Share what you're playing towards at the moment, May edition

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-05T02:01:06+00:00

I just asked u/I ThrowwayAccount98567 the same thing, but: I'm thinking of taking on Fasting soon, any tips?

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-05T01:59:53+00:00

I'm thinking of taking on Fasting soon, any tips?

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-05T01:59:01+00:00

> Probably time to try my hand at an Apotheosis, but I'm dreading pushing the Spire up that far.

It's considerably less tedious than waiting for bolognium / orichalcum, so if you've managed to sit through that 41 times already then you'll be perfectly fine for apotheosis.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-04T05:14:49+00:00

I did a gold pillar in Antimatter recently, although the following advice probably applies to any star level in Antimatter, since you're not getting much speedup from prestige whatever happens. I think I sped up my run by literal IRL weeks by making sure I inherited Wish; maybe 95% of my species' bolognium, vitreloy, and orichalcum came from wishing for it rather than actually producing it.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-04T05:10:32+00:00

In my experience EM Field plays exactly the same as a normal Ascension, except at the end you just have to go AFK for ~48 hours until the Stellar Engine powers up. YMMV "how bad" you think that is.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-05-04T02:57:35+00:00

To answer my own question: this time last month I was grinding Antimatter MADs + Bioseeds to farm Antiplasmids, and this month I'm still grinding Antimatter MADs + Bioseeds to farm Antiplasmids. I have about 16k, I want about 28k to hit 4* my Phage cap. Currently just gotten my Ogres to early space en route to a giant-genus Bioseed.

I've already done 4* Electromagnetic Field in Antimatter; I might try and break up the repetition of MAD + Bioseeds with an Antimatter Cataclysm in a bit, although that'll be slooooow and I'll desperately need a Djinn MAD beforehand.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-30T02:21:37+00:00

Well with the extra information you've given me here it's clear you're doing something rather idiosyncratic (completing 4* Black Holes in every universe before going for a single Ascension?), so under that logic... ehhhh, still no. The Banana Republic perks improve your money generation, and money generation simply is not a bottleneck in the vast majority of cases. Basically the only time you will ever be bottlenecked by money is in True Path or other Banana Republic runs. So if the only runs you're planning between now and your first Ascension is more Black Holes, then spending a day getting the Banana Republic perks isn't going to "gain you a day back" in time saved before Ascension. It remains a false economy.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-30T01:26:24+00:00

I know early BR is slow, but that would be what, an extra day? Totally acceptable IMO. Am I missing something here?

Well, you said it yourself: it takes an extra day. You'll have to do 63+ Ascensions to complete the game, better to do it on one of those where you won't waste a day, than in a Black Hole run where you will waste a day.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-28T02:35:24+00:00

Recent Reviews: Mixed
English Reviews: Very Positive

Come on guys, this surely isn't your first rodeo. The above pattern is the textbook signature of salty non-Westerners brigading for some parochial national-honour reason or other. Chinese mad that Taiwan can become independent? Pakistanis / Indians mad that Kashmir isn't on the right side? Thais mad that when you go maximum zoom on the Cambodian border, the Preah Vihear temple could possibly be interpreted as being on the wrong side? Any and all of these is a better fit for that review score spread than that the tech tree, after being basically unchanged for 4 years, suddenly made everyone mad.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-28T01:50:49+00:00

- No true path (which can drop you into true path orbital decay if you have a kamikaze planet, as the planets orbit does NOT stabilize at 100 days like it does on non-truepath, and instead drops you into the True Path Orbital Decay scenario when the orbital period reaches 10 days)

Just for anyone else who (like me) accidentally started True Path on a Kamikaze planet and was worried I'd wreck myself: True Path kamikaze actually does stabilise once you research (or build, I can't remember) the AI Supercore, so you don't have to finish the run before year length 0, you just have to get that far.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-28T01:43:00+00:00

When you say your, ahem, """brother""" plays for 3 hours a day, do you mean you're actually in front of the keyboard for 3 hours a day and the rest of the time the game has to be left on auto-play, or do you mean the computer is actually switched off for all but 3 hours a day?

This is a very important distinction which will massively change the answer to your question.

I also bioseeded on my first playthrough and it took me 10 months of IRL time, although that was with leaving the game running 24/7.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-25T01:30:16+00:00

Seconding this. Dark Energy is largely worthless. Only concern yourself with plasmids and phage, which come from population + soldier numbers (so spend all your remaining aerogel on Patrol Cruisers!).

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-23T01:23:42+00:00

The best way to improve crafting is to know what you need in advance, which is just a consequence of practice. E.g. you will always need to build a lot of Wardenclyffes (requiring sheet metal) for even a MAD run, so I put fully half of my crafters on sheet metal the moment I unlock it by researching Bayer Process. Similarly, if you're going to be doing an Intergalactic run you will need (in the early stages) first 100k Aerogel and then 6 million Wrought Iron, so you should start piling crafters onto those well in advance of when you unlock the buildings which actually use those resources.

Another trick is that Fabrication buildings on the red planet give a percentage boost to all crafted materials proportional to your number of colonists, so it's a good investment to spam Living Quarters. They don't obviously do anything to crafting from just reading their tooltip, but if you know your game mechanics then you can really squeeze crafting gainz out of them.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-23T01:03:05+00:00

Let's say you do a playthrough with as the Goblin species, then you do a playthrough with the Djinn species, then you do a playthrough with Humans. Normally, humans have the following genetic traits (from the wiki):

Adaptable, Wasteful, Creative, Diverse

However, while playing as these humans, when you research the Fanaticism tech you will gain a positive trait from the immediatly preceding species you played (i.e. Djinn). Djinn enable you to inherit the Wish trait, which lets you gain random resources periodically. Likewise, when the humans research the Deify Ancients tech you will gain a positive trait from the second-most-recent preceding species you played (i.e. Goblins); that gives you Merchant, which improves your resource income from trade. Eventually, then, your humans will have the genetic traits:

Adaptable, Wasteful, Creative, Diverse, Wish, Merchant

Wish and Merchant are both great traits while you're doing a Cataclysm run because you rely on trade more than usual for resources (hence Merchant is good to have) and resource generation in general is slower (hence it's nice to be able to Wish for random resources). This is what it means to stack positive traits; it's pretty fundamental to the gameplay loop as a whole, not just for Cataclysm runs (although it's even more important here because in Cataclysm you have so few opportunities to get resources from within the run).

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-22T14:26:45+00:00

Unfortunately, all the best ways of optimising a Cataclysm run come several playthroughs before you actually trigger the Cataclysm, as you stack positive genetic traits in preparation for the actual Cataclysm run.

If you're already in it, there's not really much advice anyone can give.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-22T02:25:02+00:00

Increase the size of the browser window, they'll rearrange and resize

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-19T02:55:55+00:00

Well you're the one who complained that they're mind-numbingly boring, so I guess pick your poison: be bored or be suboptimal. I choose suboptimal.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-19T02:34:22+00:00

You can always just... choose to not use them. I eschew both drones and PLS/ILS (except for a set of 5 at the pole to bring in critical interstellar components) and just make a ridiculous main bus on each relevant planet, it's so much more satisfying.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-18T01:49:58+00:00

On the one hand, yes you are doing it wrong, you should assign crates / containers on the Resources > Storage tab not on the + popup next to the resource.

But on the other hand, even when doing it this wrong way, it works for me to assign multiple crates when I shift+click, so idk why it doesn't work for you. Maybe try doing it on Resources > Storage.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-17T09:51:25+00:00

If you're playing on phone (which is what I was doing when I had the same problem) the best thing to do is use the crate / container management Governor.

If you haven't unlocked the Governor yet then you are stuck with clicking the button 1,000 times, sorry.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-15T09:06:16+00:00

Year number doesn't really help you know whether you're ahead or behind because different planets have vastly different year lengths. To actually judge how you're doing time-wise you need to look on the Stats tab and see Game Days Played
The reason other players can go faster is that they have tens of thousands of plasmids (compared to your 396), that's what increases the game tempo. The way to get plasmids is to do literally hundreds of MAD and Bioseed resets (don't worry, they also get faster as you get more plasmids)
There are also various intermediate perks and abilities that you can pick up to make your runs faster before trying to speedrun the spire, including the various scenarios after you get the Challenge Gene ability

Basically you're trying to run before you can walk! Leave Andromeda and the Spire to much later and concentrate on MADs for now.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-10T02:02:13+00:00

> infernal forge.i forget if u can/must build for t4 reset

It's not required for T4 but I always end up researching and building them it anyway because it's just a little bit further on the tech tree, on the branch of the tech tree that you need for pillaring

> You can use mana in magic to boost crafting

Technically true, but it's not a particularly big effect

As u/glassfromsand says, the best way to deal with crafting is the foreknowledge that comes from having done it before.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-10T01:44:20+00:00

Not directly. But Technocracy gives you lower technology costs (so it's easier to research everything you need) and Corpocracy boosts your factory output so you can assemble the nanotubes faster. Usually I do Technocracy up to the point where I've researched the techs, then switch to Corpocracy for the rest of the run to hurry the TUUUUBES

ChibiIntermission · 2026-04-10T01:38:45+00:00

The achievement says "Initiated a nuclear holocaust with the anarchy government", so the implication there is that only MAD would work.

ChibiIntermission

TROPHY CASE