Base principles
Let’s get you started on your quest! As mentioned here, Idle Tale is an idle incremental game. You will progress in increments. First, gather a resource. Second, spend that resource to get a little bit stronger. After a while, your gains will slow down and you will need to unlock new upgrades to accelerate generation of income. Easy enough, right?
The game will let you explore a total of 14 maps of increasing difficulty, each with its very own selection of beasts. You will start in the Newfield Forest, facing hordes of slimy slimes, goblins and ogres. Each map has general monsters and 1 elite type monster worth a lot more. On the map, you will generate a base income and receive additional income for each monster you killed. You will not receive any damages from monsters. Monsters only serve as punching bags full of cash. Do not let it fool you tough! As you will soon realized, monsters are a significant source of cash. Your goal is to bash as many skulls as you can in the shortest amount of time! Though you will not take damages, you will need to get stronger. The stronger you get, the faster you go through those hordes of enemies.
Your very first start
Now that you know the general logic, let’s get you started. You are facing your very first enemy: the mighty slime! You are only armed of a wooden sword and wear whatever rugs you could scrap from your grandmother’s closet!
Tap the screen to attack the slime, kill it and unlock your first achievements! “A Legend is Born” and “Murderer” for killing your first enemy! N.B. At the start of the game, you will need to tap to attack (unless you use an Autoclicker app, wink). However, you will soon unlock a way to auto-attack, though tapping attack faster than the automation.
As you can see at the top of the screen, your gold is no longer 0 (“0g”). You should have earned 6g from your first kill.
Where should you spend them?!
Mighty Shop
At the start of the game, the game interface will appear somewhat empty. A lot of options will need to be unlocked. The only menu you have available is the shop.
The shop contains two types of upgrades: - “Gains” that increase your base income per second. - “Upgrades” that unlock all sorts of upgrades that will make you stronger.
Upgrades range from unlocking new maps, quests, multiply your grains, increasing your stats…etc There is a whole variety of them!
Gains
As in any incremental games,“Gains” present you with a variety of investments. Each new category of item will start at a higher cost but provide a much greater income. Within each category, the cost of each upgrade will become more and more expensive and the return on investment will slow down. Ultimately, you will need to save to unlock the next category.
Your first investment will be in health potions. The first level will unlock passive generation of income.
Most idle games use the -illion system to represent large numbers. Just know that the next segment of large numbers is 1000 times bigger than the previous one.
Large number representation goes as follows: g (gold) < K (1K gold or 1000g) < M (1 million or 1000K) < B (1 billion or 1000M) < T (trillion) < Qa (Quadrillion) < Qi (Quintillion) < Sx (Sextillion) < Sp (Septillion) < Oc (octillion)…etc
Pay attention to the Gain Per Second (GPS) located under your gold (for instance +1.07K/s) as it is a goood indicator of your current progress in regards to future upgrades.
List of Items!
Income-generating items are:
Health potions
Mana potions
Stamina potions
Mining and the pickaxe
Gems
Sigil
Tomes of magic
Bows
Shields
Daggers (more on the dagger in another post)
Each will appear in the list as you reach certain conditions. Often when you have save an amount near the starting cost of the next item (at the exception of the dagger).
Something important to know is that reaching certain level of upgrades in each of the categories will unlock item specific upgrades allowing to multiply the gain value of the related items. Even if you have to go level by level, it is highly rewarding to reach those thresholds. The best threshold is obviously to reach lvl 1 on an item, meaning to unlock a higher value item.
The thresholds seem to be: - lvl 1 (to unlock the item)
lvl 10 to multiply by 2 the gain of each level of that item
lvl 30 x2
lvl 50 x2
lvl 100 x2
lvl 150 (health potion, mana potion, mining) x2
lvl 200 (health potion)
Unsure at this time why not all items get access to the same threshol, but any how… pay attention to the lvl-1, 10, 30, 50, 100 thresholds as they multiply gains on most items.
Upgrades
Upgrades are maybe one of the most important element of the game! They unlock new systems to help you grow. I will soon dedicate an article to all upgrades, but here are the basic upgrades you need to know.
Skill tab
The first upgrade you will have access to for 20g is “Skill Tab” (which should probably be renamed “Stats Tab”). The skill tab allows investing gold into character stats.
There are so far 3 basic stats–strength, agility ad wisdome–and one unlockable stat–luck.
Each control your power in a unique way:
Each point of strength increases your total Attack power by 1. That base amount per point will increase with upgrades.
Each point of agility increases your critical strike chance by 0.5%. It is by far the most expensive and critical stat of all!
Each point of wisdom increases your critical damage by 0.5% of your base damage.
Each point of luck increase the chance of dropping a loot. The only stat that won’t reset (more on that later).
Because of the difference in cost of each stat, you will often have 3-4 times more strength points than agility and often 10-20 strength points more than wisdom. For instance, I currently have about 130 in strength, 30 in agility, 120 in wisdom. It is just the way it is. Because of the high cost of agility (and luck) in comparison to the other stats, it is best to wait and invest in them if you almost saved enough for the next level.
Quests
Your next major upgrade will be “Quest Log” (100g? I forgot to record). Quests rewards new upgrade for killing specific monsters. Some quest will have you kill X amount of a specific monster. Other quests will have you play idle. And other quests will have you defeat bosses. Some quests are easy and just require time. Others, like dungeon bosses, will take effort to get stronger and defeat the boss. Overall, each quest will contribute to your growth in its own way. The first quests will unlock new monsters, new upgrades and new quests. Make sure to focus on them.
The first two monsters to unlock are the goblin and ogre.
Codex
As you will soon see in your first map, you will face a variety of monsters, each rewarding a certain amount of gold. The codex (250g) is like your field guide on which zones pop which monsters and how much each monster is worth. However, the codex is also a source of power and a place where to spend your gold. It allows encountering higher level monsters. Higher level monsters are harder to kill, but it also implies higher gold earnings! When you are stuck, check your codex to see if you should move to the next map or increase the level of monsters on the current map.
I would suggest to push the Newfield Forest to lvl 7-10 for now as each monster will drop a large amount of gold for your level. Once you get to new areas, you will no longer need to invest that much into lower level maps (spoiler alert!).
True Idle & Servo-Arm
Finally! For 5k and 10k gold, you can finally get lazy! True idle will have your character attack automatically every few seconds. With Servo-arm, you no longer need to tap. Keeping your finger on the screen will activate attacks. Though it remains better to attack by tapping, this feature can be upgrade so that your character attack faster.
Maps
For 2M gold, you will be able to unlock the map. The map allows to teleport to new areas. Each area represents a wall in your progression. Areas unlock through very expensive upgrades. Like many idle games, your progression will slow down before each new area and skyrock again once you move on to the next map.
The real fun starts once you unlock the map. Unlocking the Map feature will first let you move to the Forgotten Forest. With that new map, you will unlock the Gear tab (150K g), allowing you to equip all sorts of gear that will boost your stats. Soon after you will need to unlock the Unholy Map and face Death. For once, Death is kind and will help your get stronger. With your first death (yes, there will be many more to come), you will unlock the leveling and talent systems allowing you to move on to harder maps.
To sum up!
Overall, you need to balance your spendings between pushing gains and upgrades, or getting stronger to fight stronger monsters. A large part of your time will be spent on exploring the shop and what new upgrades you can unlock.