Idle Eleven Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Cheats & Strategies for Earning Tons of Cash

Tired of soccer or association football games for mobile devices that are either too complex or too simplistic, or simply tired of the genre in general but still wanting something that allows you to run your own football club? If so, we suggest downloading Gaminho’s Idle Eleven, which is made by the same company that gave us games such as Top Seed Tennis Manager and Rugby Duel to name a few.

This is an idle clicker/idle swiper game where you can become the richest football tycoon in the world by recruiting star players, swiping to earn more cash for your club, and customizing your club in a number of ways for those little cosmetic changes. You can earn in-game cash online or offline, and speaking of things like that, this iOS and Android title also does not require any internet connection – play online if you want to boost your earnings with ads, play offline if you want a faster gaming experience!

Truly, this is a game that won’t ask much out of you – it’s a relaxing title that doesn’t require you to crunch a ton of numbers and make tough decisions, because once again, this is an idle clicker. But even idle clickers (or swipers) still have a bit of a learning curve, and even the relaxing mechanics don’t stop players from trying to achieve their objectives as soon as possible. So read on and check out our Idle Eleven beginner’s guide, where we shall discuss everything you need to know if you want to maximize your earnings and minimize the time it takes to reach your goals.

1. This Is Not Your Traditional Football Management Game

In a sense, Idle Eleven is a football management game, because you can sign new players and replace them, as well as choose your own formation as needed, or if you feel like it. However, there is nothing traditional with this title in the context of association football, as the mechanics play out more like the average idle clicker. When your players take the pitch, they are actually earning cash for you, which you can then collect by swiping. And as you earn more in-game cash, you’ll have more to spend on new players that could then earn you more cash due to their higher skill levels and stats.

So how does this work exactly? After choosing your country among the available options (the game mainly includes the top 50 or so nations in FIFA’s rankings), the game will talk you through a brief tutorial, which includes five main quests that you need to fulfill in order to continue playing unsupervised. First off, you’ll have to recruit some players by tapping on the square for each of the 11 positions on field – at the end of the day, you can just tap on any one of the available six players, whose base stats are relatively the same (per position) and have the same effect on your earnings regardless of which stat you choose to upgrade later on.

Once you’ve got a couple players, you can start swiping on the screen in any direction, or choosing not to – whatever will be earned can always be tapped on or swiped at any time, with the usual option to earn in-game currency offline when you’re not actively playing the game. There are some limits, however, to the offline cash you can earn, and we shall be discussing this in a later tip.

Once you’ve earned enough currency to afford a new player, you can then tap on their photo on the field and replace them with someone else playing the same position – your old player is discarded forever, while the new one will take over and help your cause with better stats and more cash-making ability. The more you earn cash, the faster it will take you to level up, while also receiving other types of financial bonuses in the game, all of which we shall try to cover in this guide. As for the quests we mentioned earlier, these seem to be exclusively for tutorial purposes, as the rest of the game doesn’t come with any questing/achievements mechanic where you can earn bonus cash by completing certain tasks or reaching certain milestones.

2. Keep On Watching Videos To Multiply Your Earnings

One thing you will need to do a lot of if you’re trying to earn more cash and upgrade your lineup sooner rather than later is to watch as many videos as you could. For starters, the game will ask you if you want to watch a video to triple your offline earnings – do this for as long as the game allows you to. Take note, however, that the offline cash does not get added to your balance immediately – once you hit on “Let’s Swipe” after watching videos (or choosing not to), you will have to manually swipe on your players to collect your earnings.

Aside from this option to triple your offline earnings, Idle Eleven will also allow you to double your online earnings by watching these same 30-second ad videos. One video will let you earn double cash for five minutes, though you’ll need to watch another video to add an extra five-minute window to multiply your currency by two. Likewise, the game lets you double your earnings each time you level up, so take advantage of this opportunity as well by tapping on the upper-right icon with your level once it turns into a glowing icon with an arrow inside it – watch the video to double your sponsorship rewards and you won’t be sorry you did!

Videos will also allow you to increase your cash earnings and join special events, which we shall be discussing in our very next tip. What are these events and how can they affect your bottom line?

3. What Are Special Events?

Special events aren’t, in the usual sense of the term, limited-time series of activities or tasks that need to be completed within the same day, week, or what have you. These are events that randomly pop up on the upper right corner of your screen (below your level indicator, that is), and you’ll need to tap on the special event icon within a few second before time runs out and it disappears. Likewise, these events will only take a few seconds to complete once you decide to watch the ad video to participate.

Basically, a special event in Idle Eleven is a quick minigame where you can earn some extra cash for your team. These minigames include “Business Time,” where, for 15 seconds, you can earn by tapping on each player as quickly as you can once an icon appears underneath their photo. Make sure you tap on the icon before it disappears – tapping on it will notify you that that player has earned more because of a new endorsement deal, a new relationship, a good interview, a new addition to the family, or other random events that could increase their market value. It’s very simple, but in general, it won’t earn you as much as the minigame we shall be discussing next.

In addition to Business Time, there’s also the “Matchday” minigame, where your goal is to pass the ball by swiping between two players where the ball-like icon appears, with these icons shifting for each time you make a successful or unsuccessful swipe to connect. At times, multiple players may have icons underneath them, so this could make things confusing and cause you to start swiping willy-nilly. But that also gives you more options when it comes to successfully connecting two icons and earning more in-game dollars. This would also last 15 seconds but also allow you to earn some serious cash on top of what your players are normally earning.

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with how these two minigames work, you may want to try focusing on tapping or swiping on your highest-ranked players, or those that have the highest earning capability. This maximizes the bonus cash you can earn once the 15-second minigame is complete, and best of all, you’ll still be given a video option if you want to TRIPLE your earnings from the minigame.

As you can see, this feature is a quick and easy way to add to your earnings online, on top of the usual doubling or tripling of online/offline income in order to boost your cash totals. Make sure you never pass up a chance to play a special event, though be warned as well – it appears that the game will demand a VERY stable internet connection so that you can be credited for watching the video and allowed to play the special event. This may or may not be a bug, because we haven’t had any issues watching videos for double or triple cash.

4. Star Up Your Players But Don’t Overdo It

As we mentioned earlier, each player in Idle Eleven comes with six ratings – Diving, Reflexes, Handling, Positioning, Kicking, and Speed for goalkeepers, and Defending, Physical, Speed, Passing, Shooting, and Dribbling for non-goalkeepers. The cost of upgrading each stat will depend on how important it is to the position in question – for instance, Defending will cost less when you’re upgrading a Defender, but will cost more than the other stats when it comes to your Forward upgrades. Once all these upgrades add up, however, they will have the same impact on a player, which means you can just keep hitting on any (or all) of the six upgrade buttons until you’ve leveled up, or starred up the player you’re trying to improve.

Leveling up a player increases their earning ability, so in the early goings, make sure you’ve got everyone on your lineup up to one or two bronze stars before replacing them – players can earn up to five stars per tier, with a total of five rarity tiers, namely Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond.

You would not, however, want to keep starring up a player once you can afford replacing them with higher-ranked players. For example, a rank 23 player with four bronze stars won’t earn you as much cash as a rank 24 player without any stars! Sure, it may be cool to keep starring them up as you hope to reach Diamond rarity, but in most cases, especially in the early stages, you’re better off replacing them with higher-rank players once you can afford to.

5. You Can Change Your Club Name And Colors For Free Once Per Day

Now this won’t really have any bearing on your performance, but it’s nonetheless a neat way to spice things up on a daily basis. Idle Eleven allows you to choose your club’s name, city, logo, and colors – among others – by tapping on your logo on the upper left corner of your screen. You can choose from a variety of cities and nicknames and about a dozen each logos and uniform designs, and combine different colors, with a choice of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors for your uniform. That allows for a lot of customization, but we must caution you again that this is strictly for cosmetic purposes and can only be done for free once a day.

If you change your mind and want to perform a second round of customizations, you’ll need to pay some cash, with the cost varying depending on what your club’s Team Rating is at the time. That means if your Team Rating is 23.7 – with your players capable of earning you billions per second – you’ll have to pay around $35 billion in cash if you want a second club details change in the same day!

6. Reach Specific Team Rating Levels To ‘Prestige’

Earlier, we mentioned that it’s not really a good idea to keep leveling up your players as opposed to replacing them once you can afford to do so. One other reason to do this, especially once you get closer to a milestone Team Rating, is this tip – at first, the game will award a generous amount of bonus cash if you reach the Team Rating specified in the upper part of the screen, and once you reach a Team Rating of 25, you will have an opportunity to “prestige,” or to start your game from scratch, losing all your cash as your old club is inducted into the Hall of Fame but enjoying faster progress for your second playthrough.

Of course, there’s no rush when it comes to reaching this milestone, but if you want to make better progress, it’s best to focus on those player replacements once you’re closing in on the specified Team Rating that will make your sponsors happy enough to allow you to start a new club and earn cash faster.

7. Team Formation Does Not Have Any Bearing On Your Earnings

In your traditional football management game, your team formation is important – you wouldn’t want to be using a 4-3-3 formation if you’ve got a weak attack, and conversely, 4-5-1 is not really the best way to make use of a club that has a plethora of talented goal scorers. But in Idle Eleven, team formation does not have any effect on your progress except when you change it for the first time and move closer to completing your tutorial quests.

You can change from a 4-4-2 to a 4-3-3, for instance, and see no effect whatsoever on how much cash your players are earning. You will see their positions change based on their placement in the formation – a center-forward, for example, could become a center attacking midfielder – but that won’t make them any more (or less) productive in terms of earning cash. It’s all cosmetic, in other words, so there’s no real need to change your formation, to be completely honest about it.

8. What Is VIP Club And Should You Join It?

As is the case with many other games, Idle Eleven follows the freemium model, which allows you to enjoy a full-featured game for free, but offers special perks if you choose to pay real money to play it. You can take advantage of these perks by joining the VIP Club, which, as explained by the game, removes all advertisements and triples the cash generated online by your players, the experience gained by swiping and earning cash, and the rewards you can earn in special events.

Most importantly, VIP Club also allows you to add an Assistant Manager that will let you earn offline cash for 10 hours instead of the usual two – that’s right, there is a caveat to earning offline in this game, and it’s the fact that you can only earn up to two hours’ worth of cash while away, unlike other games that let you collect offline earnings that pile up while you’re gone for up to one day, or even two days in some cases.

How much does VIP Club cost? According to the game’s description of this premium membership program, it will cost you a little more than $4 USD or its local equivalent a week, although you get a free three-day trial, with the game charging you for your first week if you do not cancel within that 72-hour period. We would recommend taking advantage of the trial if you want to earn cash quicker and make some serious in-game progress, albeit at your own risk – make sure you set your reminders for three days after signing up so that you don’t end up accruing significant charges on your form of payment! (Or small ones, assuming you cancel after the first week.)

There you have it! This wraps up our beginner’s guide for Idle Eleven. If you happen to know additional tips or tricks for the game, feel free to let us know in the comment area below!