What do you do when you suddenly find yourself in a mysterious, ancient world with no idea how you got there? Without much time to look around or process what just happened, an elderly gentleman welcomes you into this mysterious world and tells you that you need to help his team excavate some legendary artifacts. You need to hurry because the fate of the universe depends on it. He manages to convince you that this endeavor is urgent and that he’s totally not a dastardly villain out to manipulate you into doing his shady bidding.
Really, he’s not.
Of course, you might have some questions about what’s going on, who this elderly gentleman is, why you’re here, why he’s here, if you can leave, if maybe there’s some coffee around to wake you up from what seems like a really weird dream sequence, but there’s no time for all of that—no time at all.
So, without much of a say or choice in the matter, you start helping the older gentleman who oddly reminds you of Jane Porter’s father in Disney’s Tarzan, except more devious-looking (just look at that mustache!). Maybe if you do what he says, he’ll eventually tell you how to get back to your world, wherever that is.
Naturally, you can’t help but feel like you’re being scammed a little, pretty much in the same way an unscrupulous salesman would start pushing you toward buying limited-time offers you just can’t afford to miss. But then again, what have you got to lose? The older gentleman did say the fate of the universe is at stake. What’s the worst that could happen?
Welcome to Temple Run: Idle Explorers.
Temple Run: Idle Explorers is an idle game from Imangi Studios, that delves more into the world of the popular series Temple Run, wherein you’re an explorer searching for artifacts and rare treasures. For those who are expecting Temple Run: Idle Explorers to play similarly to the first Temple Run or Temple Run 2, we’d like to point out early on that Temple Run: Idle Explorers still has running challenges but they don’t have the same mechanic as the original game.
For one thing, you won’t be able to control your runners in Temple Run: Idle Explorers and the running challenges here are much shorter. For the most part, this game is, as mentioned, an idle game so it’s more laid-back and the player’s participation is more passive than active.
With that out of the way, let’s briefly discuss the gameplay mechanics of Temple Run: Idle Explorers: like many idle games, you’ll have buildings (excavation sites) to unlock and upgrade, missions to complete, and a few ways to earn some extra rewards.
Familiar characters from the original Temple Run, such as Guy Dangerous, Scarlett Fox, Barry Bones, and a host of others, will eventually join you in exploring Aperion, which is the mysterious world you’re currently in. These characters will be crucial in helping you complete running challenges, which can open new excavation sites, as well as give you rewards.
Along the way, you’ll be able to discover pieces of different artifacts as you move from one location to another. By completing tasks indicated at the top of the screen, you’ll collect artifact pieces until such time that the artifact itself is rendered whole. Tasks can range from collecting a certain number of coins, unlocking buildings, hiring workers, getting Stars from running challenges, collecting scrolls, etc. Basically, an artifact will be considered complete once you finish all the tasks for your current expedition.
Once these artifacts are completed, you’ll gain bonuses depending on the type of artifact you’ve collected. Bonuses from all collected artifacts will remain active and completed pieces can even let runners unlock new abilities. If you manage to collect all 4 artifacts belonging to the same set, you’ll get additional bonuses.
As mentioned, you’ll be moving from one location to the next so once you’ve finished an expedition in a particular place, buildings you’ve unlocked in that area will be rendered inaccessible. Once you’re in a new zone, you’ll begin another expedition starting from scratch, with your resources back to zero. You’ll be given a new set of tasks and buildings to unlock and upgrade, as well as new challenges from which you can gain rewards.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get into the tips and tricks in our beginner’s guide for Temple Run: Idle Explorers! With this, you can unlock more excavation sites, earn treasure and bonuses faster, and win those running challenges without breaking a sweat!
Hire More Workers
First thing’s first: with every excavation site you’ve unlocked, you’re going to need workers—and lots of them. Excavation sites, which are essentially buildings, are where you can primarily earn coins. However, the coins generated by these buildings will depend on the number of workers mining these sites. You generally begin with 1 worker per site but you can increase this to a significant number by hiring more workers.
Of course, hiring more workers means spending coins to pay for their services (even in a mysterious, ancient world, compensation for labor is required, and rightly so!). You can hire more workers by clicking on the + sign on top of the site.
When you click the + sign, you’ll be able to see the stats of the site you’ve selected, such as its name, the number of workers currently hired indicated by green gauge, the amount of coins the site produces after a mining period, if you’ve assigned a manager to the site (more on this later), and how much it would cost to hire workers.
You may hire workers one at a time if your resources are still on the low end, but if you’ve managed to save up coins, you can click the Max button to hire as many workers as you can given the number of coins available in your inventory.
Every time you hire a worker, the amount of coins the site produces will increase. Hiring workers also helps increase the site’s rank. For instance, if you hire 50 workers at a Rank 1 site, the site will reach Rank 2. If you hire another 50 workers, the site will reach Rank 3. Typically, a site that reaches Rank 3 is already considered maxed out in terms of rank.
The more workers you hire, though, the costlier it gets, but all you need to do is wait for them to mine enough coins from a site. To collect coins, you can click on the golden money bag on top of a site. Eventually, you’ll have the option to collect money simultaneously from all unlocked sites by clicking the golden money bag button at the right side of the screen.
Spend on workers to make more money. Without them, you won’t be able to mine as much as you can!
Assign Managers to Automate Sites
In the previous section, we’ve briefly mentioned that a site can have a manager. This feature will become available once you’ve acquired other characters such as Guy Dangerous, Scarlett Fox, and the like (more on characters later).
Basically, assigning a manager to a site will allow you to automate it, meaning you don’t need to constantly claim coins manually as the site manager can do it for you. With a site manager, workers will continue to mine without any manual prompting, which makes resource gathering and collection much easier.
Keep in mind, however, that not just any character can become a site manager as there are certain requirements you need to fulfill. For instance, some sites will only allow you to assign characters that belong to the Brave type. Others will only let you hire Clever types, and so on. Each character possesses a specific trait and sites will specify which character trait they require from a manager.
Moreover, as you progress through the expeditions, sites will eventually require characters to be of a certain level before they can be hired as managers. You can check the site’s character level requirement under the slot where you can assign a manager. If it says “Auto Off,” this means the site manager you’ve hired has yet to reach the level requirement of that particular site to activate automation.
Since you need to consider a character’s type and level when assigning site managers, you may reassign managers as you see fit. This can be useful when, for instance, you have 2 sites that require the same character type but not the same levels. You can switch up the managers in these sites so the character with the lower level will manage the site with a lower level requirement, while the higher level character can manage the site with the higher level requirement.
Reassigning managers can also be useful simply when you just feel that one site may be served better with a manager compared to another. For instance, you have 2 sites that require the same character type but you only have 1 character belonging to this particular type. You can reassign this character to the site that has a higher rank or produces more coins.
On the whole, automating sites by assigning managers will make resource collection more convenient. Don’t just work your workers hard—work your managers hard, too!
Finish Tasks
Completing tasks are the primary way in which you can progress through most idle games, and Temple Run: Idle Explorers is no exception. In the beginning, you’ll be given 1 task at a time as you learn the ropes of the game. Later on, however, you’ll be given 3 tasks at a time, and you can choose which ones to accomplish first. The caveat is that you can’t unlock a new task without finishing at least 1 from your current batch.
The good news is that tasks can be rather simple and mostly involve collecting coins of a specific amount, hiring a number of workers, unlocking more sites, automating sites, leveling up characters, and generally just accomplishing various activities in the game. Upon completing tasks, you’ll be able to open chests from which you can obtain rewards like character tokens, scrolls, gems, etc. Of course, completing all tasks will let you acquire an artifact, as well as other items related to the story unfolding as you continue exploring Aperion.
Though some tasks can take time, this is typical of the nature of idle games so be patient and try to complete as many of them as you can. If you’re already getting 3 tasks at a time, you can complete the easiest one first to open up more tasks so you won’t get stuck.
Pay to Unlock Sites
As you can imagine, Aperion is a huge place and there are numerous excavation sites that you can explore as you progress through your expedition. However, before you can unlock these sites, you’re going to either have to complete runs or, well, pay to unlock the site.
When you come across a locked site, you have the option to send out runners to complete a short running challenge or cough up some dough to gain access. Although running challenges are short, they can be extremely difficult to complete, especially if you don’t have a lot of characters in your roster of runners yet. Certainly, there’s a way to win difficult running challenges, which we’ll discuss later, but suffice it that, for the most part, you’re going to end up paying coins to unlock sites instead.
This is arguably the easier route to take, though it’s undoubtedly the more expensive one. But since coins are the resource required to unlock sites, we do recommend this option as you can simply wait for your workers to mine enough coins to afford unlocking a new site.
Of course, you can still try to unlock sites by completing running challenges but earning coins is far easier as all you need to do is wait. Running challenges, on the other hand, will require you to come up with a solid team composition and placement to win.
Put simply, it takes a lot more effort to complete running challenges successfully to unlock sites. If you find difficulty in doing so, you might get stuck with a task that needs you to unlock a site. But if you simply pay to gain access to the site, you can rank up that site and recoup your loss in no time.
Level Up and Tier Up Runners
In this strange world of artifacts and monsters, you’re going to need all the help you can get—and you’ll find it in the characters you acquire as you progress through the game. When you open chests or get rewards for completing tasks, you’ll be able to obtain character tokens that will allow you to unlock various characters.
One of the first ones you’ll unlock is, of course, Guy Dangerous, the most popular character in the Temple Run series. Guy is gung-ho about finding as much treasure as he could and his skills will prove to be useful when it comes to challenges, as well as in automating sites as the manager.
Characters (also alternately referred to in the game as runners or explorers), as we noted before, possess a specific type of trait indicated by various symbols. For instance, the fire symbol represents the Brave type of character, while the green book symbol represents the Clever type of character, the blue fist symbol represents the Heroic type of character, and so on. These traits align with the skills a character has, which we’ll explore a bit more when we start discussing strategies to win running challenges.
Characters also have varying rarity tiers, which affect the Star Tiers they’ll start with. For instance, Minimus, a Common-tier character, starts out with 1 star. Scarlett Fox, a Rare-tier character starts out with 2 stars.
Overall, a character can be tiered up to 5 stars. Tiering up characters entails finding duplicates of their character tokens in chests. When you upgrade a character’s Star Tier, you’ll be able to increase the following stats:
- Max level: This indicates how high you can level up a character. For instance, a character with 1 star will only reach Level 5, but if you tier them up, they can reach up to Level 15, and so on.
- Gold multiplier: How much gold a character will produce passively and once they’re assigned as the manager of a site.
- Stamina: Think of this as the character’s health bar. Stamina is a stat that you’ll have to pay attention to once you choose runners for running challenges.
Leveling up characters, on the other hand, requires scrolls. Scrolls can be obtained randomly as rewards. You can also collect scrolls passively when you complete running challenges (not to be confused with the running challenges required to unlock sites—these are separate challenges altogether).
The more you level up a character, the more scrolls will be required to attain succeeding levels. Depending on the scrolls you have on hand, you can level up a character once or click the slider under the Level Up button to spend all your scrolls to level up that particular character as much as you can.
Leveling up will also increase a character’s gold multiplier, stamina, and their skills. Each character also has a different set of skills that can affect their coin production multiplier, coin production time, and challenge skills. Depending on their set of skills, which you can view when you click on individual characters, a character may offer more bonuses when assigned to a particular excavation site. For example, because Bobby Jones is a pirate, he works best as the manager of the Ship excavation site.
For the most part, you’ll be leveling up characters via scrolls and it will take some time to tier them up using duplicate tokens as the latter can be harder to get as rewards. To make the most of your scrolls, you may divide them evenly among characters by leveling up each one if their current Star Tiers allow it.
On the other hand, you can focus on just a few characters and spend your scrolls exclusively for them, though this may pose a potential disadvantage when you start doing running challenges, which leads us to our next section.
Try Running Challenges to Gain Stars and Scrolls
As we prefaced in the beginning of this guide, Temple Run: Idle Explorers doesn’t employ the same running mechanic that’s familiar to players of the original Temple Run. In Temple Run: Idle Explorers, you can’t actively control your runners, though you’ll be able to choose which runners will participate in challenges.
You can choose the order in which they’re arranged to face obstacles but when you enter the challenge, your characters are simply going to run a short course and the outcome will be determined by how effective your team composition and placement are.
Before we get into selecting the best runners for challenges, let’s first discuss what benefits you can gain from accomplishing a successful run. The primary benefit of succeeding in running challenges is that you can increase the number of scrolls you can earn passively if you finish the course with a 3-star rating. To get a 3-star rating in challenges, at least 3 characters need to survive at the end of the course. Each challenge also gives rewards upon completion, which each star equivalent to a certain reward, mostly scrolls. Scrolls, of course, level up characters and make them stronger. So, the more challenges you run and succeed in, the more chances you can level up characters to prepare them for more difficult runs.
To unlock more challenges, you need to also complete expeditions. With a new expedition comes a new set of running challenges.
When it comes to winning challenges, team composition and placement are key. Of course, it goes without saying that no matter how good your team’s arrangement is, if they’re composed of low-level or low-tier characters, you won’t stand a chance against the obstacles and the monster chasing your team throughout the course.
Fortunately, you’ll be able to see what you’re up against before entering a running challenge. Before doing the run itself, you’ll be able to select a maximum of 5 runners from the characters you’ve already unlocked. In some challenges, you might encounter restrictions wherein you’re not allowed to pick a runner of a certain type. For instance, in the screenshot below, you can only pick runners belonging to the Heroic type, but not those from the Brave and Clever type.
We recommend being able to choose at least 3 runners for the course for a chance to get a 3-star rating at the end of the challenge. Otherwise, you just have to play the game some more to complete missions and open chests. Hopefully, you’ll be given character tokens with which you can unlock more runners.
Each runner has their own stamina points based on their current level and tier. As mentioned, consider their stamina points as their health points.
If you turn your attention to the top of the screen, you’ll see that there are symbols similar to those that represent the different types of runners. Additionally, you’ll see a skull symbol with a smaller symbol at the left side of the gauge. If you click on the skull symbol, numbers will appear on top of the skull symbol and the other symbols after it.
The skull symbol represents the monster who will be chasing your runners throughout the course. The smaller symbol beside it tells you which type of runner will work best to buffer the monster. Meanwhile, the other symbols represent the obstacles they will be facing. The numbers on top of each symbol represents how much damage the monster and the obstacles can cause your runners.
In terms of team arrangement, the runner that will be placed in front is the runner you will select to occupy the rightmost slot when picking your characters. The runner on the leftmost slot will be the runner at the back, who will be chased by the monster.
Below the gauge signifying obstacles, you’ll see two images and numbers beside them. On the right is the picture of the monster you’ll be facing. The number beside indicates the overall power you need to contend with. The enemy’s team power is calculated based on the sum of all the numbers on top of the skull and obstacle symbols.
On the left is a picture representing your team. The number beside it is the overall power your team has depending on the runners you’ve selected. This is calculated based on the sum of your selected runners’ stamina points. You’ll notice that your team power can change color between red, yellow, and green. This tells you how well your team might do against the entire course. In summary, these colors mean the following:
- Red: You have no chance of winning the course. Rethink your team composition, upgrade up your runners, or get more runners that will fit the course’s restrictions or obstacles.
- Yellow: There might be a chance of winning, but it’s rather slim. Consider a better team selection or arrangement.
- Green: You’re likely to win the course, but this doesn’t guarantee that you will finish it with a 3-star rating. At the very least, you’ll have 1 surviving runner who’ll make it to the finish line.
When arranging your team, you might notice that there are instances when you’ve selected the same runners, but a slight change in their positioning can turn the odds from yellow to green even if the number indicating your overall team power doesn’t change.
Try arranging your selected runners in a way that will always result in a green team power to increase your chances of winning the course.
As for arranging your team, keep in mind that the frontmost runner will be the first to face the obstacles indicated on the course, starting from the leftmost symbol in the gauge at the top. Ideally, your frontmost runner’s character type should match with the symbol of the first 2 or 3 obstacles. Otherwise, you can also pick a runner whose symbol doesn’t match with the first 2 or 3 obstacles, but has enough stamina points to withstand the damage.
The runner at the very back should have the same symbol reflected by the monster. For instance, if the monster has the Brave symbol, the runner at the back of the line should also be of the Brave type. Ideally, the runner you select for this position has more stamina points compared to that reflected by the skull symbol.
Basically, your team will be attacked from both the front and the back so it’s crucial to pick really strong runners for these vital positions. This will keep the runners in the middle from taking damage. Otherwise, those in the middle will have to face the succeeding obstacles in front and the monster at the back once your frontmost and backmost runners die.
Further to team arrangement, you also need to consider the skills your runners possess. If you click on a runner’s icon, you’ll be able to view the skills they can contribute during the run. For instance, Scarlett Fox’s skill is to cheer the lowest stamina runner by 60 points. This means that during the run, the most damaged runner with the lowest stamina will regain 60 stamina points when Scarlett activates her skill.
Overall, runner types, placement, and skills are three vital things you need to take into consideration when picking your team members and going for a run. To summarize this section, here’s a quick recap of the tips we have:
- The runner in front and the runner at the back are crucial to keeping your team intact. Ideally, these runners should be able to buffer most of the damage coming from both the obstacles in front and the monster chasing you at the back. Consider the symbols these runners have and match them with the monster and the initial obstacles depending on their order in the course and the selected runners occupying these positions.
- Stamina points matter. Level up and tier up your runners so they can get the highest stamina points possible. This is important for all selected runners, not just for those in the front or back of the line.
- Your overall team power should always be green. Otherwise, your attempt at winning the challenge will be moot. Rearrange your team positions to get your team power to green, or postpone running the course until such time you’ve upgraded your runners or have acquired new runners more suitable for the challenge.
- Review your runners’ skills. Some skills can be activated at random, while others will need you to reach a certain point in the course to be activated. Take these skill activation times into consideration when choosing where to place a specific runner in your team arrangement.
Ads Give Bonus Rewards
As you can see, resources play a big part in getting you to progress in Temple Run: Idle Explorers. Aside from the various ways we’ve discussed previously, you can also earn bonus rewards by watching ads. Although ads aren’t always the most fun way to get rewards, consider watching them from time to time if you want to get a boost in resources. Here are a few ways that ads can be rewarding:
- Ad Coin Multiplier: In the expedition area, you’ll notice a stall that looks like a primitive coffee shop. If you click this building, you’ll get access to the Ad Coin Multiplier, wherein you can watch an ad and get a multiplier for your coin production for 8 hours for every individual ad you watch.
The 8-hour bonus time remains activated even when you’re not logged into the game. You can watch a total of 5 ads for the coin multiplier and if you’ve finished watching all 5 ads, you’ll fill up the reward bar and can claim a chest.
- Double passive earnings: Whenever you log off from the game, your workers will continue to mine coins in the excavation sites you’ve unlocked. By the time you log back in, you’ll be able to double your passive earnings if you watch an ad. Passive earnings will be calculated based on the number of explorers you’ve unlocked, wherein 1 explorer is equivalent to 30 mins of offline earning limit.
For instance, if you have 7 explorers, you have an offline earning limit of 3 hours and 30 minutes. Basically, if you log off and return to the game after that duration, you can collect the maximum amount of passive earnings.
- Claim a free chest in the shop: If you visit the shop, you’ll be able to get a free chest. The next free chest will be available after 8 hours, but you’ll be able to skip the waiting time if you watch an ad. You can do this 3 times, then wait for the free chest offer to refresh after 8 hours.
- Catch the floating Surprise Chest: From time to time, you’ll see a chest suspended on a balloon floating over your expedition site. If you click on this balloon, you’ll be able to open a Surprise Chest by watching an ad. Aside from seeing it directly over your expedition area, you can also catch this Surprise Chest by following the orange arrow with a yellow question mark symbol.
With these bonus rewards in your coffers, you’ll be able to finish the expedition in no time! And with that, we conclude our beginner’s guide for Temple Run: Idle Explorers. Do you have more tips and tricks to share with your fellow explorers? Share your wealth of knowledge in our comment section below!