how to maximize your ascension shards?

[Enchanted Hamburger]

okay so when ascension was first added i got a lot of shards but it seems like each time i ascend and reach prestige 25 (where i will ascend again) i get fewer shards. from the first time, when i got 84, to this time, when i had DOUBLE the amount of picks, i only got 43.
so my question is, are ascension shards getting more expensive per ascension or is it based on something?

The first time i noticed this, i decided that the next time i ascend id have as as few picks as i can, so i can start gaining the first shards at prestige 25 with a small price, then, i realised that they got more expensive than ever, is it based on the pps that you have on prestige 25? like if i gain no pps can i have a smaller price on the shards? or is it just getting more expensive every ascension

[shep7000]

I think every ascension crystal requires more picks than the previous one. I haven't ascended yet, but I've noticed that every next crystal gets more and more expensive.

[Kaysoky]

I started tracking the ascension costs over several ascensions now, and from what I observed, there are a few things to note:

1) The base cost (the cost of the first ascension crystal in each ascension) is based on the total number of ascension crystals you have earned. For example, after I earned 197 crystals, the base cost was 654 trillion picks. Unfortunately, I didn't track all my numbers for each ascension, so I don't know the rate this cost increases. I recall the very first crystal costing something like 30 trillion picks. It doesn't seem to rise as quickly as the next factor...

2) The cost per crystal in a single ascension increases exponentially. The cost per crystal appears to roughly double every 5 crystals. This means long ascensions are significantly worse than short ascensions.

All this means there are two ways to get crystals faster:

• Increase PPS (to out-scale the base cost).
  
• Perform more short ascensions.

Unfortunately, there are no meaningful unlocks in the ascension tree that make prestiging more idle.

• The Master of the Market perk (auto-buy gear) is laggy and non-ideal.
  
• The Master of Roads and Portals perk (auto-advance biomes) requires the previous perk and requires active management to work, obviously defeating the purpose.
  
• The Prestigious perk (start with x prestiges) requires a huge investment of crystals (100+?) to skip the fastest prestiges, so is not worth it.

There are unlocks that slightly help:

• The Ascended Furnace with several smelting slots can help you set-and-forget the Blight->Sun->Chronos prestige hurdle.
  
• The Master of Blocks increases your block-break, making it faster to unlock gear and biomes. And it is fairly cheap for the first few levels.
  
• The Chest Gift perk lets chests drop a Gift of Picks, which can be decently lucrative when upgraded fully. Although it might only result in a ~50% increase in PPS if you consider the drop chance and leave the game open with alt-tab clicking.

[adeyke]

I appreciate that info. It's rather disheartening, though.

At its heart, the ascension tree is a really appealing idea. I like progression systems, and there are so many upgrades there that seem fun, powerful, or exciting. However, the fact that the base cost increases with total crystals earned is just completely contrary to how incremental games normally operate: instead of each ascension leaving you more powerful, instead each one is slower than the last and you have to optimize how you spend your crystals to mitigate this. The game needs to be much, much more generous with ascension crystals.

And it's really disappointing that, rather than the idle/QoL changes merely being locked behind the ascension tree (bad enough), they're apparently also useless. The bad ratio between required interaction and engagement has always been this game's biggest flaw. The best "clicker" games reach a point where they instead become "idle" games, while this one refuses to do that.

At this point, I really wish they just hadn't released this update and had instead let people keep their previous 100%. I think I'll keep playing until I reach the Void++ and finish this event, but then I'm quitting.

[Kaysoky]

One more note, which might be important when considering that I previously recommended shorter ascensions... apparently there's a limit to the number of times you can ascend (15), so it might be possible to lock yourself out of the ascension tree if you ascend too quickly...

This is just based on the patch notes, so I'm not sure what this actually means (like not being able to ascend at all, or not incrementing the counter). I've found a single ascension perk (+1 Pearl per ascension, per level, up to 7) that scales based on ascension count, so presumably this limit prevents a player from getting a couple extra Pearls.

[Kaysoky]

Having done two more ascensions (for 19 crystals and 17 crystals), I can roughly map the trend for crystal cost growth:

• The next crystal's cost doubles (exponentially) for every 5 crystals in a single ascension.
  
• The base crystals cost doubles (exponentially) for every 20 crystals gained.

So my guess is that the cost for the next crystal is:

<next crystal cost> = 
  <very first crystal cost>
  * 2 ^ (<crystals gained this ascension> / 5)
  * 2 ^ (<crystals gained total> / 20)

[Caralantha]

At present, the estimate cost increase per crystal within an ascension increases by about 9%

Each ascension increases the cost, Sasha (A15 P110) is currently needing over sextillion picks to increase AC amount by 1

There is a display for the tree skills available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YQkimKbHgedlLeCUkpQYRq-RB7No1T3z8fENsf0CqAw/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT: The automation is currently being debugged from my understanding, and the best recommendation for first ascension is to grab double furnace, then biome upgrades and PPS crystals. ~85 crystals are needed for double furnace + biome upgrades + new gear

My info is from conversations on Discord server and personal experience

[DRIFTER]

Can you break this down a little simpler:
- What is the buy priority / sequence
- At what prestige (roughly) should you ascend to save the most time
- How many levels do you need to buff PPS multipliers to stay ahead of the cost increase per ascension?

[Kaysoky]

Originally posted by Drifter:

- What is the buy priority / sequence

As mentioned above, you'll want to go down the middle of the tree (Ascension PPS) first along with the left side (PPS items). The middle is more impactful early on, but the cost rises more quickly too. The left side only gives you a few % more PPS. The right side of the tree is mostly QoL, which can be important to make prestiging slightly less tedious.

Originally posted by Drifter:

- At what prestige (roughly) should you ascend to save the most time

This almost entirely depends on how much patience you have. In general, your PPS increases linearly with prestige, with some increases as you hit biome thresholds (i.e. Chronos and Void). But at the same time, it takes longer to prestige for every prestige. Each additional crystal in an ascension costs more too, so longer ascensions give you less over time.

I've settled on a strategy of keeping track of my Crystal count each day. When my crystal gain for 1 day is less than the average crystal gain per day over the entire ascension, it is probably time to consider ascending.

Originally posted by Drifter:

- How many levels do you need to buff PPS multipliers to stay ahead of the cost increase per ascension?

You can't. After 400% ascension PPS, it costs more to increase ascension PPS than it returns in crystals. There are a handful of skills that increase PPS alongside ascension PPS, but in my experience, none of them out-pace the cost increase.

[DRIFTER]

Thank you. It is as I feared.

This game is not like other NGU games. It does not value your time. Besides a host of complaints we can lobby about the game (like autobuy pickaxes still missing, probably the top priority QOL this game badly needs), it really feels like it was slapped together without careful planning. Most "idlers" (which this game really is not) get easier with time as you make meta progress, but for some reason, not only does this one fail to equip you with the tools to simplify your workload, it moves the goalpost exponentially farther, making you feel more powerless the more you progress. Seriously, why?

I really hope that this is wrong, but from glancing at the discord the power players mentioned that they claw their way to 100 crystals on the first 5 ascensions, then decreasing returns with the ones after that ("average 50" they said).

And as for those of us after achievements?
The End of Part 6?
Sasha said that's ascension 50.

God Help Us All.

[Kmess]

Originally posted by Drifter:

Thank you. It is as I feared.

This game is not like other NGU games. It does not value your time. Besides a host of complaints we can lobby about the game (like autobuy pickaxes still missing, probably the top priority QOL this game badly needs), it really feels like it was slapped together without careful planning. Most "idlers" (which this game really is not) get easier with time as you make meta progress, but for some reason, not only does this one fail to equip you with the tools to simplify your workload, it moves the goalpost exponentially farther, making you feel more powerless the more you progress. Seriously, why?

I really hope that this is wrong, but from glancing at the discord the power players mentioned that they claw their way to 100 crystals on the first 5 ascensions, then decreasing returns with the ones after that ("average 50" they said).

And as for those of us after achievements?
The End of Part 6?
Sasha said that's ascension 50.

God Help Us All.

We're working on QoL updates, performance / crashing issues. And we plan on tweaking the balance so its not as it is currently - it will only get better. The cap on ascension is temporary as we roll out more fixes and improvements to ascension.

The End of Part 6 is not 50, it's 18

[DRIFTER]

Thank you for the correction. Very happy to hear it's more reasonable.

The scaling for PPS is quite rough. Hopefully the balance may give you some in-game way to know how much boost to buy to keep up with the curve.

Please consider putting at top priority auto-buy pickaxe feature, because every prestige and ascension is a lot of time rebuying pickaxes constantly: scroll, swap, click, swap back to the (few) axes you actually use. over and over again.