Nurture

criteria
 Reward
 Goal

*"Travel to a dimension filled with gigantic monsters. All enemies have 2x attack, World enemies have 2x health and map enemies have 10x health. Luckily, Scruffy has a brother in this dimension who will help you out if you level him up! You'll gain access to the special Laboratory building while on this challenge, which will give bonus Exp to Scruffy's brother, Cruffys. Check the Scruffy and Laboratory tooltips while on this Challenge for more info. Clearing **Z135** with this Challenge active will grant an additional 400% of all Radon earned up until that point, and will (mostly) return the world to normal. **Complete this Challenge with Cruffys at Level 10 or higher to earn a new Perk!**"*

## **Cruffys**

The bonuses the player earns once Cruffys is at a certain level is shown in Cruffys' menu.

The list of bonuses are as shown in the following table:

 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10

The final bonuses from Lv. 19 Cruffy are as follows: +135% attack and health, +160% resource production and looting, +20% Void Map Drop Chance, +35% Crit Chance, +50% base Crit Damage, and x141 Radon (only for the duration of Nurture), and he will stick around for 15 additional zones. (Zone 150).

The formula for Cruffys' Exp gain is equal to 2.5 \* (1.02^ (**Zone** \* 3)) \* **dailyRadonModifier** \* **Staff** \* **Knowledge** \* **Labs**. Cruffys requires 300K Exp initially, and this cost increases by x2.5 per level. Below is a table of Scruffys' required Exp gain per level.

## Structure

### Effect

Increases Cruffys' Exp gain by 10% (compounding) and enemy health and attack by 3.5% (compounding) per Laboratory purchased.

*"Build a giant Laboratory that Cruffys can use for research. Each Laboratory constructed increases Cruffys' Exp gain by 10% (compunding), but will pollute the world with toxic waste and research chemicals, increasing all Enemy attack and health by 3.5% (compounding)."*

Laboratories are a new building you can only build during the Nurture challenge. They provide additional Exp to Cruffys at the expense of increasing enemy health and attack. Below is a table of the stat increases for both aspects.

## Strategy

Though the loot description will only show the bonus to Scruffy, Cruffys also benefits from the XP gained from Worshippers, and this will be the overwhelming majority of his total XP. For speed, run a Large Savory Cache map to ten, every 10 zones, starting at zone 50. Otherwise run no maps until you begin to slow down or need to do Voids at the end of the challenge. This will level Cruffys as quickly as possible and reduce the total number of Laboratories you need to build, thereby reducing the overall difficulty of the final zones.

You'll want to unlock Observation as quickly as possible, even if you can't afford it yet, because you still get benefits from it even at level 0. So, your first **Nurture** run should aim for Cruffys level 10. This initial run can be done with a larger number of Golden Battle upgrades than you would use in a Radon-focused run. Given a Hazardous staff with over 500% Pet XP bonus, you'll need somewhere between 40 and 50 Laboratories.

On your second Nurture run, you should aim for Cruffys level 9, which needs around 25 to 30 Laboratories. Once you can do this run easily, you can begin to increase the number of Laboratories, or adjust the ratio of Golden Battle/Radon upgrades.

You'll need around 125-130 Laboratories to finish with maximum level Cruffys.

If you've recently acquired Observation, you'll want to put as many levels in it as you can reasonably afford, bearing in mind that the early even-numbered levels are far more important than the early odd-numbered levels. Then, start farming Runetrinkets. They'll give you the biggest overall power boost among all of your available options for quite a while.

Until Observation is raised to level 4, there is little to be gained from the post-challenge Cruffys bonus, and to maximize Radon per hour you should Portal as soon as you begin needing to map after completing the challenge rather than pushing significantly past 135 during active play.

Once Observation is raised to at least level 4, and you are able to max out Cruffys on each run of the challenge without slowing down the run, you should instead Portal at exactly z150 when the post-run bonuses from Cruffys run out and the multiple bonus Runetrinkets for clearing z149 are obtained. At this point, you should also check to see if the final Cruffys zone offers you a quicker farm for an Antenna than your current HZE.

When idling for longer periods, switching from AutoVoidon to AutoBattle after picking up the z125 bonus will maximize your Runetrinket gain at zero effective Radon cost, as the Radon gained after the end of Nurture is less than 1% of the total Radon for the run even if you push for another 50+ zones, while the bonus from z150's Golden Battle will give you a couple extra shots at a trinket (and additional 3% bonuses from Scruffy Radon on your next run) in the same amount of time.

Some people implement this by configuring Custom AutoGold to buy Golden Void first, then Golden Radon, then finally Golden Battle at the end. The disadvantage of setting it up this way is that you need to adjust the number of Golden Radons every time you pass an achievement threshold. Of course, you could always switch to Golden Battle manually after zone 125, but then you have to remember to switch back by the start of the next run.

For the "Nurtured AF" feat (reach Cruffys level 19 before zone 70, then complete Nurture), expect to need around 170-175 Laboratories, as well as good Worshipper management. Farming the resources to actually *build* the Labs may also be nontrivial, especially when foregoing maps to maximize Worshippers.

## Trivia

This challenge was introduced in the 5.4.4 patch on December 11, 2020.