@dongpa
fyi, someone asked me what my favourite Hex clearing route is. When I was weak it was the all natural/no power/no active artis way. When I had lots of powers, it was throws SACs/FCs/IMs down. When I got stronger, it was the 1 IM power clear technique. Then it was the 0 powers, 1 IM arti, 1 QS, 1 TS method. Now it is the 0 powers, 1 IM arti method -- but you need maxed out advancements and artis to do it

in case you're interested for the future to have something to work towards (I'm guessing you're not at a level able to pull this off yet if you're asking the best way to clear Hex; but it might be good for futur reference), I'll post it in the next mesasge

Hex Earth - 1 IM (power or Insane Arti [I use arti])

Requirements: Insane IM, Insane AV, Insane A$B, Insane M$B, Insane $B, All useful Advancements maxed out (too many to list here)

Possibly required (depends on your advancements and arti levels): Leg/Insane QS or TS or FH

Helps: Insane AcampB (brings the wait time at the start of the map down to ~1 min); if you don't want to wait at all, drop a SAC

Summary of the 1 IM route:
- get all caches and merc camps in SA
- get to the Market in AF (Borkou 2.0), empty the Market
- get AF merc camp southeast of Market on Northeastern C.A.R., use IM on this merc camp
- get the 1st army cache
- from here the path should be straightforward to however you typically finish HEH

High level details for the 1 IM route is:
- wait until you can get all the merc camps, Army & Money caches in SA; depending on your artis & advancements this may take 5-10 mins or several hours; you can speed it up by popping some SACs (1 if your Adv's are maxed out, more if you're still weak there)
- get to the Market in AF (Borkou 2.0), empty the Market
- buy all mercs from the camps in the order from cheapest to most expensive camps
- get AF merc camp southeast of Market on Northeastern C.A.R., use IM on this merc camp
- go from AF to the 'big army cache' (single territory) in West Russia (Ustuansky)
- if you've done everything right and have the right Adv's & Artis, you should be able to reach this cache; if not, try hitting the merc camp in Mexico (Chipas) and see if that gets you the rest of the way; if not even that helps, you probably are missing some artis/adv's required to do the 1 IM artifact clear
- hit all the hospitals on way to the 'big army cache' on the small-ish superbonus in Central Russia (Central Sakha)
- get the money cache if you need it
- upgrade hospitals if you need to/if you can
- depending on your artis/advancements, here you have options of:
(A) just clear the big terrs in the area**, then hit AQ or AAQ [preferable]
**you need to ensure they are captured before your armies get too low, to ensure you can get the next army cache; I forget the # of armies required to do this, but if you run out of armies before getting that next army cache, you are stuck using IM/TS/QS/FH to get enough armies to get that cache to continue - you just have to "know" whether it's ok to hit AQ/AAQ at this stage or not (and if you're not sure, just go to step C)
(B) carefully clear the 2nd 'big army cache' on the large-ish superbonus in East Russia (Far East Russia)
(C) pop QS on the big terrs, TS on 2nd biggest terrs
- when finished, Auto-Dig all the artifacts, start arti upgrades, hit TW, wait for upgrades to finish if you need to, then SASc

For me (A) is the way to go but it totally depends on your Artis/Advancements

I have super-ascended five more times (now 145).

Total boons:
* +3000 AP at startup (+1)
* +2000% AP from levels (+4)
* +28 artifact carryover
* +7 artifact dig speed

Artifacts carried over:

Insane (5): A$B, A^B,  CB, MeD, RCB
Insane (5):  TW,  IM,  AV, SAC, MCB
Insane (5):  HB, TMB, BMB,  DB, ACD^u
Legend (1): TW^s

 HD (2): lgnd^u, rare
 MB (2): rare^d, rare
 OV (2): epic^d, unco^d
 IV (2): rare^d, rare
MiD (2): lgnd^u, unco

Epic (2): {TS, DAC}^f
Rare (1): ACD^s
Unco (1): TD^?

^f:fodder, ^u:upgrade
^s:spare, ^d:downgrade

Highlights:
* upgraded ACD to insane because why not
* found that crafting is no longer needed
* removed speedy crafters from the churn
* put mine discount where it used to be
* still mainly focused on +25% AP boons
* will revisit that in about 20 supers

I’ll do #4 in approximately 3hrs.

Total upgrades of:
Artifacts +2 (4 total)
AP +50%

Insane:
AV, A$B, TW

Legend:
A^B

#4
Insane Time Warp
Legendary Army Camp Boost, Alloy Values
Epic Supercharge Army Camp, Draft Boost

+25% AP

@Carrot Wax
@Krinid

Specially very thanks for kindly advise!!!!!

There is a 0.48 IM (one Legendary IM arti) clear possible for Hex that I shamelessly stole from Zinthos. I don't remember anymore if it works without late P4, but with late P4 and only 122.5% AM it's possible with pretty modest artifacts (Insane A$B, Legendary AV, MD, CB, MCB). SA is the same as usual, you take the Africa market, 0.48 IM Central Newfoundland (go through africa and EU, not NA) and then make your way to the Greenland money cache. You should be able to buy your way to the important army cache from there.

I've done a 1x IM clear using Nyanza too, which also has pretty modest requirements. That one is more straightforward, IIRC you can go straight to the important army cache after the IM there.

A Legendary MD and MCB is also really nice for Hex as it lets you reach the 170M money cache more or less right away as well, instead of being slightly short.

18th SA. +AP for 225% AP and 9 addl artis.

300 / 100 / 45 / 44 / 37 / 25 / 38 / 24 / 18 / 19
19 / 18 / 14 / 14 / 17 / 16 / 11 / 10


Got an ACB upgrading to rare so at least I'll get that back up to leg soon. The first few levels are the drag now. Only another 3 supers or so worth of SL on pre-SA levels so I will start using the leg IM to clear PA soon. At least then I don't have to play Hard Ursa Luna. Will have to double up on hard RFRE or Scandi to have the AP for enough SL advancements though.

I'll have to try the 0.48IM hex, that would make me feel good about doing hex 3x per super if one was free. Need better money artifacts though it sounds like.

Ins A$B leg AV SAC IM and epic HB TW TS EC

@mr fancy pants
There is a different variation with a replacement maneuver to compensate for the 1 IM clear method I posted above depending on what one is lacking ... sometimes you need to pop a SAC/FC, sometimes you need to use an active arti, sometimes you need to upgrade hospitals, sometimes you need to waiting a couple hours, etc

Time for an update with 75th SA. 15x AP (+1400%), 19 slots, 200 starting AP.

Insanes: A$B, ACB, CB, TW, RCB, MD, DB
Legs: AV, SAC, HB, MCB

+ some other legs, epics and rares to be used for the next insane, which will be AV. Finally the first leg I got will be upgraded.

Clear path is currently Tutorial -> Geopolitics (with H Ursa Luna) -> both Far Lands -> 2x HOT, 2x HRome, 1x HScandi, 1x HCCC. Theoretical clear time is ~9 hours (without powers or active artis), though it takes so much active playing that I think I've yet to complete a full SA in less than one day. The map that takes the longest is Feldmere at about an hour.

I have also finally made the switch from +25% AP to +100 AP. It seems that I did this later than many others, this was mainly to get rid of all hospital upgrades. The last one was Breaking Green, but then I realized that I can just skip it with less AP that it would take to do it with lvl 1 hospitals (which requires almost max AM), so I probably could have switched to +100 AP a bit earlier.

Another new development is that I realized that with >100% increased draft multiplier, it's possible to get past the normal drafting limit of a map if you have enough army camp production to get through the whole (remaining) sliding pool at once. I'm now getting 100-200% IDS (increased draft sizes) as early as Final Earth instead of pumping everything into AM. This gives me one huge draft, which is still not enough to finish the level immediately in most cases, but faster than full AM. In K-PX for example, this strategy reduced the clear time from ~50 min to ~20 min.

For artis, the future plans are to get insane AV. After that it'll probably be MCB, ACD, BMB and TMB in some order, but the improvements are getting pretty negligible. And I guess HB should be upgraded at some point too. For AP, it's going to be +100 AP for a while to speed up the early levels that are still short on armies, and then later more +25% AP to be able to skip more levels.

Edit: after testing Feldmere properly with the IDS strategy, I can clear that in ~30min now, so that's another half an hour off the total.

Edited 2026-05-05 09:41:57

I have super-ascended five more times (now 150).

Total boons:
* +3100 AP at startup (+1)
* +2100% AP from levels (+4)
* +28 artifact carryover
* +7 artifact dig speed

Artifacts carried over:

Insane (5): A$B, A^B,  CB, MeD, RCB
Insane (5):  TW,  IM,  AV, SAC, MCB
Insane (5):  HB, TMB, BMB,  DB, ACD
Legend (1): TW^s

 HD (3): legend, rare, rare
 MB (2): epic^u, unco^d
 OV (2): lgnd^u, unco
 IV (2): lgnd^u, unco^d
 TD (3): lgnd^u, rare^u, unco
MiD (2): legend, rare^u

^f:fodder, ^u:upgrade
^s:spare, ^d:downgrade

Highlights:
* almost able to naturally skip Sengoku
* currently skipping it with compromises
* added discount artifacts to the churn
* time to pick my next insane I guess
* also to switch to starting AP boons

#Awaythrou are you down to less than a day yet?

Super ascended again yesterday my dudes. 38 times total now. 775% AP and 9 artifacts IACB ISAC IA$B I$B ITW IAV IIM IDB and LHB!

At a point where usually only one run on hex earth gets me enough AP to super ascend, especially if I max out stage 2 AP boost. My strat has been basically to only spend AP on maxxing joint strike, alloy values, mercenaries and skip level and by the time I’ve maxxed skip level I’m usually at far land which takes me to scandi which then takes me to regio coquus and then plateau assault and then hex earth. Those two hardened levels are probably slowing me down the most rn and my goal now is to break free from the hex earth matrix…I did hardened scandi last run and with maxxed merc camps I was able to clear it in one or two sittings. I think as the AP piles up I might start to just repeat that level a few times to get to 134k it might be faster than slogging through the hardened levels

14th and likely final for me. 10x ap for 250%. 4x slots for insane av,acb, a$b, legendary tw,sac epic md. Feel got the hang of it and pretty easy but it’s like trying to tie the high score of a video game that you cant lose. Js up to max then mercs to 150 then ap then av or merc d. The mercenary discount is helpful for those hardened copper creek where yiu want phase 3 hospital but then can’t afford mercs even with insane av. Phase 3 get the 4 start with techs then all skip level. Phase 3 is pretty terrible. Just started to get phase 4 on gargantuan. Never paid for any bundles or premium so likely on last set of skip levels

19th SA. +arti for 225% AP and 10 addl artis.

300 / 100 / 45 / 44 / 37 / 25 / 38 / 24 / 18 / 19
19 / 18 / 14 / 14 / 17 / 16 / 11 / 10 / 8

0.48IM hex doable with uncommon MD, all p4 advancements, and maxed AM. Once I improve the MD I hopefully dont need any p4. PA also doable with 0.48IM and maxed ICA, wonder if it's doable without any ICA. Probably with two uses of 0.48IM... Hopefully very close so I can keep on hex when I'm shortly out of SL powers.

Ins A$B leg AV SAC IM TW (upgrading) and epic HB

I've only super ascended 2 or 3 times. Honestly can't remember. It takes 10 days to upgrade to Insane. Is it okay to super ascend while the artifacts I choose to super ascend with are upgrading? I'm only asking because I don't want to encounter a glitch and lose them.

If it’s upgrading when you bring with you, it continues upgrading.

My Leg.A^B was still upgrading when I did my last SAsc. No glitches occurred.

ShadowHawk, since we were talking about Hex Earth routes, what's the route you use with the Leg 0.48 IM artifact? And what the minimum L4 requirements are.

carrot wax I used the route proposed by Mr fancy pants further up this page. I just verified you don't need the legendary MCB or MD or CB. I don't know what you NEED from P4 because I haven't tried it out yet without P4 but the only problem I forsee is needing the Greenland money cache to buy mercs and also needing it to upgrade hospitals. May need TS on the big Siberia territory to compensate maybe?

The good thing is the run is salvageable if it turns out you don't have enough mercs by just spending the IM on the real expensive merc camp. So at worst try it and maybe you don't save the power but you won't lose anything.

I super ascended again out of boredom.