Getting Started

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The Getting Started guide is intended to help both new and returning players.

This guide aims to assist the player from the early-game to the beginning of mid-game, covering a wide range of topics including skilling, money-making, and the meta in Idlescape. Mid-game can loosely be described as the point where the player has:

  • A set of runite armor
  • Skill levels roughly averaging 50‒60

Things to Consider

This section will cover subjects including the player's account and official rules.

Game Rules

Rules

All players must follow the rules of the game. Certain things are not allowed, and can result in your account being muted, suspended, or permanently banned from play:

  • Any form of automation or botting is NOT allowed. This applies to the use, creation, or distribution of both bots and automation devices. Discussions about botting is also not permitted.
  • Scripts for quality of life improvements may be allowed, but for safety check with Boohi through in-game chat or Discord for a timely response and approval.
  • Alt-trading, specifically having multiple accounts that trade between each other is NOT allowed. Players are only allowed to own a single account!
  • Trading any items from outside of Idlescape for items inside Idlescape is against the rules and will result in a trade ban for both players.
  • Follow the chat rules!

Staff & Moderators

Current Staff Members

Tasks of people within a role are not set in stone, but in general developers create the game system and code, and moderators keep chat in normal and help players out with small problems. Community contributors help develop and test new parts of the game on a voluntary basis. Artists create the artwork for the game.

To open a ticket for assistance, you can do so in game from the "Send Feedback" feature in game, or via the Discord channel #create-ticket.

Ironman Mode

Note: The information on this page is based on non-ironman gameplay. While still very useful to start off, some advice may not apply!

Released on 11 December 2020 v0.8.

Ironman mode characters have unique restrictions and special capabilities:

  • Trading: cannot trade with other players.
  • Ironman-only Chat: all ironmen have their own chat channel that cannot be accessed by regular players, but can still chat in the general channel.
  • Chat Total Level: total levels displayed in chat for ironmen is greyed out to differentiate them from regular players.
  • Multi-logging: players can use both their regular character and ironman character at the same time in different browser tabs.
  • Server-wide Broadcasts: the first time an ironman reaches a special achievement, (e.g. first to level 50 farming) a server-wide message is sent to congratulate them in both general and the ironman chat channels.
  • Ironman-only Hiscores: a special hiscores page where the highest level ironmen are ranked.

This mode is not recommended for new players to the game.

With the release of Ironman mode came several Alternate Playstyles, all based around the mode.

Gameplay

This section covers mechanics and other information relating to the game itself.

Action Queue

In Idlescape, players can only perform one action at a time; for example, mining and foraging simultaneously is not possible.

The exceptions are: farming, enchanting and crafting. These can be done at the same time while training other skills.

Offline Progression

Offline progression continues for up to 12 hours, 24 if you have Idlescape+.

Skills

Players have access to 15 skills, split up into four categories: combat, gathering, production, and magic. For more information on each skill, see their respective articles.

Combat skills
Attack Determines how accurate the player is.
Strength Determines a player's maximum hit, calculated alongside their strength bonuses.
Defense Decreases the chance of being hit.
Constitution Increases Health/HP.
Magic Determines a player's magic damage.
Range Determines a player's range damage.
Gathering Skills
Mining Used to gather ores and other materials from different locations.
Fishing Allows players to catch fish.
Foraging Allows players to gather logs, seeds, and cooking ingredients.
Production Skills
Smithing Allows players to smelt ores into bars.
Farming Used to plant and harvest seeds.
Cooking Allows players to turn their ingredients into meals with different effects and/or for healing during combat.
Crafting Allows players to create items & equipment.
Magic Skills
Runecrafting The runecrafting skill is divided into the following:
Enchanting The enchanting skill is divided into the following:

Skills

See various guides:

Marketplace

Verify Your Email

  1. Open the menu in the upper left of the screen.
  2. Go to settings, then verify your email.
  3. You can now trade on the market!

Using the Marketplace

  • Always sell your items to other players on the market. Do not vendor/sell to the NPC unless the item vendors for more than the offers on the marketplace, which it usually is not.
  • Check the actual listings. When selling items, the game will show you the lowest listed price, however, players will sometimes list a small quantity of an item at well below normal market price in order to lure unsuspecting players into listing their items for too cheap.
  • Stack Size is important. Players don't usually want to buy up 20 separate listing of iron ore with 20‒100 ore per listing if someone else has several thousand listed at similar prices.
  • Undercutting is a controversial topic. The amount you undercut by and on which items can make people frustrated when they are trying to sell similar items or are very invested in a specific market. This is just something you will have to feel out yourself.
  • Taxes: When you sell an item, 5% of the sale price is taken in taxes. This is to help combat inflation. Keep this in mind if trying to eke out slim profit margins, otherwise you can just ignore it.
  • Items will stay posted on the market for 30 days and then they will be returned to your inventory where you can list them again if you wish. However, if your item is fairly common and doesn't sell after a few days, consider lowering the price.


Beginner's Guide

This guide aims to assist the player from the early-game to the beginning of mid-game, covering a wide range of topics including skilling, money-making, and the meta in Idlescape. Mid-game can loosely be described as the point where the player has:

  • Skill levels roughly averaging 50-60
  • Runite armor, tools or gear of similar tier.

'First Few Days' Checklist

Rather than a specific timeline that must be followed, there are several things that need to be done in the first few days of playing to get off to a good start.

  • Tools - You should follow the natural progression to some degree. Begin with bronze and move onto iron, but it isn't always necessary to get mithril or adamantite tools before going straight for runite.
  • Combat - Melee is the easiest combat style to start with as it takes the least amount of time to get the gear. Melee gear only requires mining and smithing, which are entry-level skills. Ranged requires mats from farming, which takes a long time and magic requires mats from fishing, which takes a while to get gear for.
  • Enchantments - Refining is the single greatest enchantment for early-game. This should be one of your top priorities.

Beginning the Game

Starting off, you should follow the following steps pretty closely:

  1. Begin with mining in the Clay Pit. From here you get useful ores like Tin Ore Tin Ore and Copper Ore Copper Ore. Sand Sand and Clay Clay are also notable drops as they can be used for quick crafting experience. Move on from here once you have 40 of each ore.
  2. Forage in the Grasslands. From here you get Branch Branchs which can be used to make quick crafting experience, Log Logs which are used to make bronze tools, and seeds which are planted in the Farming skill. Stop foraging once you hit both 2 Carrot Seed Carrot Seeds and 30 Log Logs.
    1. Plant the 2 Carrot Seed Carrot Seeds on the two open plots on farming.
    2. Craft Log Log with whatever Branches you get during this foraging session. The crafting recipe is found under the general tab in the Crafting skill.
    3. Burn 10 logs for heat. You will need this to smith your bronze ingots.
  3. Go to the Smithing skill and begin smithing Bronze Bar Bronze Bars. Use the lowest heat setting, which is done by setting the heat slider as far left as possible at the '1' value. Smith all your ore until you have 40 bronze bars.
  4. Go to the mining section of the Crafting Skill and craft a Bronze Pickaxe Bronze Pickaxe. Equip it and continue mining in the clay pit.
  5. Repeat the above steps to make a Bronze Hatchet Bronze Hatchet. Equip that too, then continue mining in the clay pit. Once you unlock the City Outskirts Mine, switch to this zone.
  6. Continue mining until you have 210 iron ore. Then switch over to foraging in the Verdant Valley. If you don't have it unlocked, forage in the Grasslands until you can. Forage until you have both 350 heat (from burning logs) and 35 Oak Logs. As you forage, continue to plant seeds. Craft more logs with sticks found and try out the crafting recipes for Fertilizer Fertilizer (found in the farming tab). You need level 7 crafting to make iron tools.
  7. Go to smithing and make 70 Iron Bar Iron Bars with heat intensity 1. Go to crafting, craft an Iron Pickaxe Iron Pickaxe and equip it. From here, you want to mine until you reach mining level 20. At this point, swap to the Village Quarry Mine and idle here for a few hours. From here you will get Coal Coal (which gives a lot of heat) and lots of iron ore (which can be sold on the marketplace for a hefty amount).

At this point, you can pretty much leave the game for a few hours. Gather plenty of iron ore, smith it and sell it on the marketplace. This will get you going very well.

Branching Off to Other Skills

There are 15 unique skills in Idlescape that all intertwine with one another in some way. There is no direct progression for all of them combined, so below is a simple beginner's guide to some of them

  • Farming
    • Continue foraging and planting seeds as you get them. For the best experience, you want to use Mysterious Seed Mysterious Seeds in 1x1 plots. These are fairly rare, so just using the high level seed you can works fine.
    • Your plot size will grow with every 10 levels you get. Make the most of it by filling up all the plots as fast as possible.
  • Smithing
    • One of your top priorities when leveling smithing is the Refining Refining enchant. This is extremely valuable in terms of making money and progressing other skills. The majority of your profit will come from this enchantment. It is helpful to read the Smithing Guide as to why refining is such a strong enchant. For the Refining enchantment, you need a pair of Stygian Gloves Stygian Gloves or Stygian Boots Stygian Boots (I would recommend boots as they are cheaper) and 6 scrolls of refining. Getting the boots costs 4,000,000 coins from the General Shop. If you can't buy refining scrolls from the marketplace, making the refining scrolls requires:
    • Reading the Smithing Guide is extremely helpful. Some quick tips pulled from it are to use the second forge as soon as possible and to get refining as soon as possible.
  • Runecrafting
    • Runecrafting is a unique skill in that it uses essences. Essence is something that is passively gained from doing skills. For example, Earth Essence Earth Essence is gained from mining and Water Essence Water Essence is gained from fishing. Hovering over each essence will tell you how it is obtained.
      • The hardest-to-get essences are typically fire and cosmic essences.
        • Fire Essence Fire Essence comes from smithing and cooking, but the amount of fire essence gained is dependent on the amount of heat consumed. Therefore, since heat is usually pretty expensive, fire essence is very difficult to get.
        • Cosmic Essence Cosmic Essence comes from crafting runes. These are hard to get early-game because you need to gather other types of essence before cosmic essence can be gathered.
    • In general, you begin runecrafting by NOT runecrafting. You typically want to save up essence until you have 50,000 essence of a certain type. At this point, if you have completed the 'Fallen Academy' quest and have level 50 crafting, you can craft talismans.
      • Talismans are extremely useful as they increase the amount of essence gained per action by lots. Talismans can be dropped from chests, geodes or bird's nests, but these are rare.
      • You especially want to save cosmic essence until you can make a cosmic talisman. Otherwise, you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot.
    • If you are playing without the market, you want to do the majority of your runecrafting after you get the refining enchant (described above). Refining gives you gems that are used to make chisels that boost your runecrafting level.
    • Read the Runecrafting Guide for extra tips and tricks.
  • Cooking
    • Beginning cooking starts with preparing ingredients. These ingredients come from fishing, foraging, farming and some combat zones. Usually, you want to prepare ingredients until around level 35 cooking.
    • After reaching this level, you can start using your prepared ingredients to cook. Preparing different ingredients will unlock different recipes for you.
    • Enchants you want to quickly get are the Scroll of Cooking Scroll of Cooking. You also want to get a Ladle Ladle as soon as possible, which drops from Goblin Goblins in combat.
    • Read the Cooking Guide for all the nuances that come with cooking (there are a ton!).
  • Combat
    • There is a page dedicated to helping players being combat which can be found here.


Overall, following this guide should get you decently set up to continue progressing the game at your own pace.

Tips and Tricks

  • ALWAYS ASK QUESTIONS IN CHAT. People in chat are almost always extremely helpful and open to new players getting into the game.
  • Burning coal is a cheap way to get heat, whereas logs can often be sold to players for more than their value in heat. Check the market for current prices on coal, logs, and pyres logs to see what the best heat to gold ratio is.
  • CTRL/CMD + left-click will link an item in chat; you can link up to 5 items per message.
  • You can link your gold and heat in chat by CTRL-clicking the money bag and flame above your inventory.
  • You can link your skill level by CTRL-clicking the skill.
  • The vault is where you can store items you want kept separate. Examples of such things might be an augmented ladle for cooking, a weapon you don't have the level for, boots with various enchants you are not currently using, rare drops, crafting projects you are saving for later, or excess blank scrolls you don't want to accidentally enchant.
  • It's a game, play it to have fun! If that means optimizing things in a certain way, playing the market, not trading ever, playing in non ideal ways etc., then go for it. People give advice to help you but in the end, it is you that is playing. 'If you ask for advice, you should consider taking it though.'

See also

References

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