Best Skills to Level First in IdleMMO

Every skill, ranked by peak XP per hour

Rates assume no XP boosts (each calculator has boost toggles). Combat XP/hr assumes a steady ~8-second kill pace, so treat it as a gear-dependent estimate. Gold/hr uses live player-market prices net of materials consumed. XP requirement curves are community-sourced estimates, as on the calculators.

Where to start

At level 1, the best rate in the data is Millstone Mines (Dungeoneering) at about 2,700 XP/hr. But the stronger argument for opening with gathering skills isn't the rate — it's that their output is the input for everything else. Logs feed Construction, ore feeds Smelting, bars feed the Forge, and fish feed Cooking. Early gathering levels pay you twice: once in XP, again in the stockpile your crafting skills will burn through later.

Don't chase one skill to its cap before touching the rest. The top-rate resources sit behind level 90 in most gathering skills, and the climb gets slow. Rotating skills at the levels where a new resource unlocks keeps you near each skill's best available rate, which is what each calculator's table shows for your level.

The endgame rates

The biggest number on the board is The Nexus (Dungeoneering) at about 35,028 XP/hr, behind level 95. High combat and dungeon rates come with strings attached: kill speed depends on your gear, and dungeon runs carry entry costs. Read them as ceilings rather than guarantees. The dungeon database lists every run's XP, length and cost, and the enemy database covers combat targets and their drops.

Leveling for gold instead

If gold matters more than XP right now, the standout is Mystic Greaves (Forge) at about 39,343 gold/hr at current market prices, net of the materials it consumes. Prices move with the player market, so a figure like this is a snapshot. Open the calculator before committing an evening to it, and cross-check what your gathered stock sells for with the Bartering tool.

How these numbers are made

Each calculator multiplies a resource's XP per action by actions per hour (3,600 seconds divided by its action time), then ranks. Gold per hour prices the outputs at live market values and subtracts consumed materials, so crafting profit is net, not gross. The same math produced this page and the per-skill tables — there is no separate editorial spreadsheet to go stale. Numbers the game doesn't expose (drop tables aside from what's in our enemy pages, XP curves) carry the community-sourced label wherever they appear.

Frequently asked questions