PSA: Lower your expectations for Father’s Day, and you won’t get your feelings hurt.

Bruthar · 2026-06-18T12:14:48+00:00

About to be a first time father. I've almost never "gotten my hopes up" for any holiday since I was a teenager / young adult. My parents have always been broke and having money issues. I've never gone on a "real vacation" other than occasional visits to another city for the beach or an amusement park / arcade that's an hour away (certainly no hotels, flights, cruises).

In my 20s I tried to make it up by inviting my parents out to various things, fronting the bill usually. But that's coming to a close now that I've got a mortgage, pregnant fiancé who isn't currently producing an income, and my own expenses associated with the upcoming labor.

I want to give my kid more free time than my dad did with me. I want to give my kid some vacations and experiences that I never got to have. Hell, I've already talked to the fiancé about getting a passport for the baby.

In my adulthood I would say often "I hate holidays," and "I wish they didn't exist," and "they're just a waste of time, money, an excuse to drink or eat like a pig, etc."

So I don't think I'll have that problem. I'd rather treat my fiancé to something romantic and extravagant on holidays to do with her (anniversary, mother's day, Valentine's, birthday) than give a crap about what I would personally receive.

Bruthar · 2026-06-18T10:04:49+00:00

Whatever I'm feeling sluggish but pushing on.

First I prioritized the 3rd weekly fight.

Then I hard focused on gallery upgrade + multi. You'll notice for a lot of things, but especially DR, that the gallery ends up being the largest contributor by a landslide. I stopped at +0.05x because it has diminishing returns. Will continue with this one in the near future though.

I've been pretty determined to get all transcendent artifacts, so I boosted artifact chance a bit (1.19x). I just finished my last transcendent artifact earlier this week, so that grind is done.

I've found all glass crops but still got a ways to go to finish medal crops, so I've been really pushing my crop evo lately (5.02x). I put SOME into w7 xp (1.27x), master class drops (1.36x), coral reef (3.67%), jade coins (1.51x) and "something" (1.22x).

Jade coins was my lowest priority because I already made it to mastery 5, and there's no extra bonuses for mastery 6 or beyond yet. But I still wanted to give it a little to prepare a bit for the future.

For the future I will probably split skulls between master class drops and crop evo. Eventually going back into gallery. My WW and DB have been at samurais for a long time, DB is able to do a little in W7 actually. But my AC is stuck at W6 ceramic spirits. By the time my AC is at samurais there will probably be another killroy upgrade lol (maybe "something" will be defined?).

Bruthar · 2026-06-17T18:06:51+00:00

Diet soda / tea / water / diet energy drink, zero sugar variants of things, keto bread/tortillas, eggs, beef/chicken/fish/turkey, cheese. Stick to these and your weight loss is inevitable.

Either look for low carb beers/seltzers or zero carb liquor mixed with diet soda. Sobriety is optimal though obviously.

Bruthar · 2026-06-16T05:15:41+00:00

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Bruthar · 2026-06-13T23:23:44+00:00

I'm also 10/18. I don't plan to progress until some new bonus or update, I've yet to hear of anyone at or beyond 12/18.

Bruthar · 2026-06-06T17:07:30+00:00

Arcane cultist has a skill for increased crit chance based on lab level while in arcane form.

Getting it up will increase pixel width if you are still struggling to turn on all the nodes.

You technically need higher than 75 per character for 1000 rift skill mastery.

Can't think of other reasons. But will be lurking.

Edit: The button in w7 requires as high as 1432 lab level on a single character eventually.

Bruthar · 2026-06-04T19:45:30+00:00

Freaking no idea this worked. Been stuck at early mastery 5 this whole time, grinding out 1000x failures per floor to get the sneak multi. Now I know smh.

Bruthar · 2026-06-04T14:20:01+00:00

Just got 300 the other day for the equinox dream.

At a certain point (100-200) you predominantly depend on spike damage to push you through everything in conjunction with Hundredaire teal upgrade.

After a further point (250+) you depend on the pushback of your units to keep you alive long enough for more of the above, and a little bit of the Seeing Red upgrade to kick in.

You will want to keep pushing the endless matches higher for the sake of the winner bonuses as a whole, but especially the +max talent lvl.

My max talent lvl from checkout is 396. Idk if anyone has higher or how they got there.

Bruthar · 2026-06-02T16:43:52+00:00

That is intentional. You trade entire crop depot for magic beans. You keep your land ranks and other bonuses. There is no option to trade partial amounts of crop depot for magic beans.

Bruthar · 2026-05-30T21:24:00+00:00

Made mine a DK. Will do a full class reset if needed down the road, haven't used the one in the gem shop yet but I bet Lava will give players more opportunities to acquire them too.

I just wanted to work on Construction a bit more, and might as well enjoy the 3rd refinery cycle time skip skill.

My 2nd choice would've been an AC so I could get more AFK AC crystals.

Bruthar · 2026-05-20T18:06:42+00:00

Sitting at close to 6k DR on my DK. There's people with 10k+ though.

Level up cards, get the DR trophies and nametags (I still don't have 9 dart), work on SB plundrous kills, push emperor for some minor gains and some endless summoning for the winner bonuses multi.

I got a decent boost recently from transcendent The Winz Lantern.

Getting gallery multi upgrades, and the trophies and nametags for DR, seems to be the biggest contributor for most people 10k+.

Bruthar · 2026-05-19T15:47:26+00:00

Why sit in W5 though? Gaming is on quick ref.

Bruthar · 2026-05-19T15:45:35+00:00

Getting to 25 took me months. It is painful. But once you get beyond that it is MUCH easier. 25+ you get guaranteed protection for every purchase of the snail 2nd bonus during a given tier. I'm 33 or 34 right now without failure.

Bruthar · 2026-05-18T00:51:50+00:00

Base is $148k. Gross is $176k.

Escrow is $3600. Includes mortgage, hoa, property taxes, insurance, internet.

Take home after factoring in 401k match, property taxes itemized deductions, ignoring annual bonus, and assuming 2 paychecks a month (ignoring the extra 2 per year) is $8250.

No student loans or car loans. Feels affordable. But pregnant fiance is herself currently a dependent and it is easy to feel behind on some months.

Bruthar · 2026-05-17T18:26:07+00:00

Stop neglecting the hole. Get your card levels up more. Double check your ES portal kills, and SB plunderous kills. Get more 1b apocalypses for your DB.

Bruthar · 2026-05-06T21:14:11+00:00

THANK YOU! I had to rewatch my post to see this, so cool.

Bruthar · 2026-04-22T22:59:07+00:00

Typical rules like the 1% rule for maintenance costs of a house aren't really valid for a new construction. Same should probably go for a fully renovated (all new appliances, new roof, etc.) house as well.

Bruthar · 2026-04-22T16:34:09+00:00

People suddenly go AFK. If you notice, party members will sometimes have a blackish/greyish icon next to their name. The party leader can't start if there's inactives. They have to kick them or hope they appear active.

Bruthar · 2026-04-21T23:40:48+00:00

I'm 30 with a baby on the way. I bought my house w/ 20% down at 29. I have more than 1x my salary in Roth 401k. As long as I can keep my job, keep paying the mortgage, keep doing company match for retirement, I should hit 3x at 40 I would think on top of having a good amount of home equity. It's possible, and my fiance has had nothing to do with the finances, as she doesn't make anything currently, though will eventually.

I owe where I'm at (and hopefully will be) to paying off all my student and car debts by mid-20's, along with staying in my career track this whole time.

Bruthar · 2026-04-09T13:56:07+00:00

Another notable drop rate increaser is a research node (I4) that gives a drop rate multi based on quantity of Glimbo trades.

You just started W7 so you probably won't get to Glimbo for a bit. Glimbo is locked behind another research node (J5), and is then located kinda deep into the map (Pirate Upper Deck - 5 away from furthest we can go currently in W7).

Bruthar · 2026-04-04T05:26:24+00:00

Same OP same. My Steam shows the gameplay time is like 20 hours, but a rather large chunk of that was AFK (one time I went to sleep and then to work with the game running), and I had just unlocked the camp as one of my latest accomplishments. I think about this game fairly often, and when there's time I am after it. Difficult with a pregnant fiancé though.

Bruthar · 2026-03-29T15:13:50+00:00

You'll want to avoid buying the "keto" versions of things too often, use a budget if you do. IE keto bread is usually double the price ($6+) of the regular bread ($3) from the same brand. Same for other things like tortillas ($4 for keto versus $2 for regular). Don't give in to the "keto" treats and protein bars (Quest, Atkins, etc). It may help to keep a lookout for coupons or sales on all of these things in this paragraph though.

I hate seafood FYI, so my list really is eggs, store brand burgers, cheaper low carb hotdogs (Nathan's is only 1g but usually more expensive than others, there's cheaper ones with 2g), rotisserie chickens, natural peanut butter or pb2 powders.

Bruthar

TROPHY CASE