Milky Way Idle - Ironcow Walkthrough Guide

Tools dictate how fast you complete every action in this game, and so are basically the backbone of how time efficient your character is. You rely on Milking, Woodcutting and Cheesesmithing in order to make tools, so these are the skills that you will be mainly focusing on to start. Make sure that your tools are always up to date with your levels.

Pouches

Pouches are the major limiting factor on IC progression and changes how much stuff is available to you without you having to invest the additional time to level up the skill.

Being able to combine Super/Ultra Skilling teas with artisan will enable you to craft items with artisan bonus while being 1 level down for Supers or 3 levels down for Ultras

Small Pouch (Total Level 1, +1 Food Slot)
Medium Pouch (Total Level 250, +1 Food Slot +1 Drink Slots)
Large Pouch (Total Level 500, +2 Food Slot +1 Drink Slots)
Giant Pouch (Total Level 750, +2 Food Slot +2 Drink Slots)

The goal here is to make a giant pouch, because of how powerful the 3rd drink slot is for combat. As it requires 5,000,000 Coins to make, saving the coins to make this pouch should be your first major IC goal. DO NOT spend coins on houses before making this.

Past the early game, there are 2 other late game pouches that are obtainable from Alchemy:

Guzzling Pouch – 10% Drink Concentration (10% Reduced duration, 10% Increased Effect)
Gluttonous Pouch – 10% Food Haste (Reduces time interval between consuming food)

It is recommended to obtain the Guzzling Pouch as it will boost the effect of both Combat and Skilling drinks. The common route to transmute the Guzzling Energy required to make this pouch is to transmute either Artisan Teas or Super Stamina and Super Defense coffees, which require crushed Pearls and Amber respectively. Saving some Pearls and Ambers for this is important!

However, getting the amount of resources (Emp Tea Leaves, Pearls, Ambers) required to transmute the energy is a massive undertaking and so should be only worked on once your account has obtained enough resources.

Brewing Drinks

Drinks are an important mechanic in MWI and vital to most of the actions you will be doing. They can save you time (Skilling level teas), create more outputs (Gourmet/Gathering) and even save you resources (Artisan). Knowing what drinks exist and planning around them will improve your time efficiency, the most important resource an IC has.

Important Drinks to Know and what they do:

Wisdom Tea/Coffee – Saves you resources and time by boosting your XP.
Artisan Tea – uses 90% of the resources instead of 100%, vital in saving resources when making endgame gear and consumables.
Gourmet/Gathering Tea – 12%/15% Free resources with no downside.
Ranged/Magic/Power Coffee – Increases your main damage stat .
Stamina Coffee – Increases your Max HP and HP regen, when combined with HP food can enable you to do higher zones that you’ll struggle with otherwise.
Intelligence Coffee – Increases your Max Mana and Mana regen, can be combined with high mana cost abilities (Quick aid, Heal) or to supplement your Mana Food.
Lucky Coffee – Increases your drop rate, increasing the items you’ll get from combat.

Here are some of the basic drink setups that you will find yourself using:

Resource Gathering for Consumables (Gathering / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Resource Gathering to Refine Resources (Gathering / Efficiency / Processing)
Refining Resources [Lumber/Cheese] (Artisan / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Making Consumables [Cooking/Brewing] (Gourmet / Artisan / Efficiency)
Making Equipment (Artisan / Efficiency / Level or Wisdom)
Making Lv85 and higher gear (Artisan / Level / Wisdom)
Melee Combat (Power/Swiftness/Wisdom or Lucky)
Ranged Combat (Ranged/Swiftness/Wisdom or Lucky)
Magic Combat (Magic/Channelling/Wisdom or Lucky)

Tasks

Tasks are quests that you can reroll which provide you with task tokens. Keep in mind that tasks are NOT MANDATORY, if you do not want to do a task you can reroll it or delete it. It is recommended that you spend your first tokens on getting Task Cooldowns in order to get more tasks and increase the amount of tokens you get daily.

Focusing on tasking is vital for ICs as they provide the main means to obtain Star Fragments due to the natural rate of obtaining them from gathering being low.

Star Fragments and Jewellery

Star Fragments are extremely valuable to ICs as they are necessary to make and enhance jewellery.

You obtain Star Fragments from opening Meteorite Caches, which are a rare drop from gathering or bought with 30 task tokens.

Here are the jewellery you should prioritise:

Regeneration Earrings/Ring (Best in slot for IC combat, necessary to help with mana issues)
Speed Necklace (Dual use necklace for Skilling and Combat)

Remember to craft with Artisan! As the Speed Necklace has a high Crafting level when combined with Artisan Tea, you should start with making the Regenerations first while you work on tasks.

Alchemy

Alchemy has many varied uses for IC characters, but this will only cover the basics in order to progress your character.

Gem Transmutation enables you to swap gems randomly to another one albeit at a loss from success rates. As sunstones and moonstones are not easy to get for a new IC character, you can gamble the other gems you get for a chance to obtain these gems. You should be saving the gems required to make the Supers for your main class instead of converting them. (Garnets for Melee, Jades for Ranged, Amethysts for Magic)

Equipment Decomposing can recycle old gear in order to boost your xp by remaking the item.

Eg. Smithing Snake Fang Dirks -> Decomposing to refund -> Make another Dirk -> Repeat for xp

Do note that Alchemy success rate is decreased substantially if you’re below the recommended level, so you should level your Alchemy before using it on valuable items. You do not get a bonus to success chance from having a higher Alchemy level than recommended.

You can level Alchemy quickly by transmuting the combat essence you get from combat.

Enhancing

Enhancing your gear is important to improve your combat effectiveness and get yourself stronger to take on harder content. The success rate of Enhancing is dependant on your Enhancing level compared to the recommended level of the item, so you will want to level Enhancing as you progress.

The main route to get Enhancing xp for ICs is to use Combat Essence on items that drop from the same zone. (Eg. Swamp Essence on Gator Vests). As you progress higher with your tools you should also be enhancing them as you won’t be replacing them as quickly as the lower tier tools.

You can start enhancing tools at Lv35 Tools, but most players start at Lv50 Tools.

New Player FAQ

What goes in the Back Slot?

Back Equipments are rare drops that are only obtainable from Dungeon Chests

Should I go out of my way to farm Tea Leaves?

Drinks will help alot for skilling, but once you’re out of the early game you’ll start obtaining a large stockpile unless you’re not doing combat

Is Skilling Gear worth farming?

You should be farming your Collector Boots, Eye Watch and Red Culinary Hat as you get stronger, but it’s not a priority over your gear progression.

Starting Out

Skilling and Combat tie into each other, and so should not be neglected in favor of one side. You require skilling to make consumables and equipment, and in turn require combat to provide the tea leaves to boost it.

Time to pick your combat style! Each class has their own unique use cases and benefits.

Ranged – A class based around Magic Resistance and Evasion, strong against Magic enemies. Able to tank in groups for Magic/Physical zones.
Melee – A class based around Armor strong against Physical enemies. Able to tank in groups for Physical zones. Has 2 Main stats, Attack and Power, Attack determines your Melee Accuracy, and Power determines your Melee Damage.

Melee is further divided into 3 different styles: Slash, Stab and Smash

Do note that your xp ratio changes depending on the style you choose.

Slash – A balanced style, splits xp 5:5, recommended to start with due to it letting you level up both Attack and Power evenly,
Stab – An Attack focused style, splits xp 9:1 in favour of Attack. Able to provide some debuffs with Puncture but lacks an endgame weapon.
Smash – A Power focused style, splits xp 9:1 in favour of Power. The favoured endgame style as it has access to a Lv95 weapon and also scales your damage.

Magic – A class based around primarily using Abilities, weak against Physical but able to use healing spells for higher survivability. Able to provide supportive and healing abilities in groups.

Magic is further divided into 3 different elements: Water, Fire and Nature

Fire – A damage focused element, a very strong early – mid game element but falls off late from lack of accessible scaling.
Water – A damage focused element, has debuffing abilities and is the favoured endgame element as they can access all their upgrades from farming one zone.
Nature – The supportive element, has equipment that amplifies healing and debuffing abilities.

It is important to understand that early IC combat in MWI is very fluid, a Melee character may choose to swap between Stab and Smash in order to boost their damage or accuracy levels, or a Mage may flip between elements depending on their current need.

The current preferred endgame IC setups are:

Magic – Water Mage (Recommended)
Melee – Chaotic Flail Smash
Ranged – Sundering Crossbow Ranged

You can refer to the specific combat style tab for equipment progression as you level.

Combat Preparation

To live in combat, one must first eat in combat. Cooking and Brewing are vital to helping you stay alive in combat, and will also take up a significant amount of your time. Since you’ll be doing so much preparation, it’s important to understand what tier foods you should be using in order to maximize the time invested preparing to do combat.

For ICs, the standard food used for farming is Lv65 Marsberry/Dragon Fruit/Rainbow Milk Food.
Melee/Ranged players mainly use 2 HP 1 MP food (Donut Cake Yoghurt/Gummy)
Magic players mainly use 2 MP 1 HP food (Yoghurt Gummy Cake/Donut)

It’s not worth investing the time to make Lv80 Holy Milk food for general farming, however if you’re struggling to stay alive they can be very useful to have on hand. Lv80 food is also used for dungeons and hard elite zones

Aside from food, you can also get extra healing or mana from using Stamina or Intelligence coffees. These are extremely useful in providing that extra survivability or mana that you may need in combination with food to allow you to progress to another zone.

For example, a Mage that has to use 2 MP 1 HP to sustain mana may be lacking some extra health to stay alive, so you can use Stamina coffee to boost your health and regen.

Wisdom vs Lucky

For a new character, the biggest combat boost that you can obtain will be from levelling up your stats and unlocking better gear upgrades in order to boost your damage.

Lucky Coffee requires Lv50 Foraging/Milking in order to start making it, but it’s a very important tool for boosting your combat drop rates if you’re hunting for a combat drop

Past early game progression, you will mainly be focusing on farming for combat drops in order to make/enhance your Lv85 equipment, and so will be using lucky coffee over wisdom.

Group Combat

Grouping with other players enables you to take on zones that would be much harder to do solo. You still get xp normally (from dealing or taking damage), but your drop quantity is divided by the amount of players in the team.

For ICs, group combat is mainly used for these purposes.

Farming Best in Slot gear from hard planets (Eg. Sorcs Twilight Golems Abyss)
Farming Key Frags for Dungeon Chests keys (Elite zones)
Speedrunning tasks that you have stockpiled for a hard zone

Group combat when used properly can be a very strong tool for increasing the amount of drops you get from a zone by other players applying Auras or debuffs to the enemy, however it can also easily become a downside if your team isn’t strong enough.

A simple way to decide if a party is worth it is for farming to compare the enemies per hour (EPH) in the party compared to what you would have obtained from solo farming. Every member added should increase your EPH multiplied by players in the party. Do note that is not always applicable, and that you can make parties with just 2 members instead of 3.

Special Abilities

Special abilities are rare blue books which only drop from elite zones that have their own skill slot. These are extremely hard to get as the drop rate is low, and you’re also forced into grouping to be able to farm the elite zones they drop from. As such they’re by no means a priority for any IC to rush to get, and as you’ll be farming elite zones later for dungeon key frags, you’ll naturally find them there.

Using the same Auras does not stack in a group, every player should bring different Auras.

Notable Abilities and where to find them:

Revive – Elite Gobo Planet / Elite Sorcerer’s Tower
- Revive is an extremely useful spell for dungeons as you cannot resurrect during a dungeon run if you die. Can be used during elite zone combat to revive a dead teammate if your team doesn’t have good auras to use.
Fierce Aura – Elite Gobo Planet
- Fierce is the main aura for both Melee and Ranged players
Aqua Aura – Elite Aqua Planet / Elite Sorcerer’s Tower
- Aqua is the main aura for Water Mages.
Sylvan Aura – Elite Jungle Planet
- Sylvan is the main aura for Nature Support mages.
Speed Aura – Elite Swamp Planet / Elite Planet of the Eyes
- A universal aura if your teammate is already using their main, not recommended to farm Elite Swamp for it even though it’s an easy zone.
Critical Aura – Elite Twilight Zone / Elite Infernal Abyss
- A universal aura if your teammate is already using their main, easily obtainable as it drops from the hardest endgame zones.

Dungeon Preparation

So you’ve made it all the way here, and you’re ready to take on the endgame. What next?

Housing

Past giant pouch, ICs don’t have many avenues to spend their coins and this is where housing comes in. Housing provides you with free stat levels that would otherwise have taken many days to farm the xp for, but it quickly scales up to require a larger and larger amount of resources to upgrade.

You should at least get lvl4 Dining Room, Library, Armory and your Main Stat for dungeons.

Dojo + Gym for Melee, Archery Range for Ranged. Mystical Study for Magic

Gearing

It is quite hard to get high enhanced gear on IC as it’s luck based and you can get unlucky, however that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying to improve your gear if possible. Weapon enhancements are where all your damage scaling starts from and should be your biggest priority upgrade, followed by the other gear pieces.

You should have at least enhanced +7/8 weapons and gear before attempting to join a dungeon party.

Dungeon Keys

Dungeon Running is separated into 3 different phases:

Making the Entry Keys -> Running the Dungeon -> Farming the frags for Chest Keys

You can farm the key fragments whenever you like, doesn’t have to be after the runs, but key fragment farming is the main time consumer.

There are 3 different sets of Chest keys, with some overlap in fragments required to make them.

Chimeral (D1) – Blue Green Purple Brown
Sinister (D2) – Purple Orange Brown Dark
Enchanted (D3) – White Orange Stone Burning

Most players prefer to run dungeons in bulk as they’re time consuming to set up, so ensure that you have the correct amount of Entry keys prepared for the runs.

Dungeon Tokens

Tokens are rewarded in a random amount whenever you open a Dungeon chest, and can be redeemed in the shop for dungeon materials. Redeeming tokens early for your materials is not recommended as you may drop the full item or the materials required before you buy enough to make the item. Capes are also extremely rare and you may not get a cape before you finish farming the item you’re aiming for, so saving tokens for that is necessary.

General Expectations

You should always have enough food (Space Food, Super Coffees) to run all the keys you intend to. DO NOT pause the dungeon run once it has started so you can make food
Supers or higher are mandatory, you should not be using normal coffees.
Focusing XP (Wisdom Coffee, Wisdom Necklace) doesn’t give you any combat stats, use damage coffees and a combat stat neck.
Most teams will require adjustments to have a stable dungeon run. Communicate with your party on changes, don’t ready up and go AFK without saying anything.
Prepare your loadouts. Parties take time to set-up and get going, so ensure that your loadout is set up correctly so you are able to continue your queue in the meantime.
Understand your role in the party. The best dungeon run is one that does not fail. If you’re a support, focus on healing over damage, do not grief the run to make it slightly faster.

Builds

Melee

Starter Gear

You can skip the shoebill shoes if you don’t want to farm them.

Basic Ability Setup:

Scratch – Skunk, Smelly Planet / Sherlock, Swamp Planet

Can be used if you find them:

Minor Heal – Slimy, Smelly Planet
Sweep – Swampy, Shoebill, Swamp Planet

Mid Game Gear

Gobo Slasher can be skipped if you’re unlucky, a Rainbow Sword works fine. Most important upgrade here is the Giant Pouch.

You can swap to a mace at lvl65 and start Stab Smash weapon swapping every 5 levels to min max xp gain.

Stab is strong at farming single mobs (Eg. Bears) and can be used to specifically hunt for other gear pieces you’re missing.

50 Int Ability Setup

Berserk – Smashy, Gobo Planet
Cleave – Slashy, Gobo Planet
Impale – Nom Nom, Aqua Planet / Stabby, Gobo Planet

Mage Hunter

Beast gear is used to fight Magic enemies to obtain gear for a Magic swap.

Bears / Golem / Twilight Group Combat

Gator Vest is changed for a holy plate to improve defenses, if you’re not struggling with staying alive you can swap back to Gator.

Atk Coffee can be used instead of swiftness if your attack stat is low.

Is a less attractive choice while you have low accuracy (Smash) as you’ll be doing a lot of golems farming, swap to it once you’re comfortable with your accuracy.

90 Int Ability Setup

Frenzy – Any Bear, Bear Planet

Maim – Zombie, Twilight Planet

Stunning Blow – Magnetic, Granite Golems, Golem Planet

Puncture – Vampire, Twilight Planet / Gobo Chieftain, Gobo Planet

Abyss Group Combat

Umbral gear is used to increase your Magic Resistances against the high magic damage mobs. Some players prefer to delay farming Demonic until they obtain Griffin Armor from D1.

Swap Pincer Gloves to Pandas if you’re struggling.

Is useful if you need even more survivability.

D1 DPS

Use Precision if you’re playing smash.

Smash Stab players should naturally have colossus gear from group combat, but if you only have 1 piece it’s fine. If you have a Vampire Fang Dirk, use it over the vision shield/defender.

D1 Tank

Use colossus gear if you have it. The requirements for tanking aren’t high so holy gear is good enough.

D2 DPS

A mix of 1 Colossus and 1 Griffin or full demonic if you’ve farmed that is best. Adjust the weapons if you want to play Slash or Stab.

Gobo Defenders or Vision Shields can be used depending on your enhancement levels.

D2 Tank

Bulwarks are not recommended, you do not need to farm a Spiked Bulwark to do D2 or D3.

D3 DPS

Post Dungeons Endgame

Ranged

Starter Gear

You can skip the shoebill shoes if you don’t want to farm them.

Basic Ability Setup:

Quick Shot – Porcupine, Smelly Planet

Can be used if you find them:

Minor Heal – Slimy, Smelly Planet

Mid Game Gear

Burble Armor is used to increase defenses to make gobo farming easier for leather. The Armor strategy is also useful for farming Beast and Umbral leather.

20 Int Ability Setup

Aqua Arrow – Aquahorse, Aqua Planet

50 Int Ability Setup

Berserk – Smashy, Gobo Planet
Rain of Arrows – Marine Huntress, Aqua Planet

Mage Hunter

Ability build to farm Abyssal Imps and Elementalists for a Magic Swap.

Silencing Shot – Marine Huntress, Aqua Planet

Bear Group Combat

Endgame Crossbow swap to use offhands.

Twilight Group Combat / Soul Hunter Farming

You can use multiple pieces of Armor gear to provide higher defenses against the physical damage of Hunters. Using all the pieces here is extremely overkill so remove as needed.

D1 DPS

D2 DPS

D2 Tank

D3 DPS

D3 Tank

Post Dungeons Endgame

Magic

It is not recommended that you start mage on IC, and only swap after you’ve farmed abilities for it.

Setup is recommended before a Mage Swap.

Mages are dependent on having access to abilities, so this will be structured around which mobs with ability drops are unlocked for them.

Are 0 cooldown spells, and need to be placed in your rightmost slot or they’ll prevent your spells behind it from being cast.

Slimy

Basic Ability Setup:

Water Strike – Slimy, Smelly Planet
Minor Heal – Slimy, Smelly Planet

Jungle Sprite

Ice Sorcerors (Single Target)

Farm Ice Spear, you can skip Icy but they will be useful later as we swap back to Water.

Flame Sorcerors (AoE)

From here we move to Jungle Planet to gather Luna Wings.

While farming Jungle, you’ll become strong enough to challenge Abyssal Imps and Elementalists with Water.

If you’re unlucky with the tome it’s fine to skip it, you’ll be able to farm it on the planet.

Swap to this ability setup for Fire once you farm firestorm.

Is extremely useful for Elite Twilight/Golem/Abyss parties as a Nature Mage for Dungeon Frag farming however, so only convert all of them if you do not intend to farm a Jackalope Staff.

Sorcerer’s Tower Group Combat

Group Combat triggers are extremely important for Mages! You’ll want 2-3x the amount of HP on your triggers when farming in a party with multiple Mages due to the amount of AoE abilities being cast.

As you get stronger, you won’t be as reliant on Luna’s defenses to keep you alive and can use Icy Robes.

Ability Setups:

Is It Worth Farming D1?

Mages can skip D1 entirely if you’re not intending to get a Jackalope Staff to be able to dual class as a support. However D1 does provide some benefits in that you can transmute the Ability Books for and that Nature Mage is a strong choice for Elite Twilight/Golem/Abyss Frag farming.

D1 DPS