Strategies

## Starting Out

### Stroking

In many idle games, once you purchase the automated income mechanisms, you can ignore the manual income mechanisms. In this game, both are important and serve different purposes. If you find yourself hitting a wall, experiment with stroking to determine if it can help you overcome that wall. Don't forget to continue to upgrade the Hand through all phases of the game.

### 100-gram Multiplier

Once your squid grow to 100 grams, their ink (both black and colored) output gets multiplied by 5x every 25 grams that they grow. X15 at every 1000 milestone. If you need a significant quantity of colored ink, this is one way to get it.

X25

The hand also gains a multiplier every 25 levels after level 100. The hand gains 10% every 25th level and 100% every 1000th level. Leveling the hand up is important to keep your strokes effective.

### Redundant-Colored Squids

Clown is an additional source of Red/Blue/Yellow ink and Goth is an additional source of White ink.

### Doubloons

*Main article: Doubloons*

Doubloons are the premium currency in Squid Ink but can be gained through Chests and Achievements.
You can also use codes provided by the the game developer for free Doubloons. Be sure to read the warning on the top of the page or you'll lose the gold doubloons.

It is recommended to start by saving Doubloons for Super Fuel at least twice and then starting to purchase the more useful Artifacts, like coins, keys and maps.

It's not recommended to buy Bail Out or chests.

### When to Sell Out

*Main article: Sell Out*

Veteran players advise you to Sell Out once you've accumulated 12 to 24 pearls. Once you sell out, you'll be able to spend a few of those pearls on monuments which accelerate your income and provide other benefits.

It is important to note that a Pearl is rewarded for every 100 combined Squid weight so at least for the first Sell Out you should try to feed your squids as much as possible.

## After First Sell-Out

### Pearls

*Main article: Pearls*

After selling out, your unspent pearls provide a bonus all on their own. While it is significantly worthwhile to begin purchasing monuments, it is also worthwhile to keep most of your unspent pearls for that bonus. Veteran players recommend keeping at least 90% of your pearls after every sell out. A good way to see if you are spending too many is by observing your chest value, if that goes down you have probably spent too many.

### Best Monuments Selection

1. Oyster - Provides additional pearl income every hour
2. Seaweed - Reduces the cost of feeding squids by 5% per Seaweed level
3. Stars - Increases the unspent pearl bonus by 10% per Star level
4. Sunken Ship - Increases the chance of finding sunken treasure by 10% per Sunken Ship level
5. Giant Sword - Increases all black ink/s by 20%
6. Colossal Squid - Increases the value of ink by 5% per Colossal Squid level

### Imagination

After hitting business level 201, the Imagination monument unlocks, and purchasing this monument will accelerate the number of pearls you gain from the Oyster monument after you sell out again.

### Imagination Trick

Later on when you get enough doubloons you can start using the "Imagination Trick". At the end of a good run (check your PPH) dump ALL your unspent pearls into Imagination and double sellout for 200 doubloons. At the very start of the next run, refund Imagination for 100 doubloons. This trick will increase your earned pearls on sellout. Don't forget to refund Imagination to get your pearls back. Total doubloons needed: 300

### Clarinet

Somewhere around Business Level 250, you'll be able to perform the Artisan VI achievement that unlocks the Clarinet monument. This monument provides a 100% colored ink bonus per level, significantly boosting mixed ink production.

## After Second Sell-Out

### Oyster Growth

A fully upgraded Oyster monument provides pearls based on 20% of your best pearls earned in a single sell-out and 30% of your best pearls per hour rate. These two figures are referred to as being earned in *deep* runs and *speed* runs.

The only pearls you earn that go toward the "Highest Pearls per Sellout" and "Highest Pearls per Hour" stats are earned through the red gift boxes you get by gaining business levels. These pearls can be multiplied by the Imagination monument and by spending 200 doubloons at sell-out, so it behoves the player to heavily invest in both of these when it is worth it to do so.

##### Deep Runs

Early in the game, deep runs are the best way to earn pearls. It takes newer players so long to overcome the lower hurdles that it is simply impossible to earn pearls within the first 15 minutes of a run, and this makes early speed runs ineffective.

In the early- to mid-game, an effective Deep Run should not take more than 24 hours before sell-out. Spending more than necessary in a deep run creates *lost* pearls when playing without an updated Oyster growth rate.

##### Speed Runs

Not far after earning Griffin, a player can earn *more* pearls per hour than they can earn in a deep run. In the late-game, the majority of the pearls earned from Oyster will actually come from speed runs than deep runs. For example, a player who hits business level 950 in deep runs can achieve level 900 in a 20-minute speed run.

It behooves a late-game player to finish up their play every day with a quick 20-minute speed run, provided that they are not in the middle of a deep run. In this way, their pearl growth is maximized during the time that they are *not* playing.

You can also start cycling through deep and speed runs to great effect right after getting Catamari, which unlocks Brown Ink that makes the jump between Goth and Catamari much easier. Simply do three or four speed runs to increase oyster value. Then when it levels off, do a deep run to gain achievements and business level bonuses or let the game run offline to stockpile pearls.

### Chest Boosting

*Main article: Chests*

* The following strategy is not to be used since it's old content. A new article will be published soon. But the basic is: feed the squids required on the Chest Optimizer to chestboost\*

The number of shells you receive from chests is based on your average shell income. However, the average shell income is not calculated based on your *actual* shell balance; it is actually calculated by examining all of your inks (including your mixed inks) and dividing their value by the time it takes to harvest or mix them.

The game does this for every ink, and you can see its expected income for every ink on the inks screen:

In practice, this means that you can increase the quality of inks that you are mixing and this will grow the value of the chests that you open. You do not need to actually *produce* any inks for this to affect your chests; simply by having them processing in the mixer you will alter your average income *before* *you finish producing the first one*.

Early in the game's development, this strategy was abused, and so a three-day limit was imposed on mixed inks. As long as an ink will be produced in fewer than three days, it will affect your chest value.

This technique becomes especially useful in overcoming the wall to get Catamari for the first time.

## Late Game

### Statue of Neptune

Main page

The author chooses to spend an hour's worth of oyster pearls every run on the Statue of Neptune. It is unclear if this is optimal or not, but it seems to be a reasonable strategy. For multi-day deep runs, perhaps a few hours' worth of pearls might be appropriate.

As far as which bonuses to invest in, the general advice is to boost Prosperity twice and then alternate between Prosperity and Talent until they begin to hit your threshold for how much you're willing to spend. Note that 180 upgrades is the maximum you can spend while still receiving benefits from it. Here is a table showing the ideal ratio between the two:

It is important to note that Wealth does not affect chest value.

Chronos level 100 missions unlocks a new blessing that increases the amount colour ink your squids produce.

#### Neptune deletion

You are currently able to delete Neptune statue midrun and it will reset to 0/0/0. This allows you to get the wealth upgrades to hit a important 25 milestone.

This is one of the easiest way to get Krystal 200.

### Pausing Mixers

* The following straregy is not to be used since it's old content\*

You can pause your mixers using the power icon in the upper-left of the mixing panel. Exercising this feature does not affect your average income for the purpose of calculating chest value.

A useful late-game strategy is to save up a significant amount of ink, add significant production bonuses to component inks, add quality bonuses to final inks, and mix exclusively with Efficiency and Overdrive enabled. This allows late-game inks such as Stained Glass to be produced with an 8x multiplier.

This technique becomes especially useful when your shell balance becomes significantly larger than a boosted chest (after Griffin). If you are not clicking on all of your chests 24/7, you're missing out on most of your boosted income. This technique allows you to boost the income you earn while idle because your inks are saved until you get back to the game, however it loses its efficacy starting around level 950 when the business level gift boxes start to overcome Stained Glass income.

## Pushing post Traverse

### Switchover to boost "Highest Chest Value this sellout" statistic

* Sacrifice ink to Volcano
* Set lumens to Chest Value mode (spread them between the squids according to the Chest Optimizer)
* Set tokens to Chest Value mode (color, lumen, value, chest value)
* Set food buufs to Chest Value mode (crumbed lobster, bisque, chowder, gumbo)
* Set Neptune to Opulence
* Set Choco to dark, green, purple
* Any holiday buffs that boost Chest Value
* Rearrange squids and squidlings (via nurse sharks) as desired

```
   It is easier to tell effects changes make if you turn mission powers off

```

* Make sure squid mission powers are on
* Wait for Ivy's power to activate
* Drop bait into tank (lobster dumpling, crumbed lobster)
* Activate "Special Sauce" (Mary's ability)
* Possibly repeat previous three steps hoping to get lucky with powers

### Switchover to make Black Market ink

* Undo all boosts above that boost color ink production
* It helps to turn off most mission powers
* Put all tokens on color stroke
* Do Black Market purge
* Farm ink (shadow is usually good), use manual mixing with efficiency ability and 100% volcano (gumbo as food buff and lobster dumpling as bait)

```
   You can run tacos to speed missions while doing this

```

### Switchover to sell Black Market ink

* Put all tokens in value
* Neptune to Wealth
* Idle while selling off ink made in previous step for Shells

```
   Now's a good time to farm gold doubloons missions
   For good shells offers, upgrade Wanted Board and use max Yacht (x32)

```

### Switchover to feed squids

* Food buffs (3 burgers)
* Feed Marvin and Hand

### Switchover to push Business Level

* Switch squid team for black ink (Daisy, Clown, Sir Cephalopod, Dazzle, Fallout, Goth, Catamari, Griffin, Medusa, His Majesty, Astronautilus andMarvin)
* Set lumens to black mode (15 on each squid in tank and the rest on Marvin)
* Set tokens to black mode (black, black stroke, lumens)
* Set food to black mode (quiche, garlic lobster, paella, seafood chowder)
* Turn off Squirt and set management up
* Set companions food to seafood chowder and burgers
* Set Neptune to black (talent/prosperity = x/x+2)
* Set choco to milk, green, purple
* Any holiday buffs to boost black or black stroke
* Rearrange squids and squidlings (via nurse sharks) as desired
* Make sure squid mission powers are on
* Wait for timers to reset, then for Goth's power to activate, toggle Squirt
* Throw bait in tank (quiche, garlic lobster)
* Stroke like \*\*crazy\*\*
* Repeat last 3 steps while making progress