Regardless of the types of games you enjoy playing or if you prefer playing video games on one platform over another; if you love video games then chances are that you know what Kongregate is all about. Kongregate has been active in the mobile gaming industry since 2011 but has been around since 2006 as a PC and console publisher as well as one of the most popular portal for web-based games. It currently holds 29 games in its app portfolio and has an accumulated count of over 90 million downloads from the Google Play Store alone. AdVenture Capitalist, Animation Throwdown and Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre are Kongregate’s most popular games with each breaking the 10 million downloads barrier along with largely positive reviews from its users. As a respected developer and publisher of games across all genres, each game released by Kongregate on mobile platforms are practically instant hits.
Idle Frontier: Tap Tap Town on the Apple App Store, known as Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon on the Google Play Store is Kongregate’s latest offering on the mobile gaming market. It currently sits at #16 under Strategy Games in the Apple App Store and has nabbed respectable spots under the Top New Free Games in the Google Play Store. As idle clicker games has always been popular to many players, as well as people who do not have a lot of spare time to dedicate into more demanding genres, comparing Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon with other games within the genre makes it seem a little more complex than the rest. However, while the game packs a lot of content to keep you aiming towards something as you play it, it is actually as easy and simple to play and enjoy like any other casual game. If you enjoy idle clicker games especially those that offer a little more depth than the usual, then be sure to check this game out.
As an aspiring tycoon, Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon puts you in a quest towards establishing your own empire, one town at a time. As you enlist the help of locals to manage various businesses that continuously generate money, the challenges of running a multi-faceted trade empire in western towns can become much easier. Every bit of income you earn can be reinvested directly to each of the businesses you operate and achieving the various goals and challenges in the game can help you make each of the managers more efficient. Although you can make a lot more progress actually playing the game, generous amounts of money can still be earned while you are offline and away from the game. The fun and addictive elements of the game go beyond upgrading businesses and moving from the challenges of one town to the next as collecting and upgrading manager cards also add to Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon ’s appeal.
At the onset, Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon may appear to be a lot more complex than most idle clicker games that you have played but as you play through the initial town and be guided by the tutorial, you will surely be able to grasp the game’s mechanics in a matter of minutes. Everything is just a tap away and production and operation can become fully automated based on the manager cards you have and their upgrade level. Considering everything, you are guaranteed to make progress in the game regardless of how you play it and how much time you actually spend on it.
If you want to boost your earnings and progress faster than the average tycoon does, then check out our Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon beginner’s guide. We are going to share with you a number of Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon tips, cheats and strategies to jumpstart your game and set you forth on a faster path towards becoming a top tycoon.
1. Focus On Completing The Goals
The amount of money you make as you play Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon certainly brings a lot of excitement especially in combination with the fast pace at which you can purchase upgrades with the money you earn. In as much as you would like to consider money-making as the goal to progress through each town, it is simply not the case.
Earning money and investing profits to earn more money is the core of Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon but reaching a certain profit amount on its own won’t bring you closer to completing a level and moving on to the next. What you have to pay attention to are the goals outlined at the top of the screen as completing these will be your key to unlocking the next town.
Goals can involve a lot of different things from earning a certain amount of profits, upgrading managers, growing business, or even earning pies that you need to upgrade managers. For most towns early on, you will need to complete all objectives to reach your goal and head over to the next town. Later on, some of these objectives can be skipped as two or more will still be left by the time you are free to move to the next stage. For guidance, simply check the wagon above these goals as it indicates a trail that represents the number of goals you have to complete as well as tell you where you are and how close you are to reaching the end goal. In some instance, you will have to say goodbye to the large sums of money you will have to leave behind as it resets on the next stage but don’t fret as you get to keep your pies and managers at their current upgrade levels to the succeeding challenges. Also, you will certainly be able to make more money on the next town.
2. Maintain The Production Line Balanced
As you play and make progress in Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon, you will unlock more and more structures and the decision on how to reinvest your earnings can pose as a bit of a challenge. You will initially only be able to afford a select few upgrades but as profit keeps rolling in at a fast pace, you will soon have a ton of options to pick from. For starters, don’t worry much yet about how to go about upgrading the structures and understand how the whole operation goes. Everything revolves around three main stages: production, collection, and sales.
Production is handled by all the structures you unlock from the start of operations in town and consists of the actual creation of goods that you sell for money. The collection aspect is exclusively handled by one of two structures already available on the town when you get to it and the actual collection of goods is done by the wagon that travels around the map stopping in front of each structure that has a product that is ready for sale. Lastly, the sales part of your operations begins when the ship leaves and you earn more money once it returns.
It may not be readily observable especially when there are a lot of structures unlocked and running but what you would want is as close to an equal figure among these 3 groups. If your ship can haul in and distribute a thousand, then it would be best to ensure that the wagon can collect about the same amount with each of its trips into town and likewise, have every functional structure produce a total amount that is as close to the other 2 as possible. In some cases, the amount your production structures generate should be more than what both the collector and ship can stock as businesses that produce more expensive items tend to finish its cycle slower than others.
If you have yet to automate a particular business due to the absence of a manager, then you should take that structure of off your equation if you are going offline or see yourself doing a lot of things and not be able to consistently click on that structure for production. Keep in mind as well that the same upgrade level won’t necessary bring a closer balance to the structures particularly, the collection and the shipping ones given that managers for both potentially have different upgrade levels. As such look more into the actual values you see on each structures as your basis on how to keep all three functions as balanced as you possibly can.
3. Always Keep The Double Profit Multiplier Active
On its own, the structures generate products for sale at a fast enough pace especially in the starting stages of each town. As you progress further in the game and move to latter towns, it’s going to take a lot longer to complete goals and as a lot of it involves generating profits either directly or otherwise, having every bit of help to boost income generation should be opportunities that has to be taken advantage of. There are numerous ways in the game to earn extra earnings and also boost production but considering everything, the ad boost which doubles all amounts produced tops it all.
Keep in mind that this boost applies to everything and the more you earn means it always offers twice as much as that. Each 15 to 30-second video ad you watch via the ad booster grants you double profits for four hours and you can continuously watch videos to stack a total of 20 hours-worth of boost. As such, be sure to always keep it loaded especially if you are going to take a long rest from the game. Likewise, you should check on it every time you log in on the game and be sure to have it activated before proceeding to do anything else.
4. Go For Upgrade Milestones Whenever You Can
Each upgrade or additional purchase on any structure increases its efficiency little by little. You can see a progress bar on each of these structures that slowly grows whenever you invest on it for upgrades. On the bar reaches full, it means that you have hit a milestone and the outputs of that particular structure exponentially increases. As such, aim to upgrade structures with the intent of reaching certain milestones before moving on to do some upgrades on the next one.
Beyond the dramatic boost in productivity, you earn pies with every milestone on a structure you reach and considering that pies are exclusively important to upgrade your managers, it is always a good idea to earn as much of it as you can. Although structures differ extensively in terms of upgrade costs, you will notice, as you play, that costs on a lump sum amount won’t differ as much once you break milestones. As such following upgrade levels from the cheapest to the most expensive structure will be the natural flow of your investment.
Take note as well that you will see a “buy one” button at the bottom left side of the screen which pertains to the number of upgrade purchases per tap. Tap on it to have it read “buy max” so that every upgrade you make with each tap on the structure will purchase the max amount of upgrades you can currently afford. Conveniently enough, even if you could afford more, buying maximum halts at the next upgrade milestone for the structures so even if you cannot afford to upgrade all the way to the next one, you will clearly see how close you are to doing so.
5. Be Selective When Upgrading Managers
A huge booster for all the fun and excitement that Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon offers relate to the card collection part of the game in the form of the managers. While there is luck involved in securing cards from every chest you open, you will surely be getting enough to do some upgrades very early in the game. In as much as you would want to naturally upgrade each and every one of the managers you have enough cards for, the big delimiter comes in the form of pies you need to be able to do so. Pies serve as an exclusive resource you need to upgrading manager cards and as each manager level increases, so do the cost of doing an upgrade. As such, you have to be very careful before initiating an upgrade as it may take a while for you to earn more of the pies you need to perform the next one.
One particular game mechanic that may impact your decision to hasten upgrades would be the goals, which may be about upgrading a certain number of manager cards or spending pies. Keep in mind that whenever a goal like this pops up, two more will be available with it so if you can do well still even without upgrading a manager, then hold on to those hard-earned pies a little longer.
Another instance where you would want to push for a manager card upgrade is when a particular manager needs to reach a certain level before you can hire that manager or another one to supervise a structure and automate its operations. This situation on its own will probably be a critical point where you must push to upgrade a manager but combined with a pending goal as well, it becomes a must to accomplish. It would be an easier feat if you have both the required number of duplicate cards and enough pies, but if cards are a problem, try to gauge between having to spend gold to get these cards or do without them and still make a profitable run with a structure on manual production. IF you can provide sufficient supplies to both the collector and the ship that distributes goods, then you can most definitely do without having to spend on a card you need. In any case, completing other goals may still net you that card later on.
Considering everything, don’t upgrade any manager cards simply because you can afford to do so. If you have a plethora of pies and managers that can be readily upgraded, even in the absence of goals or structures requiring it, then at least consider the structures these managers are assigned to as you work towards keeping the 3 stages of production in balance as we mentioned earlier.
6. Automate As Much As You Can Before Leaving The Game
Considering that Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon is an idle clicker game, leaving the game idle to play on its own becomes more efficient with every manager you deploy at the structures to automate operations. As we mentioned earlier that the entire operation of your business is divided in three main parts, be sure to you have all of these parts represented as far as automation goes.
As far as importance goes, the shipyard and collector should be prioritize as there are no other structures that can serve as substitutes to their functions in the business operation. As far as production goes, it is okay to automate just one or a couple of the production structures to ensure a steady flow of profits but having more automated would always be better.
7. Take Advantage Of Freebies, Offers, And Events
Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon is actually a fairly-paced game with all the usual income you can generate relative to the goals you need to complete on each stage. With the double income multiplier, it goes even better as you will practically make progress at half the amount of time playing. That is not all you can get for free from the game as there are plenty of other freebies to earn with a little effort on your part.
For starters, be sure to tap on the bird that flies across the screen carrying a bag of coins. You will receive huge amounts of coins as you tap on it which can help speed up the upgrades you need to do. Whenever the bird is glowing, you can receive 10 times as much after watching a 15 to 30-second video ad. Sometimes, the bird will also reward you with gold, which is a premium currency that is very hard to earn. This is the more reason you should tap on that bird whenever you see it on your screen.
The shop, which you can access by clicking on the menu button at the bottom of the screen and then the dollar sign, doesn’t just offer items for sale. There are free crates containing pies and cards that you can claim once every 4 hours and the shop also holds some pretty enticing offers. If you click on the “offers” button at the top of the shop screen, you can see a list of activities you need to accomplish to earn some free gold.
At the bottom of each town, you may see an old lady and an events marker with a yellow glow around them. Click the old lady and watch a short video ad to earn 20 pies instantly. As for events, these are time-limited and may vary from time to time. As off this writing, though, the event objective invites you to play FishWorld, which is a mini-game of sorts with the very same mechanics as Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon. The challenge her is that you will most likely not be able to hire managers so everything will be manual taps. Beans you earn while playing the mini game will be converted into pies at 25%, so it’s a pretty sweet deal if you want to stock up on pies and upgrade your manager cards at a faster rate.
Although you can definitely make good progress in Idle Frontier: Tap Town Tycoon even if you don’t spend a lot of time actually playing it, you will come to discover its addictive charm as it surprises you on how much time has passed as you play it. Anyway, this is where we end our beginner’s guide for the game and we hope that the tips and tricks we shared has been helpful in boosting your progress in the game. If there are some tips or strategies you discovered relative to the ones we already discussed, feel free to let us know!
Henrik Nielsen
Friday 4th of October 2019
How do you spend marsmellows in the game.???