While I never played much of RuneScape itself I have been getting quite an itch to want to jump back into that game. With Melvor Idle claiming it was inspired form such a great old game I certainly had to check it out myself. Even more so during the holidays when I'm looking for some kind of idle game.
Before you can go do anything in the game unless you decide to skip over it you start on tutorial island. Which is cutting quite close to what one would do in RuneScape. It’s also somewhat funny this tutorial island feels like both old-school and RuneScape 3 versions of it.
It explains some basics in the sense that old-school RuneScape does. It then once you are done drops you off with a whole bunch of things never talked about kind of like RuneScape 3 in a way. At the very least the game has some helpful further sections of information you can read along the way.
While Melvor Idle is not the usual kind of idle game I play on rare occasions I do play one of these. I found the level of needing to check in on things from time to time to be somewhat fun. For basic things like mining, fishing, woodcutting, and many other gathering skills in Melvor Idle you can just select to train that skill and let it idle for quite some time.
The biggest catch however is the game will only idle offline for up to twenty-four hours. This in a way builds into the system itself a need for the player to return. There are also many things at the lower levels you need to be somewhat around to switch things when needed.
Once you gather enough supplies it’s time to craft them up into something useful. You can’t both be gathering and crafting at the same time. So, I have found when I have time to be around that I'll switch over to smithing armor, weapons, firemaking, cooking, fletching, and many other activities in the game.
If many of these things are starting to sound like stuff you would do in RuneScape one can start to see where the “inspiration” came from. Even more with my limited knowledge of RuenScape when I took a look at the combat side of things in spell casting and runecrafting.
While magic was not a route I've at least taken as of yet in Melvor Idle. Mind, air, and other types of runes sure ring a bell. At the very least you can mine for the rune essence used in creating the lower-level runes. There are also creatures that you can kill that have a chance to drop many different types as well.
In a game like this, you have to work out what you want to focus on first. Now if I had picked a harder difficulty setting my skill levels would be locked to my combat level. However, since I did not do that since I'm new to the game. I can very easily take advantage of certain situations like mining and smithing skills.
I however can’t just go max out these skills and wear the best items in the game and then go level up combat. The items themselves have requirements on them. I found this out the hard way when trying to wear quite an upgraded level of armor and being told my defense skill was far too low to wear the armor I had crafted.
At the very least since I'm not restricted to leveling up gathering and crafting skills. I do find over nights and when I'll be away for some time. I’d rather leave myself mining something like coal that is needed with many other types of ores to smelt into bars.
That has no doubt made my mining skill my highest skill so far. This should be no shock to anyone since I tend to go into mining in games anyway. It is however an idle game so it’s not like it’s more exciting than just clicking a single button and waiting around and checking back into the game hours later to see how much I've mined.
There is also a nice long-term benefit of focusing on farming a single ore like coal or even an item. As far as mining goes, over time you can mine more ore before you hit a not-so-long cooldown period before being able to mine further.
You might notice next to all the different ores there is a count like 78/78 for Mithril ore. Each time I'm auto mining it reduces it by one till it reaches 0/78. Then there is a short amount of time that it sits on cooldown before starting all over again. Thankfully you don’t need to be around for that. It will just start auto-mining again when it’s time.
The more I do a certain action the more mastery I can from doing it. That entire system goes beyond the scope of what I'm looking to cover at a more basic level. It is however great to see they have a built-in system like this to reward performing the same task over and over again. Makes you wonder if you want to stop to try and increase mastery faster or just go for experience and get as high of a level as you can first.
Many other skills seem to have the sole purpose of boosting the amount of experience you gain from gathering. I so far have not found those skills to be quite worthwhile. At least many of them have a use in a passive thing in this game called Township which is another thing that is going beyond the scope of what I'm looking to cover here.
As I've progressed, I even buy upgrades in the shop that make actions in a particular skill go faster. Early on the cost for many was just gold. Later on, I'd need things like bars, logs, and so on before I could upgrade the tool that is being used in each of the different gathering and crafting professions.
One can however only focus on mining for so long before wanting to scratch that itch of combat. I have found at the lower levels combat is something you need to be somewhat active checking in on the game from time to time.
Starting you do not auto heal. So, you have to be around to click on any food if your health is getting too low. If you get killed, you stop attacking and have a chance to drop items on you. There is even a hardcore mode of the game where such a death would be game over.
Once you are further along into the game you can afford to unlock auto food usage. That, however, still presents an issue. Once you run out of food to eat to gain back health you are not naturally regening. You could get killed at some point. Stopping your progress and making other activities like mining a better long-term thing to leave skilling away.
Once you get some gear and combat skills like I have with melee combat. I have found that I can just sit on a lower-level creature farming it for experience with no threat of getting killed. If any damage is done, I'll regen faster than I'm taking damage.
This still leaves another issue and that is why I don’t level combat going while offline. Until I have acquired Amulet of Looting I have to manually click on loot all to get any items that have dropped. There is also a cap of 100 items before anything after that goes to waste.
That is assume you don’t get killed before looting or in my case, a few times I go do another activates before collecting. Thus, losing hundreds of items before realizing I've yet again forgotten to loot all.
While melee has been my main focus now since it’s quite cheap to get into. At some point perhaps I'll level up range and magic. The game even gives you a plus or negative bonus depending on what you are attacking and the type you are attacking with. Which will come quite in handy later on when I move beyond just the basic combat area.
As far as a 2D idle game goes there are some elements that for sure have felt like RuneScape without all the having to walk around and me getting lost aspects. Melvor Idle was also a lot more complex than I was expecting from an idle game.
I’m not sure yet if this will be a game I keep going and checking on from time to time. There are some more complex things I'd love to get deeper into this game and perhaps go over those systems a bit more in-depth in further posts.
At the very least it was a nice little time killer of a game. While this is not a game you can just leave alone for weeks on end as offline mode stops after a day of being offline. It can be something I have found myself logging into for a moment here or there when I can spare it to keep progressing along.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Melvor Idle. If you wish to further support my content you can use enjargames at checkout or this referral link for Melvor Idle on the Epic Game Store.
Disclosure: I received the game for free.
Disclosure: As a creator of the Epic Games’ Support-A-Creator Program, I may receive a commission from certain purchases.
