Tips for beginners

#### Economise everything!

Do NOT open your collected boxes, keep everything you collect in your bag until your really need it for an event. This also means you do not always have to participate in every event if you do not have enough boxes to finish it. e.g. Organs: do economise the tomatoes as long as necessary to ensure you can get a red one. This might mean you have to sit out the organs event for months, but instead of getting some green and blue items every 2 weeks you will get gold and red ones (details follow)

#### Do NOT follow the red dot blindly!

This game is notorious to give hints aka red dots all the time. Except that if you follow those recommendations, you will never grow as much as you could if you choose wisely what to actually apply. Best example are the Equipments (gear, genes, cell, totem, organs), where red dots will appear on all troop types, but if you develop those equally, you will never be strong.

#### Keep your diamonds!

Do not use your diamonds to promote ants or buildings, this is a complete waste! You get diamonds for daily tasks and the peanut, but please do not spend what you have unless there is a diamond shop event, and even there think twice before spending them. Most items in that event are worthless, only very few (e.g. gold advancers, etc.) are worth spending diamonds on. And do NOT bet in the Auction House, you bet against players who spend money on the game and will rarely if ever get what you bet on, this is a waste of time!

#### Invest time!

Yes, that is the downside of not spending money: you need to invest time to get items and progress in the game. Meaning you need to concentrate on the important thing: your main nest! Farms are tempting as you can get rss from them, but that is only true once the farm itself is bigger, e.g. at least q25 or higher. So think twice before you start a farm, it will take away time you need for your main nest to grow.

### Money

So you want to invest some money in the game, but don't know what to buy? Here are a few hints:

Let's face it: this game is a money pit, once you start, this is a dangerous slope, be well aware of it!

#### Make a budget!

I mean it, once you start spending money it is easy to buy just another pack, it isn't much, etc. A good idea is to use game vouchers you can get for GooglePay and the like, so once your say 20$ voucher is used up you are stopped automatically. Another idea is to use a dedicated card, that allows only a maximum amount of spending, e.g. prepaid credit cards are a good Idea. as no money can be spent if there is no money on it.

#### Avoid certain packs

the game gives you so many buying options, and of course every single pack has that upper left triangle telling you how much of a bargain it is, but that is all smoke and mirrors, really. There are items far too expensive for what they are worth, and even basic items that can be collected can be bought, which is tempting, but really not worth it. Here is a list of items you should always avoid:

* Resource packs
* Diamonds
* Ant shards
* Honeydew
* Amber
* Snail Exp or Parts
* Food Tussle
* Command EXP

Nearly all of these items can be collected daily, and most of them very easily, or they drop in events. Buying these will only make you poorer very fast. Every cent you invest for any of those items should be economised to buy packs that are really worth it:

#### But what is essential?

The essential packs that will help you get further are the ones making the growing easier or faster, here are the most important items:

* Builder Gear
* Research Gear