Melvor Idle Guide: Tips & Strategies for Beginners (2024)

One of the best idle games ever, Melvor Idle is complex and difficult – but I am here to help you get started on the right foot by sharing a bunch of tips and tricks for the game.

The tips recommended below are perfect for the first 24-48 hours of gameplay, but you can and will apply most of them later on in the game or if/when you start a game with a different difficulty setting. Let’s start

1. Expand your bank (inventory)

One of the first things you should be spending your money on after completing the tutorial is expanding your bank aka your inventory.

You can do so by going to Shop – General Upgrades and buying the 5 x Extra Bank Slot upgrade.

Try to get at least two of these early on in order to make inventory management easier and to actually have room for items you will craft/find during your adventure.

I also have a more in-depth guide on how to make more money early in the game, make sure to check it out when you’re done reading this article.

2. Focus on Mining early on

There are different approaches when it comes to what to focus on early on in the game, but I always like to choose Mining over the traditional Woodcutting / Fishing focus, although these will be the ones we’ll have to do soon-ish also.

But for the first few to several hours, when I am also generally active in the game, I prefer to focus on Mining because that’s the only way to unlock super solid weapons fast.

And you need weapons for combat, which is one of the most important parts of the game. The sooner you start doing combat, the more rewards you can reap.

So start by mining Copper for 20 minutes or so, then switch to Tin for a similar amount of time.

Switch to Smithing – Bars – and craft all the Bronze bars that you can. Get back to mining and start mining Iron ore.

You see where this is getting – craft Iron bars when you have plenty of ore, then focus on unlocking Steel Bar, which in turn unlocks Steel Weapons, which is what you need early on in the game to easily fight against your enemies (more on this later).

Only craft weapons and gear lower than Steel ones to unlock all levels and work towards your 100% mastery. We won’t really use anything but steel weapons during combat early on.

Do keep Bronze bars aplenty in your inventory, as you will need them some good items from the Shop: Basic Furnace (helps with cooking) and Basic Pot (also cooking).

If you’re into idle games, also read our Factory Town Idle Guide.

3. Don’t fight often early on

Don’t focus on fighting early on – which is at least the first several hours in the game.

If you really need a specific item that you only get from fighting (like hide from cows or feathers from birds), do it.

But fighting early on is not passive. You don’t have the option to auto-eat when injured and you will suffer lots of damage because your skills are low and weapons / apparel of poor quality.

So wait for a few hours – until you have steel weapons and apparel before focusing on a fight. You can wait longer, because progress has to be made in other areas, but be patient early on.

Otherwise, it will be very frustrating and time consuming, with combat requiring you to be actively playing and heal your character constantly.

4. Be smart when choosing your opponents

When you have solid weapons and armor (steel level at least), you can start fighting more in Melvor Idle. But even then, you should be smart when choosing who to fight against.

In other words, you should only fight enemies that you can defeat as passively as possible, without them causing too much damage and requiring you to constantly eat food to replenish health.

Eventually, you will be able to buy the auto eat upgrade which makes things easier, but until then, always fight several levels below. Here’s how to auto eat in Melvor Idle.

The easiest to fight against early on, once you have steel armor and apparel, are those in the Farmlands category: start with the Plant, then switch up to Chicken and eventually focus on fighting Cows.

The reason why I love fighting against cows early on is that they drop leather, which can be used to craft leather armor (and more types of armor later on), which is great for those who want to focus on archery and magic attacks.

NOTE: Remember to collect the loot regularly, and also check the health of your character from time to time to make sure they won’t be defeated.

5. Focus on a single type of attack mastery

While you will have to eventually become a master of all the attack types in Melvor Idle (Melee, Ranged and Magic) in order to defeat all types of enemies, focusing on a single one is key early on.

And, as you probably saw already, we’re focusing on melee attacks first because they are great against enemies you can encounter early on, and it’s easiest to get some solid gear in the first few hours due to extensive mining.

The type of attack you perform is decided by the type of weapon you use. Melee weapons you should use are the Steel Sword (pair it with a similar shield) or the Two-handed Steel Sword. These are my favorites early on.

When attacking, choose your attack style: Stab, Slash or Block as seen in the image below:

Each of these types will train a different stat of your character. The sword goes with Stabbing attacks, the Shield helps you with Blocking and a weapon like the two-handed sword is best for Slashing attacks.

Make sure to equip the correct weapon for the type of attack you’re using, based on the skill you want to train.

These skills will influence things like the damage you deal and hit ratios, but early on you shouldn’t lose sleep over this. Go with stab attacks to increase your skills, then switch to others later on.

6. Micromanage your inventory

Having enough room in your inventory is both a must and a challenge early on in Melvor Idle. But with a bit of care (and some upgrade purchases), things become a lot easier.

When your inventory is full and you are performing an action that would give you an item that you have no room for, you will stop performing that action.

This is very bad if you’re going idle for a longer time and basically waste receiving all those items that you would’ve otherwise received. And this is why micromanaging your inventory is important early on.

Performing skills like woodcutting or mining will give you more that just the item that you are collecting. You will also get bird nests, various gems and plenty of other items depending on the action you perform.

So there’s a chance that your slots will be occupied eventually, stopping that action.

This is why you have to sell everything you don’t immediately need. Sure, there are some items that you should keep as they are difficult to get – all rare items go in this category.

But gems you get from mining, seeds you don’t use and any other type of item that you don’t see yourself needing or using in the near future should be sold to make room for potential items that you will collect.

This will become less of a problem as you upgrade your inventory slots, but early on in the game you should always micromanage your inventory.

7. Increase your Astrology Level ASAP

Astrology is not just a very useful skill to work on early on, but also a really safe one to perform when going idle, as there are just 2 items that you can get from performing it, so you don’t risk filling up your inventory.

I recommend focusing on Astrology early on in order to reach the Ameria region which has some very good multipliers that will speed up your in-game progress.

So start by studying Deedree from the Astrology tab in the left sidebar. As soon as you unlock it, switch to Iridan (which gives you more XP, so faster progress) and once you unlock Ameria, focus on it until you reach level 80 there.

We’re doing this in order to gain access to the highly useful (early on) modifiers that the Ameria region gives us – see some below:

As soon as you get to level 80, invest your Stardust in improving these skills: around level 5 for each of the regular Stardust ones and level 3 for the Golden Stardust.

8. Optimize offline progression

When going offline, you must make sure that your character can perform the action they’re supposed to without it being cancelled by a full inventory.

Usually, I prefer to leave my character focus on Astrology early on, as well as Agility.

Agility gives you some immediate bonuses, as long as you have a course built, but will also produce gold coins every few seconds, which add up and are extremely useful early on.

I personally leave my hero train Agility for the first night after starting a new game in order to get that massive boost of coins in the morning, to have enough money to buy some upgrades from the shop.

But no matter what you choose, make sure that you perform an action that is useful – and also, very important, that can be performed for several hours or as long as you’ll be away.

9. Make sure you have enough food

While you don’t need food unless you fight, you will need to build up your provisions and cook various types of food eventually.

This will not only help you stay alive during the in-game fights, but it will also unlock better recipes that you can cook later on in the game.

Make sure to also read my previous article sharing the best way to get more seeds in the game – this will also come in handy!

10. Prepare for combat

If you want to get 100% completion as soon as possible, you will also need to fight a lot. While, as we have discussed already, fighting is not something you should focus on, you should prepare for it.

First, make sure that you have enough items required for fighting. Melee combat is easy because it only requires a weapon to do it.

Archery and magic will require consumables (arrows or runes), so it’s a bit more difficult to do this early on – hence my focus on Mining and melee weapons.

Second, make sure that you have equipped the best equipment possible, boosting the type of attack that you are going to use.

Third, make sure that you have enough food to keep your health up. Ideally, you will do heavy combat when auto eating becomes available, so you don’t have to worry about your character dying.

But as long as you are semi-active and check on your character every now and then, you should still be safe if you fight way under your level.

11. Don’t ignore woodcutting!

I don’t want to turn this guide into saying “max out all your skills,” but the truth is that most things you can do in the game are important and will be needed sooner rather than later.

I actually think that, once you have completed Mining enough resources to get a full set of Steel weapons and armor, as well as enough Bronze bars for the first set of upgrades from the store, you should switch to Woodcutting.

Not only that you will receive wood this way, which is also required for buying some goodies in the store, but you will also get Bird Nests, which will have various seeds, which you can then plant in order to do some farming and automate your food production.

Make sure to upgrade your axe and get all possible boosts for Woodcutting early on in order to speed up your process and increase reward drops.

Woodcutting will also eventually reward you with the Mark of the Ent, which you will use later on in the game to train Summoning, which comes with more advanced stuff like Synergies and increased drops from combat.

Plus, as you level up the trees available to cut, you will be able to turn them into a real gold mine and sell for a nice chunk of coins!

12. Melee vs Ranged vs Magic in Melvor Idle

You will need all types of combat in Melvor Idle, eventually, as some of the mobs you will encounter will be easier to defeat using a specific type of attack.

But early on, as stated already, I would focus on Melee combat. Not only that it is the easiest to do since you don’t need ammunition – as it is the case of ranged attacks and magic ones, but it’s also pretty much OP against all early enemies that you will encounter.

As you progress through the game and idle fighting becomes accessible, you can switch over to the other types of attacks and focus on magic, as it will be more useful later on in the game.

I haven’t even touched on the town mechanics here, as that’s a bit more advanced (and basically a different game), but I do have a guide on how to give items to your town in Melvor Idle – make sure to check it out if you haven’t figured it out yet.

Final words

The tips I have shared above will help you get started on the right foot in Melvor Idle.

Doing the things that I have recommended will make sure that you are on the right track, you will progress quickly towards 100% completion and you’ll also learn, during this time, what to focus on and what to do next.

You will have to max everything out eventually, but starting focused is what helps a lot.

Most people, when starting, will try to evenly spread their attention between all the skills/options, but that is a mistake. I did it, so I know from first hand experience, ha!

If you have additional tips and tricks to share with fellow Melvor Idle players, don’t hesitate to share them below. If you have questions regarding some specific things in the game, also ask and I will do my best to answer ASAP.

Finally, if you enjoy playing idle games or clicker games as much as I do, make sure to read my article sharing some Idle Breakout cheat codes, or the one sharing tips for the amazing Idle Skilling.