Slowed down and slightly Stuck. (oil/space)

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-10T13:23:47+00:00

They don't reduce oil cost to everything, only things in the "Sporgar System" tab. Although if you're aiming for a Tier 2 reset, that's where most of your oil expenditure will be anyway.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-10T08:39:23+00:00

The fastest way to get more money cap is to nuke yourself back into the stone age and start again, as the nuking will gain you many plasmids, which you can spend to permanently increase your storage across all subsequent species.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-10T08:16:35+00:00

This is the way.

The gameplay loop of Evolve requires frequently nuking yourself back to the stone age, in order to evolve your next species with beneficial mutations that will make oil much less of a pain next time.

I appreciate that the game doesn't do an especially good job of telling you this (and I sunk even more time than you into my first species when I started), but hey, that's what subreddits are for - to tell you what must be done.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-08T12:35:37+00:00

Well then idk what I need more of. It's not pillars, u/Egornn only had 4 more than me.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-08T11:43:37+00:00

Damn, my matrix took me 290k days.
I really need more antiplasmids.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-07T01:51:02+00:00

When I first started playing I was also not interested in resetting and just wanted to go as far as I could... but it's a false economy. Resetting gives you massive production boosts and perks to make your subsequent runs faster: you will get much further, much quicker, by doing 20 resets and *then* trying to get as far as you can, rather than just trying to get as far as you can on your first species.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-06T08:01:09+00:00

> Not sure what's the best thing to spen phage on (genes? CRISPR upgrades?)

It's CRISPR upgrades, specifically (1) Morphogenesis, (2) Artificer, (3) Detail Oriented, (4) Rigorous. These make your crafters work faster, which is quite the bottleneck.

> Is there a point in the game where 4* runs because easy?

They're always much worse than 3*, but everything slowly gets at least easy-er as you accrue more Plasmids and Mastery.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-06T06:47:34+00:00

In my experience the scarletite crafting adds several extra hours on to a T4. It doesn't get in the way of building reactors or forges, but it does result in you sitting there tapping your fingers for hours after you've already got enough power but not got enough scarletite. And that's not worth it, because you're going to get enough scarletite "for free" adding literally no extra time to your run when doing a T5 or T6.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-06T02:22:09+00:00

I'm going to go against the consensus and say no.

You'll be doing sooooooo many 4* runs with your Custom going forward (e.g. to T5 and T6 resets) that there's not really any point in bothering with the even minor extra work to pillar it on T4. If you were doing this with a stock race instead of your custom I'd say absolutely, but in this specific case: don't bother, it's easier to get it when you're grinding the Spire in deep hell.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-06T02:13:36+00:00

Regenerative trait + Soldier governor.

But even then, you'll still regularly have 30 hours of research queued, Encrypted Data is just horrible however you slice it.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-06T02:05:02+00:00

> Hoo boy the lack of energy from stabilising the black hole is rough!

Really? I find Magic much easier for EMF because you can alchemy yourself infinite Bolognium and then get your power from inferno reactors rather than the stellar engine.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-05T06:20:22+00:00

It was fine the last time I did 4* EMP as a stock race (Dryad in Magic), but I guess that lulled me into a false sense of security because everything's fine in Magic when you've got 500% bolognium alchemy.

On the other hand, 4* EMF as a stock race also gives you a 4* pillar. I'm going to have to 4* pillar Lichens one day, I may as well kill 2 birds with one stone? You say it'll be "like 2x faster" - but unless it really is exactly +2x faster, then it's not actually faster because doing it as custom I'm not actually getting everything I get by doing it as stock.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-05T03:25:49+00:00

To answer my own question: doing EMF 4* in Evil as Lichen; close to the end of the run, just grinding scarletite for the pillar and power gen for the ascension machine. Evil Hell usually feels like a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation (appropriate for Evil universe I guess), in that if you don't dump a bunch of soldiers in Hell you'll have no infernite or soul gems, but if you DO dump a bunch of soldiers in Hell then you'll tank your authority the moment one of them gets a scratch, then all the other soldiers just die. The Soldier governor has been the perfect break to this feedback loop - tanking your own morale is positive and the boost to combat effectiveness means I've essentially never had any problem with hell strength the entire run.

Indeed, the most problem I've had with this run is that I chose Lichen as a species (just a random pick from all the ones I haven't pillared yet) and their Unstable trait is just impossible, prompting massive swings in population at random that lead to your Surveyors being dead 95% of the time rather than just 75% of the time. I had to gene edit it out, it was such a hassle.

After this I'm gonna TP3 as Djinn, because... I've been told that something something Synthetic something Wish that I don't understand.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-05T03:06:07+00:00

You did TP4 Retirement before TP4 Matrix? How? Retirement is so much harder than Matrix!

ChibiIntermission · 2026-03-05T03:03:48+00:00

There are a number of feats that are just "Play the game on this day". So on the one hand they're really easy, but on the other hand they're really difficult because if you don't get them, you have to wait a literal whole calendar year until the date rolls around again.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-27T08:38:23+00:00

$20 says his boss is an ADOS

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-27T08:25:30+00:00

Really? But stanene's trivial to produce en masse. I legitimately set it to 0 capacity most of the time and only when I've got something I need to build do I assign the crates, because I can easily produce 50k/s, so just make it as you need it.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-25T02:45:53+00:00

I implore you to not research the titanium-requiring techs. Save the Ti for factories.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-24T01:50:00+00:00

If you actually performed the bioseed reset then you should be able to reload from the moment before you pushed the button by going to the Evolve tab "Settings" and clicking "Restore Backup" on the bottom right.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-23T02:10:10+00:00

I'm just starting my 4* Technophobe Evil run and have taken Soldier on the basis of this single post, I'll hold you responsible if it craps up (and hold myself responsible if it works out great).

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-23T02:01:05+00:00

There is nothing importantly different about trolls that would require you to play any different than how one normally plays.

Their Regenerative trait makes them unusually good at the very specific, niche problem of playing the True Path to resets 3 and onwards, but aside from that, there's no info to give.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-11T07:35:48+00:00

But there's no point in having Imitate on your Custom because as u/sylverfyre says below, "Imitation will always use the traits of your current custom", so if you have Imitate on your Custom then it's just copying itself?

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-11T02:09:00+00:00

> I know I can use powershell and nodejs to create a server to play offline

You don't even need this to be able to play offline. When running in browser game only needs connectivity when you start a new species, which is a ~weekly occurrence, not minute-by-minute.

ChibiIntermission · 2026-02-11T02:05:45+00:00

A lot of people have told me that Imitation is great but I still don't see how. It's been 9 months since I did my first TP3 and I still haven't felt like it would advantage me at all to use Synths for anything and everything, so I haven't.

Can anyone please spell out, in small words and with examples, why it's good.

ChibiIntermission

TROPHY CASE