Best Skills to Level First in Idle Clans
Idle Clans publishes its own action times and XP rewards, so "best skill" is arithmetic rather than opinion. The table below is built from the same task data the skill calculators read, ranked by the XP per hour each skill's single best task pays.
Every skill, ranked by its best XP per hour
| Skill | Top task | XP/hr | Needs | Best level-1 start | Best gross gold/hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⚒️ Smithing (56) | Otherworldly Platebody | 2,400,000 | Lv 110 | Bronze Platebody · 24,000/hr | Otherworldly Bar · 11,039,999,940 |
| 🧵 Crafting (34) | Otherworldly Leather Trousers | 600,000 | Lv 110 | Leather Coat · 16,800/hr | Astronomical Robe · 11,641,751,760 |
| 🍳 Cooking (26) | Power Pizza | 270,000 | Lv 95 | Cooked Piranha · 12,000/hr | Potato Soup · 2,158,560 |
| ⚗️ Brewing (11) | Potion Of Ascension | 127,424 | Lv 115 | Potion Of Swiftness · 49,091/hr | Potion Of Ascension · 2,240,000 |
| 💰 Plundering (11) | Archaeological Society | 60,000 | Lv 110 | Small Village · 13,292/hr | — |
| 🪚 Carpentry (11) | Ignis Heartwood | 54,857 | Lv 105 | Spruce Plank · 16,000/hr | Yew Plank · 159,200 |
| 🏃 Agility (9) | Rock Climbing | 38,400 | Lv 90 | Jogging Course · 18,000/hr | Sunfire Seed · 15,086 |
| 🍄 Foraging (10) | Smoldering Mushroom | 34,560 | Lv 105 | Nettle · 9,000/hr | Nettle · 50,400 |
| 🌾 Farming (10) | Sunfire Berry | 32,571 | Lv 105 | Potato · 9,000/hr | Dragonfruit · 429,600 |
| ✨ Invocation (6) | First Ascension | 28,574 | Lv 110 | Abandoned Dig Site · 4,255/hr | — |
| 🎣 Fishing (13) | Bloodmoon Eel | 24,400 | Lv 100 | Piranha · 7,714/hr | Raw Piranha · 65,143 |
| 🪓 Woodcutting (11) | Ignis | 22,440 | Lv 105 | Spruce · 9,000/hr | Pine Log · 71,280 |
| ⛏️ Mining (11) | Obsidian Ore | 19,938 | Lv 95 | Copper Ore · 9,000/hr | Coal Ore · 73,920 |
Rates are the published action time and XP reward with no boosts applied. The count beside each skill is how many of its tasks can be ranked; a task the game publishes with no action time or no XP has no rate to report and is left out of the ranking (it still appears on the item pages). Item Creation is not listed: the game publishes no XP on its tasks, so there is no rate to rank. Gold figures are the gross market value of the output at current sell offers — the API does not publish recipe inputs, so nothing is subtracted for ingredients, and this table does not ask whether the market can absorb that volume. The money making guide does.
What the ranking actually tells you
The top of this table is production, not gathering. Smithing leads at 2,400,000 XP/hr because Otherworldly Platebody is a level 110 task, and every task that fast sits behind a level gate you reach by doing something slower first. Read the column as a ceiling: it is what the skill pays once you are already deep in it.
The level-1 column is the more useful one on day one. It is the fastest thing each skill lets you start with nothing, and the spread between them is much narrower than the spread at the top.
The gap between the fastest and slowest skill at the top end is wide: Smithing at 2,400,000 XP/hr against Mining at 19,938 XP/hr. That is not a reason to skip the slow ones. Gathering skills feed the production skills at the top of the board, and their output is what sells — see the market table for what each resource currently fetches.
Where the gold is
By raw output value the standout is Astronomical Robe (Crafting) at 11,641,751,760 gold/hr of Astronomical Robe. Treat that number carefully. It prices every unit you could theoretically produce at the current sell offer, and for the expensive endgame outputs the market moves a handful of units a week. The money making guide re-ranks the same tasks against what actually traded.
How these numbers are made
Each row is a task's XP reward multiplied by 3,600 divided by its action time in seconds. Gold per hour is the same throughput priced at the item's lowest sell offer, falling back to the daily average when there is no live offer. Both come from the game's public API, cached and re-read on every page load — there is no spreadsheet in the middle to go stale. Levels are the requirement the game publishes on the task itself.
Frequently asked questions
Which skill has the highest XP per hour in Idle Clans?
Smithing. Its best task, Otherworldly Platebody, pays 2,400,000 XP/hr at level 110, from the game's own published action time and XP reward. Second is Crafting at 600,000 XP/hr.
What should a new Idle Clans player train first?
Brewing has the fastest level-1 task in the data: Potion Of Swiftness at 49,091 XP/hr with no level requirement. Gathering skills are worth opening anyway, because their output is what the production skills consume.
Which skill produces the most gold per hour?
By raw output value, Crafting: Astronomical Robe produces 11,641,751,760 gold/hr of Astronomical Robe at current sell offers. That is gross output value — the game's API does not publish recipe inputs, so no ingredient cost is subtracted, and nothing checks whether the market can absorb that much.
Do these rankings assume any boosts?
No. Every rate is the published action time and XP reward for the task, across 13 skills with rankable tasks. Clan buffs, gear and consumables are on top of these numbers, not inside them.
Next: how long each skill takes to max at these rates, or the beginner guide for what to do in your first session.