Is it useful to upgrade "Cid, the Helpful Adventurer"?

Question

In Clicker Heroes, there is a first hero, which is normally a hero for active players - Cid, the Helpful Adventurer.

I'm normally a passive player, which means I let the game run and just spent my money from time to time. But anyway, I just wanted to have an answer about the question, if it useful to upgrade Cid? Just expect that I would be an active player and I upgrade him. What is the benefit?

All heroes, except Cid, will gain a bonus after quite some levels (normally around 200+). This means, the heroes will get 4x the DPS every 25 Level. Cid is still at a very low rate, even if he gets to Level 1000. Is there no bonus for him? Why should I upgrade him (besides the fact that I get 1000 or more Level which will give me a half hero soul.)?

Answer 1

Depends on Active vs. Idle play style.

If you're Idle; 150 is as high as you need to go until you decide to ascend and pump levels into him to get hero souls.

If you're active; all your damage is going to be coming from him; so after you upgrade your heroes to the bare minimum to unlock skills; he'll be the only hero you upgrade (until you decide to ascend; and then pump levels into all the other heroes for HS)

Answer 2

It is useful to upgrade Cid to level 150, since that contains the last upgrade. After that it doesn't do much damage since it is easily surpassed by it colleague heroes. You will notice that around wave 75~, maybe earlier.

If you want more click damage, simply get the 0.5% of DPS damage bonus for your clicks by upgrading the other heroes along the way. After that, keep upgrading the other heroes to get more DPS and therefore also more click damage. No matter what style you play!

When ascending, upgrade Cid to get a decent amount of upgrades so you can get another hero soul or two (1 per 2000 upgrades).

I tried upgrading Cid from level 200 to level 1100, but my click damage only increased with 1-2%, I was doing about 200O click damage at the time of upgrading. But that was probably mainly because of relics and ancients.

In my opinion, Cid is there to get you along the first 25 waves, especially when you play for the first time, after that it fades away in the shadows of the other hero's powers.

Answer 3

Simple answer is no.
Regardless of play style, Cid does not contribute to DPS, nor does Cid receive multiplier bonuses to any of his natural abilities at level 200-4100 which the others do (between 4x and 10x at 25 level increments). This makes leveling Cid mostly about unlocking his early boost to click damage. On about your 10th ascension and thereafter, you're unlikely to find even this click damage to be particularly useful; it would constitute less than 1% of the over all click damage from a roster of heroes generating DPS and a percent of DPS as click damage.

When playing idly it is important to note that you can totally skip any hero that is not either providing an important upgrade to:

• All heroes' DPS
• All gold collected
• Optionally, a skill you need (like the Dark Ritual, Energize and Reload)

Or who is significantly providing you with the most DPS.

Cid is never doing any of these. In effective idle play you can easily skip:

1. Cid
2. Treebeast
3. Ivan
4. Brittany
5. The Masked Samurai
6. The Great Forest Seer
7. Alexa
8. Natalia
9. Mercedes
10. Bobby
11. Sir George II
12. Referi Jerator
13. Ma Zhu
14. Athena

You could, as these skills are barely needed to make your optimal run time, skip:

1. Abaddon
2. Aphrodite

On the other hand, in active play, some of Cid's ability and upgrades could be useful (only) at the start. His ability gives click damage, his upgrades only affect himself. Thus, ultimately click damage comes from a factor of DPS via the abilities on Treebeast, Ivan, The Fisherman, Betty, Mercedes, Sir George II, and Frostleaf. See also those heroes providing critical click upgrades.

If you're still at a level of play where ascending with 1-3 more souls makes any real difference to you, you will want to level Cid into the 2k, 4k, or 6k range. However if you really can hit the 6k range, you're probably at a level where ascending is giving you 80-90k souls. Those couple of souls from hero levels are negligible.

Always do an optimal run with a clickable left unclicked before ascending, and you can click it to carry enough coin with you to pay for a Shinatobe, Grant, Frostleaf, or greater. They will basically carry you to level 260+ by themselves.
Note: This likely has to do with my ancients, not simply the fact I carry a clickable through ascension. EG I have Dogcog:25. for half cost heroes, and Iris:175 for at starting level 176, which I think factors into the highest unlocked level that determines the value of the clickable, then I have Mammon:410 giving +2050% gold. I'm not sure that Libertas:395 factors in because the +6465% gold is "gained from monsters when idle" and clickables aren't monsters.
It's well worth it for me though as all that gives me a value of 1.019e35 for the clickable totally outweighing the 1e8 for having Kleptos:30. This value allows me to right away buy:
Frostleaf:100, and 200 of everything below, plus all the available upgrade, activate metal detector and an energized dark ritual with reload... all of which will run close to optimally to level 265 (Again I do skip 2-175) before I have to or can buy any Dread Knight. 100 of those can run to about level 415 easily enough.

You can see my screenshots of an ascension: