Quick note: Ready Player Two *USED* to be the best FP, and that was largely due to an ability Wrena has. Right now, Ghostbeard's Greed is the best because of so many adjacent crusaders, the reason that's so good is something you won't be able to take advantage of for a while. RPT is the second-best in the meta, but for a newcomer, might be the best thanks to extra formation space.

It has been a VERY long time since I've had to try all that hard in the game, so I'm sorry if my advice is a bit scattered or unhelpful. I kind of have to guess what it's like having fewer idols in the game right now, so hopefully I'm not too far off.

1) Chances are, you're not clearing FPs quickly or often enough to be building up meaningful idol buffs between each cycle. The time spent on less-rewarding runs waiting to get to the single run that gives the most might not be worth it. If you're getting much less on those runs just to get 50% more on the one run, you're giving up idols to gain fewer idols. It might be worth it to just stick with the one FP that gives the most and not bother with FP Bonus-building until you've got enough resources to speed through FPs quickly. Otherwise, check how much your #1 and #2 FPs give for idols, and if they are somewhat close, just go back and forth between those two.

Simply: Find the best FP for you. Then find the second-best. If the payout for the best is 20% or more than the amount the second-best gives you, just keep doing the best FP. If they give about the same amount, alternate between them.

2) Whenever you're doing an idol run in FP, reset as soon as it takes longer than 1 full second to kill enemies. Tanking and pushing the extra few areas slowly is not worth it. You might get sliiiiightly fewer idols per reset, but you save a TON of time.

3) Roborabbit is a pretty bad clicker because it's powerful clicks very quickly lessen into being useless. Despite being an event crusader, Bush Whacker is still better than Rabbit. That might push you a few extra areas.

4) The lower-tier talents tend to largely be additive, so don't put too much into a single talent. Try to evenly spread your idols around various talents so that they can stack multiplicatively with eachother. A single level 20 talent will usually be much much weaker than two level 10 talents together.

5) Event crusaders can be enormously powerful. You might feel like you are stagnating now, but then the next event comes up, lets you unlock a new crusader, and just that ONE crusader makes your entire formation much, MUCH stronger.

6) Remember that this game is an IDLE game, so it takes a long time to get anywhere. There's plenty of times where you won't be making much progress, but you're working up to something down the line that will make a difference. Diligence and patience make all the difference. Sometimes it's just a matter of waiting until you've managed to unlock the one thing that suddenly rockets you forward.

As another quick note to answer your second question, that's normal. The general rule of thumb is "If you cannot beat the objective relatively easily, quit it, get stronger, and come back later." The longer you spend struggling on an objective, the LESS time you're farming for idols, chests, etc.

To maximize idol gain, try building a gold-heavy formation. The higher gold will help you level up more, which translates into higher DPS, more areas, more gold, etc. Because you're still very early in the game, it might be most helpful to reset as soon as you either...

a) Stop insta-killing enemies, or
b) Max your crusader levels.

Before you unlock bonus idols from boss kills, most of your idols will come from buying levels, especially since you haven't gotten Deep Idol Scavenger yet. Basically, your goal in the early game is to gain levels as fast as possible. So any formation you build should be a mix between gold find and speed crusaders. Anything that makes you move faster and find more gold while doing it. DPS won't be all too important since gold will help you keep leveling up anyway, but you DO still want a good DPSer so that you CAN reach the higher areas for more gold/levels.

I'll try to help you speed things up as you unlock more crusaders and talents.

1) Yes. Always. You might need to sacrifice getting more idols for a while, but you gain an event crusader. Even without gear, those can be incredibly powerful, and you would be able to unlock them without needing to do their objectives during their event. That matters since it's entirely possible that their objectives would be too hard for you, so this allows you to have a chance to get them without needing to struggle in an objective you might not be able to beat. You miss out on a few days of having those crusaders, and if you fail, those crusaders will be injured for a little longer, BUT the risk is worth the potential payoff. Of course, having no access to those crusaders for a few days might suck, but "a few days" is small beans compared to how long this game takes to play. hose days will be over before you know it and you'll be right back to normal.

2) Same as above.

For both: I don't think crusader/gear missions disappear forever if you fail them. Devs correct me if I'm wrong about that. If it's true that they will come back later if you fail them, then the only risk is a few days without some crusaders, which is a risk well worth taking.

You'll want to do RECIPE missions, but ignore material missions. Material missions don't really give a whole lot, as you know. When you have a ton of crusaders to spare in the future, then by all means, do them, but right now don't bother. But you'll want to do recipe missions as much as possible. They are random, sure, but you'll want to stock up on recipes anyway so that you're more likely to get the ones you want later down the line. You'll want those recipe missions to get/upgrade gear on those event crusaders you get from recruitment missions instead of having to wait a year for their event to come back around.

Metal Soldier is a great crusader in early-game. She's not that great by the end, but since you're just starting, she might help a lot. Metal Soldier can do a whole bunch of things. She's DPS, tank, AND healing. Literally a one-woman-army. I'm honestly not sure how good she'll be without gear, but even without gear, she MIIIIIGHT become your new DPSer. Maybe.

For recipes, you are correct. The way the recipe missions work is that there is a pool the game randomly picks from, and the only recipes in that pool are recipes that you DON'T have. The mission is guaranteed to give you a recipe you didn't have before. The only exception is if you start the mission, get a recipe while the mission is being done, and then complete the mission and it ends up giving you the recipe you got while the mission was in progress. But other than that technicality, recipe missions will always give you a random recipe that you don't have.

Upgrade missions have a limit of upgrading gear to epic. Upgrade missions will not upgrade gear into legendary/golden. The maximum they will upgrade into is epic. You need to buy goldens and craft legendaries on your own.

To my knowledge, the recruitment missions are specifically designed so that you CAN'T reach 100% on them. There will always be a risk. I've never seen a 100% recruitment mission even with all tags, gear, and EP satisfied.

For Prospector, not really. Epic materials are rarely used. The only thing they are good for is upgrading rares into epics, and you don't need many of them for that. As long as you don't convert epic mats into common mats, you should be fine with whatever you get naturally and spend the idols on DPS talents instead. At least for now.

Always worth a shot. At least you tried, and that's what matters.

Not much I can say to that other than "Good luck and happy hunting" lol

Once you get later in the game (a few requirements and large time investment is necessary), there's a trick to push much further than you'd normally be able to. It involves opening MANY chests (which a specific crusader helps amass) and a particular talent. Depending on how many of your resources you're willing to throw away per run, you can buff your damage by e10 or more. It won't be viable to you for quite a while, but I'm mentioning it now so you have something to look forward to.

Use the code ROCK-DINO-DAYC-ARES for a 3 day 25% Idol buff whenever you'e able to give the game a lot of attention. Probably not this week, since you say you're busy.

EDIT: Removed comment about "Endurance Training" because it was wrong.

I got Holy guardian, the tier 3 crusader before dps buff expired just few hours!! I worried about the mission I had to go with only 5 specified crusaders, I had to climb wall for some time but it's easier than I thought. He's the first crusaders I have that is on over 20th seat, I tried using him once and he's really helpful but took me half run already to fully upgrade him lol

I can't figure out about the damage buff by e10, I tried to find in talents with no clues but I'll keep this in mind and I might figure it out later.

And thanks for the code!! I use it this weekend so at least I can get benefit for 2 days. I'm not sure about "Endurance Training" but I never put any point into it though, I never do buff mission except those taking only 10 or 20 minutes long.

I'm kind of on and off, and I still don't know how long I can play this game so I don't really want to spend money on the game right now...

For missions, I had no idea how rare recruit mission it is but I never see it again after that failure, I definitely do it again if it comes. I do some recipe mission if I have high enough success rate. I don't really intend to upgrade it since mostly it's kind of throwing away materials for me and I don't have much of them so I just keep it like that just help me increase a bit DPS for talent I put idols into and maybe can narrow down some possibility I can get the one I might need in future.

For talent, I think I'll try to max "Deep Idol Scavenger" first, after that, to be honest, I have no idea which one I should put into since it's not really helpful IMO. What do you think?

And I think after I run out of torches, I'll focus on objectives again since I finished only few objectives because I only wanted to unlock FP so I'll try to get my 3rd TM to help me doing faster run. Any idea? haha

P.S. I just was out of my mind and reset event FP without leveling up all crusaders and I got only few Idols......... give me back 2500 torches!!!!!!!

Everything Teschio said, but I'll say it again just to reiterate lol

Talents to focus on, in order of priority...

-Deep Idol Scavenger
-Fast Learners
-Synergy
-Swap Day/Well Equipped
-Speed Runner
-Extra Training

Explanation for each, in order...

-More idols. Duh.
-Bringing XP time down from 5 hours to 30 minutes is pretty big. Likely won't make a MASSIVE difference in your DPS, but it'll definitely help quickly.
-Honestly, I debated putting this one lower. You might not have enough crusaders to make great use of this, but it IS multiplicative, so it's objectively better than...
-These are additive, so less useful on their own, but they stack muliplicatively with eachother (all DPS talents do)and they are pretty cheap, so throw a few levels on them early, then largely ignore them until later.
-Shorter missions. Faster rewards. Doesn't really help your DPS, but will certainly help in other areas.
-Arguably the most useful one here, BUT unless you're actually reaching your level cap, this won't actually do anything for you. Plus, even if you're reaching your level cap, thi talent has a lot of levels and becomes VERY expensive. Thi will likely be the last talent you max out in this tier. Hence why it doesn't take priority despite being so useful. Throw a few levels on this, then focus on other talents, and once those are done, you come back to grinding out this talent.