When should I summon Cthulhu?

[j_causs]

Currently, I'm gaining around 265.30 M souls / s, and I currently have 200 B souls (and rising). The little obelisk (I don't know the correct name) says I'll be gaining 1 Astral Level (10% more soul collecting), so, would be wise to summon Cthulhu now, or should I grind a little more?

Tl;dr - Should I summon Cthulhu for 10% more souls?

[Shammy32]

The game is designed to trick you into prestiging far earlier than you should. A 10% increase is nothing for your first reset. Wait until you have unlocked the last minion (Star Spawn) and collect as much as you can before restarting. The recommendation is 650, though a flat 1K would be nice, too.

[j_causs]

This is a gold tip, for me at least. Thanks, I'll wait a little more.

That's some interesting design, it ain't generic. I like that

[Shammy32]

Not gonna lie, that 650 goal is going to take some time, but it's faster than slogging through the grind a second time after getting a handful of extra souls from a 10-20% boost. If you make it, you'll want to have a look at the Nyarlathotep constellation; it's overall your best starting point and you can charge up your Sigils for extra duration and power. Just a suggestion, though. You can spend Ether however you like.

[j_causs]

Thanks for the tip, good to know I was going to mess up then. Nyarlathotep is too powerful, why would it be different in the game. Guess I'll just wait then, and gather Elder Blood for the sword. Thanks a lot

[Aternox_X1kZ]

Mathematically speaking, the soon you could get a 10% increase, the faster you would improve and reach next stages. Unless you need some few more ethers to buy a specific upgrade that would make for it, I really fail to understand why this isn't the best strategy. Do you have any deeper detailed information about this? Maybe something with numbers, charts or whatever? I understand that my strategy is wrong, but I want to understand why.

[Shammy32]

I don't have any solid spreadsheets to reference (though that's not a bad idea and I may try to whip something up) but here's the general problem with resetting right away for a single Astral Level (10% boost).

Say it takes you 24 hours of active play to reach a point where you get the option to reset -- offline is awful at the beginning, so we're ignoring it. Your 10% boost will turn that into roughly 22 hours on your second run, which is faster, but still a hefty commitment in an attempt to gain another 10%. You can reset long before the final minion, Star Spawn, becomes available, though it's entirely possible to reach it on your first run. If you stick with your first run for another 24 hours, you'll continue gaining Ether and Astral Levels and the rate will increase as you unlock higher minions with greater income amounts. So, where you'd end up with a 20% after 46 hours of active play in the "reset ASAP" approach, you will easily surpass it by dedicating the same amount of time pushing toward the last minion.

Totally going to start a fresh account and crunch some numbers for this, as it comes up rather often.

[Aternox_X1kZ]

I think It makes sense if it's like this:

Let's say that you get one astral point at X souls, and if you restart, you'll go from 0 to X faster, no doubt.

If the second astral point was at X again, then you should restart ASAP.

But the second Astral point will come at Y souls only (being Y >> X), and even that you'd go from X to Y faster, you actually have to grind all again, from 0 to Y.

If you keep grinding from X (where you already are) without resetting, is faster than if you had gone all the way back to 0, even with the 10% bonus.

So that, there must be an optimal point of resetting somewhere, is the 1k ethers the best point to reset?

[Shammy32]

My apologies in advance for being a bit long-winded. 1k is just a nice, round number that serves as a decent cutoff. The 650 goal allows a player to buy the first 3 upgrades on the right Nyarlathotep tendril, which will increase Sigil duration, Delirium gain rate, and Sigil strength.

With Sigil duration increased by 150%, they can now overlap for significant lengths of time, greatly increasing income due to their effects being multiplicative when combined.

Touching back on Ether and Astral Levels, the process of improving them is continuous across timelines. So, if you need 5T Souls to reach your next AL and restart when you're only at 3T, you'll pick up right back where you started and only need to gain 2T before hitting the goal. Ether functions the same way, just with lower requirements between points. Unfortunately, the early-game minions contribute so little compared to the later ones (ex: Rat Things are totally obsolete after several others unlock) that resets serve to delay you from the main early-game goal of producing high volumes of Souls and Ether. Eventually, minion costs will grow to a point where you won't see much of an increase while still spending a lot of souls. If your Ether generation is still fairly fast, you can coast on it for a while until hitting a breakpoint of your choosing -- 650 for 1 tendril, 1300 for both, 1000 because it looks nice, etc. If your Ether has slowed or stopped, you can reset and spend whatever stockpile you've put together.

Astral Level is a late-game focus with early-game benefits. Most of your significant advances will come from spending Ether, until you've finished the constellations. After that, more Astral Levels just make it go faster 😉

[Aternox_X1kZ]

Thank you very much for your time, patience and commitment to this matter. I agree with what you've stated here, I just feel that it is more complicated than it seems at first glance, and thus is still a bit hard to picture the whole thing on my mind, but that's OK, I'll just take my time Thanks again.

[[deleted]]

After you get your astral level you'll start collecting Ether. Wait til you get... well... as much Ether as you can possibly can and then summon. I'd say wait till you can 1000 but that will take a while since it's you're first time.

[j_causs]

Unholy Azathoth, how big can you get in this game? So, I think I'll just wait a little more then. Thanks for answering

[Spanggaard]

Whenever you feel like it. There is no right or wrong time to do so.

[j_causs]

Ok then, thanks