Researchers
What are the best types of researchers?
🏴Comrade Trades > 💪Luck Bonus > 🔨Power > 🏷️Discount > 🍀Luck Chance > 🕑Single-Speed = 🔨Single-Power
How do researchers compare exactly? Which should I spend science on?
🕑Single-Speed 💪Luck Bonus 🔨Power 🍀Luck Chance 🔨Single-Power 6 5 7 6 4 7 6† 8 7 5 8 7† 9 8 6
This is a rough guideline of what levels these similar types of researchers should be relative to each other to maximize production per science if you don’t want to do any math. Before level 6 Commons, follow the general priority above. †It is unlikely you will have enough copies of Luck Bonus to reach the levels on time, but that’s ok.
Other than these,
🏴Comrade Trades are generally always worth it (though a bit less so for Potatoes and Land), and you should level 🏷️Discount in industries where you’re struggling and don’t have a Luck Bonus or Power researcher with a similar cost. To explain the table in more detail, you can compare 💪Luck Bonus, 🔨Power, 🍀Luck Chance, 🕑Single-Speed, and 🔨Single-Power relative to each other, since they all directly increase the production of generators. Leveling a common Single-Speed researcher increases the output of one generator by 2x. Leveling a rare Power researcher increases the output of each relevant generator by 2x, which is equivalent to leveling each common once.
So if you have 6 Commons that cost 1000 to upgrade (6000 total) and the Power rare costs 8000 to upgrade, it’s more efficient to level the Commons. Similarly, Luck Bonus is worth 4x to each generator, which is equivalent to leveling each Common twice, Luck Chance is worth upgrading roughly 20% of your Commons (1-2), and Single-Power is worth upgrading one of your Commons. Supremes can be compared by looking at all Commons instead of just one industry’s.
How good is leveling different Commons?
Simple answer: Commons all basically equivalent, with a preference to baser tiers. Contrary to intuition, deeper tiers do not provide more benefit (and are slightly worse!) Long answer: Leveling any Common worth 2x, will eventually increase that’s industry’s resource production by 2x (than if you hadn’t leveled). The deeper the tier, the longer it will take to reach. In subsequent Motherland ranks, the delay is significantly shorter. Events have higher multipliers, but still follow the pattern. /u/awpertunity broke down the math. Deeper tier Commons can provide science sooner, but it’s typically very little.
What are Event Researchers?
Are they good? Event Researchers are rewards from events, but are only usable in the Motherland and can be found in the Researchers menu. When opening any wood/stone capsule, one industry is randomly chosen. If you have the corresponding Event Researcher, you will earn 3/6/12/… hours worth of that industry’s resource. This averages the value of your luck stats, and does not earn you generators like a time warp. You cannot trigger more than one Event Researcher per capsule. While it’s fun to get random rewards and see biggish numbers, Event Researchers are actually science-inefficient at increasing your production. Leveling one is typically worth about ⅓ of a Common. In order for them to be even as good as a Common, you would have to open a mission reward every ~27 minutes. Not only is this unlikely by mid-game, but the cost goes up much quicker than Commons. The first copy doesn’t cost anything and gives you benefit, at least!
How good are the “Investment”
Researchers? As you might be able to guess from the small increases in value vs their science cost, not amazing, but not horrible. At 2000, it takes about a month of active play before you pay back the initial investment, and at 4000, about two months, etc. I would recommend leaving them for Upgrade Cards missions until they’re your cheapest researchers.
Shopping
What should I spend gold on?
For many players, the simplest answer is the periodic 750-gold Supreme capsule deals that appear every other Tuesday at the top of the shop screen.
If you are able to consistently beat rank 17-18 in events without gold, spending 200 gold on 5000 dark science will probably help you beat rank 19, though it will require you to be very active throughout the event and you can still get unlucky with cards. If you choose which events to invest in carefully, you can get more value per gold than getting a random Supreme for 750 by aiming for science rewards and buying the Supreme of your choice when it shows up in the shop for 40k.
There are currently only four reward structures: my favorite one has 18k science for beating 19, and my second favorite has 12k science for beating 19, while the other two have only Event Researchers for beating 19. If you get far enough into events each week, you should have enough gold to invest 200 gold into two events per month. For the 12k science reward, I would try not to spend much more than 200 gold on it, but the 18k science reward is worth enough to spend an additional 100-200 gold on cards, time warps or a bit of emergency science, though if you don’t have gold stockpiled, you may need to skip aiming for the subsequent 12k reward.
Should I buy Supremes for 40k science?
If you’re rank 35+, I recommend saving up 40k to buy specific Supremes. By the mid-40’s, the game gets significantly tougher without them. The recommended order roughly follows the general researcher priority. I would start by prioritizing getting 2 copies of 💪Alf Stark and 🏴Earth Wyrm Jym.
The order is arguable and depends on your circumstances, but to avoid the biggest walls, I might recommend Alf #1, Jym #1, Jym #2, Alf #2. After that, get 2 copies of 🔨Ratchemus Prime and 2 copies of 🏷️Mega Tron, order is less important here, but Ratchemus is usually better. After you get Jym, Alf, Ratchemus and Mega Tron to level 2, I would recommend ignoring 🍀Dr. Shortstack and working towards getting Jym or Alf to level 3 next, even though it requires 5 copies. Shortstack’s value is relatively small, and you will likely gain copies from random sources. I would recommend getting Alf to level 3 first because ranks 70+ basically require Alf at level 3 or 💪Luck Power epics at level 6, and many players will find it cheaper to get Alf. You can also sort-of substitute Jym with 2 or 3 of the Ore/Bullet/Placebo 🏴Comrade Trade rares, but Jym is probably better before rank 70 if you think you can get both in time.
While saving up for your level 2 Supremes, you may want to try to minimize your science spending to when missions require it. For Spend Science missions, aim for the most science-efficient Rares and Epics in the industries you’re struggling with, and for Upgrade Cards missions, try to save your cheaper Commons and other researchers.
Should I buy the Epic capsule deal for 10k science?
Probably not. If you’re saving up that much science, you might as well just aim for a 40k Supreme of your choice, and if you want to scratch an itch for opening them, you can get 2 Epic capsules per month as rank 16 event rewards.
The reason it’s a bad deal is because Epics vary wildly in value and the average is not great. The 💪Luck Bonus ones are top-tier, but 🏷️Discount ones and Investment ones (e.g., Heisenevil) are pretty low priority. You will often be better off just buying specific Epics you need from the store.
How frequently do Supremes appear in the card shop?
Every 8 hours, the card shop refreshes, and there’s a 12% chance a Supreme will show up in the bottom-middle for 40k science, and a 20% chance a Supreme will show up in the bottom-right for 1.5k gold. If you are able to check all three deals a day, on average you will see any 40k Supreme once every 2.8 days, and any specific 40k Supreme once every 13.9 days.
How frequently do free Supreme/Epic capsules appear?
The free capsules appear random, but actually follow a predetermined cycle of 241 that includes 4 Iron capsules, 1 Epic capsule, and 1 Supreme capsule. If you are able to open 5-6 free capsules a day, it should take 40-48 days to go through the entire cycle. To see the whole cycle, check the wiki or the free capsule tracker.
Gold offers not appearing on iOS?
Gold offers have been completely removed from the iOS version. It’s been 48 hours, and my gold offer hasn’t been awarded
Email customer support at adventurecommunist@hyperhippo.ca, explain what happened, include a screenshot of your “In Progress” offers, and your Account ID (found by tapping the “rank flag,” then the “gear” icon). HH is not directly responsible for fulfilling the offers, so it’s not their fault the offer hasn’t succeeded. It can be frustrating not to have your gold, especially if you have an immediate need for it, but please remember to be civil with customer support.
Strategy
Should I complete all missions in a rank before moving on?
I think the answer is basically: do whatever you think is fun. The arguments for moving on: There’s no strong advantage to staying. The game is not balanced around it. With the rate at which they add new ranks to the game, a free-to-play player following this strategy is unlikely to ever reach max rank anyway (though this has slowed down significantly since events were added). Higher ranks have more rewarding capsules, including the free ones every 4 hours. The arguments for staying: It takes longer, but this is an idle game, what’s the hurry? It’s satisfying to 100% something. A player using this strategy will have higher researcher levels at a specific rank than other players (and because of this, may feel less punished for spending science inefficiently).
Are missions random or predetermined?
They are all predetermined and show up in a specific order. You can view mission lists on the wiki or in the mission tracker. Most missions have random rewards, but some capsules in ranks 1-30 and especially events have predetermined cards. You can view a mission’s rewards in the mission tracker by clicking the ⓘ; if the capsule is predetermined, the ⓘ will be bold.
Why is Luck Bonus so good? Why is Luck Chance relatively bad?
💪Luck Bonus is good because leveling any of its researchers is worth 4x to each generator instead of a typical 2x (or less). If the researcher affects 8 tiers, leveling it would be worth 65,536x (48) more resources! Why does multiplying 💪Luck Bonus by 4 also multiply production by 4? Imagine a hypothetical situation where you have a Farmer that usually makes 1 🥔 and has a 10% chance to crit for 100 🥔. Your average result is 10.9 🥔 (0.10 * 100 + 0.90 * 1). This means that luck is providing 92% (10 / 10.9) of your production. Realistically, when it matters, your luck chance and bonus will be much higher and constitute 99%+ of your production, which means: Crits are production. 🍀Luck Chance is basically bad to level because its increases are additive instead of multiplicative. Going from 25% to 30% means you meaningfully produce 1.2x (30 / 25) more often. This is only worth 1.2x to each generator— much lower than 2x and 4x! How do airdrops work? If you have any remaining, airdrops are weighted toward ad airdrops. You can earn 5 comrade and 5 science ad airdrops per day (in events it’s 3 comrade and 2 science per 12 hours).
If you are in any menu (like the “Propaganda Boost” screen) you will be able to hear the airdrop sound effect, which will play in a loop and will wait for you to return to the game. Airdrops start with a short time between them, but each airdrop you collect makes the next airdrop take a bit longer to appear, and after a while, the time between resets. The specific numbers are currently: Events: Base Duration is 50 × 1.2N seconds for the Nth airdrop (i.e., starts at 1 minute and gets 20% longer each airdrop), resets 1.5 hours after your first airdrop. Motherland: Base Duration is 50 × 1.3N seconds for the Nth airdrop (i.e., starts at 1m05s and gets 30% longer each airdrop), resets 2 hours after your first airdrop. The actual time before an airdrop is the Base Duration ±10%. I think this is the only random element, which makes them relatively predictable.
Events
What are events?
When are they run?
Events are weekly side games where you progress separately from the main game. They offer some lucrative rewards for those willing to play very actively, but there are a range of smaller rewards for more infrequent players, too. They run for 100h every week from Thursday 16:00 (GMT) to Monday 20:00 (GMT).
What do I keep after the event?
You keep only the rewards for the main game that you earn from beating each event rank, and for reaching certain leaderboard milestones. None of your progress or resources earned during an event will carry over into any future event, even if it has the same theme.
What are the differences between events?
There are currently three functionally different event styles that are associated with five different aesthetic styles. Crusade and Ninja has relatively low multipliers. Atlantis has relatively high multipliers and science per order of magnitude. Space and Cowboy has medium-high Common multipliers and a high innate 💪Luck Bonus, and three Rares that affect all industries, including 🍀Luck Chance. There are currently four different reward patterns in a cycle, see “What should I spend gold on?” for more details.
How can I reach 16-18 for free?
The short answer is: be very “active.” Airdrops are very powerful and make a huge difference. A typical strategy is to have the game open in a menu while you are doing other things. You will be able to hear the sound effect and/or vibration of the airdrop and have as long as you want to close the menu and then tap it. You can also take the opportunity to buy the latest generators. The other biggest piece of advice is to use a mission list so that you can look ahead and spend your comrades and upgrade your researchers efficiently. You can also use the list to plan around science spending and Collect Card missions.
Can I beat rank 20 without spending?
No, rank 20 in events is not designed to be beaten without at least using gold. And the amount of gold is based on how lucky you are getting researchers. Rank 20's requirements are high enough that you may have to use more gold than the rewards are worth if you are unlucky, not constantly playing, or not playing optimally. Due to the relative expense and gambling component, I would recommend only aiming for 19 when investing in events. See "What should I spend gold on?" A typical strategy is to spend 200 gold on 5000 dark science at the start, and then use some amount of gold on time warps at the end.
Should I set an alarm in the middle of the night?
I would not recommend anybody wake up during the middle of the night for this game (and I feel it's kinda irresponsible of the developer to incentivize it). Statistically, if you're the type of person who plays AdCom (e.g., lives in an industrialized country, spends a lot of time with screens, possibly a teenager), you're already sleep-deficient, and getting up in the middle of the night to play with a screen is going to make that worse. Sleep deficiency is a real problem with tons of negative consequences, and people are really, really bad at assessing how much things like lack of sleep are currently affecting them.
*End of irrelevent part
How should I prioritize researchers in events?
Simplest answer: upgrade your Rares and then cheapest Commons. Less simple: Same, but also prioritizing certain industries based on upcoming missions (check the wiki or mission tracker) to see where you’re going to need more production. Also I don’t think the 🏴Comrade Trade researcher for the first industry is usually very good and I don’t upgrade it much unless I purchase dark science. Least simple: Because Commons for deeper generators take longer to achieve their full value, I try to find the “least inefficient” time to level the deeper ones. That is, I look at the upcoming mission(s) in that industry and consider the difference between upgrading the cheapest top and bottom tiers. For example, leveling a base tier could make a 5h mission into a 1h mission, whereas leveling deepest tier would only make it a 4h mission. Similarly a 10h mission might only be 7h vs. 8h because most of the time is spent building up.
Leveling the base tier provides less benefit in the second situation than in the first, so it’s an ideal time to level the deep tier. I use the tracker’s calculator to figure this out, but you could also guesstimate whether the mission will take a long time. If you purchase dark science, you don’t really need to prioritize as much, since you can immediately level almost everything until things get expensive. Be careful about having enough cards for the Spend Science and Upgrade Card missions, checking a mission list will help (and see advice about these missions below).
How should I handle science spending and Collect Card missions?
Simplest answer: Check a mission list to be aware of upcoming Spend Science, Upgrade Card and Collect Card missions. Less simple: Instead of trying to complete science spending missions immediately, I recommend not hoarding science and trying to aim to complete your science spending missions around the time the next Collect Card mission appears, so that you can use the armored reward crate to get a lot of cards.
I also recommend trying to line up a free armored capsule (and maybe a plastic) when the Collect Card mission appears. Least simple: This strategy is a bit of a trade-off: you give up a mission slot and opening a capsule earlier, and in return, you get to keep your upgrade momentum going, get three missions’ worth of cards collected, and usually get a rank higher’s rewards from the armored capsule. The trade-off may not always be worth it, especially if there’s many Collect Resource missions in-between (since they need a mission slot for progress), or if opening the armored capsule immediately would benefit you greatly (e.g., you’re fishing for a new common to automate right before you go to sleep). Ideally when using this strategy, you will want to estimate how much science you will gain between the science spending mission and the Collect Card mission, based on the number of missions and how many free capsules you expect to open. Ideally, you want to start the spend science mission with just enough science so that plus your estimation is sufficient to complete the mission.
Should I hold onto free or reward capsules?
If you’re not missing any important cards, don’t immediately need the science, and you think you will be able to get to a rank with new researchers before you cap at 2 free capsules, it can be helpful to hold onto them to have additional chances at new researchers, which can provide a nice boost. Holding onto plastic reward capsules doesn’t do anything, since you wouldn’t be able to progress, but if you have an armored reward from a Collect Cards mission, and all the remaining missions before the new rank are Own Generators (which don’t require a mission slot to progress in), it can be worth it to save that armored for the new rank for additional chances at new researchers.