Zen Idle Cheat Sheet

CARD PRIORITY
	Primary (preferred, in order):
		Gate Splitter
		VIP Ball Chance
		Ball Spawn Rate
		VIP Ball Multiplier
		Gate Guardian
		Ball Specialization (preferably on ball 4)

	Secondary (in any order):
		Ball Value
		Gate Multipliers
		Quality Control
		Obstacle Rewind (make sure you can upgrade your highest stage obstacle to where it doesn't restrict ball flow)

	Useful but not strictly necessary:
		Gravity Well
		Shrinkage (this can actually cause lag if you can't upgrade Ramps to below horizontal)

PERK PRIORITY:
	VIP ball spawn chance
	VIP ball value
	All ball spawn rate
	All gate bonuses
	All ball value
	All stage obstacle cost (at least until you can comfortably upgrade everything to the point of smooth ball flow)
	Anything that directly affects ball value


Now for some explanations...

Why the focus on VIP balls?
	Oh, so you noticed that, huh? Well, this game has a weird bug where if a VIP ball hits a gate and triggers the Gate
	Splitter card, it spawns a new ball that starts with the base value of the VIP ball that triggered it... and then
	gets the VIP bonus applied *again*. So if your VIP ball is worth the base 10x value of a regular ball, and it triggers
	Gate Splitter, the newly spawned VIP ball is now worth 100x of a regular ball. Add on VIP value bonuses and 9 possible
	gate splits (the 10th gate always destroys balls), and you can easily get balls worth 25 orders of magnitude more than
	their base value at the final gate. This is known as the "VIP split" bug, and as you can guess, it is extremely
	powerful. Hence, the focus of the game is creating as many possible chances for this to occur as possible.

Why no Multi-Spawn?
	Multi-Spawn is weird, in that while it may *appear* to be spawning a completely new ball, the multi-spawned ball's
	value is actually just copied from the original ball. This can create confusion, because a basic ball and a VIP ball
	can appear to spawn at the same time via multi-spawn, but whichever ball was created as the multi-spawn trigger will
	inherit the value of the first ball, regardless of what it looks like. So you can see a basic ball and a VIP ball
	spawn at the same time, but if you watch the value popups as they both fall through their first gate, they'll be
	identical. In essence, the second ball's visual appearance is a lie. In order for this to actually be useful, you
	would need a VIP ball to spawn, multi-ball to proc, *and* the newly created ball to also spawn as a VIP ball. The
	odds of this are so incredibly low that it's immediately outweighed by the additional processing lag presented by
	simply having an extra ball in play that you most likely don't need. Therefore, my recommendation is to simply never
	use multi-spawn, either the card or the perk.

Why no promotion ball?
	There are two practical reasons for this one.
	The first is that in order for promo ball to have any effect whatsoever, a ball first needs to spawn as a promo ball
	(a 0.18% chance at best), and then it needs to collide with other balls that will actually gain value from being the
	next tier up, i.e. if a ball 3 collides with a promo ball, then ball 4 must be worth more than ball 3 for it to
	actually be useful. If you're leveling every ball evenly based on cost, then chances are their values will be fairly
	close anyway, so bumping a ball's tier up by one won't make much of a difference.

	The second reason, and one which astute readers might have picked up on, is, what if you've only unlocked up to ball 8,
	and then a ball 8 collides with a promo ball? Well then, your upgraded ball 8 just turned into a completely baseline
	ball 9, and probably *lost* a lot of value in the process. This can be managed by simply deactivating your highest-tier
	ball, so that balls can be promoted *to* that tier but not beyond it... but then you're just wasting potential ball
	spawns that could have triggered the VIP split bug. So what's the point? Best to just not waste the card slot on it.


So, what's the optimal strategy?
	Well, this is something you need to know from the very start of the game... the moment you unlock a ball, you have
	"unlocked" that ball for badges, which are the main source of long-term progression in this game. Every badge a ball
	has gives it +20% base value, and badges are distributed randomly across every ball you have *ever* unlocked, regardless
	of if you've unlocked it in that particular run. So the "truly optimal" strategy is to only ever unlock balls 1 and 2,
	since you need to unlock the second ball before you can do challenges or tournaments, which will be your main source
	of gems. I personally currently have balls 1-4 unlocked, because they all spawn on the first stage, meaning they all
	pass through every single gate and thus have the most chances at triggering the VIP split bug. At the end of the run,
	that's how you're going to get the most value out of your balls.

Why did I write all this?
	Because I was tired of repeating it on Discord. I figure, since the majority of players are going to participate in
	tournaments for the substantial additional gem income, it's only fair that everyone is able to understand the true
	rules of the game.


May your balls bring you good fortune!