Overview
Describing my path in Idle Wizard and several working builds which i found fun and effective. Also mentioning mistakes player can make along the path.
E100-E150 Chronomancer
Chronomancer is incredibly strong early-game hero, but also complicated. Startng at e93 mysteries i reached e144 in several days, while getting a good feel of accomplishment. Important — start doing Trials of Innovation early (will explain reasons later in guide).
Before starting class-runs complete all possible challanges and secret achievements to get extra income, maybe except “Dwarven Preparation”. My own catalysts were close to 36 (red and green), while only few blues. Unlike internet guides you can find outside of Steam, i am using simplyfied version without items requirements.
1) Pet leveling
Pet should be Spellhound, which gives lots of spell shards.
Spells:
– Voidlure + Automation (farm experience from void entities);
– Generate Paradox + Manabeast (autoclick experience);
– Singularity Beam + Temproal Distortion (speed up time x12);
That phase requires about 10 minutes.
Note: you need Spellhound atleast 134 lvl, this allows Automation to activate every second to maximise autofarm of void entities ang get more exp for hero. To lvl up pet faster, use the shortest duration spells with highest shards requirements. After 134 lvl pet, switch to Arcanworg to increase shards gain even more + get income bonus.
Note 2: time distortion is x12 instead of x10, that is because first you should complete class secret achievement and only then attempt to progress with Chronomancer.
2) Helix stacking
Your next move is to cast Time Helix (it required lvl 112 hero). All spells are the same. Temporal Distortion set on ‘Careful’, others on ‘Reckless’. It takes around 40 seconds to reach another Time Helix, so now this is a race to get more of it’s stacks. The more you use Helix, the less time required to reach next one, slowly shortening to a few seconds.
3) Time stacking
I stopped at 10 Helixes casts and 17 minutes time spent on run. Now switch spells to:
– Singularity beam + Temproal Distortion (since you need x12 time in any combo);
– Super Position + Ritual of Power + Worm Hole (all reckless);
– Spellfocus for extra shards.
Note: with Arcanworg you will stack spells super fast, i believe like 25 times per second for each, even tho their duration is 20/10 sec. After 6 minutes i stopped doing this. To speed it up even more you can turn off Temporal Distortion auto cast and do it manually when distortion drops below x11. This way extra time goes to other spells giving you more outcome.
4) Void stacking
Put spells Void Radiance + Void Lure and max your void mana, it takes like 20 seconds early on.
Then switch to burst build:
– Singularity beam + Temproal distortion (time x12);
– Super Position, Convert Time Lines (for main income);
– Stabilize Flow (main burster).
Now, Stabilize is tricky, since casting it will eat your time bonus x12 and turn it into x1, so you have to farm x12 again, but doing that greatly shortens Stabilizer lenght. To prevent it, in sixth spell slot i have ‘Revert’ temporary, which refreshes duration of all active spells (keep pressing it manually).
Note: Using this guide i jumped from e120 to e122. But that was just basic way, now since you know how it works, lets make it complicated and more rewarding. Instead of exiling, we will push forward same run.
5) You need fast reaction. While time is x12 and Stabilizer active (consumed another x12), i switched “Revert” for Ritual of Power and boom, income boosted from e120 to e124. You have only few seconds to do it, so better use fast keys-combos z+1, z+2, z+3 etc. Reaching that point took 30 minutes of time. But it is still too low, let’s continue rising stakes.
6) Switch pet to Interrogator and place any 6 non-instant spells. This pet will make spell duration become 15+ hours and earns exp with more active spells active. Make sure to maintain distortion bonus at x6-x12 for extra speed. After reaching Interrogator lvl 94 i upgraded him into Archivist.
I repeated burst phase to ramp up income from e120 to e126. It took only 40 minutes, while i also wrote this section of guide. Is this still too low?
7) Get x12 distortion and stack Wormhole more, previously i had like 24d skipped time (hover over hero icon to see skipped time). Every 6 real seconds gives +1 day of skipped time. Now i ended up with 130d skipped, repeated burst and got e120>e128. (50 minutes run time)
Note: you can also easely go for 30 Helixes casts to get much more mysteries.
Stats:
100 Int;
100 Spellcraft;
100 Wisdom;
40 Mastery;
75 Emphaty (not required, just speed ups).
………..
At e128 it took me only 40 minuted to reach e136. The nice fact about Chronomancer is – the more Mysteries you have, the faster you can do his cycles. This time reaching Helix took 6-8 seconds instead of 30-40. The next run from e136 to e144 done in 35 minutes. Sadly, after e150 his income becomes low and you have to say goodbye.
E150-E200 Arcanist permanent growth
For me e150-e204 was a fast journey with Arcanist. Unlike Chronomancer there are just 3 stages overall and you don’t need fast reaction or complicated actions. Still i suggest completing any additional secret achievements, challenges and even normal achievements.
Preparation
When you go to sleep or just leave computer for a while, set Arcanist on auto-stacking. Your main stacking spell is JMS (Jas Aham Missile Storm). Is has persistant power — if you stack today and exile, tomorrow it will have all the stacks. The persistent part is “+x ammount of spell casts” it gives to random spell on panel.
Spells:
– JMS;
– SpellStaff of Chamaon (extra shards);
– Conjure Manabeast (+100% shards);
– Lighting Bolt (shards generator).
All reckless. Other 2 spell slots can be used for autoclick spells to get more mana. Hover your mouse cursor over spell shards panel (top left), there you can see “casts in a second”… This number should be 80+.
You need max wisdom + all the shards boosters you can get on items. as pet use Arcanworg or Pixie. While Worg can provide bigger shards income, it requires specific items, one of which called Collar of Obedience (waist slot, unique). Unlikely you will have it this time, so just use Pixie. You can reuse this stage when you want, since JMS will grow more and more. Even if you just bored with Idle Wizard, leave JMS stacking on background.
P.S. there is an old bearded rumor about “PC need to be turned off” every day to ‘rest’. Well that is outdated and as true as Aliens, Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster. In fact, energy spike during “turn on” might be bigger than just letting it stay idle, so you are not saving electricity. The only reason for reboot might be after using a lot of different programms which messed up with memory and created many temporary files, so your PC working speed got reduced.
The idea is to charge your 3 chargable spells for several hours (2-10 hours):
– Ritual of Power (reckless);
– Radiant Pools (reckless);
– Arcane Infusion (no reckless for this, just leave it on panel).
Use spell panel:
– Ritual of Power;
– Radiant Pools;
– Arcane Infusion;
– JMS;
– Conjure Manabeast;
– Spell Staff.
In fact, you can even use 2 of those charging spells during preparation phase instead of extra autoclicks. Up to you.
Change all your items to get voidmana per entity + pet ability power. Switch pet to Voidterror. Use spell Void Lure to further upgrade entities. Wait untill void mana stops growing, which might take 5-10 minutes. Make sure you manualy activated spell Arcane Infusion, to activate passive bonus. After hat take it off panel (bonus still works).
Now since your void is maxed, switch to Devourer and upgrade to Hungerer asap. Change your items to best +profit and pet ability power ones (use saved pre-sets).
Spells:
– Ritual of Power;
– Radiant Pools;
– Kharnaphen;
– JMS;
– SpellStaff;
– Conjure Manabeast.
That’s it, now it will take around 10 minutes of simply waiting. I suggest switching source buying mode to “Max” and buy your best source manually from time to time to keep it up. Hungerer will eat random sources, which is annoying.
Stats i used in the beggining were:
int 45;
ins 60;
spell 175;
wis 175;
dom 0;
pat 0;
mast 20;
emp 75;
with them i was able to get +e9 per run (around 20 hours), which was ok.
Good stats are:
int 175
ins 175
spell 175
wis 0
dom 0
pat 30 (for items)
mast 25 (for items)
emp 75 (for faster devourer lvling and hungerer switch)
with those you can get +e11 per run, which is just insane speed.
E200 break point
So, after reaching e200 i hit a tall and thick wall. Chronomancer, Demonologist and Necromancer simply refused to give me any income at all. Arcanist slowed down to +e2 per day. Some top heroes like Umbramancer, Iron Soul, Alchemist and Abolisher are simply too much to handle, they required e280+ and top-notch legendary items.
At this stage you should do 3 things:
– collect all possible normal achievements;
– do manual expeditions to improve catalysts;
– farm dust.
It appears that Idle Wizard got patched and changed a lot in 2020, giving us more mechanics and ways to speed up progress. Using this guide means you are already way ahead of where you should be. Slow down in mysteries gain is expectable. Progressing further requires you to have a lot of items to choose from, all of which should be atleast green quality.
Now the main rule about items: when you get a grey one, upgrade it to green first, only then craft next one. This will grant overall more crafting experience, increasing your long-term progression. But, some items are just too much resource-hungry, like 250 of single dust for a single upgrade — avoid them and improve some balanced ones instead.
Now, why expeditions? Mostly, because there are 12 Trophy items in expeditions which will auto-upgrade for free. Just farm them until legendary quality. This is a great boost for your crafting experience + you can equip 2 of those items any time. Mausoleum and Dark Forest are 2 locations you should farm, since drop rates are maxed there.
Don’t forget about Trials of Innovation. Those will grant research items for free and upgrade them just as expeditions do with Trophies. It will take many days of farming, but you should start is as soon as possible, that’s why i mentioned it in e100 section.
E200-E260 Exorcist passive and lazy
After trying out different classes and pets i have found that only Alchemist, Voidmancer and Chronomancer are capable of giving me income… Which is so low that it’s not even reaching positive +e0,1. But Exorcist is a whole different story. This class is easy to use and requires less time to get stacks done compared to others. His main mechanic is Hallowed Clicks (HC) and he gets experience from them, instead of void entities.
For stats your main aim are:
– 175 Spellcraft;
– 175 Dominance;
– 175 Patience.
Secondary are:
– 75 empathy;
– Intelligence (all remaining stats).
For items i was lucky to get 4/5 from Exorcist set, except neck. All at green quality. Also took incantation efficiency from Anima Core and Heart of Storm (which you already supposed to have at legendary quality from expeditions). Tho, other guide tells to equip autoclick > crits first, yet at this stage spotting difference between items is very hard and income difference is too small to be mentioned. I have only green items yet, so no point to jump deep into math and optimisation, leave that for late-game (E300+).
Requires 30 minutes to few hours. Your pet is Golem (upgrade to Anima Construct asap). Main idea is to get Excess Hallowed Clicks by using spell panel:
– Spell Focus (your main shards income);
– Conjure Manabeast (+100% shards);
– Relentnessness (main HC income, needs as much Incantation as you can get);
– Divine Ally (passive shards + minor HC chance);
– Spirit of Valor (passive shards + improves next spell crit up to 100%);
– Holy Fervor (grants lots of HC, but needs 100% crit chance and lots of shards).
When i just started those runs at e200 it took only about 40 minutes to 1 hour of stacks in order to get +e4 income. Later it slowed down to 2-6 hours for e3 and kept this way till e250. Getting more attributes and items does improved speed again, so last time i jumped from e250 to e256 in 12 hours.
Now, one thing you need to remember is Anima Construct gets experience from ammount of bought upgrades. Which means you should do Burst stage before stacking phase when you just sturted a new run. This will allow to buy more upgrades before jumping into idle mode. Don’t forget to click orb manually to get some upgrades for that as well.
When you done with upgrades and stacks, it’s “real” burst time. Spells are the same as in stacking phase, but switch Holy Fervor with Power of Sacrifice. Now activate Sacrifice when you have max possible ammount of HC and make sure to replenish HC again up to max.
Mega burst
Now switch spell pannel EXCEPT Power of Sacrifice (it must still be running to give income):
– Sword of Anklah;
– Shattering Strike;
– Battle Trance;
– Spirit of Valor;
– Hallowed Writings;
– Power of Sacrifice.
Cast all those spells once and buy all upgrades / sources.
Now, the main income will come when you click orb manually, spending HC instead of normal clicks. This also will NOT break idle mode. This way not only all your 6 spells boosting income, but also you generate extra income from clicking, which can be called 7-spells combo. When HC reaching 0 make sure to switch back to “real burst”, get max HC again, switch to mega burst and manually spend HC again while all spells reactivated. Repeat that until you are out of spell charges or Power of Sacrifice time had run out.
Now you can either repeat burst phase from the beggining or switch back to stacking. In order to replenish spell charges fast, load stacking mode panel and use slot №6 to charge one spell after another until it’s full.
E260-E300 Ironsoul unleashed
Ironsoul is all about passive stacking and minimal participation. The core idea is switching between stances which are Meditation, Defence and Berserk. You don’t need any specific items to use this build, but there are few ways to greatly speed up. Rewards per run are around +e4-e6 per day.
During this phase your goal is to charge Ironsoul’s unique spells. The best part about them — no need of spell shards. When just starting using Ironsoul, feel free to equip Simulacrum to max out sources (but it is not required). During meditation i like to use Ebonsand Behemoth pet, since he grants extra % charges to charging spells.
Your spell panel:
– Temper The Steel (TTS, main spell with important stacks);
– Enhanced Strenght, Iron Blood (those two needed for next phase in thousands);
– Synthetic Entity (extra hero exp);
– Force of Will;
– {reserved}.
Now there is a little split. If you don’t have weapon unloked at 280 mysteries called Shadow-Scryer, use last spell is Ritual of Power. Force of Will will give it spell charges.
If you do have Shadow-Scryer, what it does is actually reducing duration of all your active spells (at current moment) by 0,5 seconds every time evocation is casted. Equip spell Furious Strike instead of Ritual, since TTS charges it very fast… In return every Furious Strike cast reduces TTS duration. This is a great loop. Before burst, TTS should have around 10,000% effect.
This stance reduces incantation spells duration a lot, your 60-seconds spell will be only 2-seconds long. This is the moment to use all stacks from Enhanced Strenght and Iron Blood. When you finish any incantation cast, Iron Soul receives bonus to all stances, that is the main idea of build. Your job now is to equip all incantation spells and any items that can speed up spell casts (not required). Some spells need mana shards = switch pet to Arcanaworg.
Your spell panel:
– Void Lure;
– Empower;
– Ritual of Power;
– Enhanced Strenght;
– Iron Blood;
– Void Radiance.
You don’t need to do anything special here, just wait till stacks from Enhanced Strenght and
Iron Blood deplete to 0 and either repeat Meditation or go for next phase. Note, early on when you just started Meditating it is a good idea to switch into Defence to get atleast small ammount of incantation casts to give Iron Soul a bit of boost, this will improve Meditation greatly. Overall you should aim for 1e5 incantation casts to call this run a success.
Before bursting, make sure to equip pet Voidterror and any void items you have + Void Lure. Then switch stance to Beserk. Since void mana will drop fast, try losing as less time as possible. For bursting use Archivist pet. Since time is precious, i did not cared too much about his lvl and around 86 bursted. Wait for more lvls and you simply lose too much mana which will outweight any benefits.
If you have strong pet items from Falconer set, equip them. But i was poor on items, so ignored item system and just used what i could. To improve burst use any evocation items you have.
Spells:
– Furious Strike (main burster spell, your income);
– Enhanted Strenght;
– Iron Blood;
– Ritual of Power;
– Empower;
– {anything else}.
Alright, so what happens during burst is you activating Furious Strike to instantly get a lot of mana and get +e4 new mysteries. Important — the more Furious Strike stacked, the stronger it hits. I remember having around 300,000 stacks (3e5). As weapon i chose Head of All-Eater, cus it has unique quality and don’t need upgrading.
