Hi guys, welcome to Milky Way Idle Guide 2025. In this article you will find info about Tools, weapons, classes, and other important things.
Tools dictate how fast you complete every action in this game, and so are basically the backbone of how time efficient your character is. You rely on Milking, Woodcutting and Cheesesmithing in order to make tools, so these are the skills that you will be mainly focusing on to start. Make sure that your tools are always up to date with your levels.
Pouches
Pouches are the major limiting factor on IC progression and changes how much stuff is available to you without you having to invest the additional time to level up the skill.
Being able to combine Super/Ultra Skilling teas with artisan will enable you to craft items with artisan bonus while being 1 level down for Supers or 3 levels down for Ultras
- Small Pouch (Total Level 1, +1 Food Slot)
- Medium Pouch (Total Level 250, +1 Food Slot +1 Drink Slots)
- Large Pouch (Total Level 500, +2 Food Slot +1 Drink Slots)
- Giant Pouch (Total Level 750, +2 Food Slot +2 Drink Slots)
The goal here is to make a giant pouch, because of how powerful the 3rd drink slot is for combat. As it requires 5,000,000 Coins to make, saving the coins to make this pouch should be your first major IC goal. DO NOT spend coins on houses before making this.
Past the early game, there are 2 other late game pouches that are obtainable from Alchemy:
- Guzzling Pouch – 10% Drink Concentration (10% Reduced duration, 10% Increased Effect)
- Gluttonous Pouch – 10% Food Haste (Reduces time interval between consuming food)
It is recommended to obtain the Guzzling Pouch as it will boost the effect of both Combat and Skilling drinks. The common route to transmute the Guzzling Energy required to make this pouch is to transmute either Artisan Teas or Super Stamina and Super Defense coffees, which require crushed Pearls and Amber respectively. Saving some Pearls and Ambers for this is important!
However, getting the amount of resources (Emp Tea Leaves, Pearls, Ambers) required to transmute the energy is a massive undertaking and so should be only worked on once your account has obtained enough resources.
Brewing Drinks
Drinks are an important mechanic in MWI and vital to most of the actions you will be doing. They can save you time (Skilling level teas), create more outputs (Gourmet/Gathering) and even save you resources (Artisan). Knowing what drinks exist and planning around them will improve your time efficiency, the most important resource an IC has.
- Important Drinks to Know and what they do:
- Wisdom Tea/Coffee – Saves you resources and time by boosting your XP
- Artisan Tea – uses 90% of the resources instead of 100%, vital in saving resources when making
- endgame gear and consumables
- Gourmet/Gathering Tea – 12%/15% Free resources with no downside
- Ranged/Magic/Power Coffee – Increases your main damage stat
- Stamina Coffee – Increases your Max HP and HP regen, when combined with HP food can enable you to
- do higher zones that you’ll struggle with otherwise
- Intelligence Coffee – Increases your Max Mana and Mana regen, can be combined with high mana cost
- abilities (Quick aid, Heal) or to supplement your Mana Food
- Lucky Coffee – Increases your drop rate, increasing the items you’ll get from combat
Here are some of the basic drink setups that you will find yourself using:
Resource Gathering for Consumables (Gathering / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Resource Gathering to Refine Resources (Gathering / Efficiency / Processing)
Refining Resources [Lumber/Cheese] (Artisan / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Making Consumables [Cooking/Brewing] (Gourmet / Artisan / Efficiency)
Making Equipment (Artisan / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Making Lv85 and higher gear (Artisan / Level / Wisdom)
Melee Combat (Power/Swiftness/Wisdom or Lucky)
Ranged Combat (Ranged/Swiftness/Wisdom or Lucky)
Magic Combat (Magic/Channelling/Wisdom or Lucky)
Tasks
Tasks are quests that you can reroll which provide you with task tokens. Keep in mind that tasks are NOT MANDATORY, if you do not want to do a task you can reroll it or delete it. It is recommended that you spend your first tokens on getting Task Cooldowns in order to get more tasks and increase the amount of tokens you get daily.
Focusing on tasking is vital for ICs as they provide the main means to obtain Star Fragments due to the natural rate of obtaining them from gathering being low.
Star Fragments and Jewellery
Star Fragments are extremely valuable to ICs as they are necessary to make and enhance jewellery.
You obtain Star Fragments from opening Meteorite Caches, which are a rare drop from gathering or bought with 30 task tokens.
Here are the jewellery you should prioritise:
Regeneration Earrings/Ring (Best in slot for IC combat, necessary to help with mana issues)
Speed Necklace (Dual use necklace for Skilling and Combat)
Remember to craft with Artisan! As the Speed Necklace has a high Crafting level when combined with Artisan Tea, you should start with making the Regenerations first while you work on tasks.
Alchemy
Alchemy has many varied uses for IC characters, but this will only cover the basics in order to progress your character.
Gem Transmutation enables you to swap gems randomly to another one albeit at a loss from success rates. As sunstones and moonstones are not easy to get for a new IC character, you can gamble the other gems you get for a chance to obtain these gems. You should be saving the gems required to make the Supers for your main class instead of converting them. (Garnets for Melee, Jades for Ranged, Amethysts for Magic)
Equipment Decomposing can recycle old gear in order to boost your xp by remaking the item.
Eg. Smithing Snake Fang Dirks -> Decomposing to refund -> Make another Dirk -> Repeat for xp
Do note that Alchemy success rate is decreased substantially if you’re below the recommended level, so you should level your Alchemy before using it on valuable items. You do not get a bonus to success chance from having a higher Alchemy level than recommended.
You can level Alchemy quickly by transmuting the combat essence you get from combat.
Enhancing
Enhancing your gear is important to improve your combat effectiveness and get yourself stronger to take on harder content. The success rate of Enhancing is dependant on your Enhancing level compared to the recommended level of the item, so you will want to level Enhancing as you progress.
The main route to get Enhancing xp for ICs is to use Combat Essence on items that drop from the same zone. (Eg. Swamp Essence on Gator Vests). As you progress higher with your tools you should also be enhancing them as you won’t be replacing them as quickly as the lower tier tools.
You can start enhancing tools at Lv35 Tools, but most players start at Lv50 Tools.
New Player FAQ
What goes in the Back Slot? – Back Equipments are rare drops that are only obtainable from Dungeon Chests
Should I go out of my way to farm Tea Leaves? – Drinks will help alot for skilling, but once you’re out of the early game you’ll start obtaining a large stockpile unless you’re not doing combat
Is Skilling Gear worth farming? – You should be farming your Collector Boots, Eye Watch and Red Culinary Hat as you get stronger, but it’s not a priority over your gear progression.
Starting Out
Skilling and Combat tie into each other, and so should not be neglected in favor of one side. You require skilling to make consumables and equipment, and in turn require combat to provide the tea leaves to boost it.
Time to pick your combat style! Each class has their own unique use cases and benefits.
Ranged – A class based around Magic Resistance and Evasion, strong against Magic enemies. Able to tank in groups for Magic/Physical zones.
Melee – A class based around Armor strong against Physical enemies. Able to tank in groups for Physical zones. Has 2 Main stats, Attack and Power, Attack determines your Melee Accuracy, and Power determines your Melee Damage.
Melee is further divided into 3 different styles: Slash, Stab and Smash
Do note that your xp ratio changes depending on the style you choose.
- Slash – A balanced style, splits xp 5:5, recommended to start with due to it letting you level up both Attack and Power evenly,
- Stab – An Attack focused style, splits xp 9:1 in favour of Attack. Able to provide some debuffs with Puncture but lacks an endgame weapon.
- Smash – A Power focused style, splits xp 9:1 in favour of Power. The favoured endgame style as it has access to a Lv95 weapon and also scales your damage.
Magic – A class based around primarily using Abilities, weak against Physical but able to use healing spells for higher survivability. Able to provide supportive and healing abilities in groups.
Magic is further divided into 3 different elements: Water, Fire and Nature
- Fire – A damage focused element, a very strong early – mid game element but falls off late from lack of accessible scaling.
- Water – A damage focused element, has debuffing abilities and is the favoured endgame element as they can access all their upgrades from farming one zone.
- Nature – The supportive element, has equipment that amplifies healing and debuffing abilities.
It is important to understand that early IC combat in MWI is very fluid, a Melee character may choose to swap between Stab and Smash in order to boost their damage or accuracy levels, or a Mage may flip between elements depending on their current need.