R0 Progression Guide

Updated for v1.57 ish. 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!

What is this guide for?

This guide is meant to cover pretty much everything that isn’t covered in class guides. This includes general phases of the game, tips on how to approach things, which classes tend to be best in which ranges, and stuff like that. 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 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.

There is a lot of information in this guide, and it’s okay if you don’t read all of it at once. I wouldn’t recommend reading too far beyond where you are, as seeing talk of features you don’t have unlocked yet can be overly confusing. It’s okay to take breaks and ask questions on the Discord (although if it’s answered in here, I can’t guarantee you won’t get a snarky response).

This guide covers from when you start, to your first realm. This is an incredibly flexible phase of the game, and most things will work. You can get away with pretty much any T1 class from 0-e300 Mysteries (aka. myst or mysts), and all T2 classes will at least get you profit.

It’s worth noting that, at least as of April 2024, most T1 class guides are severely out of date. It’s usually better to ask on the Discord than to follow them (at least in terms of item recommendations; the spell choices are usually at least passable). However, with the wiki migration, there is a push to update them, so this guide will be updated if that changes.

Quick note: Which classes are best in which ranges is incredibly hard to evaluate, for various reasons. Most of the reason for this is that to go back to the same myst ranges, you need to realm, which gives you extra resources that make you stronger the next time around. It’s also not really feasible to calculate which 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 give some options for each range, but it’s worth noting that it’s honestly mostly personal experience, and mileage may vary.

Starting Out: Learning Phases

Before we actually get started with progression, it's worth learning how this game generally works. I'm putting this section here because it's incredibly important, but if you haven't really started playing the game much yet, I would recommend playing for a good bit (probably get to e80 mysts, which is easy enough without this knowledge) to get a feel for the game and a few different classes.

This game is divided into two prestige tiers: Exile and Realm. This guide covers up until your first Realm, which will reset your mysteries - the primary resource you get from Exile. Mysteries are milestone-based on the highest amount of mana you've reached this realm, scaling by a square root - to approximate your mystery amount from mana, subtract 12 from the exponent (number after the "e") of your mysteries, and then halve it.

Within an exile, you are locked to one class, so you want to maximize the amount of mana you gain with that class. This means that we divide our exiles up into a few different "phases" - usually 3-5. These most universal phases are:

• Buildup: This is the vast majority of the 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: This phase is where we maximize all of our void mana gain. We put on as much Void Mana per Entity gear as we can, and then use either Void Radiance or Voidterror (depending on class) to gain a lot of Void Mana all at once. This lasts for 1-5 minutes, usually, because VM decays, so it's not worth it to go for much longer than that.
• Burst: This phase is when we stack as many profit boosts as possible (usually 5 incantations and 1 evocation on the spell bar, but it depends). This lasts at most a minute, as it is only linear gains per time and VM decays.

There are also some other phases that only certain classes do:

• "Snap": This is a very brief phase where we stack as much incantation efficiency as possible to "snapshot" the effect on certain spells. There are only a few incantations which do not update their incantation efficiency mid-cast (notably, GR), so not every class does this.
• Pet Leveling: Some classes have the same pet for the whole exile (of T1s, Chronomancer is notable for this), so they don't need to level their pet actively. However, many others have to swap pets quickly between Buildup and Void Mana and Burst, so they may spend a few seconds (usually just the time it takes Idle Mode to activate) with Pet EXP bonuses to get a few extra levels on their pet.

There also may be some that are specific to a single class only - for example, Umbramancer doesn't do a Void Mana phase (as it doesn't have any), and instead will spend some time stacking Umbral Rage as a sort of pseudo-snap phase. For things like that, refer to the individual class guides, or try and figure it out yourself.

It's incredibly important to have a grasp on these phases, because doing them allows you to make a LOT more profit than you did before. These phases all occur within one exile, and are often repeated. For example, you may stay in Buildup for an hour, and then do VM+Burst (which probably takes about 2-3 minutes). You'll gain upgrades from your new mana, which may increase the amount of VM you could gain, as well as more profit, so it's often worth it to "reburst" by redoing VM+(Snap, if applicable)+Burst.

Lengths of Exiles

Exiles can be as long as you want or as short as you want. Generally, as you go higher in mysts, it'll take more and more time to make profit, but that gets offset by having more memories/splinters (which are not within the scope of this guide, strictly, but I mention them because this knowledge applies to the whole game). As a result, "optimal exile lengths" are incredibly variable and no one's going to be able to give you a solid answer for that class at that exact myst range.

The real answer is just trial and error, bursting every once in a while to see how much profit you make. Again, as we learned in the previous section with phases, you sit in buildup for the length of the exile, and then vm+burst at the end for a couple minutes. If someone tells you to do an hour-long exile, that does not mean you should spend 20 minutes on the buildup set, 20 minutes on the vm set, and 20 minutes on burst. It should be more like 55m-1hr on buildup, and then 1-2 minutes on vm, and ~1 minute on burst.

Shorter exiles are almost always better mysts per hour, but as you go up in mysts enough you won't get much profit from, for example, a 10 minute exile, so you have to go a bit longer. Then, you'll have to get longer again, and so on. On subsequent Realms, memories and splinters change when that happens, so again, it's not possible to give an answer to the question of "how long should my exile be?" Instead, you should simply try out different lengths of buildup, burst, and if it's not enough to gain significant profit (up to you how much that means, exactly), then go back to buildup for a longer period of time.

Pre-Items: 0-e80 Mysts

Native Freshfood: A Druid Introduction will introduce you to the basic mechanics of the game and get you started on Druid. It is at least semi-recently updated, unlike most of the T1 guides. I would recommend following this guide to at least e30 mysts, although if you really don't like Druid you can switch off, of course. It's your game!

Exiles in this section tend to be very short - 10-15 minutes or less.

Challenges, Secret Achievements, Expeditions, and Trials

This is just a brief aside on what to do with these mechanics when you unlock them.

You will unlock Challenges at e12 mysts. You should be doing every challenge you can - they are all doable as soon as you unlock them, and they have very good rewards. Some are okay to put off (especially ones that only give skins), but they should all be completed before long.

Secret Achievements are also important, although slightly less so than challenges. Some of them will give you upgrades that are permanently available that boost profits in one way or another, and they add up to be decently significant. Don't stress about doing these (ESPECIALLY the ones like Patience of the Dead or Dwarven Preparation or Tranquility, which require a certain amount of real time) right now, but if one looks easy enough to do, then do it. If it turns out to not be super doable, just wait for higher mysts and try again.

Expeditions are incredibly important, for two reasons. They reward Catalysts and trophies (depending on the expedition stage, see Expeditions#Data).

• Catalysts are quite weak at this stage of the game, but are still a nice profit boost; trophies, on the other hand, are incredibly important. Trophies are an item slot (you can wear 2 at a time), and the only way to get them is through expeditions. Due to this not being tied to Cdust, trophies will usually be legendary far before most other items, giving you another slot to enchant. If you don’t know what most of that means yet, don’t worry. Come back and read this section again after you get a bit further and unlock items.
• You should do the expedition stage that is closest to your expedition level, gradually moving up as you level up.
• You can just idle expeditions. Manual expeditions are faster per time, but just having idle expeditions on constantly in the background is more than enough. No one bothers to do manuals, really.
• Expedition stats do not matter if you idle. If you do choose to do manual expeditions, for trophies or otherwise, see Deck Building.

Trials are also incredibly important, but not at this stage of the game.

• Runes generate very slowly (at base, 1 per 24 hours), and you can use one to start one of 5 types of trials.
• All trial types have their own rewards, but there’s two in particular you should be paying attention to at this point: Patience and Innovation.
• You should always have a Trial of Patience running, since it can reward you with another Rune and thus get you extra Trials completed. It takes 24 hours, so you should be able to set and forget.
• With any extra runes (i.e. if you have a rune, and you will generate another rune before your Trial of Patience runs out) you should do Trials of Innovation, because those reward Researches - another item slot that is independent of Cdust. Due to Runes being incredibly scarce early on, it will take a while (likely quite a few realms) to max your Researches. Don’t worry too much about it; just let it happen over time.
• Trial milestones boost various things, such as Cdust income, Edust income, Rune income, and a wide variety of other stats. They are important, but they reset on realm change, making it incredibly hard to get anything meaningful from them in early realms. Don’t focus on these, as they’re usually small bonuses for anything you can get at this stage, and just let them happen.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

The druid guide runs out at around e50 (although you can continue using Druid past that if you like, or switch off earlier). Here are your other class options in this range.

Class	Vibe/gameplay loop	Notes
Demonologist	Use Hellstorm and other such unique spells to level Pets far beyond other classes!	Is one of the only classes to really work at 0 mysts - an alternative to druid, although weaker. It gets a massive boost when unlocking T2 pets at e60 mysts - it may even be the strongest class at e60-~e70 because it can be hard to use T2 pets on any other class at that point. It recently got pretty significantly buffed in terms of scaling, but I've yet to see how that actually affects this class's scaling beyond this range.
Necromancer	Stack autoclicks and a few spells, and use Zombie to massively benefit from Idle Bonus/Character Ability Power effects.	Necro is consistently one of the strongest T1s, ~e20-e300. I would recommend trying it at least once.
Arcanist	Use JMS to stack accumulated spells very high!	Arca is incredibly good from the moment you unlock it. Once you can unlock JMS, Arca really hits its stride, and it is also incredibly simple. Highly recommended for new players.
Voidmancer	Have extra spells that benefit from Void Mana, getting some very high numbers!	You won't be able to unlock all of VM's most fun tools, like Conjure Void Elemental, right away. However, it still is one of the strongest options I've found for the ~e30-e100 range, and is very simple - just get more void mana!
Prodigy	A souped-up Apprentice, with some extra spells to work with!	Prodigy is very strong for ~0-e100 mysts as well. If you want simple, you've got it here.

No matter what class you choose, you’ll still be able to make progress in this zone. We do generally encourage that new players play around with as many classes as possible, generally, as you need 2 hours of playtime on each T1 to unlock their respective T2s once you reach e300 mysts.

You'll notice that I don't recommend pets with these classes; this is because pets often change within the run - often, T1 classes will use Voidterror to generate void mana, and then swap to a different pet for burst (Zombie, Hungerer, and Anima Construct are some of the more common ones, but it depends on class). To see what pets and spells (and later, gear) to use, refer to the wiki guides for these classes.

Items: e80-e200 Mysts

This phase of the game introduces Items, which are incredibly important to progression. Read my other guide, A Treatise on Items, 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 plus a few other specific items.

Here is a general idea of the classes that work best in this range:

Class	Vibe/gameplay loop	Notes
Umbramancer	Void Mana is replaced by Liquid Shadow, which funds new "Shadow Spells". Benefits from Offline Bonus while Idle mode is not active.	Umbra becomes the single strongest T1 class in this entire range, and likely beyond it. It’s different than other classes, but it’s actually easier to play than many others once you understand the gist of it. It is incredibly good at short exiles, and can likely carry you all the way to e300 if you wish, although other classes may win when longer exiles are required. You should unlock this class as soon as possible.
Arcanist, Necromancer	Already discussed in previous section	These classes come into their full power in this range, and are incredibly good options.
Exorcist	Replaced Void Mana with Hallowed Clicks. Only class with a manual click burst!	Exo is another very good short-exile class in this range. It tends to be a little weaker than Umbramancer, and has even weaker time scaling, but many people prefer it for not having as unique of mechanics and thus being simpler to learn. Still a strong option.
Chronomancer	Use Wormhole to skip forwards in time and reap the rewards!	Chrono is a class that starts "working smoothly" at around e120 mysts or so. It's tough to get Wormhole to loop properly (as it's very easy to run out of spell shards) before then, in my experience. It has pretty good time scaling, although it’s generally outpaced at around e155-e160 mysts. It has pretty interesting mechanics, though, so it can be a fun class.

This is still a range where the majority of classes can relatively easily make profit. Again, it’s recommended to try a bit of every class, because you’ll have to play 2h of each class in order to get their respective T2s unlocked. This is the range where classes start to require real phasing, though - you can't make much profit with your buildup set anymore (unless you're Umbra :p).

Enchantments: e200-e300 Mysts

You’ve now unlocked Enchantments. Nothing changes particularly much in terms of the main gameplay loop, although it’s even more important you use Unique items now than before. This phase of the game is rather slow, especially compared to before, so don’t feel discouraged if it feels like you need multi-hour exiles to gain many mysts at all. You're still making progress, I promise!

Here’s our list of recommended classes in this range:

Class	Vibe/gameplay loop	Notes
Ironsoul	With three unique stances that you can freely swap between, IS stacks accumulated incantations and has many charge-based spells.	IS is unlocked at e200 mysts, and is usually the best option in this range. It takes a while to unlock (about 5 hours to get the RoP casts), but it has incredible scaling for a T1, and is worth the trouble if you’re having trouble with other classes. If you’re doing fine with other classes, though, then I would recommend waiting until e260 mysts, when you can get Shadow-Scryer's Crystal Ball, which will speed up the unlock significantly.
Alchemist	Has a unique "potion" mechanic to boost different things, as well as many unique spells that spend sources as well as spell shards.	Alch is a viable option in this range. It’s often a bit weird to newer players, like Umbramancer, but it has incredible scaling for a T1, just like IS, and will get you to e300.
Umbramancer	Already discussed above	Umbra is still incredibly powerful in this range, although it has much lower time scaling than IS or Alch, so if you feel like it’s too slow, consider changing to one of those classes instead.
Arcanist, Necromancer	Already discussed above	These classes remain powerful! Generally less so than IS or Alch, but if you want to stick with them you absolutely can to great success.
Abolisher	Locked into its unique Doppelganger pet, Abolisher focuses on spending as many spell shards as possible with Silence.	Abolisher is a very strong class, starting at roughly e250 mysts (which is usually when you can unlock Silence), although it works before then as well (according to others. I haven't tried it personally). It scales off of the quality of your items, to some extent, so it often isn’t the best choice R0, but it is a beast when it gets going (although that quickly gets overshadowed by T2s, since it only starts working so well this close to them).

This is the range where you might start to feel real pain trying to force Demonologist or other weak classes to work, but they can all (probably) get you to e300 if you try hard enough. The above classes are certainly the best at it, though.

Tier 2 Classes: e300-e400 Mysts

You’ve finally unlocked T2 classes! Get used to them, as they’re used for the rest of the game. Ascension forms are kind of T3 classes, but they’re more like additions to the base class than a wholly new class, so we consider them more T2.5 classes.

T2 classes are all roughly balanced with each other. Some are still stronger at different points in progression, but they can all get all the way to the endgame.

Each T2 also generally uses very different gear (see specific guides for what gear exactly), and since Cdust is so scarce, you’ll want to focus on one T2’s BiS gear, and fully upgrade all of it (piece by piece to legendary, not evenly spread upgrading, to maximize enchants). Different people have different tastes as to what T2 feels best or most fun to them, so the most important thing is to just try all of them. Do an exile or so on each, following their guide and setting up sets as best you can, and see which one you enjoy the most.

Here’s a general overview of each:

Class	Link to guide(s)	Vibe/gameplay loop	Notes
Archon	Early Archon TA Archon (e360+)	A combination of Arcanist and Abolisher, Archon focuses on spending a bunch of spell shards and casting a bunch of spells.	Archon is the most generally recommended T2 to start with. It’s often perceived as the simplest, as it doesn’t have any snap phases or pet swaps. It’s also consistently at the very least a good performer throughout all or most stages of the game, so if you want to stick with just one class, this is one of the better choices.
Desolator	Desolator Guide	A combination of Umbramancer and Alchemist, it uses both LS and potions to great effect for big profits!	Deso is probably the strongest T2 for R0. It does the best with low gear, and is also generally a pretty strong choice throughout the rest of the game. It’s the combination of Umbramancer and Alchemist (the two T1 classes that people most often are squeamish around due to unique mechanics), so people often shy away from Desolator too, but I promise it’s not that complicated.
Heretic	Heresy: From Soul Shards to VoidLight	A combination of Exorcist and Voidmancer, Heretic has both the strength of Hallowed Clicks and void mana! It gets some of the highest VM values in the game.	Heretic is one of the strongest T2s in general. However, it does scale especially well on gear, due to having quite a few sets, which means it can be weaker than Deso or Archon in R0.
Oni	Oni Guide Refactored	A combination of Demonologist and Ironsoul, Oni reaches incredibly high pet levels and stacks a lot of incantations.	Oni is a weird one - it only becomes better than IS, one of its requisite T1s, after e320 and unlocking the Offhand slot and getting Commissar's Torn Sleeve. After getting that, though, it is one of the strongest T2’s up until about e800 mysts, after which it falls behind due to other classes also getting all attribute perks, although it’s still good enough to progress. It's also perceived as very complicated, because the guide has many phases that can be overwhelming to read through, but it's not actually that complicated when you break it down.
Shaman	Shaman Guide	A combination of Druid and Necromancer, Shaman stacks autoclicks, its 2 persistent spells, and even pet time (with its weapon, HotG), and benefits massively from summon efficiency and idle bonus.	Shaman is generally not recommended in R0, or early realms in general. It prefers longer exiles due to good time scaling, and also has the highest enchant scaling in the game. As a result, it has a low base, so on shorter exiles with low enchant levels (like in early realms), it falls behind significantly.
Temporalist	Temporalist Guide (e300-e550)	A combination of Prodigy and Chronomancer, Temporalist skips a bunch of time and stacks a bunch of spells (notably, Prodigy's QI).	Tempo is also generally not recommended in R0, for similar-ish reasons to Shaman. It has even better time scaling than Shaman, but also a worse base. It also has huge divisors on its character ability, meaning you need to hit a certain level of skipped time and CAP to make it scale properly. It also is just generally weaker than other classes until Ascensions, although once you reach e550 for T3 pets it can actually hold its own.

Tips Before Your First Realm: e400 Mysts

Before you enter R1, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Ideally, you want to get 6.5e3 memories (mems) before realming. This is not a hard requirement, and if you are not already close to this amount, then don’t stretch your realm. This is for “Reclaimed Methods” - it takes this amount of mems to max it.
• Do not upgrade items immediately before realming. You’ll need to “forge” them back - you’ll see how it works exactly soon enough - and it takes longer to forge them the higher rarity they are.
• Make sure you’ve completed all challenges. The Legion is the final challenge, unlocked by completing every other challenge, and has an incredibly powerful reward - 1 extra enchant level on all equipped items for free. Challenges also do not reset on realm change, so you will get the attribute points and level reduction back as you reach the myst requirements for those challenges again.
• Something that will unlock post-R0 is Triumphs. There are two Triumphs that are particularly easy to do, and have relatively large rewards - Shut-in, and Pure Theory. These require you to reach e400 without doing any expeditions and without doing any trials or experiments, respectively. These are not difficult at all, and you likely won’t notice the difference if you don’t do them. However, if you have an expedition going when you realm, it will fail Shut-in as soon as it kills an enemy in the new realm (which it will do even before you unlock expeditions again). Thus, cancel any expeditions before you realm. I believe trials started before realm will not fail Pure Theory, but best not to risk it.
• As is a good habit in general, make sure to export your save before realm change, so you can go back if you mess something up.

You likely won’t have many mems leftover, but anything left after maxing Reclaimed Methods should be put into profit. Generally, profit heritages are worse than Edust/catalysts, but this early on you don't have many mems left and the first couple levels of profit heritages are very cheap, and will help you climb back up much quicker. Consider a few levels in Edust, though - even just one more enchant level on each of your uniques (1.5x edust) is worth a lot more than 2x profit.

As for Imprints (which use a separate currency, gained at the same rate as memories), you should focus everything into the Forge upgrades, splitting relatively evenly between Expanded Mind (slots) and Swift Recalling (speed). After that, it doesn't particularly matter right now (not that you'll have much left), so throw it into whatever you feel like/can afford.

Other Various Things Of Note

From this point on, refer to my Early Realms Progression Guide for similar advice moving forwards. However, there's a few more things I'd like to go over, as some general tips.

• Always make sure to export frequently! The game is under constant development, and there can be bugs that break things and could lose you a lot (or all) of your progress, however unlikely that is. Having an export every few days means you only lose a few days of progress instead of weeks or months.
• The recommended order of market purchases is Bat Hunter (40 relics) -> Auto Expeditions (40 relics) -> Bat Hunter Upgrade (20 relics) -> Auto Expeditions Upgrade (20 relics) -> Renowns 1-6 (a lot of relics) -> Gather boosters. DO NOT buy Dust packs, or Timewarps/Get-Mysteries. Dust packs aren't worth the cost - just get Gather boosters instead, if anything - and Timewarps/GMs can be obtained from the Rare Goodies experiment. Bat Hunter and Auto Expeditions are fairly obvious as to why they're good, I hope.