Idle Wizard R0 Progression Guide – This guide is meant to cover almost everything not covered in the class guides.
Idle Wizard R0 Progression Guide
This includes general stages of the game, tips on how to approach things, which classes tend to be best at what ranges, and the like.
It’s not something that tells you game by game how to proceed, but instead covers major additions to the game loop and things of that nature.
If you’re not familiar with Discord[discord.gg], it might be worth going through even earlier sections that you think you’ve already covered, as they may contain valuable information that you’ve missed but would help you make significant progress.There is a lot of information in this guide, and it’s okay if you don’t read it all at once.
I wouldn’t recommend reading too far beyond where you are, as it can be too confusing to see talk about features you haven’t unlocked yet.
It’s okay to take breaks and ask questions on Discord (although if it’s answered here, I can’t guarantee you won’t get a rude response).
This guide covers everything from the beginning to your first sphere.
This is an incredibly flexible stage of the game and most things will work.
You can get by with almost any T1 class from 0-e300 mysts and all T2 classes will at least give you a profit.
It is worth noting that as of at least April 2024, most of the T1 class guides are quite out of date.
It’s usually better to ask on Discord than to follow them (at least when it comes to item recommendations; the spell selection is usually at least passable).
However, with the wiki migration there is pressure to update them, so if that changes this guide will be updated.
Quick note: Which classes are best at which ranges is incredibly hard to evaluate for a variety of reasons.
This is mostly because you want to go back to the same mystic ranges, you have to get into the sphere, which gives you more resources to power you up next time.
It’s also impossible to calculate which one is the best in a given range, because that involves factoring in every upgrade, and that’s just not something that’s really worth doing.
This guide will provide some options for each range, but it’s worth noting that this is honestly mostly personal experience and mileage may vary.
Learning the Game: Phases and Lengths of Exile
Before we actually get into progression, it’s worth looking at how the game works in general.
I’m putting this section here because it’s incredibly important, but if you’re new to the game I’d recommend playing a bit (probably getting on e80 mysts, which is pretty easy even without that knowledge) to get a feel for the game and a few different classes.
This game is divided into two prestige levels: Exile and Realm.
This guide covers up to your first realm that resets your secret – the primary resource you get from Exile.
Mysteries are based on a milestone based on the highest amount of mana you’ve achieved in that realm, scaled by the square root – for an approximate amount of your mana mystery, subtract 12 from the exponent (the number after the “e”) of your mysteries, then halve it.
In Exile, you’re locked into one class, so you want to maximize the amount of mana you get with that class.
This means that we divide our exiles into several different “phases” – usually 3-5. These most universal phases are:
Buildup: This is the vast majority of Exile.
This varies the most by class, but always consists of stacking some combination of accumulated spells, augments, a class-specific resource, sometimes pet exp, and other things, depending on the class.
Void Mana: In this phase we maximize all our void mana gain.
We put as much Void Mana on Entity gear as we can and then use Void Radiance or Voidterror (depending on the class) to get a lot of Void Mana at once.
This usually takes 1-5 minutes because the VM is breaking down, so it’s not worth it taking much longer.
Burst: This phase is when we stack as many gain boosts as possible (usually 5 incantations and 1 evocation per spell bar, but it depends).
This takes a minute at most, as it’s just linear gains over time and VM drops.
There are also some other stages that only certain classes do:
“Snap”: This is a very short phase where we stack as much spell power as possible to “snap” the effect on certain spells.
There are only a few spells that don’t update their spell effectiveness mid-cast (notably Gem Resonance), so not every class does.
Pet Leveling: Some classes have the same pet for the entire exile (the Chronomancer being a notable one from T1), so they don’t need to actively level their pet.
However, many others need to quickly switch pets between Buildup and Void Mana and Burst, so they can spend a few seconds (usually just the time it takes for Idle Mode to activate) with Pet EXP bonuses to get a few extra levels on their pet.
There may also be some that are class-specific – for example, an Umbramancer doesn’t phase Void Man (because it doesn’t have one), and instead spends some time stacking Umbral Rage as a sort of pseudo. – phase of grasping.
For such things, refer to the individual class guides or try to figure it out yourself.
It’s incredibly important to be aware of these stages because doing them allows you to make MUCH more profit than before.
All these stages take place within a single exile and are often repeated.
For example, you can stay in Buildup for an hour and then do a VM+Burst (which probably takes about 2-3 minutes).
You get upgrades from your new mana, which can increase the amount of VMs you could get, as well as more profit, so it’s often worth it to “reburst” by remaking VM+(Snap if possible)+Burst.
Length of Exile – Idle Wizard R0 Progression Guide
Exiles can be as long as you want or as short as you want.
In general, as you progress higher in mysts, it will take more and more time to make a profit, but this is offset by having more memories/shards (which aren’t exactly in the scope of this guide, but I’m mentioning them because the knowledge applies for the whole game).
As a result, “optimal exile lengths” are incredibly variable, and no one will be able to give you a solid answer for this class within the exact myst range.
The real answer is just trial and error that pops once in a while to see how much you make.
Again, as we learned in the previous phase section, you sit in the build up for the duration of the exile and then vm+burst at the end for a few minutes.
If someone tells you to do an hour long exile, that doesn’t mean you should spend 20 minutes on the setup set, 20 minutes on the vm set, and 20 minutes on the burst.
It should be more like 55m-1h for build up and then 1-2 minutes for vm and ~1 minute for burst.
Shorter exiles are almost always better mysts per hour, but as you level up enough in mysts, you won’t get much profit from say a 10 minute exile, so you have to go a bit longer.
Then you will have to extend again and so on.
On subsequent realms, the memories and shards change when this happens, so again it’s impossible to give an answer to the question “how long should my exile be?”
Instead, you should simply try different pile lengths, break, and if that’s not enough to make a significant profit (how much that means exactly is up to you), go back to the pile for a longer period.
Pre-Items: 0-e80 Mysts
The Native Freshfood: A Druid Introduction wiki will introduce you to the basic mechanics of the game and help you get started with Druid.
Unlike most T1 guides, it is at least partially updated.
I would recommend following this guide for at least e30 mysts, although you can of course turn off if you really don’t like Druid. It’s your game!
Expulsions in this section tend to be very short – 10-15 minutes or less.
Challenges, Expeditions and Trials – Idle Wizard R0 Progression Guide
This is just a quick note on what to do with these mechanics once you unlock them.
You unlock challenges at e12 mysts.
You should do every challenge you can – they are all doable once you unlock them and have very good rewards.
Some are fine to put off (especially the ones that only give skins), but all should be finished soon.
Expeditions are incredibly important for two reasons.
They reward catalysts and trophies (depending on the stage of the expedition, see the Data section of the Expeditions wiki page).
Catalysts are fairly weak at this stage of the game, but are still a nice gain boost; trophies, on the other hand, are incredibly important.
Trophies are an item slot (you can carry 2 at a time) and the only way to get them is through expeditions.
Since this isn’t tied to Cdust, trophies will usually be legendary much sooner than most other items, giving you an extra slot to enchant.
If you still don’t know what this usually means, don’t worry.
When you get a little further and unlock items, come back and read this section again.
You should do the expedition phase closest to your expedition level and gradually move up as you level up.
You can only idle expeditions.
Manual expeditions are faster in time, but having idle expeditions always on in the background is more than enough.
No one bothers to do manuals, really.
Expedition stats don’t matter if you’re idle.
If you choose to do manual expeditions, for trophies or otherwise, read the Deck Building topic.
Trials are also incredibly important, but not at this stage of the game.
Runes generate very slowly (basically 1 per 24 hours) and you can use one to start one of 5 trial types.
All trial types have their own rewards, but at this point you should pay attention to two in particular: Patience and Innovation.
You should always have Trial of Patience running, as it can reward you with an additional rune and thus gain additional trials to complete.
It lasts for 24 hours, so you should be able to set it and forget it.
With any extra runes (ie if you have a rune and generate another rune before your Trial of Patience runs out) you should do Trials of Innovation as these reward Researches – another item slot that is independent of Cdust.
Since runes are incredibly rare to begin with, it will take a while (probably quite a few spheres) to max out your research.
Don’t worry too much about it; just let it happen over time.
Trial milestones increase various things such as Cdust income, Edust income, rune income and a wide variety of other stats.
They’re important, but they reset when you change realms, so it’s incredibly hard to get anything meaningful out of them in the early realms.
Don’t focus on them as they are usually small bonuses for whatever you can get in this stage and let them happen.
Back to our regular schedule…
Class recommendation – Idle Wizard R0 Progression Guide
The druid wizard expires around e50 (although you can continue to use Druid if you want or turn it off sooner).
These are some other class options in this category. (the formatting will be particularly bad here, oops)
Demonologist: Use Hellstorm and other similar unique spells to level pets far beyond other classes!
It’s one of the few classes that actually works at 0 myst – an alternative to Druid, albeit a weaker one.
It gets a massive boost in unlocking T2 pets on e60 mysts – it may even be the strongest class on e60-~e70, as it can be difficult to use T2 pets on any other class at this point.
It’s improved quite a bit recently in terms of scaling, but I’ve yet to see how it actually affects the scaling of this class outside of that range.
Necromancer: Stack up autoclicks and a few spells and use Zombies to massively benefit from Idle Bonus/Character Ability Power effects.
Necro is consistently one of the strongest T1s, ~e20-e300.
I recommend trying it at least once.
Arcanist: Use Jas’Aham’s Missile Storm to stack your accumulated spells very high! Arca is incredibly good from the moment you unlock it.
Once you unlock JMS, Arca really hits its stride, and it’s also incredibly simple. Highly recommend for new players.
Voidmancer: Have extra spells that benefit from Void Man and you get very high numbers!
You won’t be able to unlock all the funnest VM tools like Void Elemental right away.
However, it’s still one of the strongest options I’ve found for the ~e30-e100 range, and it’s very simple – just get more void mana!
Prodigy: A bloated apprentice with a few spells to spare! Prodigy is also very strong for ~0-e100 mysts. If you want simple, here it is.
No matter what class you choose, you will still be able to progress in this zone.
In general, we recommend that new players play with as many classes as possible, in general, because you need 2 hours of playtime on each T1 to unlock the respective T2s once you reach e300 mysts.
You’ll note that I don’t recommend pets with these classes; this is because pets change a lot during the run – T1 classes often use Voidterror to generate empty mana and then swap them with another pet for burst (Zombie, Hungerer and Anima Construct are some of the more common ones, but it depends on the class) .
To find out what pets and spells (and later gear) to use, check out the wiki guides for those classes.
Items: e80-e200 Mysts
This stage of the game features items that are incredibly important to progress.
Read one of my other guides, A Treatise on Items (wiki only, at least for now) to know how to approach them as a new player and what to prioritize as Crafting dust (Cdust) is a very limited resource. TLDR: Target slots for uniques and a few other specific items.
Here’s a general idea of the classes that work best in this range:
Umbramancer: Void Mana is replaced by Liquid Shadow, which funds new “Shadow Spells”. Benefits from the offline bonus when idle mode is not active.
Umbra becomes the single strongest T1 class in this entire series and probably beyond.
It’s different than other classes, but it’s actually easier to play than many once you get the hang of it.
He is incredibly good at short exiles and can probably take you all the way to e300 if you so desire, although other classes may win when longer exiles are required.
You should unlock this class as soon as possible.
Arcanist, Necromancer: Already discussed in the previous section. These classes reach full power at this range and are incredibly good options.
Exorcist: Void Mana has been replaced by Hallowed Clicks.
Manual click class only! Exo is another very good short exile class in this series.
It tends to be a bit weaker than Umbramancer and has even weaker time scaling, but many people prefer it because it doesn’t have such a unique mechanic and is therefore easier to learn. Still a strong option.
Chronomancer: Use the Wormhole to jump forward in time and reap the rewards! Chrono is a class that starts to “run smoothly” around e120 mysts or so.
In my experience, it’s hard to get the Wormhole to cycle properly (because it’s very easy to finish the spell shards). It has pretty good time scaling, although it is generally overpowered.
It has some pretty interesting mechanics though, so it can be a fun class.
This is still a range that most classes can earn fairly easily.
Again, it’s recommended to try a bit of each class, as you’ll need to play 2 hours of each class to unlock the respective T2.
This is the range where classes start to require real phasing, though – you can’t earn much with your build anymore (unless you’re Umbra :p).
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Written By: Merp