Art Inc. Ultimate Guide: 13 Tips & Tricks to Earn More Gems and Become an Art Tycoon

Art Inc. is a surprisingly complex idle game created by PIXIO, the developer behind Tap Tap Trillionaire. In this mobile game you play as the heir of an eccentric billionaire who has dedicated his life to collecting art. Unfortunately, your rich uncle’s most prized possession, the “real” Mona Lisa is stolen, and his art gallery is set on fire as soon as he puts you in charge. The good news is that his butler, Wilfred, is there to help you rebuild your uncle’s art empire. Some shady character is also generous enough to lend you the money you need to buy your first artifact from the auction.

Now, it’s all up to you to fill your new gallery with different pieces of art from all over the world, collect money from patrons, hire guards, and chase after thieves! We have already published an Art Inc. beginner’s guide a few days ago, with a bunch of tips and tricks for those starting out. This time we are back with even more tips on how to earn more gems in the game and tricks to help you become a billionaire museum tycoon as fast as possible. It’s a tough job, but our Art Inc. ultimate guide is here to help you every step of the way!

1. Upgrade Your Paintings

As with any idle game, you make money through the passive income you generate. The quests you complete in Art Inc. will reward you with money from time to time, but majority of your earnings will come from the art on display. That is why you should always upgrade all your artifacts as much as you can. Don’t worry about the amount of gold you spend because you will earn all that back quickly. While you would want to have extra high-level artifacts on standby in case the ones on display are stolen, you should prioritize rare pieces when upgrading. You won’t have enough money to max out every single piece of art you own, so learn to invest in the right ones.

2. Check What’s Trending

When you look at your Collection, you will notice that the artifacts have icons on them. The red icon is Art, the blue icon is Historical, the green icon is Science, and the purple icon is Fantasy. Some artifacts have two icons which means they fall under two categories. The Dinosaur Fossil, for example, is both Historical and Science. If you look at the top left corner of the screen, you will see one of the icons there. The icon on the top left tells you what category is trending at the moment. Any art from that category that is put on display will get a boost in earnings. Try to put out art that match the trending category as much as you can in order to earn a lot of money quickly.

3. Winning At The Auction Is Not Always Good

The easiest way to get new artifacts in Art Inc. is by going to the auction house. There are different auction options, each with its own collection. Once you collect all the art from one auction, you won’t be able to buy from it anymore. Each auction has an average price. As the price goes up, so does the rarity of the artifacts you can purchase. Artifacts don’t always give out more money just because you got them from rarer auctions. Make sure you pay attention to the gold earned before putting it up for display.

Before an auction begins, you will be asked to choose which artifact to bid for. Make sure you look carefully because you could end up bidding for a fake. The differences are easy to spot for the lower rarity artifacts, but as you progress, it gets more difficult to spot fakes. Take your time and look at every detail. If you run out of time and you are not sure whether or not you are bidding on a fake, just sit it out and try again later on. If you accidentally won the auction for a fake artifact, you have the option to get your money back by watching a video advertisement.

4. Bring Extra Cash

Now that you know what to look for in auctions, you need to make sure you get what you want. The list of auctions will have an average price listed. Don’t go to an auction with just the exact amount because bids usually go much higher than that. For Gritty’s auction, you can just bring double the listed amount. You will have to bring three to five times more if you’re going to Dolton’s Emporium, though. The last thing you want is to go through all that trouble of fishing out the real artifact only to lose it to Granny Smith during the bidding.

5. Keep Recruiting Characters

The game lets you assign one character per artifact on display. They have different skills that can help you. Some characters increase the earnings of the art they are guarding. Others can help minimize the risk of the artifact getting stolen. Characters have different star ratings. You can get characters with 1- to 4-star ratings for free every few hours, but you will need to spend 75 gems if you want to get 4- to 6-star ones. The higher the star rating, the better their skills will be. Make sure you always assign the best characters to the rarest pieces of art on display.

Don’t worry if you get duplicate characters when you recruit. Duplicates are needed in order to raise the skill level of your characters. This is the only way to improve character skills. When a skill levels up, its attributes improve. For example, David is a 1-star character with the skill Guard Artifact. He is able to protect artifacts from getting stolen by 5%. If you get another David, his Guard Artifact skill levels up and the chance to protect artifacts becomes 7%.

6. Complete More Quests

Aside from the skills they possess, characters also give out quests. That means you get more quests the more characters you have. Quest rewards include gold, gems, and more artifacts. Of course, this does not mean you should accept all quests. Some quests will have a percentage of success on them, and the reward will be a new artifact. Your character will ask for a lot of money in order to secure the piece of art. If it’s 50% or below, you may as well decline it because it will most likely fail, and the money you invested in them will go to waste. You will have the option to retry a failed quest by watching a video advertisement, but it still has a chance to fail again.

The quests appear on the left side of the screen. Tap on a character icon to check out the quest they have for you. Some quests are easy, but the rewards are small. Quickly complete the easy quests in order to get better ones in the queue. If a quest asks you to display specific pieces of art, make sure you collect earnings from the existing display before replacing them with the ones you need to put up.

7. Manage Your Art Display

The Scream is the first artifact that you will acquire in Art Inc. You can level it up to improve its earnings, but you shouldn’t hold on to it just because it’s your first. You will continue to acquire higher-value artifacts as you progress. Since expanding your gallery takes a ton of money each time, you will have a lot more artifacts than you will have room for. Make sure you maximize each display slot by taking down low-value art and replacing them with rare ones.

Aside from choosing based on rarity, you should also consider the amount of time each art earns. If you will be playing actively, you should put up art that earn every 5 minutes. If you will be logging off for the day, put up art that takes hours to fill up. This is to ensure your art will not be sitting at full capacity while you sleep.

8. Stop Those Thieves

The very first thief you will encounter is the Silver Fox. He isn’t the only thief in town, though. When your art gets stolen, it will not be available for display until you get it back. You can always send one of your guards to chase after it, and they have a 100% of retrieving the artifact, but it will take time. Some artifacts only take an hour to recover, and you can easily speed that up by watching a video advertisement. Others, however, will take several hours, so it’s really inconvenient if a rare piece gets stolen.

Thieves usually drop by whenever you log back into the game after being offline for a while. One way to stop them is to turn off your device’s auto-sleep function and keep the game running at all times. That really isn’t the practical option since you’re going to have to use your device for other things at some point.

The only other way to keep thieves at bay is by hiring characters that have the Guard Artifact skill. The higher the star rating of the character, the better the chances of protecting the art. For example, David only has a 5% chance of defending your art, but Zeus, a 6-star character, has a 40% chance of doing so.

9. Complete The Silver Fox Challenges

Remember that thief that started this whole disaster to begin with? Well, he has the audacity to give you quests in order to get the stuff he stole back. Tap on the book icon on the top right of the screen to view his quests. Each quest will require you to get three artifacts. Silver fox will give you a hint on where to get them. For example, he might tell you to check out the auctions, or to find an artifact through exploration.

Auctions are easier since you can just keep going back until you get the piece that you need. As for exploration, it takes both luck and money. You will have to wait until your characters give you an exploration quest. Once they do, you will have to give them money and wait for them to return. You can watch an ad to reduce the timer by one hour. When they return, there is a chance that they will have the artifact that you need. The Silver Fox has three challenges in total. You will unlock him as a caretaker if you complete all three.

10. How To Earn Free Gems

Gems are the premium currency of Art Inc. There are several uses for it, but its most important purpose is unlocking 4- to 6-star characters. If you don’t want to spend real money, there are still a few ways for you to earn gems for free. The first one is by simply binding your Facebook account. Tap on the gear icon on the top right of the screen then choose the Facebook icon. Give the necessary permissions and you will earn 20 gems for free.

A second way to earn gems is through the fountain. Swipe all the way to the right-most screen to see your fountain. It earns a handful of gems every four hours, but you can increase the earnings by upgrading it. The first upgrade costs 100 gems, which seems painfully expensive, but you will eventually earn back what you spend.

Another way to earn a few gems here and there is by completing character quests. You won’t know which quests give out gems, so it is best to complete as many as you can. If you are interested in quests that give out a lot of gems, though, you should work on the three Silver Fox Challenges. These require a lot of work, but you get 50 gems for the first one, 75 for the second, and 100 gems for the third. Altogether that’s worth three premium recruitment chances.

11. Watch A Lot of Ads To Double Your Earnings

When you look at the upper right side of the screen, you will see a TV icon. Tap on it in order to watch video advertisements. Each ad you watch will double your earnings for an hour. You can watch multiple ads in a row for a maximum of 8 hours. Make sure you always have this boost active in order to get the most out of your paintings. Don’t forget to watch all eight videos before you log off for the day, so you don’t lose the boost while you sleep.

12. Take Advantage Of The Time-Lapse Cheat

One of the oldest tricks in any idle game book is the time-lapse cheat. It is done by changing the time and date settings of your device by a few hours in order to fool the game into thinking that enough time has passed. You can switch the time forwards and backwards repeatedly as much as you want. There is no penalty for moving back time, so you can always correct your device when you’re done cheating.

There are several ways you can benefit from this cheat. The first is it will max out all your art on display instantly, giving you plenty of coins in the process. This also works for the gem fountain, which is really the best thing about the cheat. With enough patience, you will be able to get all the gems you need to unlock and upgrade every caretaker on the list.

The time-lapse cheat is also great for skipping any timers in the game. If you don’t want to wait for a character to complete a quest, or if you want to retrieve a stolen artifact right away, just move the time forward for the required number of hours. You can also use this to eliminate the cooldown time in between auctions. Gritty’s auction just takes a few minutes, but Sodabee’s and Dolton’s take much longer, so you might want to use the cheat then. Don’t forget that using the cheat will also use up your advert boost, so always watch some more ads after each time lapse.

13. Decorating Your Gallery

Since Silver Fox burned down your uncle’s lavish gallery, you start off with a drab warehouse. As you earn more money, you will be able to purchase visual upgrades for your gallery. Tap on the tree icon at the bottom of your screen to open up the Decorations menu. Tap on the Swap button for the decoration you want to change. You will be given multiple options, but you will most likely be able to afford the one that costs coins. They don’t even cost a whole lot, so you should be able to upgrade everything within the first couple of hours of playing the game.

If you want the best-looking option, you will have to pay using Bucks. Unfortunately, the only way to earn Bucks in the game is by inviting friends to play it. Every three friends you successfully invite will reward you with Bucks. The more friends you invite, the more you earn. Don’t worry too much if you’re not able to recruit enough people, though. The gallery decorations are purely cosmetic and have absolutely no impact on your earnings. Apparently, your customers really do come for the art.

Building a gallery from scratch isn’t easy, but with the help of our Art Inc. guide, you will be an art tycoon in no time! If you know other ways to earn more coins in the game, be sure to drop us a line in the comments below!