The Shards Menu is a feature unlocked by purchasing the Demeter Ship. It provides players with valuable bonuses so long as they have the patience to commit to long runs without resets.
Purchasing the Demeter for the first time
You unlock the Shards menu by purchasing the Demeter ship, This is when you will first start mining shards. Here’s what you should do after unlocking Demeter:
- Spend Your Shards Before a Loop Reset: Always spend your shards before a loop reset. You do not carry over your shards to the next run, so spend them all before you reset.
- Commit to Long Runs: From now on, it will be incredibly rewarding to do long runs. This is because the amount of shards you receive increases with every single operation you complete. Meaning that the longer your runs are, the more shards per operation you receive.
- Unlock the 4th Milestone: The “Modifying Milestone” is one of the best shard investment for beginners to invest in as it provides a multiplier for the mod points gained per loop, and it acts as a second way for players to increase their mod points gained outside of the mod tree.
Getting the most out of your shards
It is important to balance your shards between different milestones, prioritizing milestones that are closer to their next unlocks. For example, if you feel like you could save up for a couple of hours to unlock a level 25 bonus, it’s probably worth doing so. On the other hand, you unlock more milestones by increasing the total levels of milestones you have.
Here’s the strategy that most players usually follow:
- Prioritize New Bonuses: When milestones get closer to the new threshold, it’s probably worth collecting shards for a few hours or even an entire night to get that next bonus.
- Sort by Cost: Enable the “Sort by Cost” option and invest in the cheapest milestone available, this is the fastest way to unlock more milestones. In the settings, you will find a toggle that automatically resorts the milestones list after every time you purchase, so you do not have to scroll.
Players usually switch between these two strategies depending on what level their current milestones are at, unlocking the next bonus can be a big boost to your progress, especially on milestones like #4, The Modifying Milestone.
Getting Faster Operations
Reducing the ticks required for each Operation
Reducing the number of ticks you need per operation will significantly increase the shards you gain as every completed operation not only grants shards, but also increases the number of shards you get in the next operation. You can find these loop mods at the bottom left corner of your mod tree.
While these mods might seem ineffective at earlier levels, because you’re just taking it down from 65 ticks to 64, which is only a bonus of around 1.5%, the percentage grows as you reduce the ticks further all the way down to 29 ticks.
Shard Milestones
Here’s a list of all the shard milestones you’ll be unlocking throughout your adventures.
