Idle Miner Tycoon – Basics Guide

Guide to Basics for Noobs

By MysteriousMage.

The Map

Here are the different locations you can go on the map

  • Start Continent (in order of unlock)
    • Coal Mine
    • Gold Mine
    • Ruby Mine
    • Diamond Mine
    • Emerald Mine
  • Ice Continent (in order of unlock)
    • Moonstone Mine
    • Amethyst Mine
    • Sapphire Mine
    • Crystal Mine
    • Jade Mine
  • Fire Continent (in order of unlock)
    • Amber Mine
    • Sunstone Mine
    • Topaz Mine
    • Platinum Mine
    • Obsidian Mine
  • Mainland
    • Super Managers: Here you can purchase, upgrade, and promote super managers.
    • Mainland: Several Sections with mines that can be played at 3 difficulties (more on this later in the guide)
      • Coast
      • River
      • Valley
      • Trail
      • Stream
      • Checkpoint
  • Event Mine: If there is currently an event running it takes you to the event, if there is no event it is unused. Leading up to an event it displays event name and countdown timer until it opens, during the event, it displays event name and countdown timer until it ends. (e.g. “New Year’s Mine Ends in 5d 12h)
  • Event Badges: Takes you to a list of all events tells you what badge you earned, if you earned gold it tells you how long it took to complete the mine.
  • Research: This is where you research.
  • Expeditions: Takes you to expeditions window where you can either start one or join a friend’s, they take a certain amount of time (reduced when a friend joins) and gives you various rewards.
  • Collectibles: this is where you open chests and select which cards to use (fun fact used to be called the workshop)

Now while on the map you also have the prestige tab and collect tab which stay in the bottom left and right corners everywhere you look. The prestige tab tells you what a mine’s current income multiplier is, what its current idle income is, and if you tap the prestige button next to a mine it tells you how much it will cost to prestige the mine and how much Super Cash you get and what the new income multiplier will be.

The collect tab will allow you to watch an ad to collect all cash from a continent with a multiplier (starts at 2x but can increase to 3.65x with research) or watch an ad to apply your ad boost (starts at 2x but can increase to 3.13 with research). The ability to do those things is only available for a continent after you have unlocked all 5 mines on it.

Mines: The Basics

The basic gameplay loop is this; purchase a mine (first one is the coal mine) once you do that you are brought to that mine’s screen. After purchasing a mine,  you are given 10 of that mine’s currency. If you already have an open mine on the same continent you will keep your current continent cash.

First thing to do would be to purchase the first mine shaft, the price of which happens to be 10. You will see a small guy (with a bouncing white arrow pointing to him) this is your miner, if you tap him he will; walk over, mine some ore, walk back, and dumps mined ore into the container. You will have to repeatedly tap him to keep him working.

Once the miner dumps ore into the container an elevator should appear on the left (with another bouncing white arrow), if you tap on it the elevator will; go down to the mine shaft, pick up all ore, rise back to the top, deposit all ore at the top of the elevator. Like the miner you will have to repeatedly tap the elevator to keep it working, also like the miner once he drops off his first load you get a new worker. On the right side you should see a worker with a cart (and you guessed it another bouncing white arrow) tap on him and he will: walk over to the elevator, pick up ore, walk back, and deposit all ore in the warehouse, at this point you will FINALLY have earned some money.

On the right side of the mine shaft you should see a button with a small green arrow, if you push the button it will pop open the upgrade menu for mine shaft 1. In the menu you can see all the various stats of that shaft (e.g. # of miners, miner walk speed, miner carry capacity etc), you will also be able to select x1, x10, x50, and Max that selection determines how many upgrades you purchase when you tap the upgrade button.

As you upgrade the mine shaft (or elevator/warehouse) you will see a bar slowly fill at the top of the upgrade menu, every time that bar fills the last upgrade is extra powerful (for mine shafts the first few are 10, 25 and 50, the elevator and warehouse hit boosts at different values) also if the mine is one of the 15 continent mines you will earn Super Cash with each boost. Once your first mine shaft hits level 5 you may assign managers, once the first mine shaft hits level 10 you may unlock more mine shafts.

After every 5 mine shafts there will be a barrier, the barrier will have an unlock cost, once this cost is paid destruction of the barrier will begin and will take some time (amount determined by depth in the mine, the location of the mine, and research). You can reduce the amount of time remaining on a barrier by watching ads, each ad removes 30 minutes from the barrier time.

After watching 2 ads you will have to wait 1 hour before you can watch more ads. You can at any time skip the remainder of the barrier time using Super Cash the amount needed depends on how much time is left ~1 Super Cash per 30 seconds remaining (I do not recommend this as Super Cash has more valuable uses). The shafts underneath barriers (6,11,16 etc now known as a “barrier shaft”) are “more powerful” than the others, the increase from the previous shaft is bigger than usual. The increase from a fully upgraded to the next fully upgraded shaft is usually ~10-20x, however, the increase to a fully upgraded barrier shaft from the previous fully upgraded shaft is ~100x-200x.

In each mine there are 30 mine shafts, and maximum level for mine shafts is 800, while the maximum for elevators and warehouses is 2400. You will not be able to max every mine shaft or the elevator and warehouse for the continent mines without prestiging.

Once you have a manager in all 3 locations at the top left you will see “Idle Cash” with a value that will look something like “12.5/s” or “234.6K/s” that is how quickly this mine will earn money if you have the app closed or are in a different mine, this value is also located in the prestige tab on the bottom left of the map. Every time you return to a mine (either from being in a different mine or when you first open the app) you are presented with collecting the amount earned while you were gone or multiplying it by watching an ad (starts at 2x but research can raise it to 3.65).

Unlocking New Sections of the Map

New Mines and Continents

Each new mine on a continent will have a certain price in that continent’s currency (start, ice, or fire) e.g. gold mine costs 76.8ab start cash.The exception to the unlock rule is the first mine on a new continent which will have a price in the previous continent’s currency (e.g. first ice continent has a price in start cash). 

Event Mines and Mainland Mines

Event mines do not need to be unlocked they are free and as such are unlocked from the moment the event starts. Mainland mines have 3 difficulties and each one is unlocked with a different currency, easy requires start continent cash to unlock, medium requires ice cash, and hard requires fire cash.

Research and Collectibles

Both of these require start cash, I can’t remember what the unlock cost was when I unlocked them, even if I did it is quite possible that it has changed since then.

Expeditions

As far as I remember this didn’t need to be unlocked however I could be mistaken.

Event Badges.

Probably goes without saying but the event badges location like the events themselves does not need to be unlocked.

Prestige

When you prestige a mine it is reset and you have to start the mine all over again, however in exchange you get an increased income multiplier and some super cash. The increased income multiplier allows you to progress more quickly and farther. You will NOT be able to max out a mine before you prestige several times, it is technically possible to max a mine out after 4 prestiges but it takes like 9 months to do so after only 4 (the 9 months does not count the time before the 4th prestige occurred).

Since you, as you upgrade your warehouses, elevators, and mine shafts you earn Super Cash, the further you go before prestiging the more Super Cash you earn. However, with how little Super Cash you earn by doing so it really isn’t worth it. Currently there is only 5 prestiges but there are rumors that a 6th currently under development.

Warning: You remember how in the description I mentioned that it IS possible to lose progress in this game, and more than that I had personally experienced it? Yeah, this is the mechanic that can lead to that. After I reinstalled the game on my new phone after over a month of not playing it (maximum time limit miners still work for without opening the game) I had earned enough to prestige the first 4 start continent mines (all I had at the time) and proceeded spend all my cash in the prestiged mines, the problem was I was not earning cash as was before I prestiged. It ended up taking me between 3 days and a week to catch back up to where I was. Moral of the story DO NOT prestige all mines on a continent at once, always keep one working (preferably the one that earns the most) until the others catch back up.

Boosts

A multiplier for how much your mines are produced there are 2 types of item and advertisement. Item boosts are obtained by using items and are added together (items of different strength (e.g. a 2x and a 5x) are added together (2x + 5x = 7x) while items of the same strength (e.g. 2x and 2x) extend the time (regardless of original duration e.g. 2x 1hr + 2x 12hr = 2x boost that lasts 13hrs). Ad boosts can be obtained by watching ads this ad boost multiplies your current item boost (ad boost starts at 2x but can be increased by research to 3.13.x but if I use a 2x, 5x, 10x, 20x, and 50x (all of these can be found without paying real money) I get an item boost of 87x, if I have the base ad boost of 2x after watching an ad I will have a total of 174x boost). 

There is technically a 3rd boost type: permanent, but you have to pay real money, you can get 2, both have a 2x effect but one affects both idle and active income, the other only affects idle income. They act just like item boosts (with infinite duration) they get added to item boosts then multiplied by ad boost.

There is also a percentage increase you can get for adding a friend for every friend you add (up to 20) you get a 5% boost to the production of all mines (which makes the maximum a 100% boost or double your income without it. Now while there is a max to the number of friends that give you a boost there is no friend limit (it may appear as if you hit a limit but that is because it only shows 39 friends at once I believe that might have been done to reduce lag) one reason you might want to add more than the 20 to get the maximum boost is expeditions.

Expeditions

Expeditions are one of the main ways of obtaining Super Cash, boosts items, and instant cash items. Expeditions come in 4 “rarities” Common > Rare > Epic > Legendary. Each one takes a certain amount of time; Common ~6 hours, Rare ~12 hours, Epic ~24 hours, Legendary ~48 hours. Each one also offers a different number of rewards; Common gives 2 rewards, Rare gives 3 rewards, Epic Gives 4 rewards, Legendary gives 5 rewards.

Rewards can be (in a roughly most likely to be a reward to least likely order) Super Cash, instant cash, boost, and skill point. The amount of super cash and the power of the instant cash/boosts depends on the rarity of the expedition. Skill points are definitely not available as a reward in common or rare expeditions (or at the very least so rare I have never seen or heard about it) but is possible for an epic, and almost certain (pretty sure more than 85% of the legendary expeditions I have been in had one).

When you go to select an expedition you are presented with 2 options join a friend’s expedition or start your own. Each expedition can have up to 5 people in it (the one that started it and 4 that joined) every time somebody new joins the expedition the remaining time is cut down (how much depends on the rarity of the expedition and how many people have already joined).

In the expedition selection, you will see a few things about each one, most evident will be the rarity (denoted by the color, title of it, and the number of rewards) next you will see the exact time (or time remaining if it is one started by a friend). Next you will see what the rewards themselves are, the first one will tell you everything about for example if it is Super Cash it tells you how much you will be getting, if it is a boost it will tell you what strength and duration (e.g. 10x, 5 min), the second will be a greyed out version you will be able to tell if it is a boost, instant cash, Super Cash, or skill point but nothing specific about it. If it is a rare expedition the third item will just be a “?” but if the expedition is an epic or legendary it will appear just like the second one (a greyed out version). The fourth and fifth rewards are always just a “?”

A recent addition to the game has added a limit to the number of expeditions that can be completed per day, the current limit is 5. Supposedly this is more expeditions than 99% of the playerbase used to complete daily.

However anyone that has added enough active people can easily hit this limit (my record for hitting it was 17 hours before the reset (which is at midnight whatever time zone you are in) however that was after only about an hour of waking up (first thing I do after turning off my alarm is check idle miner).

Collectibles

Collectibles or cards (I will be using them interchangeably based solely on what happens to be typed in the moment (most likely card)) can be gained by opening chests. Chests can be gained by completing events, on specific days in your daily rewards rotation, randomly given as a bonus reward for watching ads, purchased with Super Cash, or purchased as part of a bundle for actual money.

Chests are guaranteed to give cards of the same or lower rarity (the only exception is legendary which is reportedly only a 50% chance but since I started tracking I’m at a 70% chance of getting one (only 10 opened since I started tracking though)). Chests also have a chance of giving you a higher rarity card.

As you open chests you will receive duplicate cards as well as new cards. Receiving a duplicate card will help to level up the card, each rarity requires a different number of duplicate cards to reach the next level.

You have 3 slots for cards (one each for Elevator, mine shaft, and Warehouse as well as actually having effects on gameplay each card changes the look of the workers in its location) and so can only choose three active cards. Each card has a multiplier for how much that location can transport (or extract for mine shafts) with higher rarities having higher starting values and increase rates. For each location there are 4 common cards, 3 rare cards, 2 epic cards, and 1 legendary card, which means each location has 10 cards for a total of 30 possible cards.

Epic and Legendary cards have a bonus effect, for epic cards this is a multiplier to all income multipliers on a specific continent (each continent has 2 cards that can affect it and the cards are set up so no location has both epic cards affecting the same continent). Legendary cards have a global income multiplier that affects every mine including mainland and event.

Due to the fact you will receive fewer legendary cards the legendary income multiplier will almost always be lower than the ones offered by the epic cards, this means the optimal card layout for a specific card is the 2 epic cards that affect it and the legendary for the other slot. The optimal card layout for a mainland and event mines is all 3 legendary cards. Once you obtain all 9 epic and legendary cards there is no point in equipping common or rare cards (yes even if the transportation multiple is higher than that offered by the epics and legendaries). 

Research: The Basics

This will be just the basics of research, what is it?, and how can I do it? For a guide on what to research when check out Research: The Deep Dive. So first off what is research, it is a way to increase the rate at which you progress. You can do things like increase the income multiplier of different mines, make barriers cost less and get destroyed faster, make ad boosts last longer and be more powerful, or make your regular managers much more powerful. So first thing you’ll want to do is open the research location (right below the start contient on the map) once you do so you will notice that research is divided into 3 “trees” Green, Blue, and Red.

Each of these trees requires a different type of skill point to progress (colored Green Blue and Red), these can be bought with start cash (green skill points), ice cash (blue skill points), and fire cash (red skill points) all skill points can also be purchased with Super Cash. Now once you have some skill points you can proceed, first up is the green skill tree (as most likely you will get these skill points first) you will notice that each tree is comprised of nodes, each one of these nodes will take 10 skill points to unlock, but then to upgrade each of them it will cost 1>2>3>>5>7>10>10>10>10 at which the node will be maxed out. If you count the 10 skill points required to unlock a node it takes 68 skill points to bring a node to the max level. However as soon as you unlock a node the next nod down the line will be available to unlock.

The green skill tree focuses on making mines produce faster, the blue skill tree focuses on making rewards you get for watching ads stronger as well as allowing you to break through barriers faster, and reduce the cost of prestiging, and the red skill tree focuses on improving your normal managers by making their abilities strong, last longer, and cooldown faster.

Mainland

The mainland is a collection of mines that can be completed relatively quickly and will give you gems which you can use to purchase, upgrade and promote super managers. The mainland is divided into 6 sections (currently) Coast, River, Valley, Trail, Stream, and Checkpoint each section is harder than the previous one but gives larger rewards.

Each section has 5 mines for Coast the mines are Coast 1, Coast 2, etc. Each mine can be completed at 3 different difficulties Easy, Medium, or Hard. Easy only give green gems (unlock super managers), Medium gives green gems as well but also gives blue gems (upgrade super managers), and Hard still gives green and blue gems but also gives red gems (promote super managers). 

In the beginning you only have only the option of unlocking Coast 1: Easy for a small amount of start cash. After completing Coast 1: Easy you will be able to purchase Coast 2:Easy for some start cash and so on. After completing Coast 5: Easy you will be able to purchase Coast 1: Medium for some ice cash. After going through the whole process again and completing Coast 5:Medium you will be able to purchase Coast 1: Hard for fire cash. After you have finally finished Coast 5: Hard you will finally be able to purchase River 1:Easy and start all over.

Mainland mines can easily be completed in only a few days even by those who haven’t done any research yet. 

Super Managers

Super managers are permanent managers that can be assigned in any mine, however they may only be assigned to one mine at a time. As of the time I am writing this there are 10 super managers, 2 for the warehouse, 3 for the elevator, and 5 for the mineshafts. Super managers are purchased with green gems, they can then be upgraded for blue gems, after every ten levels they must be promoted using red gems before they can be upgraded further.

Super managers have 2 types of abilities active and passive, active abilities are what happens when you “activate” the manager and are active for a set period of time after which they enter a cooldown period (all normal managers abilities are active abilities) and passive abilities are always active no matter what. Super Managers start with their active ability but not their passive, to unlock the passive ability you must upgrade and promote them. Upgrading a super manager will increase the power of their active ability after reaching level 10 you must promote a super manager before you can continue upgrading it, all super managers will receive a passive ability when promoted at level 10.

Common Super Managers have only a single passive, rares have 2, and epics have 3, currently there are no legendary super managers, to unlock further passives for rares and epics you must promote again at level 30 for the second and level 50 for the third. After the promotion at level 10 all future promotion (20, 30, 40 etc) will upgrade all currently unlocked passive abilities, normal upgrades (using blue gems) do not affect the power of the passive abilities.

Super manager passives still affect the mine while it is idle (either while looking at a different mine or the game is closed) which can be very useful, especially some of the secondary passives for the rares and epics which do things like increase mine income factor, increase idle income, and increase continent income factor.

Super Cash

Not much to be said about super cash, it is the games premium currency and can be used to do things such as unlock mineshafts you don’t have the money for, skip barriers, and purchase items in the in game shop.

Super cash can be obtained through several means; every time a mineshaft, elevator, or warehouse reach a boost level on a continent mine, as an expedition reward, as an event mine reward, every time you prestige a mine, or it can be purchased with real money either stand alone or as a package deal (if you are going to spend money on the game purchase the package deals instead of the stand alone because you get more super cash a lower price and also get boost items and instant cash items, you may have to wait a bit to find a deal in your price range but the offers do cycle at least once a day).

For expeditions the amount you receive is slightly randomized but rarer expedition means more super cash. The further you make it in an event mine the more super cash you earn (lowest I remember seeing was 530 super cash for completing an event mine). When you prestige a continent mine you will get 100 super cash. When the elevator or the warehouse reach a boost level (green progress bar at top of upgrade screen resets) you will receive 15 super cash, when a mineshaft does the same you will receive 2 super cash.

If you read a lot of the older guides on reddit they will recommend that you stay in mine without prestiging as long as possible to gain as much super cash as possible, his is no longer necessary or practical.

The boost levels used to give much more super cash and it used to be that boost levels and prestiging were the only methods of obtaining super cash without purchasing it for real money, meaning that the amount of supercash a player could earn was finite and any time you prestiged earlier than absolutely necessary you were reducing how much you could earn, however with all the new ways of earning super cash it really isn’t worth it, most times now staying in a mineshaft an extra couple days before prestiging will only earn you around 40 super cash (if you are lucky) and a single common expedition can reward you with up to 30 super cash even without adding any friends you can complete 4 of those in a single day. 

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8015 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

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