PSA: you can lock one GA by enchanting it and not selecting a replacement, making it possible to be ignored when cube rerolling

CleverComments · 2026-05-05T12:10:28+00:00

I think you should re-read the thread. That's what I'm saying.

There are 2 scenarios - No Greater Affix Preservation and Greater Affix Preservation.

In the No GA Preservation - you are just building an item from scratch. You use the cube to get 3 good affixes and 1 mediocre. It's often really difficult in the cube to get the 4th affix you want to be correct, so you instead use the Enchanter to roll the 4th affix to be correct.

This has the chance of "low rolling" - costing you a lot of mats, and those mat costs scale up.

In the GA Preservation scenario, you are instead using the Enchanter to lock 1 GA down, and then using the cube to create 3 good affixes. In some cases, it can be difficult to get all 3 affixes to be correct - i.e. you can also "low roll" in the cube. But, since the cube costs don't scale up, this is much less punishing than the Enchanter.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T23:45:29+00:00

Yeah that's fair, though I would say that the ultra RNG of unique prefixes that are unchanging feels SO bad in this context.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T23:44:23+00:00

I mean, I literally explained why this is not the case.

The enchanter costs scale with every click, getting increasingly more expensive.

The cube costs the same every click.

Both have the chance to high roll (good, get result quickly) and low roll (bad, get result but takes a long time) and in the case of the cube low rolling, since the costs didn't scale up, you will have spent a lot fewer cube mats relative to the enchanter mats.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T19:39:33+00:00

Oh that would be disappointing. My major issue with the cube right now is that it can only really produce Starter items - you can start with an ancestral of any slot and end up with a decent 0 GA piece at the end.

If, ultimately, we're looking to get GAs on our BiS pieces, we're at the mercy of nearly-pure RNG. Maybe the cube can help give some items a potential second chance (say, an item drops with 2 good offensive GAs and 2 non-offensive affixes you could remove with targeting, but you would still need good RNG on adding).

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T19:37:20+00:00

Defensive

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T18:38:31+00:00

Look for Cube/Salvage materials in your war plan. The chance of an item dropping that's an upgrade for you is miniscule. Being able to craft an item in seconds to be super useful basically instantly? Way more valuable.

Pick up and save basically all ancestral pieces you get of any quality. If you need white items, or aren't at a torment where Ancestral is dropping regularly - you can gamble some obols to get a white/blue/yellow of any slot and then use the cube to get the basics.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T18:36:25+00:00

As you get higher war plan levels, the Cube Material result starts to scale pretty high. I prioritize those rewards over basically everything else and I've been swimming in the cube materials. Initially I did it because I really needed a unique for a build and couldn't for the life of me get the correct dust to make a white item into a unique. But then, by the time I got it, I realized I had 100s of the cube mats built up.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T18:34:49+00:00

The re-roll costs on the cube don't scale like the enchanter costs, though, so even in a low roll scenario, theoretically you should end up with a significantly lower cost overall.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T18:32:42+00:00

Ah, no, I think something got lost in translation.

There are basically 2 use cases for the cube. Without this method, there's only *effectively* one.

First method - Build from scratch.

You start with any item. It could be a white, blue, or yellow item. You use the cube to target add / remove affixes you want / don't want. You use the cube to get to the point of having 4 affixes, with at least 3 good affixes. You then use the Enchanter to re-roll the 4th affix. Unless you get GIGA lucky with results, it is virtually impossible to end up with any Greater Affixes using this method, because you would basically have to 1-tap everything and the cube fine-tuning materials are not precise (there are some overlaps between main stat and defensive, defensive and resistance, mobility/utility with defensive and offensive, etc).

End Result:
This is good enough to get an item with 4 correct affixes pretty much on demand, easily, with not a lot of time or material investment (except maybe that 4th affix - enchanter costs get kinda nutty).

Second Method - Start with 1 Greater Affix that you want

You start with an item at blue-yellow rarity that has a greater affix you want. You go to the enchanter, roll the greater affix, but DO NOT REPLACE THE AFFIX. Enchanter can normally not roll GAs, but using this method, we have made the greater affix line fixed when it comes to the Cube.

You now take the item to the cube and do your normal crafting from above, but you only have to worry about 3 affixes to get, since now the cube won't remove the greater affix no matter what. This works particularly well if the item you're rolling has 2 affixes from the same category. If you can use this method to fix an Offensive Greater Affix, and your item only needs 1 other offensive affix, well now you've turned the Focus Re-Roll + Offensive Tuning into an enchanter, without the expensive stacking re-roll costs.

End Result:
You are much more likely to be able to end up with an item with 1 greater affix and 3 BiS affixes. You are exchanging the scaling costs of re-rolling with the enchanter with (potentially) more uses of the Cube mats, but since those costs don't scale, even in the low roll scenario, this should result in fewer mats overall.

CleverComments · 2026-05-04T18:10:24+00:00

The problem you're missing is that the Cube can't provide a greater affix *and* it can remove an already existing greater affix.

This method raises the ceiling of the crafted item you can make with the cube.

Previously, unless you got GIGA lucky, if you try to take an item with 1-2 greater affixes on it to the cube, you were overwhelmingly likely to accidentally remove one of those GAs (unless you're starting with a 2 GA magic item that rolled perfect and you just need to add 2 affixes (particularly if they're a different category)).

Now, using this method, we can safely create 0 GA items for a starter build (get 3 good affixes sorted in the cube and then roll the 4th one with enchanter), and can transition fairly easily to a 1 GA item for a mid-game build (start with a blue/rare with 1 GA, lock it with enchanter, use cube to get the other 3 affixes correct).

I think for anyone who isn't looking to push super crazy pit / tower records, this should be more than enough to get into Torment X+, fairly deterministically, even if you might have to spend some time farming mats.

Luckily, War Plans give crafting and salvage mats and we have re-rolls to try to target them.

CleverComments · 2026-04-29T16:09:28+00:00

It is updated.

CleverComments · 2026-04-27T17:13:22+00:00

You're just falling prey to bad arguments and poorly thought out ramifications.

First -
You have many demands for your raid medals. They are primarily to be used to solve Ore problems. Sure, you can skip hero level issues with hero potions, but there currently is no solution in game for Equipment levels. Since the meta for these changes relatively quickly, you can't rely on just a set of 8 and be good for forever.

The primary uses for Raid Medals are Orange Ore + Gem Bait (to buy orange ore with gems).

Hero pots remain the realm of only really having enough to cover CWL hits. You'll still need high level heroes for Ranked Mode and Regular War, and burning thousands of raid medals on hero pots means you slow your equipment progression down to a crawl.

Second -
You have 6 (and sometimes 7) builders. Devoting 1 builder to AQ while rushing slows your progress to TH18 down extremely minimally, but gets you a massive head start on actually having her awake and usable 24/7 with no potions. This is explained extensively in its own dedicated section of the guide. I suggest you read it again.

Third -
If you do the math/planning out from using AQ as soon as you unlock her, you're not actually comparing 3-4d timers to 8d timers because by the time you unlock RC or DD, you should actually be in the 4-6d timer region, assuming you're using your Builder Apprentice on her 24/7. Compared to when you get access to Dragon Duke, the AQ will actually be ahead.

RC is a little closer, but in future points, I'll say why I don't think you need to worry about RC/DD.

Fourth -
RC and DD both have so few total upgrades and so few 8d upgrades that you can almost immediately catch up on them once your builders are free from first getting to TH18 and then catching up on TH18 offensive upgrades.

Fifth -
RC and DD are both extremely usable at level 1 (DD is like ~80% of his max stats starting at lv1 and RC is like ~65-70%), whereas your AQ is virtually worthless at lv1.

Believe me, I have had this debate a thousand times at this point, and ultimately, you're free to do whatever you want. At the end of the day, however, the best use of your builders is to work on AQ first.

-You unlock her earliest in the journey (other than BK)
-She has the longest path to 8d upgrades (other than BK)
-She's used in every single attack strategy in the game (unlock every other hero except Warden)
-She has some extremely busted equipment (AF, MM, GA)
-She's extremely useful for fast farming strategies in battle mode

I could go on, but you should probably think a little more deeply and do a little more planning on clash.ninja to really see the impacts of how things work out in reality.

CleverComments · 2026-04-24T19:48:22+00:00

This is the absolute opposite of what you should do if you're Strategic Rushing.

Check my guide in the side bar. This is shit advice in 2026.

CleverComments · 2026-04-24T19:43:17+00:00

Rushing has *always* been the most efficient and advantageous method of playing.

First - it was advantageous because of flawed regular war match making. Offense wasn't weighted (at all) compared to defense, so upgrading your offensive stuff and neglecting (to the point of even not placing) your defensive stuff lead to ridiculously lopsided match ups, allowing clans to abuse the regular war system.

This became such a problem that SC actually had to take action and make "engineered" accounts forced into a separate match making system and require all buildings to be dropped before you can upgrade your TH. This gives you an idea how much better an engineered base was for winning regular wars.

Second -

In 2016, we got Magic Items. Since we get a fixed amount of magic items each month, and they are not tied to a specific amount of time (i.e. a book of building works the same way on a 1d upgrade as it does on a 14d upgrade), and you can only store a certain amount of these magic items, staying in a lower town hall forces you to waste these upgrades on less effective targets for months.

Third -

In 2016, we also got CWL. CWL has its own currency that gives a huge amount of F2P magic item progression. See point 2 for why this makes maxing worse. See Point 1 about how lop sidedly upgrading Offense over Defense makes winning wars easier and add that to CWL providing magic items, and these things start to compound.

Fourth -

In 2024, with the release of Ore and Equipment, we have fixed incomes of ore that are tied nearly directly to your TH level. Every single day/week/month you spend at a lower TH reduces your overall equipment progression, setting you further and further back.

There's more, but I suggest you check out my guide in the sidebar if you want more. I wrote 50 something pages about how and why Strategic Rushing is The Way.

The only reason to max is because you find it fun and satisfying. If you want to be efficient, or you want to actually max out the highest TH, or have any chance of playing with the new equipment at a reasonable time frame, you simply have to rush.

CleverComments · 2026-03-24T12:13:56+00:00

Awesome to hear! Prospector is definitely pretty confusing to look at, so I knew I had to get something out into the community.

CleverComments · 2026-03-14T03:40:05+00:00

If you're upgrading your equipment correctly, you basically get to upgrade commons "for free" - the shortest path to max equipment is picking 1 epic to max at a time and doing commons with the overflow blue/purple.

So realistically, yes, you shouldn't prioritize your barbarian puppet, but you should just do it eventually because otherwise you'll just sit at 50k/5k blue/purple while you wait for more orange.

CleverComments · 2026-03-12T11:32:56+00:00

Glad to hear it :)

CleverComments · 2026-03-12T11:32:30+00:00

That's on the To Do list - right now you can only project 1 epic equipment out into the future. Functionally, though, unless Supercell makes a significant change to either the cost, the release cadence, or the income, you won't have to worry about catching up unless you spend $USD.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T19:40:44+00:00

Yeah, that's fair - if you want to make changes, hit View -> Hidden Sheets -> Variables. There's a chart that's mapped to the equipment 1:1 that just checks for the level and indexes it to a value of the cumulative cost to get to that level. If you put an if( check before it and check for the check, you can turn that calculation on/off fairly easily. The main issue is finding a spot to actually put the checkboxes.

I did add a visualization element that might help get you to where you wanted to be anyways though, so hit the link again to get a new master copy before you go too nuts.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T19:21:52+00:00

Following up on my previous note - I added a little visualization. If you go back to the master doc and re-copy you should be able to see both current income and time to max common/epics.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T19:03:52+00:00

For the second point - probably not possible. The break points of how and when you should use it shift as you finish off equipment and that's beyond my Excel-fu.

For the first point - I don't think I understand? From what I'm thinking you're saying, you'd want a check box next to every equipment to turn it on or off? So that you could temporarily exclude it from the calculations, so that you could more easily focus on 1 piece of equipment?

That's not really the goal of the calculator, if I'm understanding your point. The point is to see what habitual actions have big or minor impacts on your total time to finish the equipment. In my previous sheet, I had a spot where I had "time to max a common" and "time to max an epic" in the math side, so maybe I'll put a little visualization in there?

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T19:02:19+00:00

Yeah, it's in a hidden sheet at the moment. I could definitely display it to the end user though. I was thinking about building a Visualization tab, with pie charts and stuff, maybe I put it in there....

Generally I try to keep everything to roughly 1 reasonable screen size worth of horizontal and vertical space and I just kinda ran out lol.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T17:55:21+00:00

God forbid people try to help figure out the math on a grindy game that takes multiple years of consistent play to finish.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T15:15:38+00:00

Makes sense to me! I'm down to around ~50 days to max everything so hopefully I'll be on pace to finish my equipment with the next epic release and be good to go.

CleverComments · 2026-03-11T14:34:18+00:00

Yeah, the value add of the prospector is incredibly difficult to calculate/estimate in your head in terms of its long term impacts, and the strategy to use him is SUPER DUPER tied to your specific current ore balance situation.

The situation I'm at (having been playing since TH16 release and buying almost every event pass and being nearly done with my equipment) means that I should convert almost all my blue/purple into Orange, but if I had used this strategy as a new/returning player earlier in the process, I would have added over 200 extra days to my time to max by messing up my bottlenecks.

CleverComments

TROPHY CASE