What to level first

From Melvor Idle
Revision as of 14:45, 11 June 2024 by Ayarez (talk | contribs) (→‎Laid Back: added mining money making method)
This page was last updated for (v1.2.2).


Melvor Idle is a cut down RPG game with many hidden depths. There is no right or wrong way to progress in the game, and you will rarely (if ever) be punished for experimenting. Melvor Idle is about the journey not the destination.

Enjoy!

The Wiki

The Melvor Wiki is a majority community lead project. The raw data is imported directly from the game. This includes the pages with Monster, Item, Area, Spell, Skill Information/Data. One can almost guarantee that the information on those pages matches in-game content 100%.


As mentioned, the rest of the wiki is written by users/players such as yourself. Although there are a few Discord Administrators/Moderators that (occasionally) participate in helping on the Wiki, the majority is done by Players. There is no active professional team that keeps the wiki up to date. This is done to the best of the abilities of the people maintaining the Wiki, but things do fall through the cracks. If you notice something that is incorrect/misspelled/out of date or just could be better in general, feel free to create your own Wiki Account and edit it!

Every edit is monitored by other Players and Discord Moderators; egregious edits will be undone/removed. They can also be discussed on the "talk" pages on the Wiki or on the Melvor Discord in the #wiki-discussion channel. This channel is open for:

  • Reporting incorrect data or spelling that you either don't know how to edit or simply don't want to edit.
  • Suggestions of what need to be changed to be more optimal for User experience
  • Pointing out very out of date Guides that don't actually work anymore, these will usually get a huge disclaimer on them until they can be worked on
  • People wanting to Contribute and feel like they have things to say / information to impart
  • If you don't have the time or the know how to edit on the Wiki, simply pass on what you'd want done, or perhaps ask players in the channel to teach you how to do it


When following guides, please check the version in which this was published; some guides are very out of date or no longer relevant. There's work being done on updating them, but writing a good guide takes time and the current dedicated editing team is small. We'll welcome any help we can get, no matter how small or big.

Goal of this Guide

This guide gives one method for how to start your Melvor Idle journey. The goal is to give players a helping hand in the early stages of the game. It is in no way complete, or optimal for all play styles.

There are several ways to play this game. Some choices can be found here

Why not to use this guide?

There are many reasons that this guide may not be useful:

Before you start

In general:

  • This game is meant to be idled - this means that it is intended that you do not actively play this game, but instead do other things, such as go on a walk, or visit the zoo! And when you come back, hopefully you will start to see some progress, but do not expect to complete this game in a week.
    • This game however also has some more active/involved playing when it comes to the combat. You can spend as little or as much time as you want optimizing your farming there.
  • Items and equipment will give you small benefits that stack up over time, so do not expect to be a Melvor god after you have completed all of the steps outlined below - you will still have a lot of gameplay left, and the expansions are a great investment if you are yearning for more!
  • You should expect some parts of these guide to take many days and weeks to complete, so feel free to deviate from the guide at any time.
  • Offline progress is capped to 24-hours, and so once you start following these steps, you may feel it necessary to keep the game running continuously, or feel the need to check-in on progress regularly. If you do need a break, this is ok - the progress cap might feel like a limitation at first, but it also means that your township doesn't fall into disarray after a long break.
    • If you're unable or unwilling to log in within the 24 hour timespan, there's the option to download the "Unlimited Offline" Mod. Please be aware that the longer you stay offline with that mod, the longer it will take for the game to load in.
      • There is a very small chance that this mod breaks your savegame file. Be sure to manually download your save every once in a while.
      • You might lose the ability to access your gameplay file, if this is the case you will have to disable the mod and log in again, that should fix it 99 out of a 100 times.

Skills That Boost Other Skills

These skills are mostly centered around "if you invest in this skill, other skills will get stronger". Some of these skills also provide some direction about what order to work on other skills, because the bonuses to work on other skills come in a certain order. For the sake of simplicity, this section only discusses non-combat bonuses. See the full skill page for how they provide buffs for combat skills.

There is a far more comprehensive list of what Skills do exactly to be found at Beginners Guide.

If you wish to see how Skills effect other Skills please expand the column below.

Meta Skills
Skill Description Order of unlocks for other skills
Astrology This is the most straightforward Skill Boosting-skill. Study constellations to unlock permanent bonuses for the respective skills. Note that it takes a lot of investment in Astrology before Astrology buffs itself. * Farming
* Woodcutting
* Smithing
* Firemaking
* Fishing
* Mining
* Cooking
* Cartography
* Archaeology
* Fletching
* Runecrafting
* Agility
* Thieving
* Crafting
* Herblore
* Summoning
* Astrology
Summoning Create Summoning tablets that provide a small bonus to the corresponding skill, using a combination of materials that use ingredients from the skill and materials you buy for GP. Unlock much stronger bonuses by using synergies after progressing in multiple different summons. * Woodcutting
* Mining
* Fishing
* Cooking
* Runecrafting
* Thieving
* Crafting
* Smithing
* Herblore
* Firemaking
* Agility
* Astrology
* Fletching
* Summoning
Firemaking Firemaking provides flat percentage bonuses for all skills: skill XP in the form of Firemaking Skillcape, and mastery XP from the pool checkpoint and achieving 99 item mastery. It's also required to unlock better cooking fires. * Cooking
Herblore Most skills have at least one potion that provides a bonus. For non-combat skills, these potions are usually increased output of resources, but there are some important exceptions for speeding up progression. * Firemaking - Controlled Heat Potion
* Astrology - Secret Stardust Potion
* Mining - Perfect Swing Potion
* Agility - Performance Enhancing Potion
* Runecrafting - Elemental Potion
Agility Build obstacles that provide fixed bonuses to specific skills. The higher your skill level, the more obstacles you can build, at higher tiers. However, these obstacles also get progressively more difficult to build, both in terms of money and in terms of items, but they also have some of the strongest bonuses in the game. As you progress in Melvor, you will find yourself swapping between obstacles reasonable often. Agility has too many bonuses with complicated ordering, so it's difficult to enumerate them like in the previous sections. Please see the Agility page for full information.

Raw Material Gathering Skills

These skills provide items that usually aren't useful for themselves, but are very important for doing other skills.
Herblore and Agility aren't explicitly included because the materials for these skills come from everywhere.

If you wish to look at which Skills power which other Skills, please expand the table below.

Skill Description Primary skills powered by these items
Woodcutting Chop Trees. Get logs. * Firemaking
* Fletching - Bows & Javelins
* Farming - Bird Nest and Raven Nest
* Crafting - Hardwood Armor
Mining Hit Rocks. Get Ores. * Smithing
* Crafting - Gems
* Runecrafting - Rune Essence and Pure Essence
Fishing Catch Fish. * Cooking
* Crafting - Gems
Thieving Steal all kinds of things. Each thieving target gives different stuff from all over the game. Thieving targets also provide unique items that can provide unique bonuses for many different skills. These items are used everywhere.
Farming Plant Crops. Harvest them after some time has passed. Farming is passive output, you don't activate Farming. * Cooking
* Herblore - Herbs for all potions are made in Farming.
** Also makes logs for the same things as Woodcutting
Archaeology Go to dig sites, and find cool stuff. Most of these items don't impact other non-combat skills, but there are some exceptions. * Crystalized Mithril Fragment
* Crystalized Dragon Fragment
* Woodcutting
* Crafting
* Summoning

Finished Goods Artisan Skills

These skills provide finished items, usually used for combat.

If you wish to look at these items, please expand the table below.

Artisan Skills
Skill Description Primary skills powered by these items
Smithing Make bars (ingots), then turn them into metal items. Melee weapons and armor.
Fletching - Javelins, Arrows and Crossbows
Crafting Make items that you wouldn't use a forge for. Ranged armor
Jewelry (a wide variety of uses)
Consumables (also wide variety of uses)
Fletching Ranged weapons and ammunition. Ranged
Runecrafting Transform essence (from Mining) into materials needed for magic Magic
Alt. Magic

Choosing the Way to Play The Game

There are several ways to play the Game, depending on your goals and preferred game play. Here are some suggested ways to play the game and a guide on how to do it.

Before Settling on Desired Game-play

Before we get into the actual different way to play. It is generally advised you get a good feel of the game and how it works / interacts. This is generally achieved by leveling all the skills to around Level 30-40 and beat a Dungeon or 2. Once everything is around level 35 you should better understand how the game works and if you like it. The Core Game Mechanics won't really change much, it gets slightly more complicated especially when it comes to Combat later on, there will be more and more Skill interactions once you get to higher levels. Faster Experience Gains and you'll receive loot quicker. But this is about it. This would be an excellent point to determine if this game is for you or you'd rather move on.


The entire process of leveling everything to around level 35 should take about 2-3 hours. If you don't have that time to spare in 1 sitting, do what you can and then switch to Astrology until the next time you log back in. There is never any harm to level Astrology, it will only give you more benefits. At later stages you might want to switch to different skills for other benefits, for now this is your best choice.

  1. It is advised you start by leveling Astrology for the minor gains you'll get from that at low levels.
  2. Your next skills should be Woodcutting and Summoning
    • Summoning is a very important skill for boosting all your other skills, and it is leveled by equipping summoning tablets. It levels very slowly while you do everything else, and it is nearly impossible to come back later and rush level it.
    • Start chopping Normal Logs until you get your first Ent mark.
    • Sell some of your logs and use the money to buy Summoning Shard (Green) to make about 100 Ent tablets.
    • Repeat (moving up to Oak Logs and Willow Logs as they become available) until you have Summoning Level 15
  3. Your next skills should be Fishing and Cooking (and more Summoning)
    • To get enough Gold Pieces to upgrade the Shop upgrades for the first 2 Axes, Fishing Rods and Pickaxes, Octopus and Pig tablets.
    • Once you get to roughly Fishing Level 23 you should get enough Gold Pieces to upgrade the Fishng Rod to the level 20 one.
    • At Fishing Level 30 Sell all the Junk that you got apart from the Fish, and about half of the fish.
    • When you unlock Octopus, stop to make some tablets and equip them.
    • Make sure to save 300 Raw Herring and 300 Raw Salmon for the next section.
    • Next is Cooking the fish caught from Fishing, this will be used in Combat.
      • Make sure Summoning Level 25 before you switch to Cooking, so you can unlock Pig.
  4. The next skill would be Agility
    • This has some minor increases for Woodcutting, Cooking, Agility, Herblore, Firemaking, Mining and Archaeology at low levels.
    • Switching Agility Obstacles can be quite pricy at these levels, especially before you have a good moneymaking Method. If you can focus on 1 Obstacle in each Tier and leave them for now, we can start switching later on.
    • At Agility Level 20, make sure to build Pit Jump as your Tier 3 obstacle with the fish you saved from the previous step.
  5. After this finish the rest of the Skills to Level 30, the order in which you do this is not very important, you may not be able to progress some Artisan Skills yet as you don't have the resources from the Gathering Skills yet, just come back later to those skills.

There are several ways to earn Gold Pieces in this Game. Below are some suggestions on how you can obtain them effectively. When Combat is the main focus, it is generally recommended that your first 1,000,000GP goes towards Auto Eat


Skill Level Method Comment
Thieving 54 / 57 / 77 At apropriate Levels thieving Fisherman, Cyclops and Knight provides some of the best GP/h, but
you will need to obtain Chapeau Noir, Golbin Mask, Thiever's Cape, Sneak-Ers from Thieving, and also
Gloves of Silence from Thief in Runic Ruins, which requires Slayer Level 45		 It takes quite a while to set up Thieving correctly, be sure you don't do this before Auto Eat as you'll most likely die. Also don't forget to enable the "Continue on Stun" option if you have plenty of Food available
Fishing ?? Fishing in general is quite bad for GP, but it is an easy AFK method to grind out the first 1,000,000GP
Low Level Mining 0 Low Level Mining with Gem Gloves might sound like a good idea; it does give you some profit, but it yields very poor hourly gains.
Mining 85 Mining is a really good way to earn GP, but it doesn't really start generating a lot before Level 85. It also requires you to have . Pure Crystal sells for 750GP each, which racks up quite quickly and should average around 4,000,000GP per hour without any boosts. Perfect Swing Potion will help immensely if you wish to farm GP with this Method

With this minor preparation of the Skills, we're now ready to start picking the desired Way to Play, be it Skilling or Combat you should be set for both!

Ways To Play The Game

Laid Back

This Guide is aimed at people that don't have a lot of time, or don't want to log in more than once or twice a day. If you have 10-20 minutes to play and want to do something else than is suggested here, feel more than free to do so, the majority of these things will take a long time, 10 to 30 minutes won't impact the overall progress that much.

  1. Start by vising your Township, Select the Aeris Worship. This grants the best benefits for a while.
  2. We start off with a little preparing to do some minor Combat.
  3. Level Mining to Level 50. This gives us access to Mithril Ore.
    • Save all the Ore you mine for the next step.
  4. Level Smithing to Level 57. - Has a minimal Guide here.
  5. Sell all the Crafted Smithing Items and sell all the rest of your Ores.
    • This should get you closer to 1,000,000GP.
      • Either go Fishing or mine Crystal in Mining (Requires the Atlas of Discovery Expansion) until you reach 1,000,000GP
      • Once 1,000,000GP has been obtained, buy Auto Eat from the Shop.
      • If you still have some food from leveling Fishing to Level 30, equip the food and you're ready for some Combat.
      • If you're out of Food Fish up some Shrimp and cook those in Cooking so they can be eaten.
      • To consume food, it must first be equipped through the Bank and then selected using the food drop-down menu on the Combat or Thieving page.
      • The suggested target for now is the Master Farmer. He drops Seeds which will be needed for Farming. With Auto Eat and Hitpoints Level 30 this should be completely safe as long as you don't run out of food. Killing Master Farmer will Auto Eat around 420 Shrimp per hour. If you have higher healing food than Shrimp you will be using less than 420 per hour.
  6. Plant a few of your found Seeds in Farming Farming Plots.
    • Be sure to this once every so often to passively Level Farming.
      • If you run out of Seeds that you can plant, you can always get more from the Master Farmer.
  7. Astrology is our next Skill.
  8. The first large goal is to reach Astrology Level 99, this increases Mastery and Stardust gains.
  9. The next step is to make some Gold Pieces GP
    • This is the start of the Money Making Method, for an alternative Method go here
      • It is still advised you start by following the Woodcutting, Fishing and Cooking steps first. As the other Method will take time to set up.
    • We start by Woodcutting.
    • Keep Woodcutting until you find the Ent Mark
      • Craft Ent Tablets until you're out of wood.
        • You'll need to buy some Summoning Shards from the Shop, which you should have enough Gold Pieces GP for from selling all the stuff you got from leveling everything to Level 30.
        • You will need to craft at least 1 Tablet to be able obtain more Marks for the same Familiar.
        • Equipping the Tablet doubles your chances of getting Marks.
    • After the Ent tablets have been crafted, equip them.
    • Then continue Woodcutting until you find Ent Mark Level 2.
    • Don't Sell your Normal Logs for now. Keep 630 Normal Logs in the Bank, they will be needed later.
  10. Fishing is our next target.
    • Start by buying the Iron Fishing Rod from the Shop for 100GP.
    • Buy further Fishing Rod upgrades when they unlock at Levels 10, 20, 35, 50, 60 and 80.
    • Fish the highest experience Fish you can, there is a list of the experience/second to be referenced here. Alternatively you can installed the "ETA" Mod which will tell you exactly how much Experience per Hour you'll get on each Fish.
    • Just pick the highest one until you get to Shark then keep fishing Shark until Fishing Level 85
    • Open any Treasure Chest you get in the hopes of getting a Amulet of Fishing. Equip it as soon as you find one.
    • When a Pirates Lost Ring is found, you should also Equip it as soon as possible.
      • At Fishing Level 85 it is best to switch to Manta Ray until Fishing Level 95
      • At Fishing Level 95 it is best to switch to Whale
    • Keep Fishing until you find a Octopus Mark
      • Make a bunch of Octopus Tablets and Equip them in the other slot than where Ent is equiped
        • 2 different Familiars together offer what is called a Synergy, when the Synergy is active the arrows in between the 2 Familiars will turn Green. This means the Synergy is active, it will use 1 Skill Related Tablet per action (in this Case Octopus) and when the Synergy is Active it will use an additional Related Tablet and 1 Synergy Companion Tablet, so in short, it will use 2 Octopus and 1 Ent as soon as the Synergy is active.
          • Synergies require Summoning Marks to be a certain Level, their current Level can be viewed in the Summoning Menu. In this Case with {ItemIcon|Octopus}} and Ent it will require both Marks to be Level 2. As soon as you find enough {ItemIcon|Octopus}} Marks for another Level, the Synergy will activate.
      • Keep Fishing until your Summoning reaches Level 25 and your Octopus is Mark Level 3.
  11. Start by Cooking the Fish you caught in Fishing.
  12. The Pig SynergyIcon.png Octopus will give a 75% chance to give you a Cooked version of the Fish you're fishing.
    • Keep Fishing selling all the Raw and Cooked fish you obtain. Your goal is around 47,000,000GP to prepare for Agility
    • You can also keep Fishing for more GP to buy some Bank Slots. How many slots is up to the Player, a minimum of 100-150 would be suggested.
  13. This is also a good time to upgrade to Auto Eat - Tier II for 5,000,000GP and then Auto Eat - Tier III for 20,000,000GP. This makes your Auto Eat more effective.
  14. Visit Township and check out the Tasks some are quite easy to do and very worth your time.
    • You can buy Bar Box I, Wood Box I and Herb Box I after completing 40 Tasks and having Level 40 in the relevant skill. These boxes will help a lot while leveling Smithing, Fletching and Herblore.
    • Now that you have a way to make GP start investing in your Town. Build buildings that increase your resource generation.
      • You can't completely mess up your Town, if you don't notice in time that one of your resources is running low and you're not producing very much of it, all that it is gonna do is cost you time. Production of resources never falls to 0 so you will be able to build some buildings eventually. It just might take time.
      • Looking up a Guide for how to build your Town is not needed, almost all guides relating to that are from before the rework of Township and are no longer relevant.
  15. If Atlas of Discovery Expansion is owned Agility is next.
  16. The next Skill is Cartography
    • Visit This Wiki Page for more information on how to level it.
    • The goal here is Cartography Level 120 and Full Hex Mastery.
    • If is NOT owned, skip this step and go to step #19.
  17. Continue training Agility
  18. The final Skill covered in this Guide is Firemaking.
  19. This is where the Guide ends. Feel free to look up how to level other Skills by visiting their Guides.
    • The order in which Skills get leveled does not matter a whole lot, as the remaining Skills don't have Global Bonusses. There is however a relationship between Gathering and Artisan Skills, this can be found here.
  20. When you're active and online it is advised you do some Combat. Especially at the start Combat sessions don't last long and desired items are gotten rather quickly.
  21. Please don't forget to return to the Step you were on when you're going offline again. Offline Combat can kill you if you run out of Food.


Alternative Money Maker with Atlas of Discovery

This takes a while to set up due to having to grow Herbs to level Herblore. There is a guide to leveling Herblore here.
It is however much more GP per hour than Fishing.

  1. Start by leveling Mining to Level 85.
  2. Level Herblore to Level 53.
    • Craft Perfect Swing Potion, preferably until you reach Level 90.
      • The higher Tier Potion, the better effect you're getting.
  3. Buy Mining Gloves from the Shop.
    • Keep an eye out for how many charges you have left on your gloves, they double all the Pure Crystal you get.
  4. Mine Pure Crystal for profit and sell them all.
    • This will net you approximately 4 to 39.5 Million GP per hour.
      • Ways to increase the profit per hour can be found here

Combat Focus for Max efficiency with Throne of the Herald / Age of Discover

This Method aims at clearing Throne of the Herald as soon as possible for the Harold pet. This gives:

  • Max Pool Mastery Cap increased by 25%
  • 2% Global Interval reduction
  • 0.1s Attack Speed Interval reduction
  • 5% Global Mastery Gain
  • as well as many more useful things.

Doing this first has great benefits on the entirety of your account & required Playtime to reach 100% Completion.

This will be combat focused. Level as little non-combat as possible to rush Harold for the benefits, after which skilling and attacking will be faster/easier. It's the biggest boost one can get in the entire game.

It is recommended you completely ignore Township buildings after setting Aeris as your Worship.


Before going into Combat it is recommended to Level these Non-Combat Skills:

Skill Level Reason
Astrology 60 Max out the first stars (They give Global Accuracy which applies to all Attack Styles)
in the Constellations Iridan, Terra, Vale, Syllia and Arachi. If there is not enough Stardust obtained, try to balance out where you spend it and maximize the amount of Accuracy Gained.
Runecrafting 85 For Ancient Runes & decently crafted Wizard Equipment.
Mining & Smithing 40 At 40 Mining and 40 Smithing you can mine & craft Silver Bar and Gold Bar, which are required to upgrade Melee Armour to (G), so they actually get their Damage Reduction.
Agility 70 To start with Agility Level 50 will be enough. Agility Level 99 should be the aim once Impending Darkness Event is beaten.

Later Aims should be:

Skill Level Reason
Herblore or Cartography 90 Both these Skills grant access to Damage Reduction Potion IV which is very helpful, especially in the Throne of the Herald Expansion.
When Herblore is chosen it will also need Level 90. In Cartography 1000 can be obtained at (31, 19) The Sand-Covered Treasure. These can be turned in for 5,000 Damage Reduction Potion IV with Township Task Hard 15.
Archaeology 90 Only when also doing Cartography Level 90, since this allows access to Underwater Ruins which has the very powerful Engulfing Vortex Longbow. This is quite a grind but well worth it; the weapon shreds through Throne of the Herald content
Archaeology 118 This is highly Optional Not required but very fun to play with, Merman Pendant and Pirate Hook are 2 very powerful items only obtainable from very high Archaeology. You can defeat the entire game without them, they will however make some parts of the game faster/more fun.

Starting Off Your Journey

Once you've got all the skills at around Level 30, with Astrology at level 60, Agility at Level 50, Runecrafting at Level 85 and Mining & Smithing at Level 40. You're ready to start your Combat Journey.

  1. It is assumed that Combat Stats are also at Level 30.
  2. When you're roughly level 20-25 in Combat Skills (or 30 from Leveling everything to 30), it's time to switch to Mithril Equipment. Seeing as our Mining and Smithing isn't high enough to craft this, we can get these items from Mithril Knight.
  3. Continue Farming Slayer while leveling your Combat Skills.
  4. You will also need to level your Magic and Ranged.
  5. At this point you should have all 3 Combat Styles available to you. Keep fighting Slayer tasks until you reach Hitpoints Level 77.
  6. This is where this guide ends. You should have grasped the basics of Combat and Upgrading at this point.
    • Further Guides can be found with each Dungeon. They all have a list of recommended/required Equipment and Skill Levels.
    • The Dungeon Guides have been kept as low as possible on the Requirements and Gear needed.
    • If you want to know what the next objectives are, look at the Next Dungeon guide. This should give you Items and Skill Levels to aim for.
  7. After defeating Throne of the Herald.
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