This page is just one part of an entire guide series. Visit Strategy Guide for an overview of other parts of this guide.
Last updated: v6.0.0
Ok, here you are. The beginning of the endgame. You’ve been through an Ultra Ascension (UA), and you’ve mostly gotten back to where you were before. There’s still a ton of content ahead of you, including playstyle-changing upgrades. In fact, in total hours played, you’re not even close to halfway there if you want to take advantage of all that Idle Slayer has to offer! But, the upgrades are pricey and grindy, and the strategy for most of this will stay the same: click lots, play lots, and become an Idle Slayer hero.
You’re going to have a few playstyle upgrades along the way, like Rage Mode, the Village, new equipment, and even new Stones of Time. But, throughout the endgame, the basic way to measure how far you’ve gone is through Achievements. So look through the rest of this guide for some insight (master the Bonus Stages! Don’t be afraid to Ascend.) But, be aware - there is absolutely no substitute for sheer hours put into gameplay.
Consider using the following suggestions for when to Ultra Ascend, and the types of Equipment, Upgrades, and/or Major Ascension Tree upgrades you can plan on getting at each level, refer to the Ascension Tree Tier List if you get stuck in a UA.
Make your 1st Ultra Ascension once you've earned 6 overall Ultra Slayer Points (USP).
After your first UA, plan to get the new Equipment, Cape. Work towards unlocking the important craftable, the Book of Death Pact, granting you access to (Dark Divinities). Rage Mode is also essential for getting more SP (making use of the Rage mode strategy) which will help you get to Astral Slayer (the main objective of this UA, the big boy at 500 Million SP!). After Astral Slayer, you'll buy the Village Key for a meager 2 million SP (you should also grab Astral Sword (10m SP) and Astral Blessing (60m SP) as well!) and UA immediately afterwards. Make your 2nd UA at around 27 overall USP shortly after you've gotten the Village Key. Be sure to check out Village to see what preparation you would benefit from doing beforehand. Try to start making use of the Ultra Prestige Strategy to get more DP as long as you have over 470 total DP.
After your second UA, plan to get the new equipment, Claw. Exploring the Village is the first priority in this UA, collect as many upgrades as you need that will help you collect materials for the Village and begin immediately after. It'll be very worth putting off your soul farming and other quests for a bit to get the Village on its feet. Along the way, get these Astrals: Leadership master, Command & Conquer, Master of Multipliers, Daily Silver Bonus, Multiverse, Slash The Life, Eternal Rage and the Stone of Hope (see below). Make your 3rd UA at around 45 overall USP, once you have the Stone of Hope. You should also have gotten the Armory by this point, check out the Armory Guide for further guidance on how to navigate the Armory.
After your third UA, plan to get Beetle Box, Provisions, Wander's Path, and Funky Space. This will be a longer grind! Within this UA you will be able to progress through more of the Village content, including the Boss Fight which will unlock some useful Ascension Upgrades. After the Boss Fight, you will also be able to unlock a new Ability, Wind Dash, and more Ascension Upgrades. Continue to grab any Astrals you can get your hands on, including Flawless, Silk Master, Gem Seller, Gem Buyer, Dark Side of Nature, Ancient Treasures, Collateral, Time Skip, and Sacred Tome of Death Pact. Gem Seller, Gem Buyer, and Collateral make quests significantly easier. Collateral will also unlock Funky Space: a powerful new Dimension that will be your home base for a long time, including in new Ultra Ascensions. Dark Side of Nature unlocks Dark Divinities that will make Wind Dash more useful. Use Rage mode often as it’s a x170 multiplier by this point and trumps Bow for souls. The grind may slow down for a bit, but once picking up either Wander's Path or Collateral the soul rewards become explosive, making a further climb to Cyclops and Sacred Tome a cakewalk. Make your 4th UA at around 77 overall USP, once you have Sacred Tome of Death Pact and everything cheaper than that.
(You may have noticed that that Ultra Ascension now ends at the Tome and there now isn't one after Chest in a Chest. Many players were skipping over Ancient Treasures entirely, and with many new upgrades added it's far more reasonable and time-saving to perform one less Ultra Ascension, instead of devoting one to just the Tome and Chest in a Chest. If you were in that path, keep going as you were and join back below after Ultra Ascending for Chest in a Chest at 82 total USP.)
After your fourth UA the priority is unlocking the next set of Astral upgrades including Chest in a Chest, Total Sale, Stone of Rage and Rights of a Villager. Advanced Divinities (and Dark AD) are a pair of an Astral Upgrades which can also be unlocked within this UA which will unlock several new Divinities including one to obtain new items in the Armory. You're also likely to unlock a new minigame at this point which will reveal a couple more Armory Items. It is recommended to purchase every upgrade up to and including Advanced Divinities and Spectre Knight Alpha. Your Minions can play a big part in helping you reach these upgrades, so don't be afraid to spend your Slayer Points on anything you can! Purchasing these will lead to your 5th UA at around 102 overall USP.
After your fifth UA, you're nearing the endgame! This is a good time to put great focus on building up and upgrading your Armory if you haven't already started doing so, check out the Armory page for tips. A few of those Astral Locked Upgrades just revealed powerful new upgrades that you'll definitely want to pick up along the way towards Ancient Awakening, Book of Optimization, and the penultimate Wind Dash upgrades. With all of these new Armory Items, you may want to take some time to utilize Ultra Prestige to collect large amounts of Divinity Points in order to upgrade them to higher levels. By the time you've picked these upgrades up, you'll likely want to make your 6th UA at around 111 overall USP.
After your sixth UA, the next set of prizes will boost Divinity Point collection considerably. You'll find some new upgrades in your path, ending in Cutting-edge Divinities and Original Sin. Both are excellent additions to your repertoire, and the latter is worth immediately Ultra Ascending afterwards. Doing so will result in performing your 7th UA at around 124 overall USP.
After your seventh UA, there are only a few Astral Upgrades left on the tree. You'll want your Armory levels to be as high as you can comfortably handle before aiming for these final Astrals. Again, don't be afraid to use Ultra Prestige to amass large amounts of Divinity Points quickly (especially if you haven't already completed the "Ultra Ascend 15 times" achievement.) You may even want to spend time hunting the rest of the achievements utilizing the Ninja minion along the way to the end, though the more Slayer Points you have when you start it the less time it will take.
Village[]
The Village is a unique element in Idle Slayer and features an extended set of quests and a ton of lore. It's exciting and fun. But, importantly, it includes incredible upgrades to soul gains. Getting it as early as possible, and finishing the quests, will help your pursuit of the Stone of Hope immensely. Enjoy the process, and check out other pages on this wiki, but don't ignore the Village.
Stone of Hope[]
The Stone of Hope is a very expensive, but very important addition. At 1.20e10 / 12 Billion SP, it is achievable after about 27 USP, but it’ll still be a long grind. Use the "If Chasing Astral Upgrades" ascension strategy below. One of the most common questions during a Stone of Hope grind is whether you should purchase the Ultra Ascension upgrades, Soul Surge I, Soul Surge II and Reincarnation. We recommend getting Soul Surge 1, but not Soul Surge 2 and Reincarnation. Soul Surge 1 is useful to have for getting all the Astrals cheaper than Stone of Hope (besides Magical Temporary Item and Flawless).
Once you do unlock the new stone, you can check the Stones of Time spreadsheet to see if you'll want to reallocate more USP into Stone of Hope than you have available. There are two options: first, you could simply Ultra Ascend and put any new USP towards Hope, according to the helpful distribution sheet.
Alternatively, if you notice that you'd be too far away from the optimal distribution, you can toggle the Dark Reset Dark Divinity and reset your divinities for 100 DP (while also resetting your Stones of Time). This will allow you to reallocate your USP into the Stone of Hope. Just remember that after resetting, you don’t technically have any Stones of Time - so hurry to the Ascension Menu and reallocate your USP (and then the rest of your Divinities)!
Dark Divinities[]
After you craft the Book of Death Pact, you’ll have access to a new set of Dark Divinities. Unlike regular Divinities, these are toggleable - you can pay DP to turn them on, but you’re returned all that DP when you turn them off. Some of them are situationally used - some of them are always useful.
Most Dark Divinities have a positive and a negative (also separating them from Divinities). The Divinity Tier List will tell you more about which to prioritize or use. Generally, you’ll want to use Buckshot, Dark Projectiles, and learn to run the Bonus Stage using Hard Mode and Silver Death.
Achievement Goals[]
Ultimately, the best way to track your progress through the endgame is through your total achievements collected. There are some massive Ascension Tree nodes and expensive Astral and Ultra nodes that you can chase, but the true mastery of the endgame grind is measured in achievements, mostly max item levels. Some will take a while, and others will simply take a lot of luck. These should be tied to your goals (see below).
Endgame Strategy Quick Notes[]
Set Goals[]
You need to set goals as your endgame strategy progresses. These goals will inform ascensions (or Ultra Ascensions) and give form to your gameplay. Goals should either be playstyle upgrades (Rage Mode, Stone of Hope, etc), Astral upgrades, or Achievements. Ultra upgrades should be viewed as steps to those goals (See Ascension Strategy below).
If chasing Equipment level achievements, it’s helpful to view them in total sets of 50 levels (this will make more sense with the CpS Ascension below).
Stack City[]
In endgame strategy, your main goal is to stack as many Random Box buffs on top of each other for maximum gains. These stacks are multiplicative, and can dramatically increase your earnings. There are ways to increase the likelihood of earning good stacks (like the Less Coins More Fun Divinity, and Bonus Stages), but your life is now determined by RNG (Random Number Generation - or the idea that it's a dice roll). Yes, there’s ‘luck’ involved. But it’s also, technically, just time. If you invest the time, you will get a massive stack in a bonus stage. But it does take time. You can also visit the Tavern and imbibe the Special Drink in order to pick up a buff you didn't have beforehand, though it'll take an hour before the next one is ready.
Max Your Equipment (no, seriously, don't forget how important this is)[]
The Equipment Bonus is one of the better CpS buffs you can get. If you can stack a major Equipment buff with an 18x CpS bonus or more, you'll make a ton of coins. Don’t leave it up to chance; max level every equipment item you can. The higher their levels, the more bonus you’ll get. Of course, the Chain Mail of Greed also increases the value of every equipment level. While exploring the Village, you'll get Joey's and Higgin's Amulets, which also increase your soul and CpS bonus for every single level of equipment.
Don't Neglect your Offline Rewards[]
It's easy to underestimate just how many enemies are slain offline. Same as above, putting levels into your equipment is key - in this case, especially the Sword, Dagger, and Axe. If you find that you're not particularly active, consider tuning your Stones of Time to beef up those offline gains. With this playstyle, Souls Bonuses aren't as important as having a nice coin combo (see Stack City above) at least once per Ascension.
Master of the Bonus Stages[]
The bonus stage is an essential element of endgame strategy. It's important for gains, but also essential for materials. As you’re aware, bonus timers pause during the Bonus Stage, and then your coin and soul gains can be massive. With Bonus Rewards+ from the Ascension Tree, you also have 4 random boxes each time you finish the Bonus stage. Flawless will give you two more. If you enable the Silver Death Dark Divinity, those are silver boxes, too! Hard Mode (Dark Divinity), Specialist (Divinity), Death Trinket (Divinity), and Bonus Stage 2 and 3 all improve your gains even further.
And the best part of the Bonus Stage is that it’s pure skill. Chest Hunt can be very lucrative, but it’s entirely luck. In the Bonus Stage, on the other hand, the only factor that can lead to failure is you.
If you’re going to play into the endgame, you’ve gotta master the Bonus Stages. Put in the work and get good.
Huge SP Gains[]
Whether you’re chasing Astral upgrades or just pure achievements, you need more SP. Have a lot already? You need more. The more SP you have, the more SP you’ll get. The more SP you have, the more massive your Ascension CpS bonus.
Which Dimension?[]
Endgame strategy can vary a little in various dimensions. If in doubt for what's best for your exact game, check the Official Idle Slayer Calculator here. After Village is unlocked, soul gains will be roughly similar in Mystic Valley, Factory, and Hot Desert. There are far more coins to be had in Hot Desert, and the giant is the best in the business. Rage mode giant criticals and extended bonuses all lead to the best gains in Hot Desert. Armory Items may sway this a bit, such as element bonuses causing another dimension to be the best. Modern City and Jungle are also important for farming materials for rage pills in. Once you unlock Funky Space it will quickly become the best Dimension for Souls, with its own Giant bringing it ever higher. It will be a while before your Armory and enemy unlocks bring you back to Frozen Fields, but once you've fully evolved all of the enemies there, it'll be the most rewarding place from then on.
Daily Quests might send you to different dimensions each day, but pick one to be your 'home base' and farm there.
Portal at Night for Materials[]
Once you’ve unlocked Rage Mode, the dimensional staffs, and the CpS and Soul Compass, you’ll want to stay stocked up on materials for those temporary craftables. But who wants to go somewhere with slime or bat wings, much less the jungle for roots? Luckily, you can get lots of good materials in Modern City, and the bonus stage, with goblin cloth and soul boosts, will spawn in any dimension. For Rage Pills, consider heading to the jungle at night before bed, and gather your roots offline. You can head back to your preferred dimension when you wake up and send your minions back out on missions.
...unless you've significantly invested into the Stone of Idle. You'll be receiving hundreds of materials per hour so you might not need to stay in one dimension overnight purely to gather materials. Portal to those other dimensions for an hour or two, fill up, and make sure you're in your home dimension when you're done for the day.
Mine DP and Ultra Prestige Your Minions[]
There’s no way you have enough Divinity Points yet. Do everything in your power to check your minions frequently, prestige them often, and gather DP.
Whenever you’re preparing for an Ultra Ascension, take some time to get your minions close to max level. It’s unlikely that you want to permanently spend 450 DP on Ultra Prestige. If you don’t, enable it right before your UA, and then reset your Divinity Points after unlocking Blessing of Cronus. As long as you have more than 20 minion levels that get auto-prestiged, you’ll gain more DP than you spent.
Making use of Ultra Prestige can still make sense even if you'd need to reset your Divinities before and after your UA. But for that you will of course need at least 41 minion levels (which is easily possible). It’s easy math to figure out, and definitely worth doing! There's a lot more on Ultra Prestige on the Minions and Divinities page.
Rage Mode Strategy[]
Eventually, you’ll unlock the very fun Rage Mode. On average, Rage Mode will give you about 6x the normal SP gain of killing with a bow. It will help generate a ton of souls if used right! The best strategy is generally to not Rage until you have a soul bonus. Then, wait until about the last 14 seconds before that bonus runs out. The hope is that in that time, you’ll find a random box with a giant Mega Horde. (You can find your Rage Mode duration, rounded down, in the Stats screen.)
Pause bow firing as soon as you see a box on the screen and use Rage Mode - if you're lucky and it is a mega horde, you'll collect a mountain of souls and it will also cut Rage Mode's cooldown in half!
If you don’t encounter a Random Box, just fire the Rage Mode when there's enough time for one Rage remaining and hope for the best.
If you do have a soul bonus, feel free to chew through those Rage Pills. In general, rage will last enough to kill 2-3 giants if you fire Rage when the first giant is in front of you. With a soul bonus, wait to have a giant in front of you, fire rage, use a rage pill, and wait to have another giant in front of you before using rage mode again.
Once you have all the upgrades that boost Rage Souls (leaving the Rage multiplier at x170) you should feel confident to use rage mode throughout a Souls Bonus as it will give you a lot more Souls than merely using Bow. You can consider using a Soul Compass to multiply the Souls multiplier by 1.75x and even a Shards Necklace to improve those gains further by about 3x.
Trailing Keys Strategy[]
Trailing keys is a still a very viable strategy at this point in the game, and continues to do so until Giants make up the vast majority of soul gains (which is very late in the game). Don't forget to not pick up Strong Magnet if you want to utilize it. The Dark Divinity Wind Force does make this technique much easier, once it is unlocked.
Inner Power[]
Early in your Ultra Ascension, you’ll purchase Inner Power (a new Ultra upgrade next to the Stone Golem). Inner Power changes how minions rewards are calculated - not so much based on level, but now based on how long your minions take to complete a mission AND how many Slayer Points you have spent in this Ultra Ascension. This can become quite valuable.
You’re mostly going to want to spend your Slayer Points as soon as possible, but it's important to prioritize upgrades that you will find more useful on your adventure.
Cyclops Strategy[]
Once you get Cyclops you can initially get about 360 B SP every 26.9 hours, increasing to 810 B from just leveling it up. This is assuming that you use the daily 3 hour mission reduction, Work Benefits, Improved Work Conditions and Minion Elixir. Close to when Cyclops is first unlocked, it will be a large percentage of your total SP (having 4-5 T total SP when unlocked), so active play may seem very pointless in comparison, but that is far from being true. Cyclops is great for supplementing both idle and active playstyles, but there is no doubt that using the strategy for Wander's Path will still help you get more SP per day along with Cyclops. Even though you aren't guaranteed to make 500 B per day with active play, the next milestone, Sacred Tome of Death Pact, is too far away to get to with just Cyclops. Assuming you can claim it perfectly on time, 10 T SP would take 13 days to get with solely Cyclops (and Inner Power), without even accounting for the period of time it takes to get Cyclops to its max level. Even getting just 300 B SP per day along with Cyclops would reduce this time down to 9 days.
Ascension Strategy[]
Your strategy in Ascension is still basically the same. Review the extended discussion of Ascension Strategy for a reminder. But remember these concise strategies:
If Chasing Achievements[]
If you’re chasing an achievement goal, use the CpS Ascension Strategy. This essentially asks, “If I ascend, will I increase my CpS gain by a higher % than I’ll reset by ascending?” You can estimate your CpS ascension by looking at gained SP/lifetime SP. For instance, if by ascending, you’d gain 100M SP, and have a lifetime earned 1B SP, you’ll be gaining a 10% boost in CpS by ascending. If you’re not yet 10% of the way to your goal, ascending makes sense - even though it'll reset your progress!
For achievement goals, it’s helpful to use sets of 50 for the goals. So as an example, let’s say you’re chasing the Gloves 400 achievement. That costs 90Qd (9e49) - that’s a lot of coins! Your total SP is 25B, and you’ve been grinding for a while. You have 7 Qd saved up - more than you’ve ever had - and if you ascend, you’ll gain 2.5B SP. The math says you’re a little less than 8% of your way to your goal (7/90), but your CpS would increase by 10% if you ascend (2.5/25). Even though you’ve never had close to 7Qd before, you should ascend; you’ll gain more than you’ll lose!
This might sound complicated, but try and apply it. It’s fairly simple in application, and very helpful in answering the question, “Should I ascend?” Chasing endgame achievements is often about a grandslam in the bonus stage, gaining you a ton of coins quickly and pushing you past that ascension barrier. It's a lot of grinding, but you love the game! Play away.
Ninja[]
There are some achievements that are simply too difficult to achieve through Ascension CpS alone, these being level 450 Claw+, 350 Spear+. For these very difficult achievements, you’re better off using Ninja to push coins further, by not Ascending and not spending coins, you would be going further with coins than where Ascending would otherwise get you. The journey is not quick though, getting the final achievement of level 500 Spear would take several months of diligent Ninja claiming, so be prepared for the longest Ascension of your life. It's best to wait until at least picking up Cutting-edge Divinities as it contains an upgrade that will significantly reduce the amount of time this grind takes.
If Grinding SP[]
If you’re just grinding SP, you should be using the SP Ascension Strategy. Simply ascend whenever you get close to 10-20% of your current total SP. Any higher and you’re noticeably hampering your gains. Ascending at this level is not costly - you'll be back where you were quickly, if it seems to take too long, add on a condition to ascend when you have a x20 CpS and/or equipment CpS bonus gong. As always - ascend often!
If Chasing Astral Upgrades[]
Finally, if you’re chasing an Astral Upgrade, be aware that there are expensive Ultra Upgrades along the way that might be worth purchasing. For example, if you’re chasing an upgrade costing 25B, and you have a chance to buy an upgrade for 3B that gives 20% soul bonus, you might initially balk at ascending and spending 3B SP on something. But 3B is 12% of 25B, and it increases your gains by 20%. Spending 12% to gain 20%? Sounds good! Soul Surge I, Soul Surge II and Reincarnation match this criteria.
Join the Discord![]
Also, if you’re an endgame player, you’ve joined the Discord server, right? It’s a great place to talk grindy, nitty gritty details of the game. 40,000+ members can't be wrong, can they? Join away!