Early game

## Day 1 - Day 51, The Beginning

Just play the game. Don’t open crates, don’t spend rubies, all you need to do is force your way through, upgrading your stats with the gold you get. If you feel like you’re stuck, you can still play a Day, get the gold from killing the mobs even if you die at the end. This takes just half an hour to an hour of active play time and you don’t need to worry about spending your limited resources (Weapon Crates and Rubies specifically) to beat it.

## Day 51 - Day 530, Early Game

### Rewinding

At Day 51 you unlock Rewinding, the main mechanic of the game. You can do your first Rewind immediately, or just keep pushing a bit more to see where you can get, though it’ll get harder and harder. Once you do your first Rewind you can start to Discover your first skills, with some giving you very minor bonuses, like a bit of extra HP or mana, and others almost changing how the game will be played.

Use your elixir first to Discover skills, and later to upgrade the ones you already have. Some skills to watch out for are Elixir Mastery (EM)¹ which will be guaranteed in the first 10 discovers, and Time Jump (TJ)² and Deja Vu (DJV/DV)³, which will greatly facilitate your Rewinds and should be maxed out as soon as possible. As well as those, any damage skills you see will let you push further, netting you more elixir on your subsequent Rewinds. This way, you’ll get into a nice flow of Rewinding, discovering more skills, upgrading others and then pushing more days to get more elixir on your next Rewind.

On the other hand, some skills you want to avoid are Hidden Strength (HS)4, Idleness and Dissipation (I&D)5 and Arcane Arts (AA)6. These are absolute traps and will just be a waste of elixir, all of them can be kept at level 1, with no downside.

HS' weakness is that its number values are always overshadowed by other sources of flat damage, namely Damage stat (that you buy with gold) and weapons.

Idle is just a bad mechanic overall, being extremely slow: Rewinding with the game open with packs takes about 3 minutes, 10 if you don't own packs (on a good Rewind spot and with TJ awaken, which will be true for Days 2000-10000 at least), while an idle Rewind can take several hours, especially as you go further into the game. Idle also cannot go further than your max day, and doesn't give you any hero tickets on Rewind, which is pretty much the only reliable source of this valuable resource.

Idle does add Rewinds to your Rewind count, as well as gold, but no elixir or tickets. This can be used to increase your Rewind perks in a non-active way, but is still much slower (1 Rewind per hour, with no effect from I&D) than the 530 strat that will be explained later.

When leveling skills, it’s recommended to keep your EM at twice the value of your other skills, aka 2:1 EM:Damage. This is meant to put you on a nice flow of leveling that’ll get you used to the grindy nature of the game. Eventually, you’ll make do with less EM, or get a couple skills at least up to the same level of it, but this will be explained further on. Remember to always discover skills first, while that’s a thing.

       One last thing that’s good to know: Aside from 2 specific spots, there’s never an answer to “What should my skills be at Day X?”. Knowing where you can push to depends on other things aside from skills, so you might need half or double the levels that someone else had to reach a certain day.

### Weapons and Rubies

During all this, you don’t need to open any weapon crates or spend any rubies, the Training Sword (the weapon you have since Day 1) will do just fine until Day 300+ since you can upgrade your damage with gold.

Legendary weapons actually have good numbers on them, but the amount of gold you can get will increase dramatically with every Rewind and every time you push to a higher max day, which can render that shiny weapon useless very quickly, meaning you wasted 50 crates (in a golden spin) for nothing. If you really want, you can open some crates, 10 maximum, and grab whatever rare weapon you find. Side note, if you like collecting things, don’t sell the Training Sword. It’s a one of a kind weapon, and can’t be obtained any other way.

Don’t spend rubies on any resources, such as gold, elixir, weapons, crates, or tickets. The value on those is pretty high and you’ll quickly get these resources for free when you need them.

Spending rubies on rerolling discovered skills is also not useful, since you can quickly discover all 28 of them.

### Tickets and Heroes

It’s around this time you’ll get your first hero tickets, which you can and should only open 10 at a time for a guaranteed Epic. To start, use the New Age8 banner, at least until you get one copy of Mikhail9 (and as for my personal opinion, one copy of Dash10). Heroes for the most part will go in and out of usage very randomly during this stage of the game, and so you don’t have to worry too much about which heroes to use. Once you get both copies, switch to doing Classic11, as almost all legendary heroes are good/will be used eventually, these being Cain12, Dark Merlin (DM)13, Nero14, Dewitt15, Lilith and Lilibeth16. Note: Cain can end up killing you by pulling the mobs closer, especially if he doesn’t have enough stars to kill them. Try him out, and make your own conclusions.

Unlock all 6 hero slots as soon as possible with your rubies, but not the hero loadouts (the numbers at the bottom).

While heroes aren’t gonna do much you still might want to use the best of them right? Well, I would recommend using Mikhail (Mik) and Dash, once you can get them, but your main focus for damage will be Eleanor17. She is a very fast hero that will be used for Rewinding all the way to Day 30000 (the current cap as of set/22). Beyond that, Garp18, Dewitt, DM, Esther19, Max20 and Elaine21 (these last two only when  you can get them to 4\*) will be good support heroes to focus your attention and resources on.

### Dungeon and Expedition

You can ignore Dungeon for the most part, but try to play around with Expedition, gathering some bones (fossils) and unlocking further difficulties. You can use more Crowd Control heavy heroes (CC, such as freeze and slow) to try and get a longer run, but for farming use the highest difficulty where you can kill mobs for at least one minute.

Once you can farm 200 bones in about an hour (or overnight with the AFK pack), go to the bone shop, scroll down and buy Caladbolg22, a legendary weapon. This weapon is very cheap and will be your only weapon until Day 1500, though you should buy a new one every time you pass an extra 100-200 days. This will allow you to save all your Weapon Crates, which are very valuable and limited.

Your bones can also be used to buy runes, which are very important as the game progresses, though you should only buy the Greater versions, not regular or lesser runes. These other runes have very small values, and can only be upgraded to tier 3, while Greater runes go up to tier 24 (as of aug/22), and so will be a better investment of your bones and time, being upgraded all through the game.

### 530 Rewind Farming

Once you hit Day 500-530, STOP. Do not kill the boss on Day 530, and make sure to turn off Auto Continue23, by pausing the game during a Rewind or a push (just gotta be in Campaign) and removing the check mark. This is where you will farm all skills you might be missing and then farm Rewinds, as such:

* Go down to the minimum day and farm Rewinds until you have about 500.
* Go back to Rewinding a single time down from max day to grind elixir so you can discover your last skills. If you can’t unlock a skill in less than 10 Rewinds, upgrade EM instead until you do.
* Once you have unlocked all skills, get your first awaken.
* And then Rewind farm until you have 2304 Rewinds before passing Day 530.

Why should you do that? Well, the first Rewind perk you can see in your list is the minus waves perk. This will lower the amount of waves of enemies you have to kill in Campaign, up to a minimum of 1 wave until Day 999, then one more minimum wave every 500 days, so 2 waves at Day 1000, 3 at 1500, and so on.

Lowering the amount of waves is going to drastically decrease the amount of time you spend Rewinding and pushing.

But why that number? 2304 is enough Rewinds so that you can reach Day 2000 while still being at minimum waves, and then just the regular Rewinding for elixir you have to do to progress will maintain your waves low enough. If after farming you ever see a second yellow wave, you will have to farm again but that's pretty rare to happen, and if it does you will probably be at a later stage in the game (3k+) where Rewind farming becomes as fast as doing the 530 strat.

If you don't Rewind farm now, you'll have a much harder time getting to those higher days, and if you Rewind farm between 531 and Day 3k it will take much longer. In case you missed Day 530, even though it takes longer, farm anyway.

And why Day 530? Because that's the last day where you will always be below 500 days from max day, and so will always have a 100% portal chance. If you go beyond Day 530, for instance 600, and then Rewind down to Day 30, you will have a ~11% chance for a portal. Being at Day 530 (or just below it) will also allow you the highest amount of elixir possible to unlock all 28 skills before you have to Rewind farm.

What if you’re late to reading the guide and you already missed Day 530? There’s a few different options. If you’re close to a new jump in portal skip (for instance, you’re at Day 900, with Day 1000 allowing you to skip +5 days per portal, or 10 with Express Pack), it’s usually a good idea to finish the push towards that milestone, and Rewind farm there, as that’ll be faster whenever you do find a portal. Also, if you’re close to another Awakening, and you don’t yet have Awakened TJ, you can try to go to that Year and see if you luck out. Don’t try to reroll for TJ if you don’t find it though. In any situation, just follow the strat the same way, just keep in mind it’ll be slower since you won’t have 100% portal chance.

Thank you M1dKnight#7309 on the Discord for the write up of the 530 strat, which I'll be quoting in parts here:

What is the 530-Rewind farming strat?

Note: you don't have to wipe data and reset to use this strat in case you passed Day 530. If you're on a high enough day, you can still Rewind farm without this strat.

- DO NOT PASS DAY 530. Pushing to 530 is ok, but don't beat the boss.

- Rewind down to as low a day as possible then repeat the following:

CASE A: You do not have the express pack:

  1) go up to Day 60 with the help of portals

  2) exit, go back to shop, and Rewind ONCE, taking you back to Day 30. This will give you around 1 Rewind per minute.

CASE B: You have the express pack:

  1) go up to Day 120 with the help of portals

  2) exit campaign and Rewind TWICE, taking you back to Day 30. This will give you around 2 Rewinds per minute.

CASE C: No express pack, TJ awakened:

  1) go up to Day 95 with the help of portals

  2) exit, Rewind 3 TIMES, taking you back to Day 39. This will give you around 2 Rewinds per minute.

CASE D: you have the express pack and awakened TJ:

  1) go up to Day 130 with the help of portals

  2) exit and Rewind 4 TIMES, taking you back to Day 40. This will give you around 4 Rewinds per minute!

### Awakening - Year One

Awakenings are a new mechanic, which allow you to boost one of your skills each Year (365 Days). In capped skills, the boost is an increase in the max level of the skill, or in the case of one of them (WS), it removes the cap completely. In the case of uncapped skills, these gain a x2 multiplier, and the ability to reach Milestones, explained further in The 10 Millions Skills Grind.

Once you unlock your first awaken, you will be presented with 3 options out of all your unawakened skills. If you don’t want any of the options, you may reroll for 3 other skills (which might not be completely different form the ones you just got). In the case you can’t pay the 200 ruby fee, you may close the window and continue awakening later.

For your first awaken, don't bother trying to reroll to find TJ or EM specifically, this can be insanely expensive and is not worth it. You want to grab TJ > EM > RA24 > BD25 > UP26 > Inspire27 > BS28, but the order is just meant to explain which to pick if you see MORE THAN ONE of them. If you see any of them, choose it, if not, reroll. Don't be scared to reroll if all your options are bad, just don't miss a good choice for a "better" one. If you saved rubies properly playing so far, you can be more strict, and only pick the first 5 skills of the list for Year 1.

### Rubies

Well, if I'm not wasting my rubies rerolling to find TJ, what do I do with them? The main answer is: you will want to keep 200-400 of them to reroll awakens when you see no good option, but the rest is gonna be used to buy Elixir Walls29. These are the single biggest buff you can get in the game, as sources of extra elixir are rare, and will save you a lot of time and Rewinding. Start by buying the 25% ones, Abyss and Glacier, and then just keep buying the next ones as soon as you can until you have them all. Since they're passive buffs, they will always be active no matter which one is equipped (that's just cosmetic) and their buffs will stack with each other.

Eventually they will keep their price but halve their bonus, but they're still great and should be bought nonetheless. Your last one will unlock at Day 6000, so you'll have things to spend rubies on for a while.

As well as that, make sure to unlock all friend slots you can, and then buy rune slots and gear (more on that later) slots as you feel like you need them.

### Friends and Amity

       Your Friends list in the game is actually a source of currency, in the form of Amity, or hearts. These can be used to buy a limited amount of Rubies and Crates every week, which you should always buy, and also unlimited Tickets, which you shouldn’t buy. Last in the shop are the Hero Evolutions which will be discussed further in a future section.

Make sure to always have your maximum number of friends to get all the hearts you can every day. These don’t have to be actual people you know, as you can just add people from the Search tab, and they don’t send you hearts, you get your hearts yourself. Keep in mind people that are inactive for over a month can’t be used to gain hearts, so replace them if that happens.

Once you get all 2304 Rewinds, you can push past Day 530.