Guide

## Introduction

Welcome to the v1.01 Time Layers Guide! This is a soon-to-be detailed guide that will take you through Time Layers, using optimised strategies, thorough explanations, and basically what you should expect.

### Premise

When you initially load up Time Layers, you will be greeted with 3 tabs, a large vertical tab, a "spacetime" section of that tab, a display of the current age of the universe, and the amount of seconds of time foam. The goal of this game is to get to the Perspective Layer.

## The Physical Layer

This layer goes by quite quickly, and should only take less than 30 minutes.

At first, you should notice an increasing age of the universe in seconds, and an increasing time foam in seconds, which you should focus on for now. You will have also accomplished an Achievement, **Tick Tock Aarex's Clock**, for having a 1-second old universe, which is free. Achievements are an essential part to progressing efficiently in this game, and you can see what Achievements you have completed if they're green. However, only some contain a reward once completed, thus should be a detail to remember for later on. Once your *time* (time foam) reaches 20 seconds, it's time to perform what's called a *Temporal Compression*. This reduces the time by the cost, and increases your *Temporal Compressors* by 1. Temporal Compressors are a boost to your time, as they *compress space* by x1.1 each. Initially after doing so for the 1st time, 3 mysterious buttons will appear underneath the *Temporal Compressors*. These are the provided upgrades for the time foam, which are necessary for progression. Temporal Compress 2 more times and save up 200 seconds of space foam, which shouldn't take long. This allows you to buy the 1st Temporal Upgrade, which unlocks "Space Foam".

**Space Foam** is another concept in the Physical Layer, which is a timeless quantity and is measured in meters. By now you should have 1 space (short for meters of space), so you can already perform 3 Spatial Compressions. You'll notice that with each Spatial Compression your space goes up slightly, but at 3 it's not enough. In order to increase your space any further you'll need to purchase the 2nd Temporal Upgrade for 500 time, in order for Time Compressors to now boost Space Compressors by +1.5% for each Time Compressor. To make this a shortened wait first buy the 2nd Space Upgrade beforehand to boost Time Compressions based on Space Compressions, again +1.5% each.

If you have 4 Temporal Compressors and 3 Spatial Compressors (optimal), your space will increase to 1.56, which almost meets the requirement. At least you can buy the 3rd Space Upgrade for 1.5 space, which will cut the costs of Time Compression down to a third. This means that you can now perform Temporal Compressions more easily, so having 6 of them will finally increase the space sufficiently enough to meet the criteria to Spatial Compress again!

By this point you should have at least 2.01 Space Foam, so you can unlock the 1st Space Upgrade - the most important of them - to unlock **Spacetime Foam**, which is basically just a combination of the 2 previous concepts. Well done, you have unlocked all 3 fundamental mechanics of progressing in the Physical Layer of Time Layers! However, this is nowhere near the end. The Spacetime Foam will place in the middle of the 3 mechanics.

You gain *Spacetime* (short for *meter-seconds of spacetime foam*) @

s
×
t

{\displaystyle s \times t}

 per second, where

s

{\displaystyle s}

 is the amount of space you gain per second and

t

{\displaystyle t}

 is the amount of time you gain per second. Thus, it should increase quickly, so ensure you Spacetime Compress often. Spacetime Compressors are valuable, as they provide a **free** Spatial and Temporal Compressor for each Spacetime Compressor! Focus on reaching 20,000 Spacetime. This allows you to buy a powerful Spacetime Upgrade, where Spacetime Compressors are basically 1.5% stronger. This doesn't seem like much, but it all adds up later on. Sadly, progressing should soon slow down, so don't forget to Compress in all the categories.

For 5000 time, you can purchase the 3rd Temporal Upgrade to double the effectiveness of the previous upgrade to +3% and double Spacetime gain! Now you should be getting around 5,000 Spacetime per second, so get 9 Spacetime Compressors then wait about 4-5 minutes to accumulate 2.000e6 Spacetime to buy the 1st Spacetime Upgrade.

## 2.000e6 Spacetime; The Energy Layer

Now, this Upgrade is not like any ordinary upgrade. It will unlock a **whole** new layer of content, literally! Once you reach this layer, you will unlock a new tab, called **Energy Layer**. When clicking this tab, you'll see a chunk of upgrades, and a button to reset all previous progress for Space Energy. If you can't tell, Space Energy is the main currency of the Energy Layer. The only viable way to keep progressing now is to reset, so do that now. Don't worry, the next run will be even quicker than before! Now, don't be tempted to buy the 1st Space Energy Upgrade, with its yellow border and text and a black background, as it is actually more effective to bank the Space Energy, to multiply the speed of the Physical Layer by 2 (confirmed by EditorThingy). This time around you keep the 1st Upgrade of each Physical mechanic due to your 1 Space Energy, meaning you automatically start with all 3 mechanics!

This next run should take around 10 to 15 minutes (unconfirmed). Buy every Physical Upgrade you can, keep compressing, and shoot for 1.000e6 Spacetime in order to reset for another SE. Keep doing this until you have 3 Space Energy so now you can safely buy the 1st Space Energy Upgrade, as this won't affect the x3 speed multiplier that 2 SE already gives.

### Nucleosynthesis

This is what you unlock when buying that upgrade. It comes in handy as it will add length to your Space between the timeframe specified in its subtab, to be able to push for more Spatial Compressors.

Remember to always go for Achievements, especially the Achievements at a column past the 5th column, as they are stated to have many rewards. Now after buying the Nucleosynthesis, you want to grind for some row 2 Physical upgrades. The reason the 5 SE Upgrade likely exists is because you can keep the row 2 Physical Upgrades (meaning you don't have to do this grind over and over). Once you get 3 row 2 Physical Upgrades, start farming for 30-40 SE runs. You do this for about 10 minutes according to the main creator of Time Layers, Patcail.

You can then buy the 100 SE upgrade which will be a nice boost. Now go for the 4th row 2 Upgrade. This allows you to reset for around 300 SE. Start grinding towards 1000 SE, then buy the upgrade. Same thing goes for the 5th Upgrade.

### 1.000e5 SE; Automation

Upon buying the 5th Space Energy Upgrade, you will be granted a boost to Space Energy gain, and unlock Automation.
.

You'll be greeted with a subtab. Now just set all 3 values to -1 and you're good to go! (You never really need to change these values.) You should be going for the **NEIN TIEN NEIN TIEN** after that, to further buff Spacetime and Temporal Compressors. Start grinding for the next Space Energy Upgrades, and get Physical Upgrades along the way. However, this is a noticeably long process. (?)

After you have 1.000e50 SE, you'll notice that the upgrade doesn't do much. You should still grind SE though. The reason the upgrade exists is because it allows you to get 20 Temporal Compressors faster, which is actually a milestone amount.

## 20 Temporal Compressors; The Stellar Layer

Upon buying the 5th Temporal Upgrade costing 20 Temporal Compressors, you unlock the 3rd Layer. The bright yellow tab colour distinguishes this layer from the others. However, in the default subtab, all you'll see is how many Stars are owned and their effectiveness towards Spatial Compressors. It is best to restart for a Star as soon as you can, as you can't bulk-create Stars for now.

After resetting, the 1st row of Physical Upgrades are kept. This is due to a feature that is incredibly relevant at this stage of Time Layers.

### Grinding out the Stellarpedia

The Stellarpedia is a collection of Unique Star milestones, which provide many boosts, mainly to speed up early-game progress between each Star and reduce focus needed on the game itself. SP1 (Stellarpedia 1 Star) allows you to keep the 1st row of Physical Upgrades. You may also notice that the Universe's age is intact, which isn't due to this, but Automation shares this fate, which is a nice QoL benefit early after resetting.

With these additional benefits, it's time to create more Stars. The ease of progression between each Star will seem to become more apparent, as you'll gradually be able to keep more and more upgrades as you accumulate Stars. (?)

At SP12, which lets you keep the 12th space energy, it will actually give the 12th space energy upgrade to you for free, despite not having anywhere near enough energy at this point to get it manually. This will unlock normal energy. Normal energy is a new type of energy that is acquired by doing a space reset while spaceless, which disables space compressors and divides spacetime by 1e60. Ideally you will want to go spaceless and grind for 1 normal energy first, which will give a 2x multiplier to the physical layer. However, due to normal energy being capped at 1 (for now), this will be all you can do with it.

There is a specific Stellarpedia milestone to look out for, and it is SP15, which unlocks a crucial new way of playing the game.

### 15 Stars; Creating Galaxies

Galaxies are a new mechanic that when entering one of them, it does a stellar reset and puts some conditions on the game according to the galaxy. You just unlocked galaxy 1: The temporal and nucleosynthesis effects of space energy is disabled, and gain 1e50x less spacetime. The reward is to gain x free applications of nucleosynthesis upgrade 2 (Nucleosynthesis boosts spacetime gain) where x is the number of completions. Enter the first galaxy.

Upon entering galaxy 1, you will notice that you will have very little spacetime due to the 1e50 nerf. It will take some waiting (~5 minutes) to get the spacetime above 1. During this time, get all the time and space compressors you can get. Being long in Galaxy allows you to raise limit of Normal Energy. Once you get to 1e6, you will get space energy and will rapidly progress. You will have to grind time energy to get to 1000 years per second, which is the goal, but it shouldn't take that long. Once you complete it, you will gain a free nucleosynthesis upgrade 2, and your normal energy cap will now be 2. Notice that your normal energy will reset to 0 after you exit the galaxy. Grind for 2 normal energy to bump the 2x multiplier to 3x and do a regular run to get to SP16, which square roots all spacetime dividers when in galaxy 1 and spaceless. This will allow you to get normal energy while in galaxy 1. Go in galaxy 1, and it will be a lot faster due to you have nucleosynthesis upgrade 2 now. After this, grind until you can get not one but three more completions of galaxy 1 which should take about an hour. Next exit out and get 5 normal energy, which then unlocks the Perspective Layer.

## 5 Normal Energy; The Perspective Layer

At this point, you are nearing the endgame, so give yourself a pat on the back.

After reaching 5 Normal Energy, you can unlock the Perspective Layer.

*The guide ends here for now. Remember that you can always ask questions to other players and members of the Time Layers community, or figure out the rest of the game yourself!*

*:)*

### Supercompressors

.

The next update is here

## The ENDGAME; [stats]

As in the perspective layer section, ask questions to other players of the Time Layers community or just figure out the rest yourself.