After you finally finished the story levels, it is time to go into endless mode and get OP tower upgrades......wait a sec, what are those yellow thingy and why does every research need it?

Firstly, bit dust(AKA bd) is an item exclusive to endless mode. Every endless research will be needing it, so it will be important to acquire them to progress faster in endless mode.
Currently there are 3 ways of getting bd in this game:

• Playing in endless mode and enemies will drop bit dusts occasionally
  
• Completing quests in endless mode
  
• Secret codes

There are some research which will help with bd gaining, there are:

• Bit Dust Drop Rate (AKA bddr): It boosts the bd amount gained by enemies looting or quests
  
• Loot Frequency & Loot Rarity: Bit dusts dropped by enemies are counted as loots, so they are affected by loot buffs
  
• Endless Mode Difficulty: Looting is affected by portal difficulty, so playing with higher difficulty yields more bd

At this point, we are pretty much having normal researches(or lower). We will need to make preparations until we can afford to farm in 6.3, the most popular bd farming map. go and afk strat already

There are some researches which should be prioritized here:

Because, why not? I heavily recommend all those who have research tickets stocked up to dump their tickets into here. When maxed it provides +500% which is 6 times of bd from all sources.

The difficulty increase in endless mode makes the enemies harder to beat, we will need better towers to survive it. Global upgrades sure are nice, but don't forget to level up specific tower researches, as it is cheaper when you are doing them together. Damage and attack speed generally matters the most.
Flamethrower and Tesla has nice upgrade priority as they are early game towers which will carry you whenever you are doing quests, or mining in endless.
Make sure to max out wave interval too.

They require prestiging to unlock, but they give nice bd boost later on.
Quest reset is quite simple if you have time to grind for it, 25% two times is enough for it.
Map selling might take some time since you will need lots of tiles for selling. Go and youtube some 200% custom map selling videos for maximum efficiency.

Aside from bit dust, resources are still a requirement for endless research. You should try and mine in every single run so that your resources will pile up.
Avoid upgrading every individual miners unless you are going for 6.3. Researching mining speed modifier is better since it is compatible with every miner.

You can keep grinding in different story maps and trying out different strategies. There isn't any strict rule for which map you should be grinding for or which tower you should main.

When should you start farming this map: You can start farming it with this afk strat at any progression.
Splash research isn't a requirement, and for low research you can also use your currently strong aoe towers like Flamethrower or Tesla to kill the spawned enemies.


In 1.8.5 patch, bd drops in 6.3 are no longer affected by enemy amount. Doing excess mining and overloading is not necessary to get more bd.
As the rarity goes up with time(until 100% cyan), it is better to wait as long as you can before you spawn enemies and get the loots.

Step 1: Put on the highest endless difficulty you have
Don't worry if you cannot beat it, with the following setups we can make it easier.

Step 2: Remove all the miners
Mining too much will cause the hp scaling goes up, making it harder to manage(if you have low tower researches). Even if difficulty doesn't matter, the rarity of loots will be significantly increased.

Step 3: Block the shortcuts
AA(antiair) is best because of its lowest price. You can also put dps down first to prevent stakey walking over it.
Step 4: Start the wave and wait
You just need to sit and wait for the time to pass. Enemy speed -5% is recommended to get early as it makes a run longer.

Step 5: Reap the loots
You can install the miner when stakey is about to reach your base(second rotation speed platform as indicator). Max out your dps tower and kill anything that spawns. You can even unlock dmg buff in the core to increase your survive rate.

Core upgrades
Enemy speed -> 2 levels of coin gen -> left path down to 15000 coins -> right path down for miner installation time and speed

What you will need to prepare for the map:

• 8 Splash friendly portals with 500% difficulty(ignore regulars for now, don't pick healer or armored)
  
• The best base you have(range, attack speed and damage, EWOP is nice to have)
  
• Hard boss tile
  
• A ton of research on global and splash and related support towers

Make a 3x3 grid for your splash and place all your portals nearby. Your aim here is to make your tower kill everything as fast as it can.

Reroll the spawn seed by placing/moving tiles in the map. Get a seed in which regulars doesn't spawn on the first 20 waves.

The first 20 waves should be enough for the splash to build up mdps and then you can use ball lightning to kill the incoming regulars and bosses.
End the game around wave 60(second stakey) for the best efficiency.

Max portal difficulty in 6.3 is 2520%, while the max portal difficulty in custom map is 4500%.

• Nice research level, especially maxed wave interval.
  
• A nice base with decent dmg, atk speed and range. It can be EWOP(enemy walking on platform) but don't ever pick any base with disabled research.
  
• A high difficulty portal(above 400%) with specific enemy types.

This is an example of portal I am using, 4 of the spawning enemy types are weak to minigun, in which I can solo the portal with only minigun as dps. This means I will only need to heavily research one tower.

Long path and nice sight for dps tower usually makes the enemies easier to deal with. The map design might vary depends on the tower used and how the person make it.

This is an example of my map, I am using minigun as dps and crusher as support. Notice how a single crusher can grab enemies from different places of the path.
This layout works on tower with long range, like minigun and sniper.
edit: I realized i need nearby road tiles for crusher to use its disorientation, so i moved the platforms a bit.

3x3 grid for dps tower(s): This is commonly used when you want to hyper-buff a single tower. Usually 2 dmg mods and 2 aspd mods will be placed on sides while corners are left for power/search/xp mods.
Some scalar resource tiles nearby: They can be used to give xp by using xp mod, or they can act as gauss fuel. Leave some space around the resource so you can put your mining mod down.
Lots of range platforms: Freeze 1st ability spam, can give up to 50% dps boost against every enemy(except icy which is immune to freeze). Crusher spam is nice too but make sure they can reach lvl 10 for disorientation(instakill plus extra dmg)
ZETA-core: Best core available in custom maps, bonus power per lvl can give a lot of boost if you have high xp lvl cap research.
Boss tiles: Hard boss tile increases loot rarity and hence better bd efficiency. If you feel like doing long AFK runs like me, rare boss tile can be an option. fk metaphor
Long trail behind base along with platform spam: If you feel like having some snowball machines this could be an option. Make sure the freezes are at least lvl 1 so they can get passive xp to reach lvl 10.

Make sure you don't enable auto wave calls as it decreases the bd gain in a run. (Loot rarity scales with time elapsed, and bd gained by this method are mainly timed drops)
If you are playing actively, you can end the game when you are not killing waves before another wave starts for best efficiency. Or instead, instant call waves and spam abilities before ending it.

• High global dmg/Gauss dmg research
  
• High global range/Crusher range research
  
• High global projectile speed/Crusher projectile speed research(optional)
  
• Maxed Disorientation chance/Increased capacity(Crusher)
  
• Remaining HP - Nanoparticles (Gauss)/HP threshold - Ultimate (Flamethrower) (make sure your flamethrower is able to reap any gauss leftovers)
  
• Leave Burned XP - Selfimprovement (Gauss) at lvl 2 so more xp is burnt
  
• High Scalar miner mining speed/mining mod mining speed/overload/xp mod xp given research(for xp farm)

An example layout:
Crusher will grab enemies from the portal and release it near the base, resulting in disorientated enemies walking the longest path, and giving a lot of money.
After getting the basic gauss and xp setup ready, overload to get maximum amount of xp. You can use another gauss and more crushers(on proj speed tiles) to deal with the overloaded mobs.
Pump all the xp you have gotten into the gauss all at once and you will have a gauss which does massive damage and can last for few hundreds of waves. Turn off wave call and go do something else and come back getting thousands of bit dusts.

Here is a video about the map and the strategy using it.

Well, that is what I have known since 1.8.5 update. Since I am still at the phase of custom map farming, there is nothing further than it that I can do a guide. If you have any good strategies for bit dust farming too, please share it with us so we can discuss and find out the most efficient method to grind this game :)

And the last please enjoy the game as well!!

side note: im so bored of all the 6.3 spam