Guides

New player tips, from /u/raids_made_easy on reddit:

 * Focus on resources that will allow you to Prestige as quickly as possible for the highest mana gain. Early on, the Printing Press and Gold Sifter buildings produce the highest value resources.
 * Purchase upgrades as soon as possible after they become available. The resource production increases they provide are much greater than multiple building purchases and often subjoin additional resources as well.
 * It will take quite a few Prestige resets before you can run all the buildings with increasing resources (units/second > 0). Upgrades can modify the input/output values of resources for existing buildings resulting in small cost changes per unit that scale in relation to the total quantity. It may be necessary to temporarily turn production off or destroy buildings in order to maintain the complexity of the buildings' resource requirements.
 * Mana gain is based on current remaining resources rather than total resources so you want to let it run without spending any of your resources on new buildings for a bit before prestiging
 * The mana gain formula is a bit complicated. The gains scale the same every run with a dampening factor being applied for every 50 total mana you gather. There is also a "1st mana wall" determined by your total mana, which means the more total mana you have the more resources it will take to reach the 1st mana point every run. After you reach the 1st mana, though, you will begin to gather points at the standard rate.
 * First prestige is recommended at 2 or 5 mana. The first spell will cost 2 mana and the second one is increments of 3 mana.
 * Speaking of spells, Market Portal will be useless to you for a while. The formula to determine the trade amount has two soft caps determined by your spare mana and your total money respectively. This means that until you have a decent bit of spare mana for it to work off of you won't be getting very appealing trades.
 * Sand and glass will be unlocked with the Destructive Sifters upgrade. You need 10 mana and 5 gold sifters to unlock this upgrade. If you have at least 2 furnaces you'll also unlock the Glass Furnaces upgrade which allows you to begin producing glass.
 * Don't worry too much about Water and Hydrogen when you unlock them. They aren't terribly useful for a while, but are needed for a few late game things.
 * Steel can be produced with the Manufacturing spell when you reach 50 mana. This will unlock the Skyscrapers upgrade which makes managers available as well as several very useful buildings.
 * When you reach 150 mana try to save up 180 banks, 5 investment banks, and 1 million money for a special and very profitable event. Also, make sure you have the Coal Mines upgrade purchased.
 * Beware the Demon trades. If you take more than 10 you will definitely regret it. And god help you if you sign their pact. What could possibly go wrong?
 * If you have extra mana after casting the spells of your choice and are not using the market portal, you should usually refine the extra, as it will warp in extra resources every now and then.

Note that some of the information on this page may become outdated with time as the game is currently under very active development.