Most games nowadays are too competitive and too challenging – so much so they get in the way of relaxation. Players get bombarded by all sorts of minimizing and maximizing algorithms just to get optimal results. This can get too stressful for many players. Some of us just want to play a game and enjoy our time without having to worry about builds and strategies, right?
Fortunately, games like Idle Arks: Build at Sea exist thanks to developers like BHome. It’s a laid-back oceanic simulation game, and you can take all the time in the world to complete it. There’s no pressure, no challenges, or anything blocking you in your way to finishing the game. You’re also not limited by time or difficulty. The only thing that can get in your way is the game’s limited resources. That’s basically the only thing you have to manage here.
However, a game’s simplicity doesn’t mean that there are no objectively better ways of playing the game – there are still ways to make you progress faster. For a game that revolves around waiting, that’s a great thing. An idle game like Idle Arks is designed to make you wait for a long time, otherwise skip the wait by paying money or watching ads.
If you want to be able to progress quickly, you will have to follow this Idle Arks beginner’s guide. We found out ways to make you build your rafts and arks and other various vessels faster without having to spend a lot and minimizing your ad consumption. While there really isn’t any pressure to move on in the game, following this guide will get you to the ending faster. So strap on your seatbelts and try not to drown – we’ll have you building your grand ark in no time.
1. The Basics Of Idle Arks: Build At Sea
A short introduction is in order. Idle Arks starts with you waking up on a single raft. The Great Flood has just subsided, but there’s still barely any land to be seen in all directions. To survive, you have to build a bigger vessel. To do that, you’ll need resources – wood in particular. With such a devasting flood, the world has been littered with broken twigs and branches.
Luckily for you, you know how to swim. And somehow, there’s a tree growing on your raft. You can either wait for the tree to grow and harvest its twigs and branches for wood, or you can momentarily leave your raft to get floating wood back to the boat.
Your ships will become more elegant the further you get in the game.
Slowly, you can use the wood you collect to expand your ship. From simple rafts to big, majestic boats, you will be able to build them with wood. Gold-plated Egyptian-themed ships? With enough wood, you can build it.
But you don’t have to do everything alone. Even the biblical Noah didn’t build the Ark on his own – he had some help from his family. As for you, you can find other stranded survivors – both humans and animals – to help you in building your grand ark.
Whenever you start a new building project, it will be put on queue, and they will be completed one after another by your humans. Therefore, the more humans you have, the faster you’ll be able to complete building things. Humans are also there to harvest your trees, your crops, and flotsam.
Meanwhile, there are various animals that you can rescue from the flooded landscape. They produce different kinds of materials that your humans can collect – which somehow gets converted into wood. They act like extra sources of income, regardless of what they are.
In general, the more humans and animals you have on your ark, the better. They will be there to help you until you reach the end.
2. Row, Row, Row Your Boat
To progress through the game’s story, you have to guide your people through journeys across different islands. For every island you pass by, you’d usually discover new humans and animals. However, to be able to continue on with your journey, you’ll have to make sure that your ark is in good condition, and is well-equipped enough to course the waters.
You can see from the Map which companions you can get from the next stages in the game.
To help you keep track of your ship’s needs, the game gives you “Ark Missions”. These are lists of items and objects, usually ship parts, that you’ll have to build or acquire. Once you complete all the needed requirements, your ship will be able to continue its journey. Moving from island to island will unlock new Ark Missions. Complete Ark Missions in sequence and you’ll be able to reach the end of the story.
Sometimes, moving from one island to another will bring you to a new map. When this happens, a large tornado will suck your ship into the sky. Your current ship will be stored in a bottle, and your crew will be forced to start all over again with a new raft. Don’t feel discouraged, though! It’s all part of the plan. While you will virtually have to start over, your new raft will always be better than your previous one. It might not be obvious at first, but you’ll be able to see the difference when you start upgrading your new raft.
For example, on the third map “Red and Sand”, you’ll notice that your new raft is gold rather than wooden. Aside from the new coat of paint, your brand-new raft will actually be able to support more parts than your previous one, sometimes even earning multiple floors and being able to submerge parts of it!
3. Flotsam And Jetsam
As mentioned above, most of the wood you collect can be scavenged on floating planks on the waters. However, it’s not just planks of wood that you can get from the waters. There are three things you can get from the high seas: flotsam, message in bottles, and pots of gold.
You can just click the flotsam to have one of your human companions swim and retrieve the wood. Similarly, you can collect the message in bottles just by clicking on it and having someone retrieve it. Getting the messages is optional – you can complete the game without ever getting one. But they’re still worth the effort – they tell bits and pieces of the game’s story.
Some ships can submerge its first floor – making your Ark a submarine!
The third piece you can get from the sea are pots of gold. Funnily enough, it’s neither a pot nor do they give you gold. They are actually treasure chests that contain – you guessed it – wood. Lots and lots of wood. Some part of me thinks that these chests do actually contain gold, but in desperation, your folks throw the gold away and just dismantle the chests and use the wood for construction. Either way, these so-called pots of gold are worth getting. However, unlike the previous two, you can’t get these unless you watch an ad.
Is spending ten to thirty seconds watching an ad worth the loads of wood hidden in these chests? It depends on you. However, you can easily build parts of your ship if you constantly take these pots of gold off the water, so it’s worth doing if you can bear the ads.
If you’re not the type of person who likes to watch ads in your games, there’s something else you can do to get these loads of wood. We’ll tackle that in the next section.
4. Gems, Achievements, And Shortcuts
Aside from wood, there’s another resource that you will use in Idle Arks. These are gems – and they’re going to be your best friend in Idle Arks.
Gems are collected primarily by completing Ark Missions. Simply doing your tasks and building your ark will grant you gems without you noticing. Reaching certain milestones in your journey, called Achievements, can also net you gems. These milestones may be as simple as collecting a certain amount of flotsam, or increasing the number of companions you’ve saved from the flood.
Keep on finishing Ark Missions to progress the story and earn rewards.
What are gems for, you ask? They let you skip the ads while also getting the rewards. They’re basically your shortcut pass for everything in the game. See a pot of gold and you want to get all the wood without having to watch an ad? Spend gems. Do you want to double your idle rewards? Spend gems. Do you hate it when your companions go to sleep at night? Then spend gems to move time forward and wake them up at dawn instantly.
Gems are very rare in the game, but you can buy them in the store. You’re also going to get a lot of free gems in certain intervals in the game. Although it might be tempting to use your gems a lot of times early on so you’ll be able to reach the later maps faster, we recommended using these gems in those later maps instead.
As you move from one map to another, and with your rafts improving over time, the wood required to build parts become more expensive. Overall, the waiting time you have to endure in later stages is longer than in earlier stages, but the number of gems you have to spend to skip an ad or to wake your companions up will remain the same. And while your wood resources also increase in later stages, your gems are still better spent the later it is in the game. Keep this in mind whenever you feel the urge to spend gems.
5. General Tips And Tricks
You can also get one extra human companion from the wheel of fortune – Hindi. This is the only way to get Hindi in the game.
When building your ship, ship parts tend to be locked by prerequisites. Most of these parts require a certain number of flooring that needs to be built before they become available. You can easily see what the prerequisites are by the words “Unlock at” with the requirement below them.
For the floors, don’t waste your wood building as many as you can. Build only as much as you need to unlock the next ship part. This is so you can maximize your use of resources. Ship parts usually produce wood over time, or give you gems over time. Floors, meanwhile, don’t give you anything.
Sometimes, while playing, a wheel of fortune will appear. You can spin the wheel if you agree to watch an ad. Always take the opportunity to spin the wheel. At worst, you will get extra wood from it. Spinning the wheel can give you the Cat companion, who generates gems when petted. It’s the only way you can save Cat from being marooned forever, so make sure you spin the wheel often. You don’t want the little kitty getting stranded on its own!
If you want to completely eliminate ads from the game, you may spend a modest amount of money to have Ad-Free Gypsy join your crew. She’ll remove all the ads from the game, allowing you to earn all rewards immediately without spending gems.
Another companion you can get by spending money is Rich Peggy, the penguin. He’s relatively cheaper than Ad-Free Gypsy. Getting Rich Peggy onboard will double all your income forever. This means getting double the wood and double the gems. Imagine getting quadruple of what you usually get for idling, just by having Rich Peggy and then watching an ad whenever you open Idle Arks – that’s a lot of wood!
6. Set Sail Forever
Idle Arks currently has seven maps, spanning twenty stages. However, finishing the seventh map doesn’t mean it’s the end of the game for you. There’s a reason why the last chapter (at least for now) is called “To be continued”. Expect more maps coming your way later on.
Once completed, all your ships will be spirited away and stored forever for viewing inside glass bottles.
That’s a relief. I don’t want the ship I built lost forever. It’s a relief to know that the developers plan to add more maps in the future, allowing me to build even fancier ships later on. While we wait for the next chapters to be released, we can focus on collecting wood for the inevitable reset we’re getting once we move on to a new map.
With that being said, we hope our Idle Arks beginner’s guide was able to help you. Frankly, the game doesn’t really need a very complex guide to finish. We’re sure you can do it all on your own. Most importantly, we hope you enjoyed the game. It’s a very relaxing game to play while unwinding, which is a nice change of pace from the popular games available today. We hope this Idle Arks guide helped you relax better in your free time.