Early Realms Progression Guide

Updated for v1.54.1. Contact @merpderpy in the Idle Wizard Discord for any questions - this guide is very new, and I’m making it from the perspective of a player who already has a lot of knowledge. I’ve tried my best to explain things well, but there may be things that are unclear to new players. Please let me know, so I can improve this guide!

Introduction

You’ve finally reached realms! This is when the game gets into its real groove. I will assume you were following my R0 Progression Guide and followed the tips for the end of R0 there. If you haven’t - go look that over!

This guide is meant to cover pretty much everything that isn’t covered in class guides, up until you start doing long realms at roughly 1.5e6 memories. This includes the general phases of the game, how to approach realms, edust phasing, and more. It is not something that will tell you play by play how to progress, but instead it will cover major additions to the gameplay loop, and things of that nature. If you’re unfamiliar with the IW Discord, then it may be worth going through even earlier sections you think you’ve already passed, as it may have valuable information that you’ve gotten by without, but would help you to progress significantly. Feel free to ask questions there, as well!

Class Choices

What class you use is entirely up to you, and all T2s are balanced enough to be able to make progress at any point. However, there are bad choices in terms of progression.

Temporalist is, in my opinion, the worst class in the game up until Ascensions at e1100 mysteries. It simply doesn't fit what the game wants from you before then - shorter exiles. It takes a long time to make it do anything, especially R0 and early realms, and it often does it much slower than other classes with equal investment. If you want to use Temporalist, go right ahead - you will still make profit, and I also very much enjoy the class. However, it's very weak in any point where this guide is relevant to you.

Shaman is in a somewhat similar boat to, and is arguably worse than, Tempo in R0, but catches back up to other classes much sooner than Tempo. It much prefers longer exiles, like Tempo, and also has a somewhat weak base that is made up for by its incredibly high enchant scaling - which is not available to you, starting this guide out of R0, before full legendary gear. Once you have legendary gear and a decent bit of memories, then it'll be a solid choice of class, while Tempo still falls far behind other choices.

Now that we've discussed the two worst options (which, again, to be clear, are still usable, and if you enjoy them then you should use them), let's discuss the rest, and which ones are generally considered the best. Keep in mind that, due to the ever-updating nature of the game and how many factors there are at any given point of progression, on top of the fact that most players aren't replaying through these sections of the game, we don't have detailed information on what class is best in any given range.

Heretic is, in my opinion, the strongest class up until around e1000 mysteries, with no particular cutoff. It has an incredibly strong base, and also incredibly solid time scaling - or, in other words, it's incredibly good at climbing mysteries fast and also will keep going pretty well when you've reached your plateau for the realm. In R0, it's quite strong, and the more items you get, the stronger it gets.

Archon was the go-to "starter" T2 for a while. It's relatively "simple" - although that's a bit redundant because what does "complicated" even mean - and is one of the strongest classes at pretty much every point of progression (probably always top 3). It has been adjusted semi-recently (removing some base and adding Expel Soulstealer), which means that I'm not entirely sure where it stands now. It's still quite strong, for sure, but it probably isn't quite as fast at climbing as before. A lot of people also like it for the big JMS number. Go crazy.

Desolator is a great choice R0, and it remains such in early realms. It falls off a bit as you approach Ascensions, but remains a strong option, especially for climbing. I'd generally say it's outclassed by Heretic, but I don't have any actual evidence to back that up. I enjoy it, personally, and it'll serve you well if you like it.

Oni is somewhat unique, in that it makes incredible use of Commissar's Torn Sleeve to gain access to attribute perks before other classes would be able to. This is a major source of it being able to compete with other classes, but every class is able to max attributes eventually (around e800-e900 mysteries), so it falls off at that point. It also is the most complicated class, with many different phases and pet swaps, so it can be overwhelming when starting to use it. It will also not be that exemplary of a performance at any given point. If you enjoy it, go for it.

All of this only applies before reaching Ascensions.

The Flow of 10d Realms

After your first realm, it’s generally recommended to realm once every 10 days or so. This is roughly the time it would take to softcap your Cdust if you didn’t spend any, and it happens to work out well with the time multiplier to memories softcapping after 10 days. You should push as far as you can during these 10d realms, as more mysts = more mems. Even if you’re not making much progress, it’s still worth it to keep pushing. This 10d realm pattern will continue for a while, so get used to it!

Here are some general tips and recommendations for this section of the game.

• 0-e400 mysts will seem like a breeze now. The class recommendations still apply, but the ranges in which classes work will be extended due to increased profits. In particular, Umbramancer will likely work all the way up to e300 much more easily now - I personally always use it from ~e90 to e300.
• Other triumphs besides Shut-in and Pure Theory are generally not worth it early on. The only other one you should really consider for a while is Brain Fog, which doesn’t get any easier over time after you get legendary gear (besides tiny tiny boosts from achievement points and the like). Brain Fog rewards the Ritual Disk mount, which is incredibly important for Temporalist, but not so much for other classes. You will need to do this eventually, and it’s not really that difficult. I would say to do it as soon as you have a decent stock of legendary gear. The Speedrun triumph is also very doable, but that will happen naturally (especially if you make a habit of using Umbramancer for your early-realm climb to T2s) and its reward isn’t worth spending extra resources or anything on getting it.
• Your priority is to upgrade the gear for your T2 class. This will just happen, and will likely take a few realms to finish - generally around 1e5 mems. Once that's done, it might seem like further Cdust is useless - but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Now, you can Edust phase. See the section below for more details!

Memory Investment

How to invest memories changes over time, and it mostly depends on whether or not you’re Edust phasing. If you’re not Edust phasing yet, then you’ll want to invest according to the tips below. If you are, then you’ll want to not invest in any Edust heritages for the majority of the realm, spreading that out instead over catalyst and profit heritages.

Here are some tips for what to invest in:

• Always have Reclaimed Methods (Foundation) maxed.
• With legendary items, Edust scales the hardest of any stat, so you may want to spend more memories on Edust gain than you would think (it also boosts the memory multiplier).
• Catalysts boost the memory multiplier and are a decent profit multiplier, but aren't overly strong in the first couple of realms. They start being very powerful once you can reach Catalyst Memetics at e750 mysts. You’ll still want to invest a few mems in these catalyst heritages even before that, though
• After that, generally you prioritize Power section upgrades over Mana section ones (you still want a mix of both, as costs scale exponentially).
• This spreadsheet can help you fully optimize your memory spending (although it isn’t infallible).
  • You’ll need to fill out the information on the “Main” tab, and then go to the “Memories” tab. There are many things you likely won’t be affected by at the moment, which you can safely ignore (although make sure to set things to 0 and such if you don’t have them unlocked). You’ll want to check both the “Enchantment” and “Catalyst” checkboxes at the top of the Memories tab, which will make it count Edust/catalyst income heritages as profit.
• Brazen Ambition (rune generation) is also important to max most of the time. Trial count is the main roadblock for Legacies, so doing more is helpful for that, on top of letting you max Researches faster and get more dust.
• Forefather's Work/Muscle Memory are incredibly powerful, and should be considered one of the best to invest in. Which one(s) you use depends on your class - for example, Archon really wants FFW but gets nothing out of MM, while Desolator loves MM but gets nothing out of FFW. Some also use both, like Temporalist.
• Imprints use a separate currency. You should max the forge upgrades as soon as possible, and after that, focus imprints on Memories Within Memories to boost mem gain, and after that, it can kinda be spread around wherever. Catalysts are generally better than the other things there, and Headstart is pretty useless besides small QoL, but other than that just distribute as you see fit.

Edust Phasing and Changing the Routine

See Enchantments for more details on what, exactly, an Edust phase entails, and why it's important. This section is focused on how to incorporate them into your realms, and how that changes your routine. *Note: the Enchantments page is not currently fully updated with a guide. It has all of the bonuses to things right now, but it will be updated in the future to have a full edust phase guide.

You will start Edust phasing as soon as you have all of your chosen T2's gear at legendary. You'll then focus all of your Cdust into Experiments, but in order to maximize the effect of this Cdust, we do it all at once with every possible Edust modifier equipped or upgraded. This involves respeccing (or, resetting and redistributing) your memories to put all of them into the Edust-boosting heritages. Again, see Enchantments for more specifics.

Generally, in a 10-day realm, you'll Edust phase once. You unlock all Edust bonuses after e380 mysts (Mounts, with Fey Glider), so generally you'll do it right then to boost the rest of your climb back to your previous highest mysts and beyond. You'll respec to all-Edust mems (Restored Rituals, Foreseeable Results maxed, and then as much Unseen Efficiency as you can get), do a bunch of experiments with all the right gear and maxed Enchanting Membrane enchant, use Membrane's active ability, and then respec back to a mix of profit/catalyst income/other heritages, like usual. Immediately after realming, you should really keep the profit/catalyst focused heritage spread, and then I like to add the mems I just gained to Edust, so I have enough passive income to get at least 1 enchant on everything fairly quickly.

You also do Rare Goodies experiments at the same time as Edust, because you can get many valuable things out of this experiment, such as nullifier cores, disenchantment cores, timewarps, and get-mysteries. The nullifier cores in particular are what allow us to phase like this; it's more than sustainable with the amount of nullifier cores we get back from this experiment. It is also the only good use of red dust. All the other kinds of experiments (catalyst shards, 2h buff, and expedition consumables) are completely useless. The catalyst shard one could potentially be useful, if not for the fact that green dust is also used for location keys, which also give catalysts, on top of splinters.

Again, for more details on how exactly to maximize your Edust phases themselves, rather than just the broader strokes, see Enchantments.

Now that you're Edust phasing, you'll likely skyrocket past where you previously capped out. This will become your new routine - doing an Edust phase roughly once a realm.

Splinter experiments (e650)

Once you can easily get to e650 mysts to unlock Splinter and Key expeditions, you may want to delay your Edust phase every other realm or so, in order to also do those at the same time. You could do these at any time, technically, but because of Foreseeable Results you'll get the most out of it if you spend it during an Edust phase. You'll want to have Fractured Awareness maxed - before you spend any orange dust or do any key-locked expeditions, make sure to have FA maxed. Splinters are the most important resource in the game for progression, even more than mems, and FA gives you x10 when maxed. Each level is a multiplicative increase, too, so it's actually worth it to softcap on orange dust for a little while so that you can spend it only with FA maxed. Early on after unlocking FA, you won't be able to max it without a significant loss in Edust heritages; that's okay. If you can, spend 5 extra nulls to have a full Edust phase, then take some out to max FA and do Splinters, and then go back to profit/catalysts.

As for key-locked expeditions specifically - converting Green dust to keys isn't boosted by FA itself, so it can be done during the "maxed" Edust phase, if you choose to do that kind of thing. However, Week of Adventure boosts key income by 20%, and that applies to experiments. Make sure to do as much of these experiments during this week as possible! You can also choose to do the key-locked expeditions themselves either during this week, or during Week of Augmentation for the increased catalyst drops (or a mix of the two). When doing key-locked expeditions, you should always have FA maxed. As for converting Unstable Keys, the best conversion for splinters is Shattered Reality keys, but you may want to do others in order to max their trophies at first.

Memetics (e650-e950)

Once you get to e650 mysts, you'll unlock Void memetics. You'll continue unlocking a new type of memetic for the next few e100s of mysts (e750 is Catalyst memes, e850 is Source memes, e950 is Spell memes), and they are all quite different, having one main thing in common: they each use Memetic Splinters to upgrade. Splinters become the most important resource in the game, even more so than memories (although they are both important). Balancing which memetics to upgrade can be incredibly difficult to eyeball, because they all have different effects, and some less direct than others. To do so, use this spreadsheet's Memetics tab. You will need to put some information in on the Main tab for it to work properly.

Now, a quick rundown on each type of memetic!

Void Memes (e650)

See also: Void Memetics

These are often a little strange to understand at first. Essentially, you now have the option to toggle between seeing Void Traps or Echo Traps. Both still exist, regardless of which you're viewing, but you can only see one at a time. At this point, it's unlikely you need to see Void traps (because you don't generate VM by clicking them, and you often just use Synthetic Entity or Void Automaton by this point), so most people just permananetly switch to Echoes.

Echoes appear over time (base rate 1 per hour), and will spawn on a random Echo trap. Each of the four traps is different - from left to right, they're Spawn Rate, Void Profit, Void Mana per Entity, and EXP Gain. You can level each trap separately with Splinters, which will raise its max level. Collecting an Echo on that trap will grant it EXP (you can see how much in the top left of the Void Memes menu). You can focus Echo spawns on one trap by clicking on it in the Void Memes menu.

VpE and Void Profit traps are fairly straightforward; each level gained will double their effect, which for most classes is a simple doubling of profit. You can see why this is pretty good - but would it surprise you to learn that Void memes are the weakest memetic type? Anyways, level these two equally (for most classes. For Desolator, you want more VpE than VP).

Spawn Rate and EXP Gain don't directly improve profit, and instead allow you to level your traps faster. I wouldn't recommend leveling EXP beyond level 10 or so, but Spawn Rate can go higher, because when you collect entities on a max-level trap, you gain Trap Efficiency, which multiplies the effect of all traps. This means that Spawn Rate will increase profits by allowing you to get more efficiency over time, increasing the effect of the VpE and VProfit traps. Its max level should sit at around -4 to -5 from VpE/VP traps. EXP traps used to be leveled higher than just 10 (usually -5 or -6 from VpE/VP was the recommendation), but with the addition of the Echo Chamber paramnesic, we have a lot of multiplicative Efficiency, meaning that we have more than enough EXP even with significantly less investment into EXP. Spawn Rate is still worth it, though.

Current trap levels/EXP reset on Realm, but the max levels (bought with Splinters) persist.

Catalyst Memes (e750)

See also: Catalyst Memetics

Moving from the most involved Memetic type to the least, we have Catalyst memetics. These are simply passive boosts to Catalyst effects and income, and don't require any involvement on your part after upgrading them. They are not, however, weak. They are incredibly strong, and make Catalysts another driving factor of a realm. If they weren't already the strongest Catalyst for you, Red catalysts will now far overpower your other catalyst types. Blues will beat Greens soon enough, as well, if they aren't already.

You'll want to level Red the highest, followed by Blue, and then Green lagging significantly behind. Green income can be leveled higher than Blue income initially, though, because they are the highest quantity catalyst, so you want more in order to maximize the Catalyst multiplier to memories. For reference on my current catalyst memetics, I have 22/24/21 income and 11/17/16 power. Besides Green income, that is more or less optimized for how many splinters I've spent.

Source Memes (e850)

See also: Mana Source Memetics

Source memetics are a bit more specific than Void or Catalyst memetics, but are equally as set-and-forget as Catalyst. Which sources should get which bonuses depends on your class, so see your class's guide for the distribution. They're incredibly strong when you first unlock them, even without investing many splinters, because you don't need to level them up to see some sort of benefit.

Essentially, each source at base has a base cost, and a cost scaling per source. This cost scaling is how much extra the next source will cost. Decreasing the cost scaling is a huge boost to the number of sources you get, because you get thousands of sources, so you're dividing the cost by the decrease in cost scaling multiplied by itself for each source of that type you have. Each source meme has its own set cost scaling, independent of which source you put it on. Then, when you put a source meme on a source, two things happen. The source's own cost scaling is overriden by the memetic's, and instead of providing profit, that source now provides the bonus of that memetic at increments of source count. There is also the "gild" memetic (icon is the mana icon, it's the first one), which provides a very low cost scaling and a profit boost to the source you put it on.

This means that you put the gild on your main production source (for many, this is Gems, or their unique source. For example, Archon uses Arcanasprings), and then put the others among the other sources distributed in a specific way as to minimize loss and maximize gain. Use this spreadsheet to figure out the optimal distribution, or just look at your class' guide.

Source memes are incredibly important to upgrade. They will probably get the majority of your splinters, as Gild upgrades automatically at certain milestones of ingots gained, and Gild upgrades are extremely powerful.

Spell Memes (e950)

See also: Spell Memetics

You may or may not reach these while doing 10d realms, but I'll mention them anyways. Spell memes have their own form of Ingots (Ink), and you can invest that ink individually in different spells in order to get various bonuses. Each level will increase the spell shard cost of that spell by x1.75, while increasing that spell's efficiency by 50% for evos, 30% for summons, and 20% for incants. Every 2 levels also increases the max cast rate of that spell by 1. There are also a few different type-specific traits: incantations get a final multiplier to their cast amount for every 3 levels, while summons get increased autoclicks per level and increased autoclick profit per 5 levels.

Spell memes are incredibly powerful, as most memetics are, and will likely get even more splinters than Source memes did.

Due to spell shard costs also increasing, it's worth noting that you also need to upgrade your shard pool size. This is its own button, above the spells, and will increase your shard pool size by 50%. This allows you to generate more shards and actually fill up your spells when their costs are very high. Class guides will often have adjustments that need to be made for spell memes (and if they don't, then either ask in the Discord or try and figure it out yourself).

Quasi-Realms (recommended 1e6+ Memories)

v1.50 introduced Quasi-Realms, which are essentially challenge realms which change the rules of play a bit and (most of the time) lock you into a certain class, usually with altered spells. They do not reward Memories when you realm change out of them - instead, they reward Delusions based on how far you got. These Delusions are used to upgrade Paramnesics. These upgrades are not super significant a lot of the time - they're strong, absolutely, but they're often not worth doing right as you unlock them.

Each quasi is completable (e.g. 1 delusion) at the minimum mems required. However, they often take a lot of time and a lot of blue dust in order to actually do that (especially the first two, Rainforest and Feral Abyss). Therefore, it is not recommended to do them at the minimum memories, especially as it requires its own set(s) of gear that need to be upgraded to legendary, which is a tall order at the mems where they unlock (2e5 for Rainforest).

The recommended course of action is to ignore Quasis until 1e6 memories, and do Decadence first, and then either knock out a bunch of them all at once, or do them gradually in between Primes, usually with 1-3 delusions each depending on how much effort you put in. This gives you time to gradually upgrade the gear you'll need (most of the items that exist, unfortunately) while still allowing you to devote the majority of your dust to experiments.

Once you do some Quasis, here's a priority list for Paramnesics:

• 1 level in Green Spectrum Delirium, and then 1 level in False Memories. These introduce new scaling that is incredibly powerful, but each level past that is a very small linear bonus.
• Evenly level Echo Chamber and Stellar Feedback until both are maxed. Echo Chamber is both incredibly powerful and incredibly nice QoL.
• Max Catalytic Rhinestones. This isn't always the best pure profit increase, but it will help with the catalyst memory multiplier.
• There is a point around 3-6e6 memories where you'll likely be hitting the cap on enchantments from Forgotten Might, so a few levels of Fictionary Might can be very strong. Other than that, it's usually not very good.
• At around 15-20 dels, getting a single level in each of Illusionary Premonition/Elusive Power/Unrealistic Expectations is quite good. Levels after that are still good, but not amazing.
• After this point, it depends more heavily on class and progression.
• Feigned Nobility is the standard; we compare each paramnesic to it to see what is worth it, because if a param is under 2x for 1 del, then it's better to just invest in this. Everything below this point will only be better than Feigned in specific cases.
• Sleight Of Hand, while it looks quite good, is usually not. It's a pretty small profit increase for most classes even if you can actually cast that extra bit, and with more than 1-2 levels in it plus a healthy helping of spell memes, non-Archon classes will be capped by spell charges, so they won't actually be able to utilize the cast rate. That also doesn't mean it's great for Archon; it's good, but it's not even the best user of it and there are usually better options.
• Imaginary Talents depends a lot. It's usually at least decent, and some classes get more out of it than others, but especially once you have Unnatural Talents maxed it loses a lot of value. Demiurge ascensions will likely get a lot out of it, but I haven't done the math.
• Further levels in Illusionary Premonition/Elusive Power/Unrealistic Expectations are decent at this point. Ditto for Green Spectrum Delirium and False Memories.
• Biased Statistics and Cthonic Grandeur are both just kinda bad. Ignore these, pretty much.

Transition to Long Realms (1.5e6 Mems)

Once you hit 1.5e6 memories, you'll unlock Hypnotizing Hardships (HH). This allows you to gain splinters from doing trials, which is incredibly strong. Around this point, you'll want to transition to doing long realms instead of 10 day realms. We do this for a few reasons - primarily because it allows us to sit in realms with lots of Trial milestones to have increased rune generation for splinter income. You may not want to do this right at 1.5e6, because it'll be somewhat annoying to keep HH and FA up at all times, but it should be relatively soon after that point.

Long realms should usually be 56 days, in order to line up with the weekly schedule. Try to line up Edust phases/running key-locked expeditions with relevant weeks. You want HH, FA, Brazen Ambition, and whatever else you want (lots of catalysts, probably!) maxed, as well as Fundamental Distortions once you have it unlocked. You'll probably start reaching Ascensions not too long after starting them. I won't go too in detail for long realms here, because it's not within the scope of this guide, but I thought I'd at least mention it. Go see the Discord for further details and to ask questions.

This guide is still "in development", so let me know if there's anything I missed or should change!