Native Freshfood: A Druid Introduction

A low-mystery Druid, and Idle Wizard, guide for 1.30

Introduction

The Druid is the first class in the game after the humble beginnings as an Apprentice, and is a class that can be used for great Mana and Mystery gains during the first few days of gameplay.

The Druid relies on Summoning Spells, Autoclicks, and Critical Autoclicks to generate profits. This is in part reliant on the Druid's passive ability, increased Summon Spell Efficiency, also applies to the autoclick profit of autoclicker spells. The Druid can even be used during your first life, before even earning enough Mana to unlock Mysteries or Exiling.

This guide will cover four major breakpoints in Druid early progression: Day 0; e0-e10; e10-e20; and e20-e50 Mysteries.

As for many of you this may be your first guide to playing a class, this guide will also explain a few of the common terms found in other guides.

Extremely Condensed Version

25 Wisdom; Max Dominance; Dump Patience Build-Up spells:

Build-up for about an hour

Burst spell set:

Now, if you don't know what any of that means or how to get there, lets move in to the real guide.

Day Zero

How to get off the ground in Idle Wizard

Idle Wizard is a game about Mana. Lots of Mana. Endless supplies of Mana. Mana is your main currency for doing things, and thus Mana production is often termed 'Profit'. And a journey of a thousand mana starts with a single click. (...and then 14 more clicks to buy your first Mana Gem.)

Your first goal in life should be to reach Wizard Level 3. Do this by clicking the orb and buying Mana Sources (Gems, Grimoires, etc). (Or, if you get lucky and snag a Void Entity, that will also give Wizard XP.) Once you've hit Level 3, you unlock your first pet, the Pixie. Pixie will automatically click the orb for you, generating more experience and mana.

Your second goal in life is to reach 5000 Mana and buy the Upgrade which unlocks your first Spell Scroll. Spells are the big place Mana comes from, as they can take the Mana generation of your sources or clicks and multiply them many, many times over. Spells must be charged before casting, and spells are charged by collecting Spell Shards (either from clicking the orb, autoclicks, or slowly and silently over time). Once charged, spells must be cast manually by clicking the spell scroll or pressing the number key 1. Casting spells also generates experience, further increasing your Wizard Level. The first interesting spell is Magic Missile, which, when cast, gives you a chunk of mana. Pretty straightforward, and good for getting more sources and upgrades.

Your next goal is to reach Wizard Level 7, and spend at least 1 hour (real time) in Idle Mode (meaning, not clicking the Orb yourself), which unlocks the Zombie. What may surprise you is that the Zombie will actually be one of your main pets for the rest of the guide. Zombie may look weaker than Pixie (its autoclicks are weaker, and its bonus is smaller), however it comes with a great tool: its autoclicks will generate spell shards as if they were manual clicks, allowing you to more quickly charge your spells without clicking the orb.

Your final big goal is unlocking the Druid itself, which comes at Wizard Level 14. However, it's actually not best to swap to Druid immediately at level 14. It's much more efficient to wait until level 15 so that the spell Summon Woodland Creatures is available on arrival, and to also wait for 1.2B (1.2e9) Mana for the Passive Sorcering upgrade, allowing you to set one spell to cast itself automatically ("Autocast").

Beginning Plantspeech (e0 - e10)

Speak for the Trees

Plants I

Once you have reached level 15 and swapped to Druid, two things should become apparent

• You can't use Magic Missile anymore
• Your Wizard Ability (seen by hovering the mouse over your portrait at the top) doesn't give Profit anymore, it gives Summoning Spell Efficiency

By this point you should also have two Spell Scrolls, and the ability to set one spell to Autocast.

Set your two spells like this:

Cast Summon Woodland Creatures as soon as it is ready. It should immediately start spam-clicking the Orb, and give a large amount of Mana. Additionally, it will begin to slowly increase the power of your class ability (Summoning efficiency), its own bonuses (Critical Rating), and its own profit (through the increased summoning efficiency)

Running spells (Spell Focus, Summon Woodland Creatures, etc.) to generate shards, autoclicks, levels, and other stacking bonuses, is known as the Build-Up phase of a class guide. Build-up phases cover most of the time spent playing as a class.

At level 20, and 350B (3.5e.11) Mana, you will unlock a third spell slot. Use your third spell scroll to charge one of your new spells, Summon Evergrowing Forest, and get the shards to cast it once while Summon Woodland Creatures is active.

Preparing and casting multiple profit-boosting spells together is known as the Burst Phase of a class guide. Burst phases usually only last a few minutes at most, and usually end when one of the spells they use runs out of charges.

After a few casts of Summon Evergrowing Forest (especially if you can click a Void Entity at the same time as you activate Evergrowing Forest), you should start rapidly approaching 10Qa (1e16) Mana, unlocking Exile and Mysteries. Don't exile immediately though, wait until you have collected a few Mysteries worth of mana. Say, around ten thousand (1e4) or more. A good way to ensure this is to wait until you reach 60Qa (6e16) Mana, which will let you unlock a 4th spell slot. That spell slot can be used to charge Magical Weapon, and then cast magical Weapon, Evergrowing Forest, and Woodland Creatures all at once.

Plants II

After hitting Exile, you revert back to where you started. Zero mana, zero sources. But you have your Achievements, and your shiny new Mysteries giving a global profit bonus, and your class and pet unlocks so you can pick up again. Start the same way you did last time, clicks > sources > Pixie > Zombie > level 15 > Druid. However, during this life, another point will come up. Upon reaching level 17 and unlocking Summon Evergrowing Forest, place it on your third spell scroll but don't actually cast it, just let it charge. Once it is fully charged, change pets to Golem. Golem has a larger profit bonus than Zombie, however Golem does not generate spell shards like Zombie does, so you'll want your spells to be charged and ready before making the switch. Give Golem a few minutes to level up (while Woodland Creatures autoclick away) before entering your Burst by actually casting Summon Evergrowing Forest.

As a rule, because Summon spells are expensive to cast, you only want to be trying to charge one Summon Spell at a time. This means, start with only Spell Focus and Summon Woodland Creatures, and wait until Woodland Creatures is both active and at full charge before filling another empty spell scroll.

Improved Plantspeech (e10-e20)

Now with more stats!

Attributes

Having reached 1e10 Mysteries and thus Paragon Level 1, you now have Attributes. Attributes give small, semi-permanent bonuses to specific potential forms of Mana production. Every class has different priorities for which Attributes it can best take advantage of, and some classes have multiple playstyles which also focus on different Attributes. Attributes are only semi-permanent as they can be freely reset on every Exile, without losing any of the points which were spent.

Every 25 Points given to a single Attribute will also give a 'perk', a single, large bonus to a different statistic. When looking at Attribute distribution, the perks are the main goals, and so in between unlocking new perks, extra points are often put into a 'Dump' Attribute, usually Patience because it has the largest profit bonus per point but also the weakest perks.

Attribute priorities:

• Wisdom: 25. The most annoying part of the Druid's startup is trying to get your spells rolling. 25 Wisdom will smooth that out greatly; however more than 25 Wisdom is not efficient as Wisdom does not otherwise improve profits.
• Dominance: As high as possible. Increases Autoclick power, and Critical chance and power.
• Patience: Once Dominance is at maximum, dump the rest of your points into Patience.

A longer build-up

The additional levels offered by reaching e10 Mysteries and beyond open a new spell set for the build-up, and a new pet choice. These two new decisions form 'Build Up Phase 1' and 'Build Up Phase 2'

Phase 1

Much like the previous build-up phases, the goal of this phase is Autoclicks and Void Entities. However, by this point, you should be reliably unlocking Summon Guardian Of The Canopies, and thus include it in the build-up.

If a fifth spell scroll is available, use that slot to charge Summon Evergrowing Forest, Magical Weapon, and Ritual Of Power. Otherwise, just swap the contents of slot 4 to do it. If not enough Autocast slots are available, prioritize autocasting Spell Focus, your best Autoclick spell, and:

• If this is your first time doing this build up, or if you will be paying attention to the game, Void Lure.
• If you will not be paying attention to the game, autocast another Autoclick spell.

If this is your first time doing this build-up, you will need to stay here for about an hour while Void Lure casts itself 10 times, Otherwise, once everything is charged and sustaining itself, move in to Phase 2.

Phase 2

This is the part where things diverge from past Druid wisdom. Once you've let Void Lure cast itself 10 times for the first time, you'll unlock another pet: the Devourer. This monster generates far greater profits than the Golem long championed by other Druid guides, but it does so by draining shards from your Spells. To counteract this drain, you will need to have Spell Focus, alongside multiple autoclicker spells (Summon Woodland Creatures and Summon Guardian Of The Canopies) on Reckless Autocasting at all times. So, once your spells are all at full charges, swap pets to Devourer, let it level for about an hour, and then burst.

Note: You only need to do the "cast Void Lure 10 times" thing once. Once Devourer has been unlocked for the first time, all you need to use it is its Wizard Level 40 requirement.

Pre-Burst

Before most Burst phases, most guides do a 'pre-burst', in which they charge their burst spells and collect Void Mana.

Because this guide uses Devourer, all of the burst spell charging needed to be done before the Devourer was equipped, which is why Phase 1 included instructions to charge those three extra spells. So, the pre-burst for this guide is to cast Void Lure, and wait until 2 or 3 Void Entities are available.

Burst

Once several Void Entities are available, swap to this spell set:

If you have the 6th spell slot, equip Ritual Of Power. Click all available Void Entities, and then immediately cast all spells. This will cause you to gain a large amount of mana, very quickly, and you will spend the next 30 seconds buying Upgrades and Mana Sources as fast as possible.

In many builds, it is possible to reset after a burst ends and do another burst. However, with Devourer eating all your spell shards, this will probably be too slow to be worth it, and you would be better served by Exiling at this point (if you have earned more Mysteries). If you aren't happy with how many Mysteries you made, then you will need to spend more time in build-up in your next run, or take a break and run some Challenges to get their bonuses.

Established Plantfood (e20-e50)

Feed me, Seymour

After you get into the e20 to e30 Mysteries range, you will encounter a few things. In particular, reliable access to your 6th Spell slot and all 6 Autocast slots, and eventually the spell Force of Nature. Force of Nature is better than Ritual Of Power, and so anywhere you would be using that spell, use FoN in stead.

Because you will have all 6 spell, and autocast, slots available, the build-up phase is able to use this spell set:

Swapping out Void Automaton to charge the three burst spells (Summon Evergrowing Forest, Magical Weapon, Force of Nature), before swapping to Devourer for a few hours.

Also by this point, you may be unlocking the upgrade which allows all spells to hold 4 charges, which allows you to remove Spell Focus from the burst set, and bring back Ritual Of Power:

Druid has a lot of early profit potential, but unfortunately it starts to run out of steam when it gets into the e50 Mystery range. (And while Druid does continue to unlock additional spells at higher levels, its base profit values and scaling start to lose a lot of their efficiency by the time those higher spells open up.) This also means that Druid is not able to take advantage of Tier 2 Pets, as it is unable to reach the pet levels required for T2 pets while still having its other spells efficiently provide profit. Fortunately, along the way to e50, several other classes open up, and can be used for further profits, Mysteries, and progress.

Addendum: Rules of Nature

And they run when the sun comes up

Near the end of Druid's optimal range, a final important spell unlocks: Rules of Nature. RoN is a Persistent Spell, meaning it gains power the more it is cast. You will also need to cast the spell 2000 (2.01e3) times in order to unlock the three Rule of Nature Challenges, and it is best to get all 2000 of these casts in a single run. Rules of Nature is also a Non-Shard Spell, which charges over time from Critical Autoclicks, rather than from collecting Spell Shards. In order to gain the 2000 Rules of Nature casts required for the Challenges, and also potentially even make some profit out of your final Druid run, use Pixie and the following build-up set:

And once you have achieved your 2000 Rules of Nature casts, charge Magical Weapon and Force of Nature, swap pets back to Devourer, let it level for a couple minutes (still using the Rules of Nature build-up spells), swap Evergrowing Forest for Void Lure to get some Void Entities/Void Mana, and then burst with:

Addendum 2: Spellhound

By most conventional wisdom, Spellhound is the best pet for starting a run, as its sole job is to generate lots of Spell Shards and get your spells charged up. This guide does not reference or use the Spellhound, because Spellhound has a minor flaw: its shard generation is heavily based on Pet Ability Power, and this guide is largely written for a stage of the game where Pet Ability Power bonuses aren't available yet.

Around the time when this guide comes to an end, Pet Ability Power bonuses start to become available, and Spellhound becomes a viable, and extremely powerful, pet for charging spells.