Idle Miner Guide Version 0.

I. About the Author

Hi Everybody, I’m QuiksilverHg and this will actually be the first guide I’m writing for a
game. I studied engineering in college so maximizing efficiency is in my nature, and I have
really enjoyed this game.
I’ve been playing this game since just around the first event mine (Halloween) and have
gotten my wife (an accountant), mom, and several other friends and relatives hooked on it. I’ve
currently max-prestiged the first three mines on all continents and am working at getting the last
few. I’ve gotten a gold badge on all event mines except the first, while being completely
free-to-play and without using any date / clock tricks (these WILL NOT be discussed in the
guide). In the process I’ve come up with some methodologies and tips-and-tricks I thought
everyone might benefit from

II. Game Description

Idle Miner Tycoon came out in July 1st 2016 and quickly exploded into becoming a very
popular game.
The basic premise of Idle Miner Tycoon is simple; starting with only $10, start a coal
mine, grow it a little at a time, adding gold / ruby / diamond mines etc. until eventually you have
a vast mining empire.
One of the nice features of this game is that it’s impossible to lose and impossible to
regress. There is no decision you can make that will cause you to lose, and there is no action
you can take that will actually set you backwards. There are however a metric ton of places
where there is an optimal decision and many other suboptimal decisions. While making the
suboptimal choice won’t set you back, it will cause you to earn less money over time and
progress more slowly through the game.
The goal of this guide is to help you find optimum paths through the game which will
maximize the money you earn, help you find the optimal ways to invest that money, and help
you make the best use of the one precious resource that isn’t represented in the game, your
personal time.

III. Goals and Progression

Broadly speaking, the only goal of the game is to make as much money as you can, as
quickly as you can. In the course of trying to maximize your cash flow you’ll open a lot of mines,
prestige them a few times, invest in research and higher quality workers, and participate in
event mines.
 Some progression goals along the way include: opening mine shafts, opening new
mines, doing research, participating in event mines etc. Generally the only reward for
completing these goals is finding a path to earn more money, so this guide will focus on
completing these objectives in a way that will help maximize your earning potential.

IV. Game Resources

A. Cash

Despite the fact that you spend time in coal, gold, diamond, etc. mines, all mining
in the game is instantly converted into cash; you will not have repositories of precious
metals or gems. This ends up greatly simplifying what could be an overly complex game.
Note: An amount of cash coming from a diamond mine IS NOT worth any more than the
same amount of cash coming from the coal mine. Cash is cash, it does not matter where
it came from.
Cash will come in four primary varieties, cash, ice-cash, fire-cash, and shards,
respectively for the starting-continent, Ice-continent, Fire-continent, and Mainland.
Your total cash will be expressed at the top of the screen, first it will tell you the
exact amount, but as your fortune grows, the game will begin to abbreviate your amount
of cash with a multiplier. For example, 1,000 = 1k, 1,000k=1B, 1,000B=1T, 1,000T=1aa.
After aa the game continues the series as aa, ab, ac, etc. all the way up to az. After az it
goes to ba, then bb, bc, bd etc.
Each event mine will also have its own type of currency, whether that is candy,
moon rocks, mistletoe, or fairy dust, they all function the same as the other types.
One thing to note is that it is impossible to trade one type of cash for another. If
you want a certain type of cash, you will have to collect it from the designated continent.

B. Super Cash

Super cash is this game’s second-tier currency, it can’t be directly harvested from
a mine, but you will come across it naturally in the course of playing the game.
Expeditions and event mines are the primary ways to get extra super cash, although you
will want to check the pro-tip on prestiging to find a way to get a significant boost in your
super cash production.

C. Time

One resource that is extremely limited, but which is not represented in-game at
all, is the amount of time you have available to play the game. Each day you have to
work, do homework, take care of the kids, or whatever else. This leaves a limited amount
of time to play the game each day.
 Because of this limited resource, one of the things this guide will help you do is
find the most efficient way to spend that time to still maximize the growth of your mining
empire.

V. Game Elements

A. Mine Shafts

The first step in turning raw materials (coal, gold, diamond etc.) into income
involves your miners pulling it out of the ground and turning it into its equivalent value in
cash.
Your first action in the game (and on each new continent or event mine) will be to
open a mine shaft.
On your tap (or at the managers’ directions) the miner will walk over to the coal,
harvest up to his max carrying capacity, then return and deposit his harvest into the bin.
Total mine production from all shafts can be seen by clicking on the shovel and
pickaxe icon in the lower right corner. This is an important tool to figure out how much
you should upgrade your elevator and warehouse!
In the early game the majority of effort will be spent in trying to find the ideal shaft
to invest your money in. Ideal strategies will be discussed further in the “VI. Maximizing
Growth” section.

B. Elevator

Now that your miner has turned the coal into cash and placed it in the bin, the
next step is to get it to the top of the mine. This is accomplished through the elevator.
On your tap (or at the manager’s direction) the elevator-operator will drive the
elevator down to the first mine shaft, collect the money, then if full go back up, or if not
full continue down to each mine shaft until he is full.
Note: It does not matter which shaft your elevator-operator collects the material
from, a full elevator is worth the same amount whether its material came from the first
shaft or the last shaft.

C. Warehouse

The final step in turning your raw material into income is for the warehouse
workers to haul the material from the elevator-bin over to the warehouse. This converts it
into profit in your bank account which you can spend.
 On your tap (or at the manager’s direction) all of your warehouse workers will
push their cart over to the elevator-bin, fill their cart up to its maximum amount, then
return it full to the warehouse and unload it.
Note: Any boosts from Ads or boost-tokens will be applied as the warehouse
workers drop material off at the warehouse. Boosts from prestige, friends, research,
workshop upgrades etc. are applied elsewhere.

D. Managers

When beginning in the game, in order to get your miners working, you’ll need to
tap on them to get them moving. Once you reach level 5 in your first mine shaft, you are
able to purchase a manager which will order your mine shaft worker to keep working
instead of having to tap each time.
You should buy this manager as soon as possible as he’ll be able to get the
miner moving again the instant he gets back, faster than your fastest tap could possibly
get him moving again.
Similarly, managers can be purchased for the elevator and warehouse, and
similarly you’ll want to purchase them as soon as possible.
In addition to keeping your workers from being lazy, managers also have the
ability to provide various boosts to increase productivity. Mine shaft managers can
increase walk speed, mining speed, or reduce cost; and elevator and warehouse
managers have those abilities as well as the ability to increase maximum load for their
workers.
Ideal boost-strategy will be discussed in “VI. Maximizing Growth”.

E. Barriers

Upon reaching mine shaft level 5, you’ll find that you cannot unlock mine shaft 6
without first paying some money to remove a barrier that is in the way. After paying the
cost, it will take your workers some amount of time to remove the barrier before you can
open the next shaft (60 minutes for first barrier, more for each subsequent). Research
upgrades can reduce the starting time, and you can watch up to 2 ads every hour to
reduce the time by 30 minutes per ad.

F. New Mines & Prestige

Once you’ve collected a certain amount of money (76.8 ab in the case of the gold
mine); the game will offer you the chance to purchase a new mine. Opening the new
mine will start you off back on mine shaft 1, the same as when you started the game, but
with one huge advantage. You’ll already have some money, so you can level up your
first mine shaft and even open up new ones right off the bat!
In addition to having a new place to start earning money, the new mine will come
with a score multiplier which will mean that investments in the same shaft in this mine
will earn more money than the same investment in the previous mine. (Exact
manifestation of increase is something I’m still trying to figure out)
After reaching a substantially larger amount of money, a star will appear
indicating that you have enough money to ‘prestige’ one of your mines. Doing so will
wipe out the current progress you have on the mine, and start you back at an
un-upgraded mine shaft 1, but with a substantially higher score multiplier. While it is
generally advisable to unlock new mines as soon as possible, it may not be ideal to
prestige as soon as possible since income you were previously earning in that mine will
go to zero. Finding smarter times to prestige will be discussed in “VI. Maximizing
Growth”.

G. New Continents

On reaching x amount of cash on the start continent, you will be offered the
opportunity to unlock the Ice Continent. It’s a good idea to do this as soon as possible.
Once you unlock the Ice Continent, you’ll begin in the Moonstone Mine with zero
ice-cash. All income on this continent will be in the form of ice-cash.
Strategy for starting and growing the Moonstone Mine are identical to starting
and growing the Coal Mine.
Similarly, once reaching a certain amount of ice-cash you will have the
opportunity to unlock the Fire Continent, starting with the Amber Mine.

H. Research Laboratory

Once you unlock the gold mine, you will be given the chance to open your
Research Laboratory. In it, you start off with a research tree where you can spend green
gears to unlock bonuses to your various mines. There is also a separate research tree
for ice and fire gears. Ice tends to deal with reducing costs and timers, whereas fire
makes your managers more effective in various ways.

I. Workshop

After unlocking (which?), you’ll also gain access to the workshop. In the
workshop you can open up treasure chests which will level up a selection of workers for
the mines, elevators, and warehouse.
 In addition to the chests you find naturally, you can purchase additional chests
containing cards towards worker-upgrades with super cash.

1. **Pro-tip** Save up your super cash for buying the legendary chest in the
workshop. This is the best bang for your buck on using super-cash.
(Much less effective since they dropped the rate of opening yellow
cards, but still getting yellow cards is absolutely the best way to expand
your income)

J. Expeditions

One of the recent game updates offered a new feature called expeditions. This is
a chance for you to take your mine overseer on a trip to find new resources or upgrades.
You can select either to start a new expedition choosing one out of three choices,
or go on a friend’s expedition if their join-window is still open.

Note: Going on friend’s expeditions will not cycle the expeditions you have
available. If you end up with three terrible expedition choices, they will not cycle until you
use one of them.

1. **Pro-tip** If you have friends you can closely coordinate with, always go
on the best expedition available, rare, epic, or legendary. Start some kind
of groupchat or group text to let each other know when a rare or better is
starting. If all of you only have bad common expeditions available, you
should each go on your own common expedition to cycle as many as
possible at the same time.

K. Ad-Boosts

At the bottom of each mine you will find an option to boost the mine’s output by
watching an ad. It is generally worthwhile to do so as watching one 30 second ad can
double your production for hours. In the Ice research tree you’ll have the option to boost
the bonus from the ad, as well as the duration of bonus you receive for watching each
ad.
Once opening all 5 mines on a continent you will get the option to watch one ad
to boost the whole continent. Prior to this, it is generally only worthwhile to watch an ad
on the highest producing mine on the continent.

VI. Maximizing Growth

 Now we’re finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of this guide. This is where I will
start giving tips on how to use your cash, time, and resource investments to grow your
mines as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A. Investment Priorities

Each time you open a mine, you have the choice to invest in expanding a mine
shaft, the elevator, or the warehouse, but how do you pick?
Well, your elevator cannot haul up any cash that is not in the mine-bins, neither
can your warehouse workers haul away any cash that the elevator hasn’t brought up
first. Thus, any total capacity that the elevator has which is more than the total mining
output is wasted, likewise any warehouse hauling capability that is more than the
elevator capacity is wasted.
Therefore when upgrading, you should always upgrade mine shafts first, then the
elevator, then the warehouse.
For example:
You got ahead of yourself in the elevator and your elevator says that it
can haul 10k/s total. When you look at your mine shaft total production (using
shovel/pickaxe button), you see that your mines are only producing 5k/s. Your elevator
will come up with only a half-full load each time, and the remaining 5k of capacity is
completely wasted. Upgrading your elevator further will result in 0 additional income, you
will need to focus on upgrading your mine shafts before you can earn any more money.

It is important to also note that having a huge amount of cash sitting in the bin at
the bottom mine shaft doesn’t do you much good either. What good does it do to have
the money sitting in the mine-bin where you can’t spend it? If the mine shafts are
producing a lot more than your elevator is hauling, that does you no good as the extra
money sitting in your bins is money you can’t spend.
Thus under ideal conditions it is optimal to have your mine shafts, elevator, and
warehouse producing at exactly the same capacity.
Unfortunately in the real world this doesn’t always work out. We can’t have our
finger in three places to click on all three at once, and even if we could, we might not
have the money to upgrade them all exactly equally. That’s not even mentioning the
jumps that occur when crossing upgrade thresholds or the imbalances that can occur
due to workshop or manager effects.
Since excess mining capacity will at least let the cash be stored at the bins it is
worth having the mines producing (slightly) more than the elevator, and the elevator
producing (slightly) more than the warehouse.
For example: Your mine, elevator, and warehouse are each working at a total
capacity of 50 aj/s you only have enough cash to upgrade one of them… which do you
do? If you upgrade an elevator it will not have enough to haul so that does nothing…
similarly the warehouse will not help you get any more income. Having the mine shaft
 producing 51 aj/s will at least store that extra 1 aj/s in the bin at the end of the mine shaft
so that you can collect it later.
Note: If you have a huge glut of supply somewhere in the system, eg. several ag
sitting in the bottom of your mine shaft, while both elevator and mine are carrying af; it
may be worthwhile to upgrade the elevator to ​slightly​ more production than mines to
clear out some of that glut and put it to use. Likewise with the warehouse if there’s a
huge stockpile sitting at the elevator.

B. Shaft Choice (so to speak)

So now that we’ve established that upgrading the mine shaft production is the
first priority, how do we choose which mine shaft to spend our money in?
Well, in the beginning of the game it’s pretty simple, you only have one or two
mine shafts available, so you just pick one. Later in the game, you can have as many as
30 different mine shafts to choose from, how do you pick which one to upgrade?
I’m going to give you two methods, the first is the best efficiency for your
investment; it will help you find the highest return per dollar invested in the mineshaft.
The second will maximize your personal time; going through each mine shaft one at a
time and making calculations on each can take a long time. It could be that with the
amount of time you spent doing calculations using the first method, you could have
already made that money by taking a shot in the dark, particularly in event mines or
mainland mines that tend to go much faster.

1. Method 1 - Investment efficiency

● Open up the upgrade box on the first mine shaft.

● Ensure the upgrade amount is set to the x1 tab in the bottom left. (If you’re flush with
cash you could use x10 or x50, but do not use max)
● Note the cost for the upgrade, as well as the increase in total extraction shown in green
right below the current total extraction
● Divide these numbers. This will give you the amount of time it will take you to make back
your investment;
○ For example, it costs 900k to upgrade a mine shaft. This increases your total
extraction by 9k/s. Dividing 900k by 9k gives 100s. It will take 100s after
upgrading to get your 900k investment back. DO NOT mix up the currency
multiplier. Dividing 900aa by 9T/s is not 100s, it is 100,000s; instead of it taking
you a couple minutes to make your money back, it will take several hours.
○ Note: If there are any manager boosts on any of these mines, the number will not
be accurate… try to compare only between unboosted mines or mines with the
same boosts on them.
● Repeat the previous for each mine shaft, find the one that will require the least amount
of time to make back your investment.
 ○ Doing this for every single upgrade will take waaay too long, generally if a shaft is
the most efficient for one upgrade, it will hold for at least several upgrades
○ Also note, that for the mines you didn’t upgrade, the time to return your
investment will be the same, so you don’t need to recalculate.
○ If you’re just looking to upgrade a few times, I wouldn’t bother writing down each
one, just remember the lowest number you’ve found so far (and which mine it
was) and check whether the next mine beats it or not.
● Apply your best cost-reduction manager to the most efficient mine, and upgrade it until
you run out of money, or it stops becoming the most efficient.
○ Generally once a cost-reduction manager is applied and activated, that will be far
and away the most efficient mine until his ability runs out.

This method is very time consuming, but it will always give you the best return on your
investment. As you progress through the game it will take a lot longer to have money for each
upgrade, and spending that hard-earned money more wisely will pay dividends. In the early
game and as event mines begin, it is probably easier and more efficient to just stick to method
2.

2. Method 2 - Player-time efficiency

● Open up the upgrade box on the first mine shaft

● Set the upgrade count in the lower left corner to ‘max’
● Note the amount of total extraction increase (shown in green under total extraction)
● Repeat for each mine shaft and purchase max upgrades in the shaft which gives the
largest total extraction increase (use a cost decreasing manager if possible)
○ Note: If ‘max’ is limited by the maximum shaft level (800) it may be smarter to
upgrade the shaft to 800 then go to a lower shaft. To figure out if it is smarter,
use method 1; though generally upgrading to 800 is a very efficient use of money
so it’s safe to just do it.
● As a shortcut, keep in mind that each time you break an upgrade threshold (at levels 10,
25, 50, 100, 200 etc.) it will cause a large increase in production for the same amount of
investment. Generally if you have the chance to upgrade through a threshold you should
do it.

To understand how this method works it’s first necessary to talk about what the ‘max’
upgrade button does. It tries to spend ALL of your money to upgrade the mine shaft as many
times as possible. Assuming for the moment it ‘gets’ to spend ALL of your money (more
expensive mineshafts will have rounding errors due to not being able to purchase partial
upgrades), this method will tell you which mine shaft will give you the largest income increase
for investing ALL of your money.
Note: Towards the intermediate and late game it is wise to not spend ALL of your money
on shaft upgrades, since you’ll want to spend some of it on the elevator and warehouse to keep
your product moving along.
 C. Using Managers to upgrade

Generally speaking, once you’ve figured out which mine shaft you’re going to
upgrade in, it makes sense to use your best cost-reducer to help you upgrade that shaft
more cheaply, and more times for your money.
The only exception I would make to that rule is in fast moving mines like
mainland and event mines. In these you may get a green cost-reducer early, but
because you’re moving down shafts so quickly, you may want to save him until you’re in
a shaft that will be the most profitable for longer (generally in the 7-10 range until the
second barrier is gone).

D. When to Prestige

So you’ve finally started bringing in the big bucks and that fancy yellow star
appears in the lower left letting you know that it’s time to prestige. It’s tempting to go
ahead and hit that prestige button as soon as possible, however, knowing that your
income from that mine will go straight to zero as soon as you hit that button it may not
always be the right decision.
If that mine is your highest producing on that continent it would be wise to wait
until either:
a) You’ve banked enough cash that you’ll be able to upgrade it most of
the way towards being the top earner again or
b) You upgrade another mine to be the new top-earner
c) Also be sure to check out the pro-tip on extracting super cash before
prestiging
Note: The easiest way to see which mines are your best producers is to go to the
world map and click on the yellow prestige star in the lower left corner. This will bring up
a list of all of your mines, you can compare their production by looking at the idle cash it
has displayed there.

1. **Pro-tip** Extract Super Cash before Prestiging

You may have noticed that as you are upgrading your shafts, elevator,
and warehouse, that each time you cross an upgrade threshold (at 10, 25, 50,
100 etc. for mine shafts, various for elevator and warehouse) you get a small
amount of super cash (2 for shafts, 15 for elevator / warehouse).
A lot of the time if you are maximizing efficiency during development, you
may skip mine shafts and leave them at level 1. A lot of the lower numbered mine
shafts could be upgraded through a lot of thresholds for almost nothing yielding
essentially free super cash.
 Therefore, before prestiging a mine, it makes sense to go through all of
your mine shafts top-to-bottom and upgrade them through as many thresholds as
you can. I will even delay my prestiging for awhile so I can do this.
Obviously you don’t want to spend all your money doing this, as you need
to save some to upgrade your mine after prestiging. As a general guideline, I will
upgrade as much as I can, but will try not to spend more than the 1st showing
digit on making a new upgrade.
For example: I have 2.65 ‘aj’, I will check how much I can ‘max’ upgrade a
mine shaft, if I can go all the way to 800 for less than 900 ai I will. If I can’t, I will
first upgrade to level 10, then by x10 up to 50, then by x50, up until it would cost
me more than 900 ai to reach the next threshold.
So, by the time you’re on your second prestige or so, you should be able
to go to 800 on a couple mine shafts, then 700 on a few, then 600 for a few more,
on and on, until there are some mine shafts you can only upgrade to 25 or 50.
This is still well worth it, each mine shaft you get to 800 is worth $22 super cash,
$20 for 700 and so on and so forth. From just one shaft you can get more super
cash than you will from most expeditions.

VII. Event Mines

VIII. Research Tree
A. Start Priorities
B. Ice Priorities
C. Fire Priorities
IX. Workshop
X. Expeditions
XI. Ads, Boosts, & Real Money
A. Best Bang for your Buck
XII. Starting a Mine (open to first barrier)
XIII. Intermediate Mine Growth (6th shaft to prestige)
A. Growing the Mine
B. Harvesting Resources
1. Using Managers
2. Active Gathering vs. Idle Cash
3. **Pro-tip** Leave Game open (10x collection)
4. **Pro-tip** Choose which mine to leave active (when idle)
C. When to Prestige
1. **Pro-tip** Extract super-cash
XIV. Event Mines
XV. End Game
A. Elevator/Warehouse to Mine Shaft Inversion (generally around ‘ar’ to ‘as’)
B. Where to spend time/money
C. Squeezing every drop out
D. Ruby / Sapphire Mine
E. Final Prestige