Exterminate

criteria
 Reward
 Goal

*"Travel to a dimension filled with nasty bugs. All non-special World enemies are high attack, low health, fast bug enemies. Whenever a group of Trimps kills a bug enemy, that group of Trimps will become Experienced until death, allowing them to attack first against fast enemies. However, wasting time in Maps allows the swarm to grow, granting +50% permanent additive attack and health to all World enemies per map started in this Universe. Completing **Z120** with this Challenge active will unlock a special new Building!"*

## Rules

Bugs are fast, with a powerful attack, but low health. Your Trimps can attack first against them, however, so long as they are Experienced (i.e. so long as they don't die).

Each map started gives the enemies a permanent attack/health bonus for the remainder of the challenge.

## Strategy

Scruffy level 10 is recommended. Having Blacksmithery coverage through zone 115 is recommended (HZE128).

Disable map at zone, or configure it to enter the map chamber without running maps. Use Golden Battle. Purchase Sharp Trimps if possible.

Use a regular pushing spec, balanced somewhat toward health & equality. Contrary to earlier suggestions maximum attack is **not** what you want to focus on: Your speed of progress is determined mostly by how quickly you can kill a bug when you don't have the Experienced buff, and whether you can complete the challenge at all is determined by having enough health \* equality so you never get stuck on a bug that one-shots you every time.

After you kill a bug, all enemies are effectively slow so long as you stay alive. Once the run gets difficult, bugs will one-shot you if you don't one-shot them (they have very high attack and low health compared to normal enemies), so force 0 equality while fighting bugs. Unfortunately, Improbabilities and Exotic Imp-orts will still spawn with drastically more health than bugs, and you may not be able to one-shot them at 0 equality (especially when you encounter 2 exotics in a row and the first one procs your Gamma Burst), while they may be able to kill you easily at 0 equality. Bear this in mind.

If/when you die and get stuck, crank Equality all the way up, and whittle the enemy down until it is near death. At this point, pause the game, and keep un-pausing and re-pausing over and over until the enemy dies, and you are in the paused state with the Experienced buff before the next enemy appears. (The buff icon may not appear; that's OK.) Turn Equality all the way down to 0, un-pause, and pray that you one-shot the next enemy. Continue in this way as long as you can, usually until you encounter 2 exotics in a row. You can go as far as pausing every single cell (adjusting equality depending on whether it's a bug or an exotic) if you have tolerance for that much micro.

Once you can't progress through the world any further, equip a regular efficiency staff and raid the highest and largest Large Metal Cache map you can tolerate a time or two, for metal to buy equipment (and possibly some prestiges). This should carry you a few more zones. At that point you can either raid 121 for Dagger & Boots (and possibly more metal farming, Atlantrimp, and Melting Point - which can be a net win in total equipment & Smithies even though they increase your Swarm stacks), or wait a while to build up Tenacity. Regardless, if you're running the challenge with marginal Radon, you'll likely need some amount of time waiting on Tenacity for the last few zones.

**Checklist:**

* turn off auto abandon (settings left side under )
* turn off void maps
* turn off Tfarm
* turn off SHIP Farm
* turn off max bonus after

### Feat

Cheese from earlier patches has been removed, getting this feat is now far less tedious.

1. Set map at zone to stop at zone 119 cell 100. You can do this earlier too, there is very little difference.
2. Play the Exterminate challenge as you normally would up to that point. You may need to raid 121 gear or higher to get the stats to beat 120 with 100 stacks, do this before getting 100 stacks.
3. Run maps until you have 100 Swarm Stacks. **Remember that you get stacks for maps started, not maps completed.**
4. Finish the challenge, you have to beat the full stats of the 120 improb with 100 stacks.

If you don't want to sit through 100 map repeats, turn autofight off, create a map, start it, then tap M C over and over again to start and exit the map repeatedly, gaining a stack every time. Or enjoy that it's only 100 repeats, and only takes a few minutes.

## Trivia

Finishing the challenge with at least 100 Swarm stacks earns The Tortoise and the Bugs feat.