Heresy: From Soul Shards to VoidLight

For the meme short version, try Wait thats Heresy: A Dood's guide to Speed Heretic

Updated by: NomiSaltium

Updated for v1.49

## Introduction to Heresy

The Good:

* Viable for many stages of the Game
* One of the fastest classes
* Benefits from many features

The Bad:

* Chaotic valuations
* More speed means more active
* Burst is increasingly time sensitive and frequent

The Ugly:

* Can be extremely gear dependent for power
* SO MUCH GEAR
* SO MUCH EDUST

## The Fundamentals of Heretic

If this is your first time ever using Heretic, especially if this is your first realm, these are the basics that you want to know to get the most out of . This section will cover the basic phases, desired attributes, and the items that you will want to obtain and upgrade early on.

### The early-game Gear

This section assumes you aren't rolling in legendary gear yet. It will advise you on general gear comparisons and good pieces to look out for.

Heretic has 4 item sets that need to be upgraded as best as possible: Burst, Void Mana, Evocation, and Incantation snap. Technically, there is also a Pet Level set, though it needs legendary items more than it needs enchants, and it's less impactful than any other item set.

Void Mana and Burst are the most important sets to upgrade. The other 2 sets can just be as much Evocation ("evo" for short) and Pet Ability Power ("pap" for short) as you can get, and all of your Incantation ("incant" or "inc" for short) items.

For burst, all click/crit/profit gear give the same value per enchant level, inc provides between ^3 and ^3.3 depending on burst spell set, and summon gives ^0.65.

Heretic likes a lot of items, though some early ones to look for are most items from the Nether's Embrace set for Void Mana, , , , , , and .

Other notable items to get are:

Reasoning

For other items that you will want to upgrade as you go, you will find them in the enchant priority table here.

### The Attributes from start to finish

Start with the following attribute distribution, assuming you have at least 800 attribute points:

INT 150, INS 150, SPC 150, DOM 150, PAT 50, MAS 50, EMP 100

EMP will be your main dump stat until you've maxed most attributes.

Spend attribute points in this order, assuming you don't have  and epic :

1. INS 200
2. DOM 200
3. DOM 225
4. INT 200
5. INS 250
6. DOM 250
7. MAS 200 for  and the perk
8. PAT 150
9. INT 250
10. MAS 250
11. EMP 150
12. SPC 250 for
13. EMP 250
14. Dump into PAT
15. PAT 250
16. Dump into VER
17. WIS 200
18. WIS 250
19. If Innate Aptitude is leveled up, max all except SPC and WIS, dump rest into VER

### The Phases of Heresy

#### Quick Burst

This phase consists of doing the phases from Buildup to Burst quickly (within 5-10 minutes at most). This way, you'll gain more sources and upgrades, thus making all of the phases better. Afterwards, you can do the phases in order again until you gain mysteries.

#### Buildup

The first phase of  is centered around collecting many things. You use your evo set for this phase. You will spend most of your run in this phase. The basic spell set for this phase is as follows:

The pet for this phase is  for increased evo. You can use  to fill the shard pool if you have at least 1e26 Void Mana. This is useful for charging your spells in all of your spell sets.

Details
 * is your best source of Excess Hallow Clicks (EHC for short) for  and one of your Character powers.
* is used because  scales with all-time performed Hallowed Clicks (PHC for short). Later on, Smite is also be used to make  stronger.
 The autoclicks and spell casts from this phase also improve , which is the go-to burst spell for your longer Heretic runs. If you use  for burst, charge it in this phase, but with  instead of .

#### Void Mana

This phase is pretty simple: generate as much Void Mana as you can within the next 10-15 minutes. Staying in this phase any longer than that is not worth it. This is where you use  (or  later on) to generate your ocean of Void Mana with your Void Mana set.

 is used so that you always have 's ability active if you have that item. That spell also boosts your Character ability power, which means more Void Mana.

If you lack , you can leave that spell slot empty.  is used to keep your HC pool topped up before burst. All of the other spells are used to generate Void Mana or keep spells charged.

#### Snap

**Important note**: if you don't have a lot of high-quality Incantation items for this phase, you can avoid snapping  for the time being, until you get some legendary items.

This spell set is the pre-burst setup, though this specific type of setup is also known as a "Snap phase". Here's how it goes in this case:

1. Cast  and wait for the HC pool to fill up.
2. Cast  and wait for the HC pool to fill up again.
3. Cast .

 and  are used to fill your HC pool before casting the 3 spells mentioned above.

Details
 By casting these spells with a full Incantation set, their bonuses will be locked for their full duration, even if you change item sets, but only if they stay in the exact same spell slots the whole time. This is known as a "snap".

#### Burst

**Important note**: if you didn't have a lot of high-quality Incantation items for the Snap phase, you can replace  with  in the burst spell sets below.

The short run spell set looks like this:

This spell set includes , and is used specifically because  takes time to scale up.

1. Do the snap phase.
2. Switch to burst item set and spell set in this order (specifically for recharging ).
3. Click the Orb a bunch of times (or 1 time thanks to 's **active** ability).
4. Switch to snap spell set to refill HC pool (and recharge  if you're using it).
5. Go through steps 3-4 over and over again until either  or  run out. In this case, you snap them and continue bursting until  runs out.

These steps remain the same regardless of progress. You can also do a VM phase after bursting, then do steps 1-5 again. Doing these steps properly is crucial to make profits as a fellow .

Getting the muscle memory down for Burst is most of the struggle, as it's a lot of button presses in a short amount of time. Make sure you use the spell sets and item sets features in the game to make the Burst much easier to do.

## Items

### Enchanting

Enchant your item sets in this order:

1. Burst
2. Void Mana
3. Buildup / Snap
4. Pet Level

Buildup and Snap sets are similar in power, though Snap is better at less than e550 mysteries. Pet Level set needs only 1 level to gain bonuses from  and the Legion challenge.

The enchant priority table below assumes that your total enchant level is 7 or higher, and that you have maxed all your attributes unless otherwise noted.

 **Highest** (profits 30% to 20%, mostly burst items)

Exceptions:
* replaces  in burst at total enchant 30.
* replaces  in burst at total enchant 39.
* At total enchant 24 or higher, if you don't have legendary , use  at 1 enchant level lower than this instead.
* If you don't have legendary , use  at 3 enchant levels lower than this instead.
 **Highest -1** (profits 20% to 13%, VpE 20%, VpE 15%, and many burst items)

Exceptions:
* If your total enchant levels for items with 15% VpE enchants are 12 or lower, or if you are using , use  at 3 enchant levels lower than this instead.
 **Highest -2** (profits 13% to 9%)

Exceptions:
* replaces  in snap at total enchant 39.
* If you don't have MAS 175, use  at this enchant level instead.
* If you don't have SPC 250, ignore  until you do.
 **Highest -4** (profits 6% to 4%, evo 20%, pap 22.5% to 20% in buildup)

Notes:
* Whether you use  or  doesn't matter until you reach Ascensions.
* If you don't have , ignore it until you do.
* If you don't have legendary , use  at this enchant level instead.
 **Highest -5** (evo 15%, pap 15% in buildup)

Exceptions:
 **Highest -6** (evo 10%)
Exceptions:
* If you don't have , use  instead.

You can use this spreadsheet to get more precise information on how to spend your e-dust. However, it requires you to make a copy of it and to input a lot of data. It is helpful for some other things as well.

### Phases

Notes:

* In the enchant tables below, you'll see enchant levels presented in this format: "Enchant 3+5 (8)". The first number is the enchant level it should be at before any other bonuses. The second number adds bonuses from  and the Legion challenge. The enchant level in parentheses is the total enchant level. This note will appear in each of those tables in case you skipped it.
* If you don't have access to T3 pets yet, you can use  instead.

#### Buildup

You can swap  with  for a few seconds to fill the Shard Pool if you have at least 1e26 Void Mana, then swap back to Manabeast. This way, you can maintain maximum cast rate during buildup for much longer. You can also use the additional Shards to recharge all of your spells in all of your spell sets, then return to the Buildup spell set.

Possible adjustments:

* If you don't have legendary , use  instead.
* If you don't have , use  instead.
* is slightly stronger than  in this phase regardless of enchant level.
* and  provide exactly the same bonuses for this phase, so it doesn't matter which one you use until you reach Ascensions.
* With enough Catalysts,  beats . You can always compare them in-game to see which one is stronger.

#### Pet Level

,  and  don't need enchants.  doesn't need enchants for this phase.

Notes:

* The Pet Level spell set for Archivist is not necessary, but it's there if you want to know how to maximize its experience gain.
* is not necessary either.
* For , you can switch briefly to the Void Mana item set and spell set, then switch back to pet level item set and spell set for a minor boost to pet experience.

#### Void Mana

Stay in this phase for 10-15 minutes at most. At that point, you'll be at the highest amount of Void Mana you can reach this exile, not counting upgrades you might get after bursting.

You can also stay in this phase for a short time, then snap and burst, buy some upgrades and sources, then come back to this phase.

Possible adjustments:

* If you don't have 175 MAS, use  instead.
* If you don't have legendary , use  instead.
* If you don't have , use  instead.
* If you don't have , you can leave that spell slot empty.

#### Snap

Make sure that ,  and  are in the exact same spell slots in both this spell set and the burst spell set. Otherwise, you won't get all the benefits of this phase.

You can recharge  here by switching to the burst item set.

,  and  don't need enchants for this phase.

Possible adjustments:

* If you don't have 250 SPC, use  instead.
* You can use  or  instead of . They have the same enchant bonus, so it doesn't matter which one you use for this phase.
* If you don't have legendary , use  instead.

#### Burst

If you run out of Hallowed Clicks, you can switch to the Snap spell set to recharge them and , then go back to Burst spell set and burst again.

Possible adjustments:

* If you're using  instead of , replace  with  at total enchant 15 instead of 24. (see enchant table above)
* At total enchant 24 or higher, if you don't have legendary , use  instead.

Around Red Power Memetic 24/25, Gild 20 Source Memetic, and 1e11 Catalysts (1000 Red Soul Shard)  begins to outperform .

With enough Catalysts,  outperforms . The Catalysts needed depends on enchant level and . However, Fist Brooch is better overall, because past a certain point (probably around 1e9 Catalysts), it takes so many Catalysts for Miniaturized Accelerator to outperform Fist Brooch that it's not within reasonable reach.

For those who are interested, the following table and this spreadsheet show what these thresholds are:

## Pantheon

 e500 mysts (3 Gods)
 e600 mysts (6 Gods)
 e700 mysts (Both abilities)
 e800 mysts (Chaos unlocked)
 e900 mysts (Cerebros unlocked)
 Demiurge
 Dread
 Notes

Cerebros is higher than most other Gods because of the God experience boost it provides.
Once you reach Ascensions, Dread puts Tempoaeverum higher than most other Gods, while Demiurge keeps the same priority.

 Before Ascensions
 Demiurge
 Dread
 Contraligia

If you are unsure what level Contraligia should be at, put it at roughly the same level as the lowest leveled Minor God.