Hello,

I'm on my first playthrough and I've been using the market strategy. I'm wondering which artifact did others upgrade to Insane first? I'm pretty sure alloy values would be the best option but army camp boost is tempting for challenges and battles. I'll also have a legendary cache boost soon which I like but I wish I had a better army cache boost instead. which is better long term?

thanks!

Edited 4/4/2025 00:35:10

Which Legendary artifacts do you have?
I think the consensus is Army Cache Boost as your first insane.
Also, I've been told AV to insane is overkill though I have a Legendary and still run out of money.

1. Army Cache Boost
1a. Time Warp (route i did, get way more digging done, also it's really strong in battles as you get 8 hours done off rip)
My otehr insane is AV . On some levels it is over kill (Australia comes to mind), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. One other plus is you don't need to spend AP on money saving/making upgrades as early.

You will regret making army camp boost insane.
Working on Army Cache Boost followed by Cache Boost. No idea what my 5th would be.

"One other plus is you don't need to spend AP on money saving/making upgrades as early."

I never even thought of this! Good stuff!

Which Legendary artifacts do you have?

-Army Camp Boost, Alloy Values, Cache Boost, plus rolled the dice for fodder ones and got Idle time and Resource Cache
-Current Epics: Mercenary Discount, Bonus Money Boost, Time Warp
Time Warp will probably be my next legendary goal and I guess I better start upgrading an Army Cache Boost!

My insane artifacts, in order of construction:

1. army cache boost
2. army camp boost
3. cache boost
4. mercenary discount

I am considering resource cache boost as my fifth.

It was originally going to be my fourth, but stuff happened.

Other candidates are time warp and inspire mercenaries.

There are no fixed rules. In general, some artifacts are better than others, but it still mostly depends on the way you play.

Insane AV is definitely overkill and can be replaced with 8 MR+9SM powers for every future super you make. That value will be decreasing a lot though, by the time you have around 100% AP bonus, your MR+SM power consumption will go down to 2 per super. I chose that route and I can confirm that the powers from the maps are enough for 100 supers, on top of daily bonus and raffles. Unless you severely depleted you market raid powers, I would advice against Insane AV, you can get better value from other artis. Check your powers from the Statistics advancements to be sure, a list of all powers x level on the PKMX website.

TW can be useful as an accessory artifact, not as a core one. In your next supers you will be drafting a lot, it makes little sense to use TW to skip 1HU only to spend that time drafting anyway. Same goes if you use it for speeding up digs, you will be leaving those artis behind anyway, or slow yourself a couple months to dig enough for another merger. Unless you enjoy taking your time and go steady and slow, you are better off with core artis first.

Army cache boost and Army camp boost are your best choice for Insane, the first better than the second if you enjoy playing the game in short bursts. SAC would be an unusual but sound choice if you enjoy sitting down and playing for a while, especially if you don't upgrade your idle time, with 8h of SAC you can play a couple hours, leave the game and come back the day after with your SAC still active (and refreshed), big drafts and 20x clan request make SAC the most important core arti for players who want to go fast.

Also don't get too carried away by people's advice, Idle is a game of balancing different variables: artis, powers and advancements all work all in conjunction with the way YOU play and what makes the game fun for you.

Great advice @geforce, thank you!
I'm definitely not looking to get carried away with advice and max optimization, it's just an idle game after all. But it is interesting to hear what directions others went. An insane artifact is such a time (and money, woops) investment, I would be so annoyed if I made one and then it ended up sucking.

""asdfgh" "1. Army Cache Boost"

I could have done the first Super Ascend by now but have been building Artifacts for the Insane ACB.

I have four Legendary, four Epic, three Rare with an Uncommon upgrading to Rare so need one more Rare then an upgrade cascade begins which may take a month. So six weeks until the first Super.

Finally starting my upgrades. Just kicked off 5 Uncommons to Rare > Epic > Legendary > Insane A$B. Hooray!!! > Super Ascend.

That was a very short month. Nevertheless, congrats.

It was a short month but.... I used all my Hardened Trisk time warps and still have many days of upgrade time. To upgrade the five Uncommons to Rare is 24 hours... I forgot how long it takes to upgrade five Rares to an Epic.... then the Epics to Legendary... and I think it takes five days to upgrade five Legendarys to an Insane.

I'm in Hardened Europe now seeking Time Warps. Two weeks?

Thanks for the support.

Just kicked off A$B upgrade from Legendary to Insane - 9 days 23 hours until Super Ascend +/-. I'll take an Epic AV with me at least.

Going to close Hardened Europe Huge and go back to Hardened Trisklion scrubbing for Time Warps.

you can Super Ascend while your artifact(s) upgrade

Hola señor asdfgh, gracias,

No, I didn't know upgrades continue.

I've got a couple of things going. My understanding is our advancements are reset upon Super Ascend so I'm trying to get an Epic AV before crossing over. This Epic AV along with Insane A$B is what I want to take. I'll also pick +25% AP.

So that's my strategy.

Edited 4/17/2025 02:04:38

JayBeeSee,

What have you been upgrading over these last days?