Hi Everyone!

So far, I've submitted around 6-8 submissions for the Prestige challenge. I was a firm believer that getting to Mushroom Grotto and grinding away was the most efficient path to achieve a quick 'first prestige'.

Now, I am fairly positive that abusing the Mud Pit and the Forest are the quickest paths. Here is my logic behind it:

• Strength cost - By staying in Mud Pit for 90% of the run, you only need to get your strength up to level 3. This means that you only need to spend, 700+10,000 to achieve enough damage to one shot multiple blocks in the Mud Pit AND in the Forest. Compared to going to Mushroom Grotto which requires an ADDITIONAL 42,000g to get your strength to 4, you save so much more money!
• Area Cost - You can stop anywhere from level 3 to level 4 in cost. This means that you spend 1,000g for the first area upgrade (level 2 area), 6,000g for the second area upgrade (level 3 area), and the final upgrade is OPTIONAL at 30,000g (level 4 upgrade). This is the most expensive investment next to Marketing AND by stopping at level 3 or 4 you save a lot of money!
• Stamina Cost - because the maps are so much smaller, you DO NOT need to invest a ton of money into stamina! I never go over 18 stamina because there is no point with these smaller maps! First investment is at 150g, second investment is 1,500 g! You can stop there if you TRULY want! If you want more clicks though, another 8,000g is not terrible!
• Map Bonuses - Every time you find an item you gain experience that will level up the map location. First you need two artifacts, than three, and finally four. "But why does this matter? Mud Pit barely gives you any money", you may say BUT when you get the Mud Pit up to level 20+ it turns into a MONEY PIIT for this challenge! Since you have your strength instantly breaking all blocks and Area blowing up the map at level 4, you only need two to three clicks almost every time! With each level up of the map, you GAIN an additional 30% to the total bonus of that map! At level 20, Mud Pit is making 600% on each artifact found! Tall Mask will be about level 18-24, which is generating over 1,500g! With the level bonus and the other two items, you are bringing in close to 5,000g per person attending! With 70 people attending from Marketing, that becomes almost 450,000g per minute by the time you hit 7 minutes on your speed run!
• Item Bonus - Item bonus comes down to the same thing as the Map Bonus. The higher level your items, the more money they generate for you. The thing is, because there are only THREE items in the mud pit, you can get them to higher levels more consistently than at the Forest level. By the time you could even get the Map Bonus and Item Bonus of the Forest Level to 16, you would already be pushing Level 24 in the Mud Pit for Map and Items. The difference of 240% extra from the Mud Pit makes up for the difference and than some.

There COULD be an argument that getting to forest and grinding there would yield better results as the artifacts are worth more out the door. I can experiment with that as an option for sure, but what is all of your thoughts on this matter?

With my recent submission (2/11/25) being below 8mins 30 seconds, I have a strong feeling that if we could perfect the strategies we COULD see a sub 8 min run without Auto-clickers!

I think the marketing upgrade for 150k is not worth it (it goes from 60 to 70 people). That's a 1/6 increase in money but 150k is about a sixth of the 1m required so in the end it won't make a difference time wise and going out of your way to buy the upgrade will waste some time you could spend grinding out the items for more money.

Interesting!

That’s a great point, a LOT of the time I am just a few seconds behind my 8m 28s time, that could be the difference of breaking my time or not!

Oh no why did i give you ideas...