Idle Ants is a new idle clicker game from Madbox, that combines light, simple graphics with a straightforward gameplay that players across ages can easily grasp in seconds. The game lets you take command of a continuously growing ant colony that will continuously feed on anything they come across with. Every bit of food they gather earns you cash, which in turn is spent on recruiting more ants for the colony as well as improving the ants’ performance as far as gathering food is concerned.
Idle Ants lets you dive in straight into the game without any tutorial save for the initial messages to instruct you on the basic goals in your adventure. There is little to no pressure at all involved and you can make progress in the game regardless of how you play it. Once you have launched the game, you will continue to earn idle rewards from it even while you are offline and away from the game.
While Idle Ants actually leaves you with zero chance of failing or losing in the game, there are naturally faster and more efficient ways of progressing through the game and unlock new worlds one after another. If you are eager to see the next set of items to be devoured by your colony of ants in the game, then our Idle Ants guide has everything you need to know to jumpstart your adventure!
1. Keep The Multipliers Active
You would naturally be inclined to start growing your ant colony as soon as you dive into the world of Idle Ants. It is a satisfying scenario to watch your ants at work as they tear down whichever object is available and observe them bring bits and pieces of it back to their anthill. It can be a much satisfying experience as well to witness as your ants increase in number with each upgrade and move faster as well.
Before spending cash on upgrades or doing anything else for the matter, what you should initiate first are the profit boost and speed boost that becomes available for you as soon as you start playing. The income multiplier is the most basic boost that becomes available and you can see its banner pop up at the upper left side of the screen. The speed multiplier, along with additional temporary boosts will become available via its respective banner that pops up on the right side of the screen.
Both multipliers will require you to watch a 15 to 30-second video ad to enjoy the boosts that last for about 30 seconds as well. It is important to note that while you can still make good progress even without patronizing ad boosters, doing so will tremendously speed up your progression.
The 2x income multiplier is the buff that reaps the most reward as you will practically earn twice as much for the duration of the boost. The speed multiplier lets your ants move a lot faster as well, indicated by the blue boosters that appear on their rear end. Both multipliers become more valuable as your colony grows and keeping them active as often as you can will have your ants gorging down items within a couple of minutes or so.
2. Maintain As Little Idle Cash As Possible
As a common feature across idle clicker games is continuous streams of profit that you earn regardless of what you do, a basic strategy that applies to all games within the genre involves keeping them at the minimum as well. Although having a huge reserve of cash is a sight to behold, the more cash you actually keep in stock means the less efficient you are in terms of managing the colony.
Every bit of upgrade you spend cash on contributes to an increase in your colony’s productivity. Holding on to any amount of cash that can be sufficient to purchase any upgrade means you are earning less than you should. As such, one of the key strategies you need to keep in mind and practice in Idle Ants is ensuring that the amount of cash you see at the upper left corner of the screen is always never enough to purchase any of the available upgrades.
3. Follow The Basic Investment Strategy
Relative to the above strategy, you are very much free to spend away your earnings however you want on the trio of upgrade options below the screen. Any upgrade purchased directly leads to higher profits in the same period of time afterwards and the more important aspect of investment in Idle Ants still revolve around doing so at the soonest and not keep any amount of earnings idle.
You will often be made to choose among speed, workers, and strength as investment options, provided you can afford an upgrade in each of them. Speed and worker upgrades are relatively affordable but strength upgrades are a lot more expensive. As you continuously spend the income you are earning on the first 2 investment options, you might worry about strength not being invested in enough as continuously investing your idle cash on the other 2 upgrade options will hardly allow you to amass a big enough amount of cash for even a single purchase of a strength upgrade.
Just to summarize what each upgrade can do, speed naturally increases travel time for your ants to move from the anthill to the food supply and vice versa. Workers relate to the number of ants you have in your colony and you can keep track of their numbers with the counter at the upper right corner of the screen.
Last, but definitely not the least, is your ants’ strength, which determines how easily they can nibble through the target object and tear it apart with their mandibles. You will notice early on that ants will take some time crowding around the target item as they chew off bits of it to take back home to the anthill. As their strength increases, the time they spend on the item will noticeably be shorter, resulting in a faster turnaround of labor and quicker generation of cash.
To ensure that you are investing in upgrades in the most efficient way possible, always opt for the cheaper one to buy first in regular situations and purchase the most expensive whenever you get your hands on a huge sum of cash. In this sense, you will always be switching upgrade purchases between speed and the number of workers, given that purchasing one will make the other cheaper than the next upgrade. Prioritizing strength comes whenever you have enough cash to do so.
Fortunately, Idle Ants provides a ton of opportunities for you to earn tons of cash in an instant. These are basically the best opportunities as well to spend oodles of cash on investing in strength, sometimes even numerous times in one go.
The biggest loads of profits in Idle Ants can be earned from idle rewards. Your colony will continue to earn cash while you are away and the amount of cash you earn depends on the upgrades you have invested in as well as the length of time that has passed since you last played the game. Unlike most idle sims that set a limit to the time within which you must log back in to claim idle rewards, your idle earnings in Idle Ants can grow continuously without limits.
Beyond the huge amount of cash you can readily earn, you will also be presented with an opportunity to claim 3x as much after watching a short video ad.
Every time your ants fully consume a food item, or whatever object it is that they can devour, you will receive a huge amount of cash instantly. Again, instead of claiming the rewards outright, you can opt to watch a 15 to 30-second video ad to triple the amount of cash rewards you can claim. The amount varies on the object consumed, but will always be attractive enough for you especially if you want to purchase some upgrades afterwards.
One scenario to keep in mind is when you are just a few bucks short of being able to purchase an expensive strength upgrade. Although we recommend always going for the other 2 upgrade options unless you received a huge bulk of cash, being close enough to afford a strength upgrade should be considered as well if you should hold on to your idle cash a bit. In any case, it is a decisive point that depends entirely on you as well as the amount of time you still have to spend on the game.
4. Always Tend To VIPs
Relative to the aforementioned tip, Idle Ants also has a VIP feature that visits your screen every once in a while. Like some boosts, the VIP ant carrying a huge bag of money will only be around for a few seconds, so if you need loads of extra cash quickly, it is best to tap on the VIP ant before it disappears.
The amount of instant cash you can receive from the VIP ant will vary depending on your progress in the world but, in each instance, it is much bigger that what you would receive from gathering food within the same amount of time, if you chose to ignore playing the 15 to 30-second ad that comes with the VIP.
In truth, there are a lot of video ads included in Idle Ants and if you watch each one that comes your way, you might actually spend more time doing so than actually playing the game. On the other hand, though, it is a free game that largely relies on ads to be continuously available for everyone to enjoy. One way to get the most out of the video ads is to actually run them through while watching a movie and then play ignoring ad boosts once you have enough cash to run some upgrades.
5. Use Extra Squad Bonuses Strategically
One unique ad boost that is among the features of Idle Ants is the squad bonus boost that pops up on the right side of the screen from time to time. In addition to the speed multiplier and the income multiplier, this boost will temporarily recruit a random number of ants to help your colony decimate the item faster and transport materials back to the anthill at a much faster pace. You can easily notice the instant recruits with their pink color in contrast with your regular ants that come in black.
Although taking advantage of this feature whenever it becomes available is a good thing, utilizing them in the best way possible requires a good sense of timing. Each food source or random item your ants disassemble and take back to the anthill for cash have limited supply of materials. If you are close to gathering every bit of crumb from the food source or whatnot, then summoning an extra supply of additional ants may not become as beneficial.
Note that the instantly recruited ants will only proceed to chomp down at the target object and carry crumbs of it to your anthill once, before leaving. Shifting to a new item after completing the current one will not extend the temporary ants’ stay longer and they may simply just leave without earning you anything extra. In such situations, it is best to wait until your regular ants finish their big meal and summon the squad bonus at the start of the next item.
6. Unlock New Worlds As Soon As Possible
One of the more intriguing aspects of Idle Ants come from the wide selection of food items and materials that your ants devour for cash. Every item consumed earns you a load of cash and also fills up the bar at the top of the screen. This bar indicates how close you are to unlocking the next world, filled with more unique items to consume for your colony as well as higher earning rates to help you jumpstart your colony’s growth in that world. You need to pay a small amount to unlock the next world, but once you are able to afford it, there is no reason to hold back as a bigger adventure filled with more items await you on the new world.
What typically happens in most idle clicker sim games is that you go through a complete reset whenever you progress enough to transfer into the new, bigger world. Your cash and upgrades reset and you start building up again at a relatively faster rate than the previous world to get back into your former upgrade level faster.
In Idle Ants, moving on to a new world will have you start from the barest upgrade levels at the starting point. You will still have the idle cash you earned from the previous world, and it is easy to notice how fast cash comes in with every chunk of material that your ants bring home to your anthill. Within a much shorter span of time, you will be able to reach upgrade levels to match the one in your previous world and start earning more cash per second.
While you might expect that the previous world has been lost and forgotten, you will be surprised to find that it still exists and can still be visited. More importantly, you can still purchase upgrades on it, complete the world over and over and increase the profits you earn from it on top of your earnings in the new world. Naturally, though, your focus in terms of active participation should be the newer world, as the profits it can earn you per second cannot be matched by the earnings of the previous one.
In any case, newer worlds are much more challenging to complete and the more worlds you unlock, the more exciting yet demanding managing ants across all of it becomes. Always place the newer, more profitable worlds at the top of priorities and you will continue to earn profits as efficiently as possible.
That wraps up all the tips and strategies we have for Idle Ants. We certainly hope that you picked up some valuable tips that you can readily apply to your subsequent dives in the game and that you enjoyed reading our guide as well. If you have your very own tips or strategies for Idle Ants that you would want to share with us, do not hesitate to do so and drop us a note down below!