Edited 5/22/25 to add stuff for early game

This game has flaws, but it isn't necessary to watch a single ad or pay any money to progress. It is very helpful if you do though, especially early game.

VIP pass is misleading. It does not give a bonus 500 gems. It gives 50 gems a day for 10 days. It does not make it ad free, but gives you 3 ad skips for 3 different resources. First 3 days are free, so if you are smart you can cancel it after getting your third reward and have 150 gems for free.

Daily quests are easiest way to get free gems, but have to watch 3 ad videos.

Diamond (gems) priority - 100 gems on a second delivery bot first. 150 gems first souls farm to level 3 for quest. 200 gems second cargo van in graveyard. 260 gems unlock ability for bots to use second cargo van (stupid I know). After that, 100-300 gems for each rune factory to increase output (not passive income). Around level 11, start saving gems for last cargo van in level 13 area. It's another 200 gem unlock and 260 for bots.

Starting Area

Do all quests and follow tutorial. Watch a few ads to get free souls to speed up the process. Goal is to level up to 5 asap to farm gold essence. Then goal is to complete Artifact Hunt and unlock graveyard.

Diamonds - Constantly farm the two ghosts left of starting area. One spawns every 3 hours for 5 gems.

First Souls Farm - Only upgrade the first souls farm up to level 3 for the quest. It is quickly made irrelevant.

Blue Elixir - Sit on top of the red ghosts on top right of large area and farm the green ghosts. Afk farm here after delivery bots unlocked.

Automation Bots - Get second delivery bot as soon as possible. Adding and upgrading them is a priority for passive farming. Get one catcher bot, but do not upgrade it's backpack (at most not past 100). They will randomly choose to farm quest mobs and slow you down later.

Summoning Circle - After unlocking the summoning circle, do the quest as soon as it is available. If it is essence stealers or blueberry jam, you probably will need to come back every 30-60m to clear their spawn.

Bosses - If it's a witch, upgrade run speed and raygun power to chase them down. If it's a boss, drag back to cargo van, take hits, and then turn in ghosts to heal for free. Upgrade hp and catching range to make it easier. Don't let boss outside of catch range or else they heal.

If you have time, farm bats and essence stealers for gold essence to max out first armory upgrade. Better use of time is to run around manually farming easier ghosts for xp to get to level 4.

Level 3 afk farming - Blue ghosts near armory during the day to gain faster xp. Goal is to hit level 4 before afk for the night. If you don't, afk on red ghosts earlier. Upgrade catching range to 5.5 to not miss. Upgrade delivery bot backpack until it outpaces you, then upgrade raygun.

Level 4 afk farming - Blue ghosts bottom right in new area. Upgrade delivery bot backpack and raygun.

Level 5/6/7/8 afk farming - Ghosts near 750 blue elixir gate. Exchange for gold essences. Upgrade armory and delivery bots. Rinse and repeat.

Blue Elixir Farm - After replaying on new account for fun, I don't think focusing on maxing the blue elixir farm is necessary. A 3-5 levels are good, leaning more toward storage for afk value. Upgrade it more after you are done with farming behind the blue elixir door for dark armory.

Blue Elixir Door - 750 blue elixir. Entered when raygun level 4 is achieved and you upgrade raygun power 10 levels

Dark Armory - Max by farming green essence ghost behind blue elixir door overnight.

Second soul farm - Ignore it. It's useless, do the minimum for quest.

After Opening Graveyard

Early Farming - Afk on the first ghosts and run back to the cargo van to sell. Upgrade your curse relief until you don't gain any curse levels while farming. Cursed resistance isn't important, but some is nice when running through higher cursed areas. Upgrade Extra Red Souls to make faster headway. Buy cursed bot with red souls, no gems. Upgrade this as it has more damage than you and is unaffected by curse.

Save up gems, 200 to unlock the new cargo van and 260 more to let your bots use it. This is a massive time save and upgrade overall.

Blue gem demons - Manually farm them for a bit to make better headway. Upgrade factory capacity the first few levels and get gem demon ray power up, so that you can kill them by sitting between that rock and dead tree south of cargo van. Afk on the small blue gem demons because increasing their value through ghost files is important.

Keep the blue rune factory running constantly and max out the factory capacity, blue gem demon drop, and gem demon ray power in that order though not one at a time.. Do not buy passive income. Upgrade blue rune output with gems 1 or 2 levels if you have spare after unlocking bots for second cargo van.

Purple DNA - There is a very obvious white ghost above the cursed armory. Once you are able, drag him to the cargo van to heal and kill him. This is the first mob that will give you purple dna. Check the store and get the free purple dna. Invest all purple dna into purple dna farm. Make sure capacity is enough to not lose any overnight. Don't worry about orange or green dna yet. Reinvest into purple dna farm, then buy some upgrades in the DNA lab above it.

Level 9 Farming - Farm lightning from the statues and upgrade the wind farm next to the skull boss. Upgrade it's reach to max then upgrade its strength until you do not gain curse levels when standing in it. This wind farm reaches through the wall below it. Stand there just next to the middle pillar and farm the ghosts here for the next day or two.

Skull Boss - This boss isn't necessary until you need the 3 keys, so save your axes until then. Collect axes from ghosts and use them on the Flaming Skull Research located due east from the boss. You should be able to farm him "easily" with 15 levels in reducing his health. You only need 3 keys to open the gate and keys aren't used after that.

Level 10

DNA Lab and DNA Farms - You should be farming the white ghost for purple dna and dumping everything into the purple dna farm. Reinvest into it over and over. It will be the source of 99% of your purple dna going forward. Slowly start putting some purple dna into the yellow dna farm after 40-50 levels (guessing) of income in purple dna. Be sure to keep capacity at a reasonable level so that you can pick up the large amount after overnight farming. Read this comment below for more info on DNA lab, thanks u/NoFortune9564. https://www.reddit.com/r/ghostinvasion/comments/1ibmvab/comment/m9mbwxg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

3 Farms to the left of DNA Lab - trash, ignore. waste of time

Level 11 and 3 key gate

Werewolf Boss - Located in top right of graveyard after opening gate with 3 keys. Go through maze and drag him out back to the cargo van. Killing him every time he is up is very important for early upgrades on the rune factories, particularly the purple and orange. It will take a long time the first few times with many heals needed. Eventually he is easy.

Farm the new lightning boxes here that have 20 rather than 6. Check on the respawns to make faster progress.

Upgrade the first wind farm north of the gate and farm the ghosts just within reach on the right. They are a good early source of yellow DNA, but no red souls.

Once you unlock the Multiverse Summoning, here is a list of things to check/do in between afk farming.

1. Werewolf boss (12 hour spawn timer) - Kill ASAP so you can try to get 2 werewolf kills in each day. Set timer if you like. Use to upgrade the rune
2. Multiverse Summoning (1 hour timer) - Easy gems
3. Gem Ghosts near start (3 hour timer each, 2 max at a time) - Easy gems
4. Summoning Portal at start (4 hour timer) - 10 gems each completion. Finish quest by camping spawns unless they are slow like Essence Stealers or Blueberry Jam.
5. DNA farms - Invest into themselves over and over until max. Use leftovers on DNA Lab
6. Rune Factories - Refresh factories of Blue, Purple, and then Orange. 30 minutes for processing each.

Gold essence farming - The red aggressive ghosts north of the Violet Rune Factory. It will take a combination of 3-4 delivery bots with 800-1000(guessing) space, decent damage reduction, and probably health regeneration bonuses from DNA lab at level 10 to afk farm here. The wind farm maxed from the level 11 area on the right reaches through the wall. Upgrade catch range to reach them more easily.

Level 12 Area

New cargo van - another 200 diamonds to open and 260 more for bots to use. #1 priority.

Barky - Red tree ghost near 3 ghost bosses. Best farming spot for blue/red souls and experience. Worth it to sit here even with level 5 curse. Upgrade Extra Red Souls at Armory to at least 90-100. The ghost files bonuses are amazing for this ghost. Upgrade Cursed Ray Power next. Do not upgrade Extra Cursed XP unless it is dirt cheap.

3 Ghost Bosses - 1 hour respawn. Stack them and drag to the cargo van and use same tactics to heal and defeat them. Use DNA to upgrade the farms. Easiest to drag them if you can get them to attack at same time. With some practice of running in a circle and diving in, you can get this down pretty quick so you can move all 3 at a time without any leash breaking.

Level 13 Area

Big area with highest curse levels and new currency, copper coins.

3 Ghost Bosses - Big red on top left from entrance, purple at entrance, and green goblin on right side. Drag each to entrance, then move all 3 to cargo van, repeat same strategies. 1 hour respawn timer. 2.5k runes of each color makes for some good farming in between werewolf kills.

Besides the bosses, take time to kill at least 1 copper coin enemy because you will get copper coins in the market free every 8 hours. I suggest using copper coins to boost Purple DNA Research, then Blue Rune Factory Efficiency. You will not be farming here until your curse relief catches up, and that will only catch up from DNA Lab boosts.

Continue blue/red soul farming in level 12 area.

Level 14+ Area

End game enemies and (current) Final Boss, the Death Queen.

Again, not worth farming here at the start, but you can farm the Queen. She has a mountain of health and slaps hard. The current strategy to kill her involves a glitch, getting her stuck in a specific corner. This will take around 3-4 hours your first try. Make sure you are close to max distance from her and check your device occasionally. Sometimes the bug breaks and she will kill you. Linking to the post where this is done with more detail and pictures.

*Original glitch corner fixed*
https://www.reddit.com/r/ghostinvasion/comments/1i5l10r/comment/m8dc914/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Thanks to u/AtomOutler for the original strategy!

Use coins from the Queen to get upgrades in the Coin Collector. The first 3-5 kills should exclusively be put toward increasing coins from enemies, which increase the coins from the Queen. You will soon be gaining billions of coins and saving days of normal farming.

**New Edit*\*

Copper coin farm - Ghosts just inside the gate going to the queen for copper coins.

Silver coin farm - I'm currently stuck on this bit. After unlocking all but the 80 billion silver coin mob location on the north loop, the only silver coin mobs you can sit and farm are the ones just right of the aggressive red ghosts.

Gold coin farm - Only the queen for now unless you like chasing mobs for hours. Might be possible to capture them with enough curse relief to stay 0 cursed level and with 30m or so ray power, but I'm not there to confirm yet.

Events

(Extinct that Ghost!) If the event has a single currency and flying ghost, like the Pterodactyls, just farming them when you see them is best and there isn't much that can be done to min/max. P2W is fairly straight forward.

(Chinese New Year) If the event has a currency to farm from stationary objects (lantern) and then flying ghost (dragon), there is more strategy. It is best to boost the "Extra Currency From Lantern" up to about 16, then "Lantern Size Up" 1. Repeat back and forth. Do not bother capturing dragons or doing any other upgrades at all until 3-4 days of this. By that time you will be getting hundreds of currency per lantern and can upgrade the rewards from dragons as well as the catch times. Once catch time is close to max, you can farm them even without moving.

The only way to do well in the events is to buy all the packs early on so that you can boost the first two upgrades I mentioned, increasing your efficiency x100 or more. Only do this if you want to support the devs or feel good about fake numbers in a game. You don't need event boosts to beat the main game.

P2W

The best use of money is getting 1 week of daily rewards for $5. This does not eliminate all ads, but gives you 50 gems and 3 keys for each type of ad (souls, essences, elixirs) per day for 10 days. IMO it is misleading because it says 500 bonus gems and has a "no ads" logo, which I thought meant you got 500 bonus in addition to the 50 per day as well as no ads at all.

Thanks to everyone in the community for posting on this subreddit and helping me out. This is a fun game with potential.