Ascension strategy

The details of ascension can be found here:Ascension.

The goal of this guide is to create a framework for ascending. Mostly for advanced players / players who already ascended once.

**Maximizing your gains:**

Attribute points earned on leveling up increase the core values of your attributes. While many options exist for adding multipliers to attributes, several ways exist to directly increase your core attributes without spending points, but only up to a hard limit (usually 75). Because of this it is best to save your points from leveling until you have exhausted these options.

**Core attribute gains:**

The Tel'Adre Gym can be used for training the strength, toughness, and speed attributes up to 75 in each.

Sometimes exploring areas like the lake or forest will increase attributes, but this is far more random.

### Stat increases

Level up to level 2, use the lake to get to 50 speed, then use the gym to get to 50 str and toughness before level 3, if you want to go through the effort.

Jojo can be used to get wisdom and intelligence up to 75 through meditation. His encounter rate gets massively increased at level 4, and he can be recruited as a follower if you don't ever attack him.

**Attribute Multipliers:**

The trading post in Ignam sells Manup Potions, Vitality Tea, Agility Elixirs, Scholar's Tea, and Incense of Insight. Each of these grants a 1% alchemical boost to an attribute and up to 20 can be used for each. Since gems carry over through each ascension these can be purchased in bulk to pad your stats in the early game.

(The alchemical items for boosting Lib and sensitivity are Vixen's Tea and Sensitivity Potions, and available for sale from the incubus who sets up his shop outside the deep cave once you defeat Zetaz.).

Spell books and red manuscripts and will grant a multiplicative "knowledge" percentage boost to intelligence, and crimson Jade will grant one to wisdom when consumed. This works even if you cannot actually learn spells from these materials.

**Flat bonus stats:**

Vampirism is an odd case because it requires only having vampire wings and a vampire face. It gives you access to the embrace special attack and then gives you between 3 and 5 turns to bite your opponent. These bites deal health and lust damage, and they each give you a minimum of one stack of vampiric thirst. Each stack of vampiric thirst increases your strength, speed, intelligence, and lib by a minimum of 2 (giving more points of increase at each successive New Game +). These easy points can give you a boost early on, and especially on later playthroughs can make gathering wood and Stone trivial for building up your camp.

Internal mutations for the bloodstream and mouth slots can give you a higher capacity for storing vampiric thirst, double the number of stacks you gained per bite, and even increase the amount of attributes you get per stack from 2x to 3x.

**Hoarding Exp:**

The game calculates experience rewards based on the difference between your character's current level and the level of the enemy you are fighting. However, there is no upper limit to the amount of experience points you can accrue. To effectively power level it is much easier to reach a certain level of strength and not advance in levels, because eventually you will run out of enemies that are strong enough to present meaningful amounts of experience points. If this ruins the fun for you, then feel free not to play this way. However, it is exceptionally difficult to reach the maximum level of 185 without playing in this fashion, because there are no readily available enemies near that level. Even Marae, the super boss, is only level 140. Other ways to advance faster include raising the difficulty level, and purchasing the wisdom Ascension perks. However these are both multiplicative, and so have diminishing returns against lower level enemies. In particular once an enemy is too low level they will only give between 1 and 100 experience points. Even doubling that through wisdom and adding an extra 40% by playing on the highest difficulty level is still nowhere near enough to reach higher levels in a meaningful amount of time. It's actually far more effective to artificially lower your level by picking up the soul overlord perk, survive a f-class heavenly tribulation, and then create a clone in camp. This will lower your level by 30, allowing you to gain experience as a character of that level.

Since most of your strength is based on level gated perks that get better and better as you reach higher tiers of perks, it is a viable strategy to reach level 78 (the minimum level necessary for undergoing the f class heavenly tribulation), spend all of your attribute and perk points, and then create a clone, reducing your level back to 48. You will effectively have negative attribute points and negative perk points that will be paid off as you level back up to 78 or pick up bonus perks along the way.

### Getting Exp ASAP

Finding Patchouli allows you to find new areas faster. These areas can be higher level than would be available to you otherwise, allowing you to gain exp faster. The battles that grant the most exp are in Volcanic Crag vs true fire golems using aoe ice spells or in Glacial Rift vs Ice Giant using single target abilities. Alternatively, the group of lv 51 true golems in He'Xin Dao offers fewer exp and you have to pay to challenge them, but the area is easier to locate and doesn't deal environmental damage to you.

It is important to note you can only damage enemies who are less than 50(or 40?) levels above you, the others have a shield that causes you to deal only 5 or so damage and almost no lust damage.

### Perks to get in every run

* Soul Aprentice - unlocks Soul sense, to make it easier to find previous areas(removes encounters from table making it easier to do whatever else you want to do)
* Hot Blooded + Nymphomania - Increases minimum lust, allowing you to always be ready for a fuck, and to use black magic, automatic Might + Blink casting. If not enough lust is gotten this way, carminite jewelry in Tel'Adre can also increase minimum.

### Characters to get in every run

* Phylla - she generates the largest number of children, increasing the speed at which you gain ascension points fastest (available in Desert)
* Luna - Allows for healing, removing weakened and generating food (available in Tel'Adre - again desert exploration)
* Evangeline - Transformations + Mutations
* Patchouli - even though he can be used without recruiting(enslaving), it is much better to enslave him, the second time you see him.
* Dinah - Similar to Patchouli, doesn't require joining to be useful, but it's advantageous.
* Diana - Universal healer, can heal the damaged curse status effect.
* Sidonie - Her "recollection" interaction is repeatable each day and nets you a large amount of wood for free. This makes building your camp go much faster.

### Places to find in every run

* He'Xin'Dao - Soul stuff, arena for training, Dungeons and quests at adventurers guild, many of these give more ascension points
* Tel'Adre - Carpenter's tools are important for building you camp. A lot of other stores to help, gym to get strength, toughness and speed.
* Ebon Labyrinth - A lot of interesting monsters, clearing it gives ascension points. Unlocks Boss Transformatives at Dinah.

**Stocking your Poison Pearl:**

The Sky Poison Pearl is the only way to bring items from one ascension to the next, offering seven pages of storage space. However, pages two through seven can only be accessed when your level is at least six times the page number minus one (level six to access page two, level 12 to access page three, etc.)

two through seven are locked by default and can only be accessed when your level is at least six times tpagelot number minus one, (level 6 to acceslot 2, 12 to access slot 3, etc. Up to level 36 to access them all.

Keeping a stack of Bimbo Liquors in the first page makes recruiting Patchouli and Sophie easy.

Stocking one of the first two pages with the quest items needed for the Adventurer Guild lets you start our your journey with several extra levels worth of perk and attribute points.

**Having Children:**

If you're playing as a female or herm and don't have a problem with your character giving birth then you can earn a fair number of ascension points by rapidly having kids. (Males can also father children with NPCs, but they progress more slowly, details available here: Pregnancy

).

Having a high fertility rate makes recruiting Amily faster and allows you to pick up more Ascension points from having kids throughout the game. This makes permanent perks from various deities such as Marae and Fera very valuable, and other options such as magical fertility or even just dumping Ascension points into raising your fertility solid investments after your first playthrough.