd have to buy a point of C1 first before I can afford to do full tree)
4. Continue upgrading quality, and rarity of my Zodiacs once I get enough sells

Does that sound about right? If not, please do correct me here!

[spidweb01]

Originally posted by BosoBr0:

1. Sit on max speed and merge as much as possible.
2. Keep sacrificing and selling probably until 1e17 cost on each donut (currently at 2e16 cost after like 4 days of sitting on selling max quality whenever possible, so maybe 5e16 each might be more realistic)
3. Readjust my gold build to work with the max speed Zodiac setup (because on entering dilation I'm always 1 DTP short so I'd have to buy a point of C1 first before I can afford to do full tree)
4. Continue upgrading quality, and rarity of my Zodiacs once I get enough sells

Does that sound about right? If not, please do correct me here!

This sounds kind of...off a bit and I'm not sure what the exact reason is. My stats at the very start of Minerals were: Just for basic reference: At the start of Minerals, I had 615 zodiac sacrifices and 2315 total Unities. Almost all of my zodiacs are level 121 Immortal +12.

Also you shouldn't need to manually buy any DTP, that should be part of a macro. So just my guess is that you are not doing full score Unity runs (or not enough dilation in the Macro), which are in turn resulting in less quality zodiacs and less Attack power. Or you have not been sacrificing enough.

Edit: There are also zodiac build ideas/variations in my guide that may be better than what you have listed.

[BosoBr0]

Originally posted by spidweb01:

Originally posted by BosoBr0:

1. Sit on max speed and merge as much as possible.
2. Keep sacrificing and selling probably until 1e17 cost on each donut (currently at 2e16 cost after like 4 days of sitting on selling max quality whenever possible, so maybe 5e16 each might be more realistic)
3. Readjust my gold build to work with the max speed Zodiac setup (because on entering dilation I'm always 1 DTP short so I'd have to buy a point of C1 first before I can afford to do full tree)
4. Continue upgrading quality, and rarity of my Zodiacs once I get enough sells

Does that sound about right? If not, please do correct me here!

This sounds kind of...off a bit and I'm not sure what the exact reason is. My stats at the very start of Minerals were: Just for basic reference: At the start of Minerals, I had 615 zodiac sacrifices and 2315 total Unities. Almost all of my zodiacs are level 121 Immortal +12.

Also you shouldn't need to manually buy any DTP, that should be part of a macro. So just my guess is that you are not doing full score Unity runs (or not enough dilation in the Macro), which are in turn resulting in less quality zodiacs and less Attack power. Or you have not been sacrificing enough.

Edit: There are also zodiac build ideas/variations in my guide that may be better than what you have listed.

Ah, I should clarify what I meant by that.

Yeah, at the start of minerals I was around that same area you were at, but right now my I'm at Level 132 Immortal +19s on everything.

I just mean normally, unless I have at least 1 red or 1 Cancer zodiac, by the time I run all ECs and pop an extra dilation for 0.05 seconds, it still still is around 10^80 away from buying 65/65 DTP from 0 DT upgrades, so adding a buy Center 1 before that pop usually pushes me over the edge and gets enough to load a full dilation tree.

Also, I think I might have something on the order of nearly 5k sacrifices since I let it run overnight, all the gains have really slowed down at this point so I feel like that's alright at least.

[spidweb01]

Still seems off. Perhaps you need longer than .05 secs for dilation. Full Unity macro doesn't need any manual input even before reaching Minerals.

Again just to point out the differences, I had 2.3 K unities, and you have 43k unities. That's a huge difference in bonuses. Yet my zodiacs were better than yours (and where you are, yours should be better). As I said, something is not right (sorry I don't have a better answer).

Even so, during minerals you should almost always be doing full Pisces build for speed and quality, with an occasional attack build push to buy attack revs and Relics.

Edit: C1 is actually a good one to max first, not last. IMO T1 is probably the one to max last.

[BosoBr0]

Should I get screenshots and post them maybe, to see what could be going wrong? Since I really don't want to be stunting my gameplay for longer than I already have.

[spidweb01]

I don't think screenshots would help me, but maybe would someone else. It's hard to remember specifics of things. I only know what I had because I wrote it down. Other than that, going from memory. I think your attack level seems ok, it's just your zodiacs that don't make sense to me. If you farmed them using all Pisces it just seems like they should be better.

Minerals are slow at the beginning for sure, which again is why you go for speed. Sorry that's about the best I can say because I really can't think of anything else.

[BosoBr0]

Originally posted by spidweb01:

I don't think screenshots would help me, but maybe would someone else. It's hard to remember specifics of things. I only know what I had because I wrote it down. Other than that, going from memory. I think your attack level seems ok, it's just your zodiacs that don't make sense to me. If you farmed them using all Pisces it just seems like they should be better.

Minerals are slow at the beginning for sure, which again is why you go for speed. Sorry that's about the best I can say because I really can't think of anything else.

Hmm... alright. Well, since I just woke up, I decided to get on and do some tests and figure out some stuff.

1. Attacks
Using 12 Pisces:
- Takes 17 seconds to get to 1581.
Using 3Aqu/3Lib/Can/Ari/Can/2Ari/Can:
- Takes 39 seconds to get to 1604.
Ultimately for gold, using the Pisces speed build absolutely sucks. Also notable that my max attack level reached with a slightly different loadout is 1611.

2. Minerals
Highest mineral currently owned: Lv.20
Fastest Game Speed: 3.36x
Game Speed on Gold Build: 1.76x
Current Max Spawn Level: 15
Cost Fall: 15k
Luck Bonus: 1.5x
Quality Bonus: 2x

3. Donuts
All four astrology donuts are at 19-20x multi currently. Hard to push them any further.

4. Time Flux (and what I think might be the real bottleneck)
TF per hour (with Offline enabled): 44:28 (50:55 with Offline disableed)
Could it also be possible that, since I'm not using ANY time flux at all, that THAT could be the bottleneck? I've currently just been trying to get my TF per hour to over 60, so that I could begin earning passive TF while even online... or is it worth to just use to get a crapload of minerals fast?

It's all fine if you don't know how to help, just putting this out in case anyone does.

[roboticaust]

Quit worrying about gold. That's what you are doing wrong. As you progress in minerals, that gap between full pisces vs a push build drops down to 0 attack level difference

[roboticaust]

Just going to elaborate on the mineral update for you. It's a big middle finger to the rest of the game as you know it. All the things you think you need to keep doing go out the window and all that matters are those stupid rocks and micromanaging them. The whole system slowly cuts out piece by piece all the things you think you should be doing until eventually all that's left is sitting on your thumbs with auto unity disabled entirely.

So take the hint early on and worry about those stupid rocks first and foremost or you're going to struggle.

As you noted yourself, sacrifice isn't nudging and won't until your zodiac level per automated unity goes up. Your donut progress isn't either. The only thing you are using unities for atm is gold and if the gold gains have reached a crawl towards the next upgrade, what's the point of even triggering unity? Just disable it for a bit and work on getting your rock to polish.

Your relics work best when they are at the best attack level you can reach. Every time that you trigger unity, you are throwing away progress elsewhere. For instance, you are tanking that local game speed stat every few seconds with it on and slowing down your ability to spawn and merge more. Give it a break so you can progress.

[BosoBr0]

Originally posted by roboticaust:

Just going to elaborate on the mineral update for you. It's a big middle finger to the rest of the game as you know it. All the things you think you need to keep doing go out the window and all that matters are those stupid rocks and micromanaging them. The whole system slowly cuts out piece by piece all the things you think you should be doing until eventually all that's left is sitting on your thumbs with auto unity disabled entirely.

So take the hint early on and worry about those stupid rocks first and foremost or you're going to struggle.

As you noted yourself, sacrifice isn't nudging and won't until your zodiac level per automated unity goes up. Your donut progress isn't either. The only thing you are using unities for atm is gold and if the gold gains have reached a crawl towards the next upgrade, what's the point of even triggering unity? Just disable it for a bit and work on getting your rock to polish.

Your relics work best when they are at the best attack level you can reach. Every time that you trigger unity, you are throwing away progress elsewhere. For instance, you are tanking that local game speed stat every few seconds with it on and slowing down your ability to spawn and merge more. Give it a break so you can progress.

Gotcha! That's what I was really looking for.
So it is just a matter of getting a polish. Or getting several polishes before I even do anything else really. I might also use whatever time flux I get on accelerating my progress in that regard too.

Alright, thanks!

[spidweb01]

That's what I said in my first and last response, I just got sidetracked. Glad Roboticaust made it make sense for you.

[roboticaust]

Originally posted by BosoBr0:

Gotcha! That's what I was really looking for.
So it is just a matter of getting a polish. Or getting several polishes before I even do anything else really. I might also use whatever time flux I get on accelerating my progress in that regard too.

Alright, thanks!

Hold your flux til the very end of minerals or the final achievement becomes a month or more grind.

As for polish, your first one will increase your vp gains, meaning faster progress with minerals. Your bigger goal should be refine. You won't notice things really start to change until you can get refine off the ground. So the sooner you get there, the better.

Obviously the things you were focused on do need to be done at various points through minerals, but the majority of them are "side quests" for a lack of a better metaphor. Your major game changers will be refine nodes (and the features they unlock) and relic progress. Stuff like zodiacs, sacrifice and donuts are so incredibly minor that you can and should mostly ignore them.