The Beginner Miner’s Guide to Idle Miner Tycoon
Running a mine is not an easy task. There are plenty of things to take care of such as the mining of the actual minerals and earthly resources, the transportation of said resources back to the surface, and storing them safely and liquidating them into spendable money. Fortunately, you can experience all those daring tasks from the comfort of your own PC or Mac when you play Idle Miner Tycoon by Kolibri Games. In this beginner’s guide, we’ll show you all you need to know to get started with your first mining operation.
Parts of the Mine
Firstly, we need to know the parts of the mine we are going to be working on. The mine contains three fundamental parts: the miners, elevators, and warehouse. These three need to be as synchronized as possible to maintain efficiency in profit-making.
Miners
The miners are responsible for mining the earth for resources and depositing them all in a cart. In short, they’re the ones who are doing the dirty work. There are several characteristics of the miner sector that you need to know about:
- Total Extraction – the total value of the resources mined per second
- Miners – the number of miners actively working
- Walking Speed – the speed at which miners carry the mined resources and dump them into the cart
- Mining Speed – the speed at which miners mine the earth with their pickaxes
- Worker Capacity – the value of the maximum number of resources that can be carried by one miner
The mines can consist of multiple underground layers called shafts. The deeper the shaft is, the more valuable and profitable the resources mined there are. Building new shafts costs a lot of money however and it becomes exponentially more expensive as you dig deeper into the earth. You may also encounter barriers that need to be cleared before building a shaft. This process requires a significant amount of money and also takes a lot of real world time to complete.
Elevators
As mentioned, miners dump their mined resources into a cart. The elevators are the ones responsible for collecting the contents of each cart and bringing them back to the surface where they’ll be temporarily stored. The elevators have several characteristics:
- Total Transportation – the value of the total amount of resources that the elevator can transport
- Load – the value of the maximum amount of resources that can be carried by elevator
- Movement Speed – the speed at which the elevator ascends and descends through the mines
- Loading Speed – the speed at which the elevator collects the contents of mine shaft’s cart
As your mine becomes deeper by building more shafts, the elevator should keep up with its collecting capabilities. Otherwise, a situation could arise wherein plenty of resources are dumped into shaft carts, but the elevator is too slow in collecting them. This causes lag within your mining operations and can greatly affect profits.
Warehouse
When elevators transport resources back to the Earth’s surface, they are stored temporarily in the elevator’s own storage space. The warehouse sends out workers called transporters to collect those resources and transport them back to the warehouse where the resources get turned into usable money. The warehouse has several characteristics:
- Total Transportation – the value of the total amount of resources that transporters can collect from elevators per second
- Transporters – the number of transporters actively working
- Load per Transporter – the value of the maximum amount of resources each transporter can carry with their cart
- Loading Speed – the speed at which transporters collect resources from the elevator and deposits them into the warehouse
- Walking Speed – the speed at which transporters move from the warehouse to the elevator and vice versa
Manager System
The game is named Idle Miner Tycoon but it’s not actually “idle” during your first few minutes with the game. When you start the game, all sectors of the mine have to be manually interacted with to make them work. Enter the managers – the non-playable characters responsible for making mine workers keep working for you.
Each part of the mine has its own set of managers and cannot be shared among them. For example, the manager for an elevator cannot be assigned to manage the miners or the warehouse transporters. Additionally, a manager can have one of three ranks: Junior, Senior, and Executive. These ranks are important when it comes to manager perks.
Manager perks are temporary boosts to your mining operations that can be activated anytime. Examples of these discounts in upgrades, faster movement speed, faster loading speed, and much more. The higher the rank of the manager is, the better their perks are. For instance, a Junior has a perk of 40% upgrade discounts whereas an Executive has a perk of 80% upgrade discounts.
Managers can be hired by clicking on the manager slot and clicking on “Hire Manager”. Money is spent when hiring a manager and it gets more expensive as you hire more managers. Additionally, the managers you get are completely randomized so you may not always get the ones with the perk you want. If you are dissatisfied with a manager, you can sell them and take back 50% of the money spent on them. You can also receive a 100% refund in exchange for watching a short ad.
Cash
Cash is the main currency of Idle Miner Tycoon, and this is what mined resources eventually turn into when they reach the warehouse. There are several things to know about the cash system in this game.
Firstly, there are several types of cash depending upon the continent in which the mine is located. Idle Miner Tycoon’s world consists of several continents with their own cash type represented by their own color – Normal (Yellow), Ice (Blue), Fire (Red), Dawn (Pink), Dusk (Purple), and Ancient (Blue-Green).
Your money is measured with the usual real-world units such as thousands, millions, billions, and trillions. However, when you exceed the trillion mark the game starts using units like “aa”, “ab”, and so on. You only need to look at the second letter; the farther the letter is, the higher the amount of money. For example, 10ab is greater than 10aa; 10aa is greater than 10T; 10T is greater than 10B, and so on and so forth. To know more about how to earn money quickly in Idle Miner Tycoon, check out this guide here.
