Ascension, Magic, Artifacts and Rituals: MergeCiv Endgame Guide
Resettlement teaches you to let go of your grid. Ascension asks for everything else — your Gold, your Tier 1–3 Gold upgrades, even your unspent Culture Points — and pays you back with the Magic system: Mana, three spells, 24 collectible artifacts, and nine Resonance Rituals that permanently change how every future run plays. If Culture is still new to you, read Chapter 4: Resettlement & Culture first, because Ascension sits on top of that loop, not beside it.
The Road to Ascension
The path starts in the Legacy tree. Plans for Mage Tower costs 200 Culture and unlocks the Mage Tower research itself. The Magic Book opens once you have unlocked Resettlement, and the Mage Tower requires it, so you will normally have Magic Book levels before the Plans are worth buying. The Tower then takes ten construction levels at 50,000 Ore plus 100 Mana each. Level 10 reads "Ascension Unlocked," and from then on you can ascend whenever you choose.
Read the reset list before you do, because it is harsher than Resettlement. Ascending wipes the Surface and Underground grids; your Food, Wood, Ore, Gold, Mana, and Metal balances; all Tier 1–3 upgrades (including Tier 1–3 Gold upgrades); your Legacy upgrades; and your unspent Culture Points. You keep Magic Crystals, Ritual Assignments, Artifacts, all Tier 4 Ascended Upgrades (Reinvestment, Mana Monolith, Mana Syphon, Fission, Conservation of Magic, Capacitative Efficiency, Department of Magical Appraisals, and Build Citadel), Knowledge and Tier 5 research, Conquest progress (Valor, road landmarks, and Muster Grounds army), The Roost, and your Citadel grid. Spend down your Culture and Gold (into artifacts or Reinvestment) before you commit.
Mana: Generation, Caps and the MANA Test
Mana comes from the Apprentice. By default it only generates while the Apprentice is resting, which puts auto-merging and Mana income in direct competition. The MANA Test upgrade (5,000 Gold + 100 Mana) fixes that permanently: the Apprentice generates Mana while working and the Rest button disappears. Buy it before anything else in the magic layer.
Your Mana cap is your Magic Book level (1,000 Gold per level, up to 100) plus 100 per Magic Crystal, plus 100 per level of the Glistening Gem artifact once appraised. Generation scales through Charge Up (×1.3 per level compounding, ten levels — nearly ×14 at the cap), Capacitative Efficiency (×1.01 per level, a hundred levels of slow compounding) and the Mana Monolith (×2 per level across ten levels, starting at 100,000 Ore and multiplying ×10 each level). Because Mana Monolith and Capacitative Efficiency are Tier 4 upgrades, their levels survive Ascension. Two artifacts feed the pool too: Cracked Orb adds +1 Mana per second per level, and Stone of Worship adds Mana scaled by your population.
Three Spells, Three Jobs
Magical Upheaval (100 Mana to cast; unlocked for 6,000 Gold + 100 Mana) destroys any Surface or Underground tile. It is your deadlock breaker when the board fills with unmergeable leftovers. Pick up Conservation of Magic alongside it: refunding 1 Mana per theoretical merge inside the destroyed tile (2^(tier−1) − 1) makes clearing a high-tier mistake nearly free.
Infused Harvest (100 Mana; unlock 20,000 Gold + 500 Mana) harvests a tile with a tier-based multiplier — the tool for converting a tall tile into an instant resource spike when you are a few thousand short of an upgrade. The Infused Jerky artifact raises both its yield and its cost ×1.3 per level, so it changes the spell's scale, not its efficiency.
Fission (2,000 Mana; unlock 100,000 Gold + 2,000 Mana) takes one tile of tier 2 or higher, drops it a tier in place, and puts a second tile of the same type and tier into a free cell. Two tiles one tier down are worth the same merges as the original, so Fission buys shape: it turns one tall tile into a matched pair at the tier below when you need a partner on demand. It requires an empty cell for the copy, and as a Tier 4 unlock it persists through Ascension.
Spoiler: End-of-Run Crystal Burst Trick (Conservation of Magic + Mana Syphon)
Once you own both Conservation of Magic and Mana Syphon, right before you Ascend (or Resettle on a deep run), cast Magical Upheaval on your highest-tier Stockpiles and resource tiles (Tier 8+). Because Conservation of Magic refunds 2^(tier−1) − 1 Mana per destroyed tile, demolishing a board of high-tier tiles refunds a massive wave of Mana that overflows your cap and funnels straight into extra pending Magic Crystals via Mana Syphon.
Magic Crystals: The Currency That Matters
Crystals are the core currency of Ascension. Each one persists through Resettlement and Ascension, adds +100 to your Mana cap, and powers Resonance Rituals.
You earn them through crystal charge. The charge goal for crystal n in a run is 100 × n²: 100 for the first, 400 for the second, 900 for the third (the Crystal Infuser artifact trims the goal ×0.9 per level). There are two ways to add charge, and they convert at the exact same rate: manual infusion for crystal n costs 100 × n Mana and grants 10 × n charge, while the Mana Syphon upgrade turns overflow Mana into charge at one-tenth value. Either way, ten Mana becomes one charge, and the permanent Crystals feather upgrade in The Roost multiplies charge from both sources by +5% per level.
Worked Example: Crystal Number Three
Your third crystal needs 900 charge — 9,000 Mana however you deliver it. Manual infusions at this stage cost 300 Mana for 30 charge apiece, so that is thirty casts. Or buy Mana Syphon (which persists through Ascension), keep your Mana pinned at cap, and let every point of overflow drip into the crystal automatically. Ascending claims whatever crystals you have finished charging.
Artifacts Worth Your Gold
Artifacts cost Gold: 1,000,000 for the first purchase this ascension, ×1.3 for each one after. The counter resets when you ascend, so every cycle starts with another million-Gold artifact on the shelf — budget for several pulls per cycle once Tribute income matures. Duplicates grant 1 XP each, and level costs follow a Fibonacci curve (1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…).
Buying artifacts requires the Department of Magical Appraisals (100M Wood + 100M Ore, Tier 4), and owning it automatically appraises every artifact you pull — so their effects are active immediately. Detect Magic (300 Knowledge, ×10 per level, max 6) is only needed for unappraised artifacts obtained without the Department.
Top priorities: Golem (×1.2 Food, Wood and Ore generation per level), Itemized Paystub (+1 Gold/s per population per level), Interest Accumulator (passive Gold/s equal to 1% of your banked Gold per minute per level, capped at 50%/min), Mana Multiplier (×1.2 Mana per level), Crystal Infuser (×0.9 crystal charge goal per level), Golden Compass (+1 scout quality per level), Historic Compendium (×1.2 Culture per level), and Printing Press (passive Culture/s based on your Resettlement reward).
Spoiler: Guaranteed First Drops, Rarity Odds & Artifact Imbuement
Guaranteed First Pulls: Your first Rare pull is always Itemized Paystub, your first Epic is always Interest Accumulator, and your first Legendary is always Printing Press. Furthermore, whenever you roll Epic or Legendary, unowned artifacts of that tier are always awarded before duplicates. Base rarity weights draw from a marble bag (~60% Common, ~28% Uncommon, ~9–10% Rare, ~2% Epic, 0.1% Legendary with pity scaling).
Artifact Imbuement: Once you unlock the Citadel and purchase the Artifact Phylactery (100M Culture in the Empire tab), any level 10+ artifact can be Imbued at the Citadel (up to 3 times, or up to Mythic with the Astral Tree's Reliquary). Each Artifact Imbuement consumes the Phylactery and performs the same full Citadel reset as a Citadel Imbue (wiping your current run, Magic Crystals, and T1–T4 upgrades), except your reward is promoting that artifact one rarity higher (reborn at level 1, one Fibonacci XP step dearer, with amplified scaling) instead of +1 Citadel tier, while removing copies of its marbles from the drop bag so your remaining artifacts level up faster.
Choosing Your Resonance Rituals
There are nine rituals, presented as tarot-style cards. Crystals can be unassigned and rituals apply instantly, so nothing here is a permanent mistake — though crystal income is gradual early on, so order still matters.
Ritual of Space (1 crystal, +1 grid size, max one assignment) is the undisputed first pick; an extra row and column pays off in every system. After that, buy back your automation: Assistance Ritual (3 crystals, then 6) keeps the Apprentice and Apprentice Control through Ascension, Scouting Ritual (5) keeps Auto-Scout, and Ritual of Intellect (2/5/10) keeps the Smart, Genius and Space Conscious Apprentice tiers.
From there it depends on your loop. Ritual of Quality (1/5/25/125…, max 10) makes the Scout spawn tiers 1 through level+1; Ritual of Culture (1/2/4/8…, ×1.5 Culture per level) multiplies every Resettlement payout. Bureaucratic Ritual (2/25/50) auto-buys T1–T3 upgrades, Ancient Grimoire (2) starts runs at Magic Book level 100, and Ritual of Capacity (40/200/1000, ×10 Food/Wood/Ore storage) is a deep-endgame sink for when crystals arrive in dozens.
Ascension and Resettlement: One Loop, Two Gears
Post-ascension you start on a fresh grid, while Resettlement works the same way: 5,000 each of Food, Wood and Ore plus the 6×6 expansion, then resettle whenever growth slows. Culture still scales quadratically with population, and your Ritual of Culture levels and Historic Compendium now multiply every payout. The two layers form one loop: resettle for Culture and Tribute, convert Gold into artifacts, charge crystals, ascend, assign rituals, and repeat.
Because Tier 4 upgrades (Reinvestment, Mana Monolith, Department of Magical Appraisals) and Knowledge survive both Resettlement and Ascension, every investment into them permanently accelerates your future cycles. Read Chapter 6: Underground & Citadel for where that road leads next.
Keep Reading
Next in the Handbook: Chapter 6: Underground & Citadel · Chapter 7: Conquest & The Forge · Chapter 8: Offline & Boost Math
Play MergeCiv · Beginner's Guide · Resettlement & Culture · Tips & Tricks · FAQ