Idle Games and others that use New Game Plus systems for their layers may employ a system of milestones that are received as either a number of resets is performed or a certain amount of a resource given upon resetting is achieved. This often provides players with convenient functions like autobuyers or keeping previously purchased upgrades on reset to make repeated resets faster and later stages of the game less tedious. Some games also reward boosts for reaching milestones that let players progress past just making the same again with no benefit, making them function more like upgrades that don't need to be purchased. Most of the time, the requirement and reward is shown in a specific milestone tab, while the fact of whether it has been completed or not is indicated by the color.
Subtrope of Anti-Frustration Features and Macrogame (which is more related to things that carry over playthroughs in general). Compare Achievement System, which typically does not affect the game as much and isn't as tied to stages of progress (achievements like the ones for ascending a certain number of times in Cookie Clicker do not count because their effects generally boost production slightly at most and aren't tied to making gameplay more convenient).
Examples:
Action
- The Binding of Isaac unlocks a new feature after completing a successful Mom's Heart run. This is usually an item, but three of them make some part of the game harder. After that, many of the unlockables in the game are unlocked by beating the game's multitude of final bosses with each character.
- Marauders: When a player reaches level 50, they can choose to Prestige, which entails a complete wipe of the player's inventory stash, trader reputation, their main questline progression and of course, their level back to literal zero. In return, they can receive one Prestige point per wipe which can buy them permanent upgrades like extra stash space and special outfits that carries on to the next prestige.
- PAYDAY 2: The infamy system has you reset your level in exchange for a small perk. Infamy level 1 lowers skill point requirements by 10% and doubles infamous item drop rate. Every Infamy level up to 25 increases experience gained. Every odd Infamy level up to 25 and every level above that unlocks a piece of clothing.
- The 64 Layers Tree: The qrestige layer that has four milestones meant to make the prestige layer faster by keeping completed challenges, letting you buy max qrestige qoints, and keeping prestige upgrades.
- Advent Incremental: Several days starting from Day 2 have milestones earned for reaching a certain amount of a resource or percentage completion that provide either convenient features like not resetting upgrades upon training elves, raising coal gain to the power of 1.25, or unlocking a new elf to help with dyes.
- Antimatter Dimensions:
- Eternity Milestones are the Trope Maker. They are given as you perform more Eternities that provide various convenient features meant to speed up repeated Eternities, starting from 1 and ending at 1000. They include things like an autobuyer to the Infinity Point Multiplier upgrade, starting Eternity with all Infinity Upgrades, completing Infinity Challenges as soon as you unlock them, Infinity Dimension autobuyers/autounlocking, and offline Eternity Point/Infinity/Eternity gain (only one of these can be active at one time).
- Perks are an expanded version. Completing a Reality grants one Perk Point that can be spent on a permanent upgrade that makes future Realities more convenient, such as starting with Eternity Points, always having maxed Active Time Study multipliers, automatically unlocking achievements faster (or just keeping them), and removing Eternity Challenge required for Time Studies. There are 47 perks to purchase, but Perk Points can be used at a Perk Shop later on, making them regular currency.
- The Atomic Tree: Starting from the Proton layer, there are milestones which let you keep upgrades on reset, generate 10% of energy gain per second, and buy max of a previous resource. The electron layer also starts providing new features.
- The Burning Tree: The Coal layer has four milestones and the Electricity layer has two. The first for both unlocks a new column of ash upgrades, the second for coal lets you buy max coal, the third for electricity and second for electricity keeps ash upgrades on their respective resets, and the fourth for coal allows you to automatically do an ash reset once flame strength drops below 10%.
- The Communitree:
- Acamaeda's layer has milestones for reaching 10, 100, and 1,000 Acamaeda points that let you automatically gain previous resources, make them boost the "Start... again?" upgrade, and have Jacorb upgrades be bought "automagically".
- thefinaluptake's layer has several milestones based on Electricity and Coal that let you automatically replenish flames, claim those resources, upgrades, and provide several small boosts.
- The Compact Tree: The Compact and Superdense layers have milestones based on their respective resources. Both of their first ones provide 100% of the above layer's point gain per second (Condensed points for Compact and Vapourised points for Superdense), while the rest of Compact's milestones unlock features like a row of upgrades or dust and quality of life like keeping condense upgrades on all resets and buying max compactors.
- Crush Crush and Blush Blush have a soft reset future, which makes the game start over, but things run faster.
- Despacit Tree Δ : Most of the layers in Row 2 and 3 have milestone that automate gains for previous layers or keep previous upgrades on their resets (most of the ones in Row 3 are redundant with each other).
- The Dynas Tree: The Worker, Manager, and Territory layers have milestones unlocked by having enough of their respective resource. They provide automation, make previous layers not reset anything, unlock upgrades and structures, or give strong production boosts.
- The Factoree: The Extractor layer has milestones that unlock furnaces and furnace upgrades, Furnaces unlock extractor upgrades, Monopoly power has six milestones that keep things like upgrades and grants 10% of monopoly power per second, and the milestone for 8 power stations autobuys them.
- FE000000: Both Eternity and Finality have sixteen milestones that are unlocked for resetting that layer enough times (the former has to be done 16 times for all benefits, while the latter needs to be done 64 times). They provide improved starts, feature autobuyers/autounlockers, and for the final Finality Milestone, Complexity Point generation.
- The Game Dev Tree: Every layer that uses static currency in the 3rd and 4th row has several milestones that provide convenient things like retaining upgrades/milestones, automatically resetting layers, and autobuying buyables, but three of them let you progress further by unlocking Degree programs and the culmination of the game.
- The Gaokao Tree: Taking part in the exam and getting enough points grants a milestone that unlocks subjects, lets you study them every second, gains more credit from studying, or unlocks layers/upgrades/textbooks.
- The GFRIEND Tree: The GFRIEND Songs and Albums layers both have milestones based on those resources. Most of them unlock new tabs (Streaming, Albums), upgrades, and buyables, but some unlock buyables/reset automation and a 10x Subscriber boost.
- Grass Cutting Incremental: Grasshops are available after reaching level 201 in the normal realm. After doing galactic, You can Grass skip for the same amount of levels in the Anti-realm. Breaking the ring grants you planetary tiers, and reaching planetary tier 3 unlocks Grassjumps in the unatural realm. These all do various things from boosting currencies to unlocking new game mechanics.
- Gun Range Idle: Prestige resets gun upgrades but increases income by 2% per star. The stars can also be spent on boosts. There's also a Grand Prestige which resets stars, boosts, and iron, and rewards the player with prestige points which can be spent on upgrades. Finally, there's a tier 2 prestige which resets Grand Prestige upgrades, and gives bonuses.
- Incremental Adventures: There are several prestige layers. Prestiging on one layer resets all the upgrades on the lower layers. Prestiging on each layer gives upgrade points which allow the player to buy upgrades.
- Incremental Cubes: Upgrades can be purchased with skill points. The game resets when doing so.
- Incremental Epic Hero 2: The heroes can rebirth. Currently there are 3 tiers of rebirth, with 3 more planned for future updates. Tier 1 resets quests and hero's level. Tier 2, in addition to that, resets skill levels. Tier 3 also resets equipment levels. Each rebirth tier gives points which can be spent on upgrades. There' another type of reset, the World Ascension, for which there's one tier and another 2 planned for the future. World ascension resets more things, and some of them can be kept by doing accomplishments.
- Incremental Mass Rewritten: The Quantum layer has seven milestones for how many times you Quantize, ranging from 1 to 10. The early ones mostly let you start with Neutron Star upgrades that provide Quality of Life improvements, while later ones provide direct boosts like doubling Quantum Foam gain and having Pre-Quantum global speed affect Blueprint Particle and Chroma at a reduced rate.
- Law Of The Cat God: You can get favor by resetting cat upgrades and karma, which can be spent on other upgrades.
- Lit (2021): There are six milestones that unlock colors once you have reached a specific light threshold (light is granted for gathering enough energy to reset for it) and one at 69 (original) / 300 (+) that makes you win the game.
- The Milestone Tree: Exaggerated. The first layer is called Milestones and adds one every time you reset it once you have enough points. They generally grant new layers, upgrades, and small boosts, but some make resets not reset anything or provide other quality-of-life features. Later on, you can reset for meta-milestones based on milestones and extra-milestones based on meta-milestones, with those providing their own boosts and automation.
- The Multitree: Many layers have at least one layer that is meant to make the earlier layers more convenient somehow (100% prestige point gain, autocasting spells, autobuying refactors, and so on). Most of them are unlocked way earlier than in the originals to make the game faster as it has multiple trees for the player.
- The Null Tree: The elemental points layers have three milestones each earned for accumulating enough of them. They improve compressed null point gain, automatically buy Compress upgrades, give 2% of cp per second, unlock three new upgrades in Compress, make their respective point gain not reset cp, and make their respective best point multiplies cp gain.
- The Pg Tree: The Middle School layer has milestones named after things related to school (Student, Group Project, Class, Grade, and Middle School) that are unlocked for having a certain number of Middle School Students (from 1 to 640). The bonuses include keeping a row of prestige upgrades per milestone, a new row of upgrades, raising Middle School Student gain to 1.5, and gaining a percentage of Elementary School Students per second.
- Plague Tree: Starting from Infectivity, each layer has several milestones that provide conveniences like keeping upgrades on reset or gaining 100% of a resource per second, with later ones also unlocking new features (this happens a lot since layers starting from Fatality get very complex) and boosts to production.
- The Prestige Forest: Both the atoms and chemicals layers have milestones. The former has five which unlock new upgrades, keep particle upgrades on atom reset, improve particle gain, and grant 100% of particles per second, the latter only has one which is useless.
- Prestige Tree: Almost every layer has a certain number of milestones unlocked by getting enough of its respective resource. They make lower resets affect nothing, automatically gain specific resources/buyables, or not lose specific upgrades upon resetting.
- Prestige Tree Dimensions: Most of the layers have milestones that either provide comfort (like buying Prestige Dimensions doesn't cost any prestige points, gaining 100% of Enhance Points on reset every second) or unlocks that let you progress further (like a new Booster effect or the 1st Generator Dimension). Once you gain enough points and perform an Infinity reset, you gain a bunch of quality-of-life features and some other adjustments.
- Primordia (2022): Once you reach a high enough points/s quota, you can reset to gain an Advancement. Some Advancements unlock new layers, upgrades, or other production boosts, while others provide help like automatic upgrades, gaining 100% of a specific particle per second, or making Cryo challenges only reset the Aqua layer.
- The Space Tree: The Space layer has three milestones unlocked for accumulating enough space energy. These unlock the Spacebar and sell buttons for Space Buildings so you don't have to respec them all, a multiplier to point based on space energy, and improving formulas from dust gain and point gain from the Spacebar.
- Too Many Softcaps: The prestige power layer has four milestones that unlock a new prestige upgrade, start resets with all prestige upgrades, gain a percentage of prestige points per second based on milestones, and having automatic resets for prestige power that affect nothing, while the softcap power layer has one milestone that squares the Extra prestige points upgrade.
- Tree Inc.: One milestone is unlocked by resetting for 20 training seminars. It automates hiring employees without spending any money.
- The Tree of Life: A large amount of the layers has milestones that are earned by reaching a certain amount of the resource, usually meant to be the point where the game slows down. A few early ones are unlocked by performing a reset enough times, while later ones are received by getting enough of a resource, with some requiring challenge completions instead. Most of them improve production through things like more beneficial cost/effect bases/exponents, but others unlock autobuyers or keep other upgrades/milestones on the layer reset. The Human layer in particular has 100 milestones that keep getting stronger effects as you get more Plants/Thoughts/Humans (like the one for 63575 Plants making the Mastery V base 2 at 66010 Plants).
- The Upgrading Tree: u31 and u32 unlock Booster/Generator Milestones, respectively. Both of them provide some beneficial effects like keeping Prestige upgrades on Booster reset and raising Booster effect by ^1.25, even if they are not shown to the player in-game.
- War Clicks: You can deploy produced troops for a permanent production boost. Once a certain amount of total power points obtained is reached, you can privatize your army. Total power point objective is increased with each privatization.
- Zombidle:
- Defeating some bosses lets you start with a set number of skulls after resetting. This is only really useful in the very early stages of the game, after which passive bonuses multiply skulls by exponential amounts even at the start.
- Defeating the Wizard of a Kingdom (which you can only battle by resetting after clearing all the Kingdom's areas) grants you a Black Orb, which gives a huge bonus to White Orbs multiplier, and with certain items will also boost your other stats to make subsequent runs easier.
- Crash Arena Turbo Stars' regular mode allows players to reset all their coins and vehicle parts upon reaching the last stage in exchange of increasing their Prestige count (unlocking items exclusive to later Prestiges), skill points, gems, and cash for the Ultimate League.
- Idle Monster TD: There's a Prestige mechanic which resets tower levels, gold and wave progress and gives prestige points which can be spent on upgrades.
- Raid Heroes: Total War and Sword and Magic: When the "New Raid" button is pressed, the raid, the gold-producing buildings and the heroes' upgrades are reset. You get stars depeding on the number of raid levels you completed.
