Melvor Idle: Playing RuneScape without playing RuneScape

Melvor Idle is a RuneScape inspired idle RPG. If you're quick sure what an idle RPG is then you're in luck. It's not complicated. The game plays itself for you. You tell it what you want to be done, and it goes and does it. When you played RuneScape did you really enjoy cutting yew trees for 4 hours on end? In Melvor you just set it to cut the yews for you. You come back and collect your loot. However, this is a completely different game than RuneScape.

Lots of people ask why you would want a game to play for you. I put buying Melvor off for a long time because I thought it wouldn't be fun. It's actually a really fun game, and it fills the niche of progression. Even if I wanted to cut yews for 12 hours, I can think of a few other ways to spend my time. With Melvor I could play another game like Lost Ark, but still, keep progressing my account in Melvor. It generally has the same gameplay loop as RuneScape. The game is heavily inspired by RuneScape so much so most of the skills are identical.

Melvor Idle costs 10 dollars for the full-blown version, and Mobile/Web has a free mode you can play as well. However, you should buy the game on Steam if you do buy the full version. If you buy it on Steam you will get it for PC, Mobile, and web. If you buy it on the iPhone App store you will just get mobile and web. It's not a big deal if you will never play on PC, but you might as well get it there just in case.  The screenshots on this page will be done from the web player. All progress can be cross-platform as well.

The UI depending on what you're playing on changes. So far the Web seems to be my favorite UI, although I barely have any playtime in the PC version. Most of my time is done via Mobile which is okay for the UI. With mobile, there is a lot of scrolling since there is so much information to show. Look at the screenshot below. Try fitting that all on your mobile screen. It's a lot of info, but it still works great.

There are a ton of different skills in the game. Just like RuneScape, they tie into each other For instance Fletching will need you to cut some trees, get some feathers from the store or combat, and then smith the final arrowheads. Gold generation in this game is also very important. I started off killing chickens and selling feathers. One popular method is fishing and selling the fish. Personally, I am doing agility for money and it seems to be working pretty well. Ultimately you'll be doing all the skills anyways.  The most important thing is that you are having fun.

Not everything in this game is 100% idle off the start. For instance, you don't automatically eat food, and death will cause you to lose some items. Once you get enough gold you can buy the ability to auto eat, but until then you may need to pay attention.

For me, Melvor is a really fun idle game, and I did buy the full version for 10 dollars. It helps itch the of playing RuneScape. However, there is no reason you can't do both if that's what you enjoy!