Melvor idle – Many Welps (2024)

This week is a little late getting out. As a result, my gains are probably slightly higher than they have been in the last few weeks. These were my goals from last week.

• Obtain 75m GP to purchase the Loot Container Stacking upgrade
• 90 Slayer to take on the In to The Mists Dungeon
• Level magic to 99

This week as a whole was a prep week. I needed to get to 90 slayer to be able to enter the second to last dungeon, Into the Mists. Before that, I wanted to unlock Loot Container Stacking so I could forgo the Amulet of Looting in favor of a necklace that gave stats to take on the higher level slayer tasks. I fletched my way to 75m GP by crafting more Dragon Javelins. Sadly, I’m still missing the Fletching Pet.

Once loot container stacking was unlocked I went to take on Elite Slayer tasks. These pit you against monsters between level 200-374. My damage reduction was more than enough on all sets to take on whatever was thrown at me. Slayer tasks are the majority of what I did this week with the occasional break to craft Holy Dust to refill my prayer points. I got my last level in Magic from doing just this.

I used my Slayer Coins to purchase the Necromancer set which gives and extra +8 summoning tablets per craft and grants +8% XP to summoning. This should make creating large batches of summoning tablets much easier. I also bought all of the Slayer equipment for Ranged, Magic, and Melee and a few upgrades for each. I figured I’m going to need to fully upgrade all of them fro 100% item completion so I better start working on it now. They are not as good as my current armor sets but the Elite upgrade provides +30% Slayer XP on each piece. If I didn’t need the damage reduction I could equip both pieces for an extra +60% XP for slayer. As it is, I can only keep one on but the difference is noticeable.

Slayer is up to level 94 now so I’m ready to take on Into the Mist next week!

Combat Skills

I got a whole lot of 99s this week. Attack, Strength, Magic, and Hitpoints are all now max level thanks to running so many Slayer Tasks this week. I’m hoping these stats are good enough to take on In to the Mist. Can I Idle Melvor? doesn’t have a listing for the last two dungeons so I’ll have to find out if I have enough health/damage reduction once I get in there.

Non-Combat Skills

I got Crafting to 99 this week. It doesn’t provide any benefits other than a Steam achievement because there’s nothing to craft after level 90. I got bored of Slayer tasks in the middle of the week and used all of the dragon hides I had collected so far to see if I could max the skill. I didn’t unlock the pet before getting to max level so I’ll have to revisit crafting at some point for that.

Completion Log: 64.62% (+2.21%)

Per usual, Monster and Items granted me the most completion this week. That’s because I fought a slew of new monsters from the Elite Slayer tasks which dropped a bunch of items I haven’t seen before.

I unlocked the Strength pet this week: Lil Ron provides +3 hidden Stregth levels. Not too bad!

Goals for Next Week

• Refill the food stocks
• Refill the Rune stocks
• Take on the In to the Mist Dungeon
• Possibly take on the final dungeon

Food and Runes are running low after this week. I’ll need to spend a few days this week replenishing them before I can take on the new dungeon. Nature Runes in particular need refilled as I’ve been using them to create Holy Dust for Prayer Points.

I’m planning on running In to the Mist this week to see if I have enough stats to complete it. Depending on the requirements of the final dungeon, I’ll take that on as well!

It turns out my goals from last week were unambitious

• Level Ranged to 85
• Run the Air God Dungeon until I’m out of Damage Reduction Potions
• Try to acquire a full set of Ancient Armor from the Volcanic Cave

The damage reduction potions last for a long time. I was using them non-stop this week and only went through a thousand. That’s even with the Blade Echo Ring consuming 3 charges per attack. I was able to get the full Aeris set after 32 kills. Not to say that didn’t take a while, I was managing 4 kills an hour.

By far the biggest bottleneck was still prayer points but in the process of clearing the dungeon I got Prayer to level 99 which allows for two things. One, I could purchase the Prayer Skillcape which reduces prayer point costs by 50%. Two, I could use the Stone Skin prayer which doesn’t grant XP but does gives +3% damage reduction without worrying about XP loss.

After getting my Aeris set I needed level 85 Ranged to equip it. Most of the Hard Slayer tasks are magic monsters so I ran those until I had 85 Ranged. Once I could equip the Aeris set I almost had enough damage reduction to run the Water God Dungeon. I switched out my Agility course for a Rocky Waters obstacle. This gave me +50 health at the cost of 3% damage to monsters and 1% damage reduction. the extra health was all I needed with the new Aeris set to meet the damage reduction requirements of the Water God Dungeon without the need for my Infernal Cape’s Damage reduction. That allowed me to equip the prayer cape to stretch out my damage reduction.

The Water God Dungeon drops the Glacia set which is a magic armor set. It only took me 12 clears to obtain the full set. On run 6 I unlocked the dungeon pet, Norman, who provides -3% prayer point cost reduction!

With the full Glacia set in hand, I wanted to try my luck at the Earth dungeon. Before I did that, I purchased Expanded Knowledge from the shop for the -15% Herblore and Runecrafting interval. I was going to need a lot of runes for the next dungeon. I also went after the Elite Amulet of Magic which provided the extra 2% damage reduction I’d need to complete the Earth God Dungeon.

I ran the Earth God Dungeon 93 times before I acquired all the pieces of the Terran set. This is a melee set that’s even better than the upgraded Ancient Armor Set. For some reason, this dungeon was faster to clear than the first two. I was averaging between 6-8 clears an hour. The plate body was the hardest piece to get. By the time I had looted one of those I had already looted 52 boots and 31 gloves!

With the Earth God Dungeon completed I just had to complete the Fire God Dungeon at least once. The Ragnar armor set didn’t look much better than the Terran set so I didn’t feel the need to run it multiple times. Clearing it once allows me to purchase the Loot Container Stacking upgrade in the shop. This will let me kill normal monsters without having to equip an amulet of looting since all drops will stack in the loot container.

The rest of the week was spent trying to figure out the best way to make money to buy all of the new upgrades I had unlocked. After trying different thieving targets, I settled on crafting Dragon Javelins. With 99 Fletching granting double items per flecth, Perpetual Haste to decrease fletching time by 15%, and all of the Dragonite Bars I had sitting in inventory, it is by far the fastest way for me to generate GP.

Combat Skills

After this week I am running low on food. I have about 6,500 chicken soups left until I’m out of food stock. Knowing that I would need to make more food relatively soon and I needed 85 defense to equip the Terran set, I ran the Chicken Coop Dungeon until I hit 85 Defense. At the end of the run I had acquired 20k Raw Chicken. I should be set for a while on food after I cook all of that!

It was a nice surprise to get 99 prayer this week. I had no idea I was so close to maxing it and that prayer point reduction from the Skillcape really helps.

Magic is almost at level 99 so I’m sure I’ll be able to max that this coming week.

Non-Combat Skills

This week was mostly focused on combat so there wasn’t a whole lot of non-combat skilling going on. I did craft a ton of runes this week to take on the Earth God Dungeon which netted me 2 levels in that skill. Gathering the materials for Dragon Javelins netted me another 2 virtual levels in Woodcutting and one in Fletching. I’m hoping with all this fletching I’ve been doing I’ll unlock the pet soon!

The nice thing about completing all the God Dungeons this week is unlocking all the interval reduction upgrades for most of the non-combat skills. This will help crafting more things faster that I’ll need to complete the last two dungeons. It will also help when I’m in the Mastery farming stage of the game.

Completion Log: 64.62% (+3.58%)

Once again, new monsters and items were the biggest contributes to completion this week. 3% Completion per week seems to be the average over the last few weeks. This is without specifically targeting completion so I’m sure I can get that number higher once I’m focusing more on completion.

I got Norman from the Water God Dungeon this week which was unexpected. The God Dungeon Pets drop chance is 1 in 150 and they take a long time to clear. Getting the rest will probably take a lot longer. I got luck with Norman and dropped him on my 6th run.

Goals for Next Week

• Obtain 75m GP to purchase the Loot Container Stackingupgrade
• 90 Slayer to take on the In to The Mists Dungeon
• Level magic to 99

It looks like I’ll be doing a lot of Slayer tasks this week and the Loot Container Stacking will help immensely. The requirements for In to the Mists is 90 slayer. Unfortunatley, Can I Idle Melvor? doesn’t have to damage reduction requirements for this dungeon or the next one so I’ll have to do them manually and see what the damage is like. I’m not sure I’ll be completing this dungeon this week but I’m at least hoping to meet the Slayer Skill requirement.

Level 99 magic is kind of a give considering I have less than 50% left until its maxed but it’s nice to have easy goals too!

It’s September which means it’s time to decorate our house for Halloween and buy all things pumpkin spice. Some might say it’s too early, there’s still some summer left, but I say nay! It’s pumpkin spice time!

Of course, August was dominated by Blaugust. I was able to post more and had more gaming time last month than I have in the last few. I made the 25 post cutoff for the Gold Award this year and am quite proud of it. I’m looking forward to slowing down here this month

Sadly, last month I had to reinstall Windows which means I lost my Manic Time/ ActivityWatch data for the month. I didn’t even realize this until I went to write this post…I reinstalled ActivityWatch on my D: drive this time to prevent the data loss in case there’s a next time. It’s a lighter weight than Manic Time and does exactly what I need it to do without the extra bells and whistles.

Top 5 Games This Month

1. Melvor Idle
2. The Elder Scrolls Online
3. Aliens: Fireteam Elite
4. Generation Zero
5. TemTem

Melvor Idle is probably going to remain in my top game slot for a while. Between checking in on my phone and PC daily, it’s going to be hard for another game to overtake it in terms of time spent. I’ve also been enjoying tracking my progress in my new This Week In Melvor Idle series. I don’t see a need to discontinue it on Saturdays just because Blaugust is over. Their so fun to write!

I’ve been racking up some time in ESO this month. It was a game that’s been on my mind for a while and I wanted to give it another good try before shelving it. It’s a game that I’ve spent more time playing than posting about but I’m looking to fix that soon.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite has been taking up the majority of my co-op time with friends. Brother and I have been playing it about once a week since we bought it at the start of the month. We’re currently on the 3rd set of campaign missions and even recruited SuperToast to play with us. It’s been a blast to play with three people though I do worry our excitement might fall off once we complete all of the campaign missions. There is the new Pathogen Expansion so that’s always an option if we get bored.

Generation Zero has been the squads go to game on Saturday nights. I still don’t really know what’s going on story wise but blowing up big robots sure is fun.

When we’re not playing Aliens, Brother and I have been making some progress in TemTem. The issue is, in order to do the campaign together we can’t get too ahead of each other. We’ve been sitting in a spot during the week to level up our TemTem before we play again. This is getting boring though so we might switch up how we progress when we’re not together.

I completed all of this weeks goals fairly early in the week:

• Upgrade the Ancient Shield to the Dragon Fire Shield
• Complete the Volcanic Cave 22 more times to unlock additional spells and dungeon
• Acquire the pet for Volcanic Cave
• Check out the Air God Dungeon

The Dragon Fire Shield took the longest as it needed 7,050 dragon bones to craft. That means 7,050 dragons had to be culled. I elected to fight Green Dragons to accomplish this as they do the least damage and take the least amount of prayer points to kill with my current set up.

After the Dragon Fire Shield was completed I went back to the Volcanic Cave to get the last completions to unlock the Ancient Magick spell book. This also unlocked a new dungeon: Infernal Stronghold. I also acquired the Volcanic Cave Pet after 411 completions. I opened the chests after getting the pet and looted Ancient Platelegs. I was able to upgrade these to (G) Ancient Platelegs for another boost in defense and damage reduction.

I went to check out the Air God Dungeon to see if I could complete it. With my new platelegs and some damage reduction potions I was able to finish it once. I have enough damage reduction to idle the dungeon now but it eats up prayer points quickly. That seems to be the bottleneck to combat right now. Completing the Air God Dungeon let me purchase Perpetual Haste from the shop which reduces the interval for Crafting and Fletching by 15%.

After my first completion of the Air God Dungeon I had a hard time deciding what to do next. I tried the Water God Dungeon but I didn’t have the damage reduction to idle it and it took way to long to complete it with manual healing. I died a few times in there before I gave up on it. I ran the Infernal Stronghold once to get the Infernal Cape which adds a bit more damage reduction.

At this point, I think I need to continue running the Volcanic Cave and try to look a full Ancient Armor set if I want to melee the next God Dungeons. However, those runs eat a ton of prayer points so I need a way to kill things faster. I think I found it in the high tier crafting rings.

See, after killing seven thousand Green Dragons I had a a lot of Green Dragon Hide. Rather than sell it I used it to craft Green D-Hide Bodies to level up crafting. At level 90 special rings unlock that augment your attacks. The one I think is the answer to my melee issue is the Ring of Blade Echoes. Every attack action performs 3 attacks, the first for full damage and the next two for 20% damage. If all 3 hit not only is this is an extra 40% damage boost but it also has an extra 30% chance to proc the Sunset Rapier‘s special attack which bleeds the target for 200% damage inflicted over 10 seconds. Sure procing the special on the second or third attack won’t do as much damage but it’s extra damage I didn’t have before.

I’m also working on crafting the Ranged (Ring of Barrage) and Magic (Ring of Spirit Power) special rings as well. I purchased the Dungeon Set Swapping from the shop to see if taking advantage of the combat triangle match ups helps speeds up running God Dungeons manually.

Combat Skills

Fighting all of those Green Dragons this week plus the 300+ Volcanic Cave runs boosted my Attack level up quite a bit. One of my overarching goals has been getting Attack to 99 for the best base melee accuracy and now I’m only 5 levels away from it. Level 98 Prayer snuck up on me this week. I didn’t realize I was anywhere close to maxing this skill but it makes sense since prayer is used no matter what combat style I’m fighting with.

There was a point this week where I was out of ideas of what to pursue next. I went to the Highlands Slayer area to fight Griffin’s since they were a decent level for leveling my Attack skill, didn’t do a ton of damage per hit, and used very little prayer points to kill. They also drop Dragon Claw Fragments which are used to craft the Dragon Claw, an item I didn’t have yet. I didn’t realize that just fighting in a Slayer area awarded Slayer skill XP. I thought the monsters had to be part of a Slayer Task to count but apparently not.

Non-Combat Skills

I did a lot of Crafting this week and it shows. 7 levels gained this week and I think I have enough Green Dragon hides to max out the skill. I also did a fair bit of Thieving this week to generate some GP for the shop upgrades I purchased this week. The Thieving mastery pool is now above 95% which gives me +100 stealth to make thieving easier and triple the chance to get a unique NPC item from Thieving. I used this to acquire the Amulet of Incantation which speeds up Alt Magic cast times and subsequently allow me to generate more prayer points quicker with Blessed Offering spell.

Completion Log: 61.04% (+3.22%)

Completion is still chugging along with another 3% gained this week. Again, most of this came from fighting new monsters in the Infernal Stronghold, the Air God Dungeon, and the Water God Dungeon.

I acquired Mac, the Volcanic Cave Pet, which provides +1% damage to slayer are monsters.

Goals for Next Week

• Level Ranged to 85
• Run the Air God Dungeon until I’m out of Damage Reduction Potions
• Try to aquire a full set of Ancient Armor from the Volcanic Cave

I’m planning on another Combat oriented week. I think the new rings will help cut down on prayer points spent and with the Amulet of Incantation I’ll be able to generate more prayer points faster. The Air God Dungeon drops the Aeirs God Set. From my first run I got the Aeris God Boots which provide a good boost to Ranged damage and grant much needed damage reduction for my Ranged set. However I need 85 Ranged to wear them. I’m hoping the rest of the set is Ranged oriented to replace my mis-match of Ancient and Black D-Hide armor. We’ll see how many runs I can get in on that dungeon before my Damage Reduction potions run out, I might even get luck and get the dungeon pet!

This week was pretty boring in the world of Melvor. I decided to get Agility, one of the less exciting but extremely helpful skills, maxed and out of the way. As I talked about last week, Agility provides a huge amount of passive bonuses. At level 99, the Passive Pillar slot is unlocked which provides even more bonuses. The idea here is to customize your Agility course to maximize passive buffs and debuffs to suit what you’re setting out to do. I figured I’d get this out of the way now so I could have access to all of the obstacles and the Passive Pillar to take me through the rest of the game.

Now the trick is gathering up all of the materials again to slot the correct obstacles for the buffs I want.

Combat Skills

I didn’t fight a single thing this week. I didn’t even Item Alchemy enough items to raise Magic up a level.

Non-Combat Skills

Agility is a necessary but boring skill to level up. To make things quicker I crafted thousands of “Performance Enhancing Potion IV” to make sure I didn’t run out before I hit max level. The potion grants -8% Agility Interval so it took 8% less time than it would have. I also equipped the Firemaking Skill Cape, Ancient Ring of Skills, and the Book of Scholars for a 16% XP increase. Sure, the Book of Scholars also gives -15% GP but Agility wasn’t going to make me a lot of money anyways.

Along the way, I tried to create a course that maximized completion time and XP. Every time an obstacle hit 99 mastery I looked for another obstacle to swap for it. Usually, this would be an obstacle with more XP and less time to complete but not always. There were some obstacles that I didn’t remove just because they are kind of a pain to get materials for.

It took me until Thursday to max out Agility. The rest of the week was spent getting enough GP and materials to buy the Pillar of Combat.

Completion Log: 54.88% (+0.8%)

Completion didn’t go up too much this week. I did get a few items from Thieving that I haven’t found yet. The Training Shield which grants +3% Combat XP and adds 3% of my maximum hit to my minimum hit. I also found the Chef’s Spoon which grants +1% Cooking XP and Mastery XP as well as +2% chance to successfully cook and item.

Goals for Next Week

• Gather materials for the Agility obstacles I want so I can gear the buffs towards combat.
• Get the Damage Reduction Potion to Mastery Rank 90 so I can create Damage Reduction Potion IV
• Gather enough materials to make a lot of Damage Reduction Potion IV
• Restock Food Supply

Next week will be more preparation to take on the Volcanic Cave Dungeon. I don’t think setting up the Agility course will take too much time. I plan on using the Herblore Mastery pool to boost the Damage Reduction Potion up. The materials are hard enough to come by that I want to be making the strongest version of the potion right off the bat. This will probably entail creating a bunch of other potions to get fill up the mastery pool. I’ll have to figure out which one would be most beneficial to have a lot of. Once that’s done I’ll have to go out and get the materials for crafting the potion, mainly the Long Horns, the eyes are easy to come by. Finally, I’ll need to restock my food supply before I take on the dungeon. I’m running pretty low right now and I might be out after fighting a bunch of Raging Horned Elites for their horns.

As I mentioned last week, one of my short term goals right now is to obtain all of the dungeon boss pets. Currently, I have 7 pets out of 8 from the lower tier dungeons. The last pet I need is from the Dragons Den Dungeon which is what I spent most of this week preparing for.

In order to farm the dungeon without baby sitting my health bar I have to make sure my max health can withstand any dungeon monster’s max hit. To help with this, there is an auto-eat perk which can be upgraded three times from the shop. Once fully upgraded, auto-eat kicks in when your health is at or below 40% Hitpoints and the consumed food fills up your HP to at least 80%. So 40% of my max health needs to be higher than a given monsters’ max hit in order to idle the dungeon. As long as I have enough food equipped the dungeon can be farmed endlessly.

What happens when the max hit of a monster is higher than 40% of your health? There are two options, get more health or get some damage reduction. That’s where I found myself this week with the Elder Dragon boss. It’s max hit is 470 which would mean my health would need to be at least 1175 to have auto-eat kick in. The max level for HP is 99 which would leave me at 990 health without. I’d need some serious bonus HP before I could effectively farm this boss. Not to mention, I’d need to get my Hitpoints up 15 levels which would take a while.

This is where Damage Reduction comes in. Up until this point, I didn’t have any equipment that provided damage reduction so I wasn’t paying little attention to the stat. Since I wanted to take a shot at this dungeon this week I went over to the fantastic Melvor Idle Wiki to figure out where I could get some DR.

The easiest thing I could do was upgrade my armor. I’ve stubled on this option before but thought it was more of a cosmetic thing riffing on Runescape’s gilded armor variations. It turns out these provide a huge stat boost as well a bunch of damage reduction once fully upgraded. I was able to upgrade my Dragon Armor set to the (G) Dragon Armor set and my Black D-hide set to the (G) Black D-hide set. That set me up for success with Melee and Ranged attack styles. I still needed something for Magic which I planned on using for that attack style for the Dragons Den.

Unlike Melee and Range, the magic armor set with damage reduction comes from the Runecrafting skill rather than upgrading existing armor. I had three out of four pieces of the Fire Expert set and needed to hit 90 Runecrafting before I could obtain the last piece.

You might be wondering, how do you know how much damage reduction you need before you can take on the dungeon? Well, you could do the math and figure out what percentage of the max hit you need to reduce by to equal 40% of your current health. Or you can head over to Can I Idle Melvor? which does the math for you. It shows you how much damage reduction or HP is needed with your current stats and combat style for each dungeon as well as Slayer Tiers. I needed at least 25% Damage Reduction to take on the Dragons Den with Magic which is what most of the week was spent working towards.

I was able to obtain 26% damage reduction with my Magic equipment and spent most of Friday and this morning taking on this dungeon.

Combat Skills

Crafting a bunch of damage reduction potions was ne of my earlier ideas to get more damage reduction. After getting Herblore up to level 90 I realized I needed Large Horns for the recipe. They drop from monsters in the Desolate Plains which requires level 70 Slayer. Early in the week I decided to try get Slayer up to par to take on the Raging Horned Elites. The drop rate for horns was a little slow for my liking so I decided to pursue other options to increase damage reduction.

Over the course of leveling slayer I was able to increase my other combat stats a fair bit. Defense and Prayer I got a whopping 5 levels in this week!

Non-Combat Skills

Agility was the other source of damage reduction I looked in to. Agility is a skill that provides bonus stats in the form of an obstacle course . Agility is leveled up by running the course which nets you a small amount of GP and XP for each obstacle completed. Unlike Runescape, you can’t fail these obstacles so it’s effectively a slow money printing skill with added bonus stats. Every 10 levels, another obstacle can be built to provide additional bonusues. Some obsacle’s provide both positive and negative effects.

Looking through my course, the Spike Trap obstacle provided two negative effects -40 hitpoints and -2% damage reduction. That whole category of obstacles only have negative effects and this one was the lesser of all evils. Getting an obstacle to 99 mastery halves it’s negative effects so my plan was to run the course until either the Spike Trap was at 99 mastery or I had enough in the mastery pool to level it to 99. I ended up doing the latter but not before gaining another 15 levels in Agility.

I continued to tweak my course where I could to either increase my health or add some more DR. My course now includes the following obstacles:

• Lake Swim: +3% Damage to All Monsters, +1% Damage reduction
• Raft Building: +2% damage to All Monsters, +20 Maximum Hitpoints
• Ice Jump: +10% chance to Preserve Resources in Skills, +10% Food Healing Value, +5% Chance to Double items Globally. +2- Maximum Hitpoints, +10 Mining Node Hitpoints, +10% Slayer Coins, +5% Slayer Skill XP.

In the event I need more health, I can swap out the Lake Swim for Rocky Waters which would provide an additional +50 Hitpoints.

Pets

I unlocked Harley while writing this post! Yep, this is the boss pet from Dragons Den so that goal is complete.

Now I’ll have to figure out how to get my stats high enough to take on the Volcanic Cave. I’ll either need 37% damage reduction or 980 health to take this on. This should be an fun challenge to star figuring out week!

I also unlocked the HP pet Finn, the Cat (+10 Maximum HP) and the Summoning pet, Tim the Wolf, which provides +1 shard cost reduction when creating familiars.

Completion Log: 54.08%

My biggest win for the Completion Log this week was getting 100% Farming Mastery. This means all items in the Farming skill have been leveled to 99 mastery rank. This is probably the easiest 100% mastery to get since Farming runs along side whatever else you’re working on. It took 238 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes, and 22 seconds to complete!.

Goals for Next Week

• Figure out the best way to either get more damage reduction or more health to take on the Volcanic Cave Dungeon.

I’m not sure that I’ll be able to take on the Volcanic Cave this week. I have a feeling this will be more of a preparation week.

The summer is in full swing which means there’s a little less time for playing games and a little more time spent outside. It’s been super nice here in North East Ohio this month and we’ve been getting out to enjoy the weather whenever we can.

It’s sad to see July go since we’ll only have another few weeks of summer. But it’s always exciting to see August 1st roll around with the kickoff of Blaugust! I’ve got 2 posts scheduled and the rest I’ll be winging.

Top 5 Games in July

1. Melvor Idle
2. Summer in Mara
3. Generation Zero
4. Farm Together
5. Fallen Earth

July was all about two games for me: Melvor Idle and Summer at Mara.

After finishing up Yonder in June I was looking for something like it that I could dive into. Apparently I hadn’t quite had my fill of fetch quests. Summer at Mara came highly recommended from the internet and I was able to scoop it up just before the Steam Sale ended. I managed to beat the game a few days before the end of the month. I figured I’d save my Backlogged post on it for Blaugust!

Melvor Idle quietly suck it’s way on to my top 5 games in June after I remembered it was on my phone. I hadn’t played in months and I started slowly getting back in to it. Now it’s become a daily game for me to check in on periodically. This month I’ve been tackling some of the earlier dungeons and working catching my Ranged and Magic skills up to my Melee skills.

The squad picked up Generation Zero in the Steam Summer Sale. We played it a few times this month and it is a blast. The game itself isn’t bad but I’ve been having so much fun running down robots and beating them with a baseball bat. Sure there are guns, and sure it’s suppose to be a stealth game, but it’s so statisfying. Also if you hit a car enough times with a baseball bat you can blow up all your friends. We’ve even got a video of our first play session here.

Good times.

June Gaming Goals

I’m still deciding on whether to keep including this goals section but it seems wrong to leave June’s goals hanging.

Play My Turn in the XCOM Succession game: I did this at the last minute, and by last minute I mean yesterday afternoon. I was really trying to knock this one out in the begginign of the month but wasn’t able to. The post for it will be up tomorrow!

Continue playing Cozy Grove daily: This hasn’t exactly been a daily thing for me like I thought it would be. It’s more of an every couple day thing. It’s the perfect game for the Steam Deck but it also feels like the only game I’ve been playing on the Steam Deck so I was trying out some other games when I had the chance. I’m still looking forward to playing more of this but I’m not sure how much more right now.

Write 6 posts: Well I didn’t quite make this one. My post count for July was 3. No worries though, I’ve got a whole month of potential blogging ahead of me.

Last month I didn’t commit to any goals because I didn’t know what I wanted to play. So, I started this month poking around a few games. At the beginning of the month I was all about NIMBY Rails but I didn’t play it much more than those initial first weeks. There were two games that took hold of my interest this month and have not let go since: Final Fantasy XIV and Melvor Idle.

In FFXIV, I spent my time this month starting a new character and going through A Realm Reborn again. I decided to only level one class and only go through the MSQ without stopping for side activities. Now my Black Mage is level 55 and has just started the Patch 2.4 quest line. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here this month and plan on continuing my journey in March.

Melvor Idle has captured my attention for much longer than it has any right to. Usually, I’ll get into an idle game for a week or two at most. Once the initial dopamine hits wear off and the real waiting begins I’ve checked out. But I’m still checking in to Melvor everyday on multiple devices. I’ve maxed mining this month, collected 5 pets, and have just started getting in to the combat system a bit more. I’ll be continuing this one in March as well.

March Gaming Goals

Reach Heavensward in Final Fantasy 14: This one should be an easy one as long as I continue to play the game

Obtain the Bone Necklace and Amulet of Looting in Melvor Idle: Both of these will help progression in combat in Melvor. The Bone Necklace will automatically bury bones and give 2x the prayer points which will make training Prayer easier. The Amulet of Looting will collect look automatically making idle combat training more of a set it and forget it kind of thing.

Play more NIMBY Rails: I really like this game and have some ideas for some projects to work on. I’ve been so focused on Final Fantasy XIV this month that I haven’t played much else

Non Gaming Goals

Read for at least 20 minutes before bed: Too much screen time for me lately before bed. I find it’s much easier to sleep when winding down with a book instead of TV or my phone

Make time to blog: Too often, I think of a post idea and then sit on it. By the time I’m actually motivated to write I’ve lost interest in the idea. This month I would like to find a daily time slot to write here that’s consistent and works for me. I think some time in the evening would work best. I’ve been trying to force the morning for a while but most of the time I don’t feel like writing in the mooring.

I went down a Reddit rabbit hole last weekend and ended up in the Incremental Games subreddit. Idle games have fascinated me since I discovered the genre a few years ago. On the surface, they seem pointless. Why would I play a game that plays itself? But when you dig deeper there’s a bit more of a strategy/resource management thing going on. Mix that with some theory crafting for efficiency and now we start to see a game take shape. They’re like really, really, slow Tycoon games.

Idle games happen to be one of my guilty pleasure games. I don’t play them often but when the mood strikes I find them endlessly entertaining. The best ones usually have some form of progression, obtainable goals to work towards, and resets that provide benefits for the next playthrough. They also provide both idle and active play. I’m not so much a fan of the “clicker” games because I happen to like my mouse. I prefer the lower action per minute games where I can turn a nob here or there every so often. Or just leave it to sit offline and gather resources.

I highly recommend Kittens and Trimps as examples of, what I would consider, good idle games. And now I can confidently add Melvor Idle to that list. I’ve been “playing” it a ton this week.

Melvor Idle is what you get when you strip Old School Runescape down to the numbers and skills. Or if you had a bot going 24/7… In fact, you could argue that Runescape is just a really needy idle game already and I wouldn’t disagree.

The game draws a lot of inspiration from Runescape. The skills have the same name and they feed into each other which is something I’ve always loved about Runescape. Surprisingly, combat feels exactly the same as Runescape. That’s probably because Runescape’s combat is fairly simple anyways. But the most important part for me is that the progression (i.e. grind) feels fun and rewarding so far. Not only do the skills level up but there are levels inside of levels called Mastery. I’m a bit iffy on how mastery works right now but it looks like a promising system.

At any rate, it’s free, it’s fun, and it’s holding much more my attention than I thought it would!