Faq

Taken from the "Tips and Tricks" post in the game's Kongregate forums found here with permission from the author.

When should I travel?

It is recommended that you do not travel except when you can hit your next mark. The two exceptions to this guideline is that you should travel around 125 and 1.5M on your way to the 500 and 6M marks, respectively. The reasoning behind this is that it is easier to get to 500 and 6M if your effective production rates are multiplied by 5x and ~4x by travelling in between marks instead of going for a 20x and 15x boost.

What does completing a trial do?

Completing a single trial increases the gold bonus for that stat by 1% per Attribute Level. Dexterity grants a bonus of 1.25% per Attribute Level. For example, a successful Intelligence trial at 10 Intelligence will improve your gold bonus from Intelligence (and therefore increase the experience bonus from Quick Minds) by 10%. However, passing 10 trials in a single stat will reward you with one crystal.

How do I get crystals?

1) Complete trials (this is very easy, you shouldn't use real money. After a few days in game (5+) you have enough crystals for everything you need)

2) Buy them with Kreds

3) Find the secret

What is the best way to spend AP points?

There is no single best way to spend AP points in the current version of the game. In the earliest versions, Dexterity had an obvious advantage over all of the others. Now that the attributes are more or less equal to one another, let me go ahead and give a quick rundown of each attribute and then allow you to decide what you should focus on. Zeeeeeej's build guidelines:
 * Strength: The Power skills unlocked at levels 5, 15, and 25 are only beneficial to players at higher levels (20+). At 5 Strength, the player needs a total equipment level of 2000 to receive a 100% bonus to the gold bonus derived from the Strength attribute. Though this is a fantastic bonus to players with 2000+ total equipment levels, this will not really benefit those who are still in the earlier stages of the game. It is in your best interest to avoid leveling Strength until you are well above 2000 total equipment level as other attribute skills will benefit you far greater earlier in the game.
 * Intelligence: The Quick Mind skills at 5, 15, and 25 are very effective for players of all playstyles and stages of the game. You should prioritize getting to 5 Intelligence as it will add a +150% bonus to EXP gain that gets stronger as you successfully complete Intelligence trials. Getting to 5 Intelligence earlier will allow you to benefit more from the trial boosts, therefore you will want to aim for 5 Intelligence before reaching Level 10. The Master Engineer skills at 10, 20, and 30 are still not that great for accelerating through the game as the amount of ore production it provides is still incredibly weak. I advise you not to push past 5 Intelligence until much, much later in the game (35+) as the EXP bonus from 15 Intelligence is just not worth skipping out on the Level 5 and 10 skills from other attributes.
 * Dexterity: The Perception skill line unlocked at 5, 15, and 25 Dexterity are of the most effective in the game. Dexterity 5 is essentially a 2.8x multiplier to the gold ore found in the mine (20% chance for 10x and the 80% chance for 1x is effectively 0.2(10) + 0.8(1) = 2.8x to gold ore on average), which is where a majority of your gold income comes from. For this reason, players of all playstyles will want to prioritize 5 Dexterity to the same degree as 5 Intelligence- both are very important skills and, if achieved by player level 10, will benefit the player significantly in the long run. Idle players will see diminished returns with leveling Dexterity past 5, so this is where I recommend you stop if you are utilizing an idle build. Active players will see immense benefits through leveling Dexterity to 20.
 * Agility: There’s a bit of a controversy as to how much the skills from Agility benefit active playstyles, but I am under the impression that they help all playstyles significantly. You may want to avoid leveling Agility at all, or at least not past 5 Agility, if you are an active player as it currently undetermined the degree to which 5+ Agility will benefit you. That being said, the Agility skill tree is incredibly important for idle players. After idle players get 5 points into Intelligence and Dexterity, I highly suggest dumping the remainder of your attribute points into Agility until you can benefit from the Power skill at 5 Strength. Dash, Sprint, Accelerate, Give Me the Box, and Mining Expertise III can combo with one another, which makes Agility so powerful.
 * Idle build: 5/5/5/ALL. Push for 5 points into Dexterity, then go for 5 points into Intelligence (or reverse the order depending on what you personally think would benefit you most, I have no data to support one method or the other). Start levelling Agility until your total equipment level is at least 2000 and then level to 5 Strength, though you may want to wait until you are closer to 3000 or 4000 total equipment level before doing this as it may be better to keep pushing Agility here. Keep leveling Agility from this point on. Play with Strength a little bit if you feel like it: Picking up 10 Strength somewhere past player level 30 might be beneficial, but it is hard to determine if it would be more beneficial to keep spending the points in Agility. Pushing for another 10 points into Intelligence for Quick Minds II is not a great choice in idle playstyles as doubling your EXP gain from Intelligence’s gold bonus again is most likely not as effective as placing those 10 points into Agility. Same goes for Dexterity- the idle player will not benefit from Stamina regeneration whatsoever and Precision II just doesn’t compensate for the lack of levels in Agility and lack of an effective Level 10 skill from an attribute.
 * Active build: 5+/5+/20/0 or 5+/5+/20+/5+. Your first priority is getting to Dexterity Level: 10. You are severely limited by stamina regeneration in the beginning of the game and the No Wasted Moves skill unlocked with 10 Dexterity will effectively double your progress rate. From here I strongly suggest dumping 5 points into Intelligence to grab Quick Mind I. You’ll probably want to start aiming for 20 Dexterity at this point, but be sure to grab 5 Strength as soon as your total equipment level is in the 2000-3000 range. You'll want 20 Dexterity for more gold gains through Precision I and II, a 100% chance to pass Dexterity trials at Level 18 (making your effective rate of passing ANY trial roll to be 25%), and an additional boost to your stamina regeneration. From here you can start focusing on whatever you want as the upgrades at this point in the active playstyle all have specific strengths and weaknesses that cannot be compared definitively until the formulas are more understood. All Strength skills benefit you a lot, but the increased smash chance might actually decrease Smash II and III chances depending on how the game handles random events. Quick Minds II is great, but you will receive no tangible benefit from Master Engineering and the lack of an effective Level 10 attribute skill is not desirable in my opinion. Getting to 25 Dexterity for Precision III will help, but those 5 points might have been better spent into Str/Int/Agi. And, of course, there is the question as to the efficacy of Agility with active builds. Go for whatever you feel is best. As the meta develops, I will be happy to report my findings here as well as the general consensus.

In which order should I upgrade my equipment?

The general guideline I follow is to keep all equipment around the same price to next level. Your hammer becomes the highest leveled piece of equipment and the necklace/belt become the least leveled this way. Once you are nearing 100, 200, 300... for all pieces of equipment you are going to want to stop focusing on the pieces that have already reached the requirement for the next set. Start focusing on the next piece of equipment to hit the requirement and occasionally level your hammer when you can afford the next 10 levels in only a few seconds of gameplay.

What is a good encounter?

Simply put, anything that isn't a cross roads or dead end is a good encounter. Upgrade the belt to level 150 to improve the good encounter chance to 100%. This noticeably will improve your progress rate, therefore Belt 150 is a good thing to push for when your equipment is in the 100-150 range.

What perk should I get at level 10/20/30? Third Eye is a must have for all builds as you will only have half of the total gold production possible without it. Tranquility is necessary for idle builds to be able to compare to active builds and it does not benefit active players. Fleetfooted is a great choice for active builds as it increases active gains by approximately 33% or 50% depending on their Stamina regeneration. Additionally, no other perk compares to the benefit given by Fleetfooted at level 20 for active users. Third Eye is the Level 20 choice for idle players as the double gold production is considerably more important than doubling ore production through Harmony and is almost certainly better than increasing Dash and Sprint chances by 100% and 50%, respectively. Give Me the Box seems to be the best perk available to Level 30 players of all playstyles as getting 10 steps per treasure is a significantly strong boost to the overall speed of the game. Note: Depending on how random events (i.e., Smash) are handled by the game code, Built to Dig (+20% Smash I chance) may decrease your Smash II and III chances. Until this is confirmed, please be wary that you may be slightly harming your optimal progression by selecting Built to Dig.
 * Level 10: Third Eye if active, Tranquility if idle.
 * Level 20: Fleetfooted if active, Third Eye if idle.
 * Level 30: Give Me the Box if active or idle. Reset your perks if active and replace Fleetfooted with something like Built to Dig, Treasure Hunter, or Speed of Light as the additional 1 stamina/sec is not as beneficial here as you most likely have 20 Dexterity at this point.

How do I keep progressing once I reach the 6M mark?

Getting to 6M distance is the last mark that is included in the current version of the game at this time of writing. Once you get here, you can keep playing normally to increase your distance, and thus progression, by whatever you want. I personally travelled again around 36M total distance to apply an effective 6x multiplier to my progress. From this point on, your progress will be very slow. Keep completing trials to farm crystals, save up for the two 50 crystal items in the Store. Once your progress has come to a relative halt, you can try farming trial bonuses to improve your attribute multipliers. Completing trials makes the gold bonuses gained from attribute points increase slightly and the boosted bonuses will keep after using an AP reset item. You would ideally be level 36 before you begin this grind so you are able to have two attribute points at level 18 (for a 100% chance of passing a trial). Just let your game run and allow your two Level 18 attribute points to build up the bonus and earn you crystals. Let this continue until you have earned 15 crystals from completing trials or until you are satisfied with the bonus that only a few points in that attribute will give you upon reset. Rinse and repeat until you have ridiculously high multipliers, reset your attributes one last time, and allocate them according to your preffered playstyle. You should now be able to push for the next 5-6x multiplier from distance.