Server start

A new Shakes & Fidget server is decided in the first week, and it is decided by order and consistency rather than by how hard anybody clicks. Nothing in the opening is difficult. All of it is easy to miss, because most of it has to happen at a particular level or on a particular day.

That is the shape of problem a bot is actually good at.

This is opt-in, and it is behind the beta switch

The early-game behaviour on this page lives inside the achievement engine, and achievement_engine_enabled ships off. With it off, the bot plays normally and none of this runs.

To use the opening: switch on achievement_engine_enabled, then smart_early_game. Both are per character, so a new alt can run the opening while your main does not.

What the opening does

smart_early_game applies while the character is at or below early_game_max_level, which defaults to 100. Above that the character is past the opening and every setting below stops applying on its own, so there is nothing to remember to switch off.

It unlocks features the moment the level allows

early_game_auto_unlock_features (and the general auto_unlock_features, which is on by default) takes each pending unlock as soon as it appears. The scrapbook at level 10 is the one that matters most, because every day it is not unlocked is a day of fights that fill nothing.

Unlocking is normally free, but the protocol cannot be asked the price in advance. So every unlock is measured: the mushroom balance is read before and after, and if an unlock is ever seen to charge a mushroom, unlocking latches off for that account and says so in the log. The remaining features then have to be unlocked by hand in game, which is the safe failure rather than the expensive one.

It puts the early free fights into the scrapbook

early_game_force_scrapbook is on. On a fresh server your album is empty, which means almost every opponent is carrying something you do not have. That is the cheapest the scrapbook will ever be to fill, and the value of a free fight spent on it drops every week.

The hunt itself is the same one described on Scrapbook hunting, including the level and attribute limits. What changes in the opening is only the priority.

It keeps the thirst for adventure spent

early_game_buy_beer buys beer when the tavern is idle and the thirst has run out, so questing does not stop while you are asleep.

Two things bound it, and both matter because beer costs a mushroom unless the account is VIP:

• it only acts if beer_buy_amount is above zero, so it cannot start spending on its own;
• it honours the mushroom reserve and the daily budget, unless the account is known to be VIP, either because you declared it with beer_ignores_mushroom_reserve or because beer_auto_detect_free measured a free purchase.

It takes the wheel every day

early_game_spin_wheel takes the free daily spin from day one. It is one spin, it costs nothing, and over a first month it is thirty spins that would otherwise not have happened.

The paid spins are a separate decision and stay off. See Daily rewards.

It prioritises the ten daily arena fights

The arena module does the fighting, and the opening simply makes sure the ten experience fights a day are being used while they are worth the most, which is when levels are cheap.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
achievement_engine_enabled	off	The master switch. Nothing below runs while this is off.
smart_early_game	on	The opening itself, once the engine is on.
early_game_max_level	100	The opening applies at or below this level and stops on its own above it.
early_game_auto_unlock_features	on	Take each unlock as soon as the level allows.
auto_unlock_features	on	The same thing outside the opening. Either one enables it.
early_game_force_scrapbook	on	Send the early free fights at scrapbook targets.
early_game_buy_beer	on	Buy beer when the thirst has run out. Needs beer_buy_amount above zero.
early_game_spin_wheel	on	Take the free daily wheel spin.

What it deliberately does not do

It does not spend mushrooms on your behalf. Every mushroom spender in the app is a separate switch and every one of them is off by default, including on a fresh server where the temptation to rush is highest. See Settings.

It does not race. The request pacing is the same as everywhere else in the app, and the crawler keeps its per-minute ceiling. A server start is a fortnight, not an afternoon.

Running several fresh characters

Settings are per character, so the usual pattern on a new server is to tune one character's opening, save it as a profile, and apply that profile to the rest. See Many characters at once and Settings.

See also

• Install and first run
• How to automate the game
• Scrapbook hunting
• Achievements, which is the engine this shares a switch with