book's/RFW's In-Depth Guide to R0 Starting Realm Grinder

This is a guide to obtaining a ton of Trophies in the very beginning of R0. It should be complete as of now, though if you feel I've missed something, you're free to tell me.

This guide will walk you through the entire very beginning of Realm Grinder, as well as unlocking many Secret Trophies and giving a number of hints and tips. It walks you through from the very beginning up until you unlock Reincarnation, as well as explaining what some things do, how certain things work, and what other things are.

This guide is not a generalization, but a full guide. It gives details on how to do quite a few things in the game, as well as how to unlock certain things. The entire guide is a Spoiler, as guides are.

Yes, that is the male adviser. He's totally not suspicious, right? I wonder what the grey part of his wand is...and why he's wearing a magician's hat. He's just a servant, after all...

Basic Information

Some terms you will see me use will include:

• "Reincarnation", which is a feature you will unlock when you reach 1 Oc (1e27) Gems.
  
• [Faction Name] (#,#). The first number refers to which tier of the upgrade it is, that is, from the first three, second three, or third three, and the second number refers to which upgrade in that set it is, be it the first, second, or third.
  
• "Tribute Trophy", which refers to Secret Trophies designed as tributes to beta testers or players who have done massive contributions to the game.
  
• "Faction Monument", which is the building in the center of the screen, which varies based on your Faction.

Terms to know for in-game:

• "Run" means that Abdication.
  
• "Total" means your Reincarnation. Starting out, you're at Reincarnation 0.

Things people often mix up:

• Faction and Fraction. One is part of a number, one is the species you've chosen to affiliate with.
  
• Alignment and Faction. One is the species you've chosen to affiliate with, one is if your alignment, which you pick before picking a Faction. The three Alignments are Good, Evil, and Neutral.

Just things to know:

• Secret Trophies and Faction Spell Trophies both gives upgrades, which will appear when you've earned near the upgrade's cost that run.

Initialisms and other Tidbits

This will be edited and reorganized over time until I've gotten most or all down. If I don't explain what something is on here, then it's because we'll discuss it and how it works in the guide itself.


Initialisms:

• HoL - Hall of Legends, the final, and usually most powerful, Building in the list.
  
• FC - Faction Coins, unless in reference to a Spell. Then, it's Fairy Chanting.
  
• CtA - Call to Arms, one of the two basic Spells you start with.
  
• TC - Tax Collection, one of the two basic Spells you start with.
  
• GB - Grand Balance, the Druid Faction Spell.
  
• LS - Lightning Strike, the Titan Faction Spell.
  
• GG - Usually Goblin's Greed, the Goblin Faction Spell, but sometimes Gem Grinder, the Neutral Alignment Spell.
  
• BF - Blood Frenzy, the Evil Alignment Spell.
  
• HL - Holy Light, the Good Alignment Spell.
  
• BW - Brainwave, the Faceless Faction Spell.
  [*}GH - God's Hand, the Angel Faction Spell.
  [*}MB - Moon Blessing, the Elf Faction Spell.
  [*}HfB or HB - Hellfire Blast, the Demon Faction Spell.
  
• NT - Nighttime, the Undead Faction Spell.
  
• CS - Combo Strike, the Drow Faction Spell.
  
• DP - Diamond Pickaxe, the Dwarf Faction Spell.
  
• RGems - Reincarnation Gems, or the amount of Gems needed in order to Reincarnate.

Initialisms for things not relevant to this guide, being unlocked only after this guide stops.

• LF - Lightning Forge, the most powerful short-term Mercenary Build.
  
• DF - Diamond Forge, the RNG-less version of LF. Good up a point, then LF takes over.
  [*}IGOT - It Grows Over Time, a series of Mercenary builds that grow over time, and named after the Bearded Dwarfs upgrade's final tooltip sentence.
  
• Spiritual Surge, a Spell unlocked on R14.
  
• DB - Dragon's Breath, the Dragon Faction Spell.
  
• R# - Reincarnation Number.

Things that you might see in chats that won't be relevant until after this guide ends:

• Mercenary - a Faction that can be played on any Alignment after unlocked on Reincarnation 3, or R3.
  
• Bloodlines - a series of upgrades unlocked on R7, needs 100 upgrades purchased on the Bloodline's Faction to unlock, counts across R's and retrospectively.
  
• Research - a series of upgrades you have to complete small (or large) 'challenges' to unlock, starts at R16.
  
• Ascension - this is to avoid the e308 overflow, and occurs when you reach R40. It nerfs production formulas, makes all Pre-A1 upgrades free, allows new upgrades, and decreases Building costs.
  
• Spell Tiers - allows you to cast multiple of a Spell, multiplying their effects to each other, except for Dragon's Breath, which just adds them.
  
• Dragons - the Neutral Prestige Faction, unlocked at R46.

The Options Menu

This section here is for the features of the Options Menu, which is accessible by the cogwheel in the lower-right corner of the game, on the far right of the bottom bar.

• Short Numbers, Scientific Notation, and Engineering Notation: The default is Short Numbers, though clicking the circle by either of the others will change the notation.
  
  
• Use Thousands Separator: This will put a comma in for thousands.
  
  
• Don’t Group Upgrades by Category: This removes the category separators for upgrades and returns their ordering back to the ordering in the old format of the game, which, in general, is the same as it is now, just without those borders that allow you to hide the upgrades in that category. With this option disabled (unchecked), the purchased upgrades will be AFTER the unpurchased.
  
• Don’t Group Trophies by Category: Does the same thing as the above option, only for Trophies.
  
  Don't Consolidate Upgrades: This separates upgrade series from their stacks so you see all of them, instead of the next one to buy.
  Don't Consolidate Trophies: This separates trophies from their stacks so you see all of them at once, instead of the next to unlock (last if you've unlocked them all in a stack).
  
  
• Disable Warnings for Ruby Upgrades: This turns off the confirmation message for purchasing Ruby upgrades.
  
• Disable Warning for Exchanges: This disables the pop-up box for Exchanges of your Faction’s Faction Coin. This DOES NOT WORK if you use Buy All to buy Exchanges, but will if you use the multibuy for Exchanges and buy them separately. HOWEVER! The Buy All Exchanges WILL buy Heritages first, if you have the FC for them.
  
  
• Disable Click Particles: This removes the particles/coins/etc. that pop up when you click the background (manually or with in-game clicks) showing you what you got (Note: choosing this option will help reduce lag).
  Disable Click Text: This removes the text that pops up from clicking the background (manually or with in-game clicks) telling you what you got (Note: choosing this option will help reduce lag).
  
  
• Hide Purchased Upgrades: This hides the upgrades you’ve purchased, allowing you to view only the upgrades you have not.
  Hide Unavailable Researches: This hides Researches that your Faction cannot buy, allowing you to view only the upgrades you can pick as that Faction/Faction combination.
  
  
• Disable Menu Sliding Animation: Instead of sliding everything, it just jumps the images/location when you’re scrolling menus.
  Block Background Clicks: This prevents any manual clicking rewards – in-game clicking will still work, though. This is mostly used for the no-click challenge.
  Disable Non-Manual Clicks: This disables any in-game clicking, which occur through upgrades, and most famously are from Sun Blessing and Elven Bloodline, but also includes a couple of others, such as Gift of the Kings and a certain Research.
  
  
• Enable Spell Tooltip Persist: Causes a Spell's tooltip to persist if you hover over the spell until you click out of it or pull up a different tooltip. Makes it easier to set autocasts without using the hotkeys.
  
  
• Disable Cloud Check at Startup: This prevents it from checking whether or not your Cloud and Local Saves are the same and giving you the option to load either if the Local is different (Cloud is always going to be ahead of the Local without a bug), and will automatically load the Cloud save regardless.
  
  
• Buy All Exchanges: This is what makes the Buy All button for the upgrades tab to buy all available Exchanges as well. NOTE: This will NOT give you the Exchange Warning on the Faction Coins for the Faction(s) you currently are, though it will buy Heritages if you can afford them before doing the Exchanges (So it buys upgrades, then Exchanges) – it will not hold on to FC if you cannot afford a Heritage. This does not prevent the Exchange Warning from popping up when buying Exchanges manually.
  
  
• Sort Purchased Upgrades by Price: Exactly what it sounds like, this option sorts all purchased upgrades by their price instead of grouping.
  Sort Unpurchased Upgrades by Price: Exactly what it sounds like, this option sorts all unpurchased upgrades by their price instead of grouping.
  
  
• Hide Purchased Upgrades: Exactly what it sounds like, it causes purchased upgrades to disappear from sight, though their effect remains.
  Hide Unavailable Researches: This hides all Researches that cannot be bought by your Faction.
  
  
• Disable BuyMAX Button: Turns off the BuyMAX button on the lower-right corner by the bulidings, which cycles through Buy1/10/100/1000/MAX. Instead, you click for 1, CTRL+Click for 10, SHIFT+Click for 100, X+Click for 1000, and CTRL+SHIFT+Click for MAX.
  
  
• Skip All Tutorials: This prevents the Royal Adviser (that chick in the purple robe) from popping up when there’s a new feature for you to play with, or when you do something new to tell you about it.
  
  
• Change Adviser Sex: An imaginary feature that allows you to change the Royal Adviser into a young castle servant who seems to know all the different things about court life, and is a little bit suspicious.
  
  
• Language: Allows you to change the language of the game – YOU MUST REFRESH THE PAGE.
  
  
• Disable Gift of the (Heroes)(Kings)(Gods): Disables that individual Gift from the shop, if you’ve bought it.
  
  
• Overwrite: This overwrites your current Cloud Save with the save you’re currently on. Probably not often-used, as the Cloud automatically saves if your save is a higher R and gem count than its on-hand save, so you won’t have much reason to overwrite unless it’s not saving for some odd reason. You can see when the last time it saved is directly above it, and it tells you the R count and Gem count on that save.
  
• Restore: This restores your last-saved Cloud save.
  
  
• Save: This performs a local save for your game.
  
• Export: This exports a file of your last local save.
  
• Import: This allows you to import a save file – you need to click into the box, and then paste it.
  
  
• Hard Reset: This allows you to completely Hard Reset your game, deleting all of your files (except Cloud), stats, trophies, buildings, gems, R’s, EVERYTHING (except the Cloud save, you’ll need to Overwrite if you want to get rid of that, too).
  
  
• a.x.b.y: These random numbers in the lower-right are the Game Version you’re currently playing. If you click on it, it will open up the Patch Notes, where you can view all of the patches in the game. The first number (a) represents the Game Version itself. We’re currently on Version 2. The second number (x) represents the Expansion (where major content updates are). The third number (b) represents the minor update version (where minor content updates are). The final number (y) is the hotfix number, where small patches to fix bugs and other small errors are done.

The Very Beginning!

You start off with a message from the Tutorial, and should start with “Clouded”. If not, check to see if Cloud is synced when you get a chance. If not, just shoot a message over in the Bugs thread.

Anyway, read her message, but don't click! If you wait 5 minutes, you'll start off with one of the easiest Secret Trophies to obtain - “Need a Head Start?”. Once the Trophy awards, click out of her message, and read her next one. If you already clicked, just wait on the start of your next run, and skip the next line.

You'll now notice that free upgrade I mentioned in the “Upgrades” tab, if you check there. Don't buy it yet!

The adviser's telling you to click anywhere on the realmscape, so go ahead and do that...only to have her attack you with another message.

Now, it's time to click until you have a total of 10 Coins. Don't buy “Need a Head Start?” yet! Once you reach 10 Coins, she tells you to purchase a Farm – go ahead and do that (you have to). Read her next message, then click out of it.

She told you to keep clicking, so do that until she pops up again, informing you of a new item: Faction Coin. If you hover over the Faction Coin images in the bottom of the Upgrades panel, you'll notice a find chance: this refers to your chance to find a single, random Faction Coin, not your chance to find each Faction's Faction Coin.

Now, she wants you to open the Upgrades Panel, and you have to, so do it.

How rude of her. Tells you to open the panel, then to build 5 Farms. Go ahead and buy “Need a Head Start?” if you unlocked it.

Did she open the panel...then close it on you, only to tell you to open it again? Yes, yes she did. Do it, and then buy the upgrade – you get Building Upgrades every so many (set #, not a formula). And now you have your first Assistant! You gain one the first two upgrades of every Building Upgrade Series, except for Hall of Legends (you'll unlock it in a bit).

Time for some magic, right? Read Tax Collection's tooltip, and she'll tell you to click on it. Do so. Note that it only gives you Coins, and does not give you Faction Coins. There's an upgrade you can unlock through the Spell Trophy for Tax Collection that causes it to give you Faction Coins as well.

Okay, so she didn't tell you what to do. Time to move on! Guess what? Easy Secret Trophies Time!

There are three easy Secret Trophies we're getting here: Adviser Insight, Assistant Squasher, and glho kohhl snod – the last of which just needs to be typed (or pasted) into the Import box in Settings, then Imported. The other two are obtained by clicking on their respective icons 100 times (each).

The Assistants icon isn't the one on the bottom bar, but the one next to the empty space in the middle of the screen. The Adviser icon is her face in the lower-right of the screen, and the Settings is through the cogwheel. Import is toward the bottom.

Your First Alignment and First Faction

Now, just collect Coins and Buildings until she pops up again. Should happen when you reach 30,000 Coins generated this run. Don't cast any Spells, though! You'll want the Mana in a bit, and it regenerates slow right now.

Speaking of your mana...when it reaches back to 1,000 Mana, you'll receive the 200 Mana Generated Trophy, “Mana Droplet” which gives you an upgrade that increases your Mana Regen, but only by 0.5 mana/second. Buy it, but don't cast any spells.

At this point, you should be able to afford the Proof of Good/Evil Deeds. Go Good if you're following this Guide, Evil if you're not.

Bam! Notice eight new Buildings, including Hall of Legends? You will also probably see three new upgrades in Allegiance Upgrades, Fairies/Elven/Angels Trade Treaties, each one costing 20 of their respective Faction Coins. You can probably afford one or two right now. Fairies is free, but don't buy it – Elves is the way you want to go.

As soon as you buy the Trade Treaty, the Adviser pops up again. We'll call her Aerith. This time, Aerith wants us to open up something that only appears once a Faction is picked: Royal Exchanges. Do so, and buy all of the Royal Exchanges you can – but do not buy Elven Royal Exchanges.

Royal Exchanges boost your production by 10% each, adding to each other, then multiplying the sum against your total production. It costs Faction Coins, and the cost increases each purchase of that specific Faction Royal Exchange.

Remember how the Eleven Trade Treaty cost 20 Elven Coins? The next upgrade, if you didn't look at it, costs 100, and the third one costs 500.

If you cast Moon Blessing between 6:00 AM and 12:00 PM (Noon), you'll gain a Spell Trophy called “Sun Blessing”, which has an upgrade for 1 M (1e6) Coins that causes Moon Blessing to click 15 times every second while the Spell is active. Don't cast yet if it's between that time, unless it's almost noon. If it is, then cast.

At this point, just keep building Buildings, but don't cast any Spells. We want that Mana. Don't forget to keep buying Royal Exchanges to boost your production, but don't be like me and forget that the warning for Royal Exchanges is off – it gives a confirmation message if you try to manually buy your Faction's Royal Exchange. Oops!

Luckily, you gain an Assistant from each of the first two upgrades in a Building Upgrade series, save for Hall of Legends' upgrade series! So I'll gain the 20 back a fair bit faster than I would have before.

I've switched over into Buy 10 at this point, though things would probably go faster for me in Buy 1. I'd recommend staying there, as buying 1 of the best building you can afford is better than 10 of one that's not the best.

You're probably getting impatient, waiting for that 50M (5e7) Coins, right? Go ahead and cast Moon Blessing, if you want, but I highly recommend against it...for now. Keep building Buildings until your production is roughly 300K-350K Coins/Second (you can see it by looking at the bottom info bar). Then, just let it run or keep clicking until you reach 50M (5e7) Coins.

Once you've got that 50M (5e7) Coins, buy the first upgrade. If you've been doing a ton of clicking (or not), you might have 100 Elven Coins as well. Go ahead and buy the upgrade “Elven Friendship Pact”. Yes, the new three are far more expensive.

Yes, I want you to suffer through not using Spells. It's all part of the plan. Grind out that 500M (5e8) Coins and buy the next upgrade. Again – no Spells if you wanna follow this complete. Of course, you're free to use Spells, but I don't want you to, even though you'll probably just regenerate all the Mana used, with the time spent on this...

When you reach 50M (1e7) Coins again, if you have the upgrade that increases Click Reward by 1%, buy it. Why, you ask? Simple: the base production of Assistants is 5% of your clicking reward, so your production will go up.

Okay, now that you have that upgrade...cast Moon Blessing, then Tax Collection.

Notice a huge boost in your Coins? That's because Tax Collection goes off of your current production when it calculates your gain. Now all you have left to do is produce, produce, produce...if you bought at least 10 Citadels (which you should have been able to afford), it should take you less than 5 minutes from 0 Coins, if you don't buy anything else.

Once you reach 500M (5e8) Coins, buy the next Elven Upgrade. Did your production just jump a fair bit? Yes? Remember what I said about Assistant Production. And don't forget to keep buying Royal Exchanges, save for Elven Exchanges.

Right now, we're just grinding it out. Grind, grind, grind...

While we're waiting, there's another Tribute Trophy we can acquire. Just go to Settings, click on the version number in the lower right, and leave that open for three minutes. You'll continue to generate Coins and Mana, so don't worry. You'll see the upgrade pop up on the bottom of the Upgrades Panel when the Trophy unlocks, since it only costs 1K Coins, and you've earned far more than that so far.

You can also probably buy the third Elven Faction Coin upgrade, Elven Alliance, and probably 10 Royal Castles, if you're doing Buy10's like me. Buy them both.

When your Mana reaches 900 or so, cast Moon Blessing, building Royal Castles and Heaven's Gates if you can, then cast Tax Collection. If you're doing Buy10's, you'll probably not be able to afford any until after the Tax Collection.

Personally, I stick it out until Max Mana, then cast Spells, and recommend using that as a general rule of thumb for this game, until later on, when you can do some pretty funky things with casting Spells through Autocast, the first of which, Automatic Casting, you'll unlock at 60,000 Mana Generated. It will decrease your Mana Regeneration by 50% while it's active, but later upgrades decrease, then negate it.

At this point, focus on buying Heaven's Gates 1 at a time. Your production will go up faster that way. After reaching 10 of them, switch into Buy10 for sure on everything. Things will go so much faster. If you're going to be bothered by off-numbers, make sure you first get everything to a multiple of ten before switching over.

Just keep building Buildings and buying upgrades. When you reach 200B (2e11) Coins, buy your first Hall of Legends, and watch your production jump. That's because each HoL produces, as a base, 250K Coins per Trophy per second. The more Trophies you have, the stronger your HoL's are, before bonuses are applied.

Okay, so by now, we've bought Elven Alliance, and no new Faction Coin upgrade appeared. Buy Elven Exchanges? If you want to, but if you save 'em up until you have 5,000, spend what you have over 5,000, but keep 5,000 on-hand. You'll see why in a bit.

Don't cast any Spells until you've bought another HoL – you'll be happy you didn't have to wait for that. Be careful not to cast Holy Light by accident. That's still good production, but Moon Blessing + Tax Collection is way better.

With this combo, you'll probably get a popup telling you about Abdications and Gems. Every time you Abdicate, your Abdication Gems are added to your Treasury, and once you buy Gem Power, they give you a production bonus of 2% and increase your FC find chance.

Don't Abdicate for that 1 Gem. It's irrelevant right now, so keep on producing them Coins!

Once you have 5 HoL's, you'll probably notice that their upgrade has a considerably different scaling. It's far more expensive, but far more powerful, buffing your HoL's by a set number, and all other buildings based on the number of Trophies you have.

Don't forget to be buying Buildings, Upgrades, and Royal Exchanges – especially Buildings! They give you Trophies after so many, and that buffs HoL production, which increases your production even more!

Your First Alignment and First Faction (Part 2)

After your production reaches 7B-10B (7e9-1e10) Coins/second, stop building and just collect until you can buy Elven (2,1), at 500B (5e11) Coins. The % after is how much your clicking reward is increased by, and the boost is better than what you would've gotten without waiting.

At this point, it is just a waiting game. Just keep the pattern until you've bought all of the Elven Upgrades. Elf (2,2) is a pretty decent boost with a few Royal Exchanges. In fact, starting with this one, each Elf upgrade is actually pretty good. Elf (3,2) has a low proc chance, yes, but if you have Sun Blessing, then when you cast Moon Blessing, you'll get several hits of it during boosted income.

Don't forget your Spell combos and your Royal Exchanges (but remember to exclude Elven Royal Exchanges). From now on, every combo will yield you a decent amount of Coins.

While you're waiting, ignore your Gem Count – it's low, but it'll be boosted quite a bit in a bit.

Protip: Spells have hotkeys, starting at 1 and going down the list. Use those instead of clicking for faster results. :D

When you've finally purchased all of the Elven Upgrades, you'll gain a Trophy and unlock an upgrade called “Elven Heritage”. Heritages are unlocked once you've bought all of the upgrades for a Faction for the first time. Because this is your first time playing a Faction and buying all of the upgrades, this is your first Heritage unlocked. It is permanently unlocked, and can be bought on all future runs, regardless of your Faction. Vanilla Factions (three base Good and three base Evil Factions) have Heritages that cost 5K respective Faction Coins.

If you've saved your Elven FC like I said to, you can buy it now, so do so! Then, cast spells, build, and combo! You'll notice now that you're gaining Gems faster – stop around 3K if it slows down after that, later if it slows down later. A general rule of thumb for Abdicating is to Abdicate when your Abdication Treasury is 2x your Active Treasury, but not unless your Gems gains has slowed down. I try to aim for 5K-10K on this run, as the few extra minutes will make things so much faster/stronger, even if the next series of runs will require almost no time, and then not buying Gem Power, which will come up again, but it activates the bonuses from your Gems. 100K Gems is doable if you want to wait a few minutes more – it's up to you.

Depending on how long your run was, you might receive a Tribute Trophy called “Because I Like to Grind”. If you didn't get it, it's for having a run of at least 3 hours. You'll get it naturally, so don't go out of your way to get it by not playing when you want to. Go to bed, and you'll get it. You'll even get it if you're offline when the 3 hours hits.

Okay, ready to Abdicate?

A Bunch of Trophies!

This section is where grinding begins to happen and things begin to slow down.

Abdicate!

Aerith will talk for a bit, then she'll have you open the shop. Click out of it. No one can read her message, and DG hasn't fixed that yet.

Ready?

Abdicate nine more times. In a row. Don't bother buying anything, just Abdicate. I'm serious. If it doesn't pop, Abdicate a tenth time. For Abdicating so 10 times in 3 minutes, you'll gain another Tribute Trophy, “Rule 'dis”.

Fun, right?

Now let's get ready for the real challenge.

Speed Run.

This is a Secret Trophy awarded for generating 1M Coins within the first 5 minutes of a run without Gem Power, and the upgrade, which costs 10 Coins, increases base Clicking Reward by +1M Coins.

There are some things to know before you start it.

• Do not buy Tribute Trophy Upgrades, Mana Regeneration Upgrades, Gem Power Upgrade.
  
• Have “Need a Head Start?”
  
• You cannot use “Buy All”.
  
• You can do this without clicking very much, but it's recommended to click a fair bit – but no need to mash your mouse. I've done it quite a few times with just barely clicking after the first thirty seconds or so. Clicking reward kind of become obsolete during the run, anyway.
  
• Ignore Tribute Trophies.

Okay, on to the run but read all through the following list before you start it.

• Abdicate.
  
• Buy Need a Head Start?
  
• Buy 1 Farm.
  
• Click and build Buildings, but focus on Building Buildings. You can either switch to focusing only on the next Building after you have 10 of one, or you can stop at 30 Farms, 20 Inns, but DO NOT go past them. You really shouldn't go past 10 of each.
  
• Once you reach around 500 Coins/second or so, stop buying Buildings entirely and focus on clicking for money.
  
• Go Evil as soon as you can.
  
• Buy only Evil Buildings at this point.
  
• At around 4.5 minutes into the run, combo CtA and Blood Frenzy – just hit 2 and 3 on your keyboard at the same time.
  
• Okay, here, you click like crazy. Before they're up, you should have it.

If you didn't get it, you were probably off by a second or two – but not if you cast it around 4.5 minutes in. Set a timer if you need to.

Don't stick around – Abdicate.

This time, we're aiming to reach exactly 1337 Coins. To do this: don't buy any buildings or upgrades except for the very first Clicking Reward upgrade, which gives +4 to base clicking reward. For the upgrade, only buy it when your current Coins ends in a 2 or a 7. Then, just click, click, click. STOP CLICKING when you reach ~1300 Coins, and manually click, to ensure you don't overshoot the requirement. Once you hit it, stop, and it should proc.

Now buy Speed Run, and you'll get another Secret Trophy, “Building Hater”. It's earned by collecting 100,000 Coins without building a single Building. Pretty easy, right?

Okay, now go Good, go Elves, and run it until you reach ~100K – 200K Gems. People tell me to go to 1M Gems (1e6), but the upgrades we'll get will make getting past there faster, and it'll be worth it anyway. It'll take several runs. Just build Buildings, buy Upgrades, do Royal Exchanges, and Abdicate when your gains start slowing down. Once you've got around there, it's time for more Trophies!

Notice how things are so much faster to set up with Speed Run? Get your Buildings started faster, thus Assistants faster, thus FC faster...it's nice.

Now that you're at 100K-200K Gems, it's time for more Trophies! Abdicate.

Now, just buy Head Start, buy Speed Run, and then pick an Alignment. I like to alternate for this, and usually go Evil. We're going to play each Faction once and unlock its Heritage. Go in whatever order you want; I usually go Demons, Fairies, Goblins, Angels, Undead. Note – you do not need to buy the Heritage to have it unlocked – as soon as you can see it the first time, it's unlocked. I recommend going Angel last, if you're going to be leaving the game idle/offline for a bit. The next few paragraphs give you information on a few different Factions as you're playing.

If you play Angels last, it's a great spot to just grind out the last few thousand of the 60,000 Mana you need to get Automatic Casting, the first Autocast upgrade. To use it, CTRL+Click the spell you want it to autocast. Be forewarned – it casts the lowest-costing spell the moment it reaches that amount of Mana, and your Mana Regen is cut in half while it's active. It won't cast spells while you're offline, but will generate 10% of your online Mana Regen while you're offline – this is not affected by the 50% reduction as well, using your full mana regeneration to figure the production. If you're going idle, just leave Tax Collection on Autocast (since it won't cast anything else with that up). If you're offline, take it off. This way, you gain Mana Regen while you're away, which goes towards the next Autocast upgrade, which reduces the penalty to only 25%. It requires 2M (2e6) Mana generated to obtain, however. If you don't get it, don't worry about it and move on. Just a piece of advice for when you go idle or offline.

The Secret Trophy is called “Spell Fury”, and the upgrade (too expensive right now) grants 5% extra Mana Regeneration. To obtain it, you have to do is cast Tax Collection with 3 Spells active. Sounds tough, right? Once you have 33.42 Mana Regen, it becomes possible, but wait until 34+ Mana Regen. Cast God's Hand, then CtA, then Holy Light, then spam "1" until TC casts.

Goblins is the only Vanilla Faction without Mana Regeneration, and they have a Spell Trophy for casting their Faction Spell, Goblin's Greed, 100 times in a row without casting any other spell during a run. This means you absolutely cannot cast any spell during a run to unlock this Trophy until after this Trophy is unlocked. The free Tax Collection from Goblin Central Bank does not lock you out of it – free Spells are fine, others are not.

Undead are arguably the worst Faction possible to pick. If you only have the six Vanilla Factions, however, then going offline gives you one choic: Angels. Undead for production isn't recommended, and it's good for something stupidly insane that you shouldn't worry about.

Fairies' Spell Trophy is unlocked by casting Fairy Chanting with at least 45 Assistants, and the Trophy triples the number of Assistants you have during Fairy Chanting.

Demon's Spell Trophy, Hell Rush, is difficult this early without Gifts, but super-easy with a ton of Gems (such as close to the aforementioned 1 Oc (1e27) Gems): Cast Hellfire Blast within 60 seconds of a new run.

The moment you affiliate with the sixth Faction, you'll gain a Secret Trophy called Grand Diplomat for affiliating with all six Vanilla Factions. The upgrade grants +1% FC find chance, and is pretty cheap.

The first time you buy all six Vanilla Heritages, which you'll be doing from now on, unless told otherwise, you'll unlock “Faction Grinder”, another Secret Trophy.

Once you've done that, read the rest of this section before proceeding.

Now, just grind until you reach around 1B (1e9) Gems. This will take a few runs. After 10-20 Royal Exchanges, stop buying them and save up for Heritages, then go back to Exchanges. At some point during this, you'll gain “Grinding Dedication”, which is for playing RG for a total of 7 hours, and is a permanently-available upgrade (provided you can afford it).

If you decide to leave Elves on for this instead of Angels, put CtA on Autocast, not Moon Blessing. The math works out where CtA gives you better production for the Mana cost and time spent.

Once you have 1M (1e6) Gems or so, buy just 1 of each Building at the start of a run for another Trophy. At 1M (1e6) Gems and above, don't buy Royal Exchanges until you've bought all Heritages. Your production is slower, but the boost is superior at this point.

Once you reach 1B (1e9) Gems, Abdicate, and move on to the next section.

1B (1e9) to 10-25 Qi (1-2.5e19) Gems - Unlocking Neutrals

And Aerith pops up again, to tell you about Excavations! Buy the upgrade when you can, but don't do it if you have any Spells active.

Open the tab she tells you to. Hover over, then click. She'll talk again, then disappear. Don't Excavate more for now. Just keep producing money. Once you hit 300 HoL's, you can Excavate, but only up to 20 – no more than that for now. Every 5 Excavations, you'll notice a Quest Artifact. If you hover over them, you'll see a small descriptions, and a hint. When you reach 20, you'll earn your fourth, which bears a resemblance to the first. You'll also notice an upgrade appeared, if you looked at the counter on the Upgrade Button.

Now, you can unlock Titans. First, you need to buy that Upgrade, “Fragment of a Titan Statue”, which costs 1 No (1e30) Coins and 25,000 Angel Coins and 25,000 Goblin Coins. You can stick around, or you can build up your Gems a bit more first. So you're wondering how I knew you had it? Well, it requires 300 HoL's in that run to appear. If you Abdicate, it disappears until you have 300 HoL's again. You must have both Artifacts for them before you can unlock it, and if you were following this guide, then you had 300 HoL's when you got the second one.

If you want to cheat a little, you can use Excavations as well, but know this – if you go this route, do not, under any circumstances, Abdicate until you've bought the upgrade.

Why?

Excavations do not reset when you Abdicate, and they have a chance to grant Faction Coins. They also grow more expensive with each one you do. You also want to save your Excavations, so don't go past 50 if you go the Excavations route. You'll find out why in a bit.

During all of this, don't forget to buy Exchanges, but absolutely make sure you do not buy any Angel or Goblin Exchanges. This will set you back. Make sure “Buy All Exchanges” is turned off, if it isn't already.

The moment you buy it, Aerith pops up again, telling you that you have permanently unlocked Titans. Click out of her message, and keep going on the run until your total Gem count (Active and Abdication) is at least 10B (1e10) Gems, then Abdicate.

Notice something? You can now pick Neutral Alignment. What's the difference between it and having no Alignment? You're still Neutral without, but you can't have access to more than the three basic Buildings, and you can't pick a Faction.

Proof of Neutrality is 10 Qa (1e16) Coins to buy. It'll take a couple of minutes, which is why I said 10B+ (1e10+) Gems. You'll get it kind of easily, but the next part will take a bit, since Titan Trade Treaty requires 500 Angel Coins and 500 Goblin Coins. Be prepared for an influx of Building Trophies, since you have new Buildings to buy, and you'll easily afford 200 on most of them at the start.

Once you're Neutral, just run the game, using Gem Grinder only after you aren't buying Buildings a ton at a time anymore. This is arguably the most powerful Spell in the game later on (but not right now). Keep in mind that your Mana Regen is low again. Titans is the only base Faction other than Goblins that you'll unlock without a Mana Regen upgrade, but it's also one of the most powerful Factions at several stages of the game due to its Spell and a current bug.

From now on, the only Spell you will cast is Lightning Strike. It's powerful, and when it hits the most productive Building, your gains will skyrocket. And? It generates free Faction Coins. The more Gems you have, the more Faction Coins you'll gain. Later on, we'll be able to combo it, but for now, we won't. Don't forget to buy Exchanges, but ignore Angel and Goblin. Also, don't buy Royal Exchanges until after all Heritages that use those FC are bought.

Another thing you should know – the Lightning Strike icon on Buildings remains after the Spell ends until either you cast it again or Abdicate. The effect isn't there.

You'll probably see, for the first time, “Neutral Certificate”. As Good and Evil, you'll have seen the respective counterpart. These guys are based off of how many Buildings of its Alignment you've bought that run, and you can gain the Neutral Certificate as any Alignment, since you have four Neutral Buildings.

Once you get a good hit (or enough bad hits), you'll be able to buy Spellfury for the first time. This allows you to add a Tax Collection while Lightning Strike is active, if you cast at full Mana. Only use this when LS hits, after buying the boosting upgrade in Tier 2, Deep Mine or, after you've bought the upgrade in Tier 3, Monastery.

At this point, you want to grind to around 1 Qa (1e15) Gems or so, and this will take several runs. Toward the end of that, you'll probably get near 1,000,000 Faction Coins earned – go for it. You want to do this on the run you reach 1 Qa (1e15) Gems. Then, you'll receive the Druid Unlock notification, but only if you've done 25 Excavations. If you haven't yet, get to the 25th.

Abdicate, and this run is a little different. Start as normal, but do not buy Hall of Legends. At all. Not even 1. We want it to be 0 total. Why? Because Grand Balance, the Druid Faction Spell, will target 0-count Buildings, and it affects the lowest-producing. What's lower in production than something that produces 0 Coins?

Okay, once you have Druids, buy what you can, then cast Grand Balance (GB) and unlock Halls of Balance, their Spell Trophy. Once it's unlocked, buy HoL's, and notice that GB changed targets. GB changes targets if the Building it's targeting is not the weakest Building.

Here's why we wanted to save our Excavations. Now, you'll want to use them to, but only enough to get the FC needed for the final Tier, a total of 13,000 Elven and 13,000 Demon Coins. If you reach 50, you'll gain a Ruby and a Tooltip. Don't spend your Rubies, you'll want them way later than this guide will take you.

Anyway, unlock their Heritage, then there are two things you can do. The first, which you should do if you have burned your Excavations, is go back to Titans until you reach 10-25 Qi (1-2.5e19) Gems. This time, if you're playing actively, cast CtA anytime LS hits Monastaries. The second is if you have a few Excavations you can afford to earn the FC needed to start a run. This way, you play as Druids. As Druids, cast GB, wait 4 seconds, then cast all other spells. Spell combos are important on both, as they are the only way you'll gain Coins in a reasonable amount of time on either, but only if you do the optimal combos - the ones I listed. This is the recommended way, as it's stronger than Titans, but slower without the Excavations.

The other Neutral Faction, if you haven't figured it out, is unlocked by spending 36 hours on a single run. If you decide to do this (I recommend it, but most don't due to it being unnecessary (technically) to have them or their Heritage until later, and it just delays you Reincarnating), make sure you buy the artifact upgrade that run or you'll have wasted the 36 hours.

Anyway, once you're at 10-25 (1-2.5e19) Gems, move on to the next section. However, don't use Excavations again.

10-25 Qi (1-2.5e19) Gems - Unlocking Dwarfs!

Now for the fun part! Unlocking Vanilla Prestige!

Prestige Factions are different from other Factions we've played so far in that you must first pick another Faction, then buy their third FC upgrade before you can have access to their Trade Treaty. There are two we can unlock, Dwarf and Drow. Dwarf can only be played as Good, and Drow can only be played as Evil. Until R3, you'll have to also to buy “Underworld Diplomacy” to earn their Faction Coins every single run.

Okay, now that we're at 10-25 Qi (1-2.5e19) Gems, go ahead and Abdicate, and this time, Excavate down to 200 Excavations, stopping there exactly. Do not exceed 200. You'll gain a second Ruby during this. They're earned at set Excavation points, but only the first time you reach it ever.

Now, you'll see an upgrade called “Passage to the Underworld”, which costs 50 Qid (5e49) Coins. It can be bought as any Faction. Use Druids until you can buy it (unless you can't afford a couple of Excavations to start the runs, then use Titans), and once you buy it, Aerith will pop up, giving you a message about being given proposals, and once you click out of it, you'll see two new upgrades in Allegiances Upgrades: Bearded Man's Quest and Cloaked Shady Figure's Quest. Dwarf and Drow, respectively.

The Dwarf Quest must be completed as Good, and the Drow Quest must be completed as Evil. No exceptions.

You'll also see “Survey Equipment”, which allows you to find Lore Artifacts. This is unlocked after 100 Excavations, and once purchased, its effect is eternal. Most Lore Artifacts are just cosmetic, but some give upgrades. From now on, you'll see a number on the Excavation tab's top-right. This tells you how many Artifacts you meet requirements for, but it DOES NOT mean you'll obtain them. It could be a thousand Excavations before you do. Some of them have absurdly long requirements. You'll start earning them every now and then, and the number will fluctuate. Two of them require you to be at a certain time of day, and have a low find chance. Some are locked when you become a Faction, some require you to do certain things, and so on.

Anyway, the two Quests cost 10 Qad (1e45) Coins and 10K of each of its Alignment's Faction Coins, and has three requirements that must be met, aside from being its alignment.

Sturdy Bearded Man's Quest requires 7K or more Buildings, 800 or more Inns that run, and 10,000 total Clicks. Only one of those must be done that run, as stated. Sturdy says 'total' on Buildings, but it's that run, though there are some reports of not being able to do the Quest without the 7K buildings that run. When I ran it for this guide, I did it without 7K that run and still unlocked it.

Cloaked Shady Figure's Quest requires 325 total Trophies, 650 or more Dark Temples this run, and 10,000 or more total Spells cast. For some reason, 'total' seems to miss people on this one, and they think they have to do 10K Spells that game. 'Total' always refers to overall that Reincarnation, never that run. Don't worry about them if you don't have that, we're going to Abdicate, then go Good, then pick Fairies.

Remember their horrible production when you were on them before? They're better when combined with Dwarfs, and they're the best Faction for unlocking them, too! Why? Because their first three upgrades reduce the cost of Farms, Inns, and Blacksmiths.

Once you have those three upgrades bought, cycle through your BuyMax button until you're back on whatever setting you use. If you're not using Buy100 at all times at this point, I'd recommend doing so. All you need a little bit of clicking at the beginning so you can get the 100 Farms after getting Speed Run, and you don't really click much for money anymore.

With more Gems, you'll also end up with more Farms, Inns, and Blacksmiths, which means more Assistants. When you finally reach 45 Assistants, cast Fairy Chanting to obtain their previously mentioned Spell Upgrade, Fairy Choir, and buy it. That makes your production far more powerful, because it triples Assistants – which also affects how much FC you gain passively while it's active.

Running straight Fairies, cast Call to Arms, wait 10 seconds, then Fairy Chanting. This gives optimal production, especially if you can squeeze in a TC, which you should be able to. This is after you have the upgrade that increases your Max Mana based on Good Buildings, or Fairy (3,1).

Also – do not buy any Exchanges except for Undead Exchanges until after you've unlocked Dwarfs or have bought all Heritages. Save up your 5K Undead Coins for their Exchanges, though. If you have Faceless, then save them as well.

From now on, you'll want to use Excavations to gain a few FC, but never more than however much you need. Overshooting will burn up your Excavations and make it impossible for you to use them again.

Once you've unlocked Dwarfs, have bought Underworld Diplomacy, which allows the earning of their FC, and have Dwarf (1,2), cycle through your Buildings again. It decreases the costs.

Here is where people argue. I say use Fairy Dwarfs, most say use Elven Dwarfs. Elven Dwarfs issuperior, but only if you cannot do a full Fairy Dwarfs Spell combo. This requires casting CtA, waiting 8 seconds, Diamond Pickaxe, waiting 2 seconds, and then Fairy Chanting and at least 1 TC. If you can't do that, then don't bother. You'll need roughly 2,300 Max Mana before this becomes doable, and 2,400 before it's an obvious guarantee. Dwarf (1,2)'s reduction, alongside Fairy (1,1/2/3) and Fairy (3,1) make this possible faster than people think. You absolutely do not need the full combo to exist, just as long as all three spells overlap and you get a TC in.

If you're going to be AFK for hours, I recommend going Angelic Dwarfs and setting TC on Autocast. You'll probably unlock Improved Autocasting if you haven't already, and also probably gain the 10K Spells Cast needed for Drow, which you probably won't be able to unlock until the end of this Guide. Or you can go Elves or Fairies and just put DP on Autocast – there's a Trophy for gaining 30K FC from that Spell alone. If you're active, Elves is better, if not, then whichever gives you a higher Mana Regen. Active because then you can cast MB with DP for the clicks.

Once you reach 1 Oc (1e27) Gems, Abdicate, and you'll find out what the ??? button is all about with a message from Aerith. A lot of people don't like the sound of it, but it's well worth it. In fact, it's required to progress.

There are some Trophies that are a good idea to get, and I'll list them in the next part. Once you've gotten them, Reincarnate, and you're good to go!

Trophies to Obtain Before Reincarnating

This is the list of Trophies I recommend you have before Reincarnating, some of which you probably already have.

• Lightning Storm, obtained by casting Lightning Strike 100 times in 1 run, does not need to be in a row.
  
• Fairy Choir, obtained by casting Fairy Chanting with at least 45 Assistants.
  
• Sun Blessing, obtained by casting Moon Blessing between 6AM and 12PM on your computer's time.
  
• Mathematician, obtained by having 1 HoL, and doubling the number of Buildings going up, ending with 1,024 Farms. Doable at RGems on Fairy Dwarfs.
  
• Premeditation, obtained by having 850 Dark Temples before affiliating with the Drow in a run (not any run, just in a run, you're never permanently locked out of a Trophy).
  
• Spellfury, obtained by casting Tax Collection with three other Spells active.

[RogueFireWolf]

Basically, yeah.

On that note: if you're just starting out, don't worry about buying the Heritages (Vanilla Heritages cost 5,000 of that Faction's Coins). They're permanently unlocked once you can see them, and it's better to Abdicate when gains slow down than to push for a Heritage when you can be busy getting the others or making progress. Buying the Heritages becomes easy later on, and isn't essential at the very start (on that note - if you're playing as Elves and are already past a few thousand Gems, you can wait for the Heritage, I tend to have mixed results on if it's useful or not to do so as them early on, but generally get a decent boost with it - especially if I can buy other Heritages or already have, and am doing Royal Exchanges).

[leatherneck]

Oh, so you do want to spend the faction coins on goblins, but only after buying their faction upgrades first right?

[RogueFireWolf]

That's a setting you can disable in the Options (listed up in The Option Menu section). It's because when you're playing as a Faction, especially early on, you're trying to save your FC of that particular Faction's, so that you can afford their Faction Coin upgrades.

[Xnaker Eyes]

Because there are some skills upgrades that are bought with those Goblins (your faction) coins.

[leatherneck]

When I go to buy Goblins in the Royal Exchange it gives me a popup saying, "Do you really want to buy this exchange?" As if it would be a bad idea to buy Goblins. Why? I think my faction is Goblins, but then why not buy Goblin bonuses in the Royal Exchange?

[RogueFireWolf]

Immediately after Reincarnation? If you don't have the Gifts to buy all Faction Upgrades immediately, it's Elves for sure, though... this is a guide for R0.

[Xnaker Eyes]

Well nvm, I found out Elven Dwarves better in my case.

[Xnaker Eyes]

Thx! I have another question, after reincarnation, which is better/faster? Elven Dwarfs or Druids?

[RogueFireWolf]

You really only need the first Autocast Trophy in R0, if any at all. You can actually complete all of R0 only getting that one, if you ignore getting Drow. In later Reincarnations, there are upgrades that make obtaining them way faster, and your first few Reincarnations are actually pretty fast, compared to R0.

If you're in Neutrals, you could go with Druids for offline. Faceless is the third Neutral Faction, and requires 36 hours in 1 run to unlock. If you're offline for 12+ hours at a time, then you could probably grab it. Most would probably say to go Faceless, but I still say Druids for now.

For Dwarfs - Fairies or Elves. If you really want to go past RGems, then Goblin Drow, but getting Drow isn't needed just yet, and R3's Mercs makes getting the 10K spells easy (though Angels can do it in a few hours at R0 while online with Autocast).

[Xnaker Eyes]

Ok, Probably will go all the way for Angels until I have all Mana/Autocast trophies.

About the second question, (the first question was about recommended factions for offline runs between the vanilla ones, the 2nd question is the same but for the unlockable factions (Titans, Druid, etc...))