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Grim Clicker Strategy Guide: Tips, Cheats, and More

Learn some helpful beginner's tips in our Grim Clicker tips and tricks strategy guide.

Grim Clicker is an idle clicker game with a dark fantasy aesthetic. Despite its idle game roots, Grim Clicker is quite complex and features tons of different mechanics when it comes to character development, so our Grim Clicker strategy guide is here to help you get started.

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Tip #1: Make Lots of Manual Saves

Most idle clicker games nowadays are always connected online, which means that your game is constantly auto-saving. Grim Clicker is unique in the sense that it is only available on PC, which gives players a rather interesting advantage.

Grim Clicker has the option to create manual saves on your PC. In the options menu, the Save to PC command creates a file for you to save to your computer, and you can load the file at any time.

Screenshot by Touch, Tap, Play

Why is this important? Well, this basically means that you can do whatever you want without having to continue with the results. Save before you do something big, and then reload if you don’t like the results.

Opened a chest and got junk? Reload! Performed a ritual at the wrong time? Reload! Disassembled the wrong item? Reload! You get the idea. What’s even better is that there’s no limit to the amount of manual saves you can make, so you can save whenever you like.

Make a habit of manual saving often, and especially before you perform big actions. You’ll thank yourself later when something doesn’t go your way.

Tip #2: Best Skills to Spend Points on

There are three skill trees for your character to go down: strength, dexterity, and wisdom. Strength focuses on weapon damage, dexterity gives you more energy and crit chance, and wisdom increases your mana regeneration.

Skill trees also have skills in them that can be activated with enough skill points. Skills are either active, which require manual activation from you, or passive, which are always on. Skills with square icons are active, and circle icons are passive.

Screenshot by Touch, Tap, Play

Ultimately, what skills you invest in are up to you, but if you need some recommendations, Blizzard is a fantastic choice, especially early on in the game. It’s the first active skill in the wisdom tree.

Blizzard deals constant damage to all enemies currently on the screen, making it the perfect choice to wiping out hordes of small fry. It also kill the bonus enemies, like bats and fireflies. It eventually falls off due to the damage not scaling well, but it’s helpful early on.

Another good choice is the first active in the strength tree, Rage of Darkness. This skill speeds up your auto-attack speed and increases melee damage, at the cost of every attack costing energy. You’ll burn through your energy fast with this skill, so you need to supplement it with energy-recovering skills, like Bloodthirstiness.

Eventually, you can replace Rage of Darkness with March, which increases your damage, attack speed, and movement speed the longer you have it active. While it’s active, your click cost ten times the normal amount of energy, so it’s best to just idle with it. This skill scales very well, so it’s always a reliable choice.

If you prefer a more laid-back and casual style where you’re going to be idle most of the time, the Pilgrim Mask skill in the wisdom tree is perfect for you. This skill automatically collects bonfires for you, upgrades your weapon, and uses active skills. On top of this, bonfires now fully restore your mana and energy!

At the end of the day, don’t be afraid to experiment with different skill builds. With so many skills to choose from, the main fun of Grim Clicker is to figure out what synergizes well. Your level resets whenever you perform a ritual anyways, so why not try something new?

Tip #3: Best Upgrades to Spend Black Wax on

Notice the enemies with stars above them? These are champions, and they’re tougher than your typical monster. They take more time to kill, but they drop Candles upon death.

You can’t do anything with Candles as they are, but you can turn them into a rare currency called Black Wax, which can be spent on permanent character upgrades. In order to transmute Candles, you’ll need to perform a ritual, which resets your character back to level 1 and sends you to back to the starting zone. You need a minimum of 10 Candles before you can perform a ritual.

Screenshot by Touch, Tap, Play

In the Black Wax Store, there are several upgrades you can spend your Black Wax on. We’ll briefly go over each one with details.

  • Value of Rubies: Nets you Rubies much faster. Very helpful as it can help you upgrade your weapons faster.
  • Initial Damage: A flat damage increase for your character. Note that this is not multiplicative, meaning that it scales very poorly and will eventually be useless. Don’t buy this more than one or two times.
  • Exp From Monster: Flat increase to the amount of experience monsters give on death. Helpful, but not as important as Experience Gain.
  • Usurpation Return: Unsurpation Potions instantly kill all enemies in the current zone, which saves a ton of time, and this gives you a freebie depending on the zone. Very helpful time-saver.
  • Total Damage: Multiplicative increase of your overall damage. Self-explanatory and always a great investment.
  • Experience Gain: Multiplicative increase of your experience earned from monsters. Combined with Exp From Monster, this makes leveling up a breeze.

Basically, there’s really no wrong answers on what to spend your Black Wax on, besides Initial Damage, which you should never take. Take a look at your character and see what you need the most.

For example, if you’re lacking on weapon damage, Total Damage and Value of Rubies can improve your strength. If you’re not leveling up as fast as you should, Exp From Monster and Experience Gain are what you need.

Tip #4: Invest in the No Name Dagger

Arguably, the best weapon in Grim Clicker is… the very first weapon you start with, the Noname Dagger. The reason for this is that is has unlimited potential—every 10 levels it gains bonus damage, making it scale very well.

Through crafting, stones, and charms, you can even get the base cost of the Noname Dagger down to 1 ruby, which lets you upgrade it with relative ease. Because of this, the Noname Dagger can grow exponentially, and it just keeps getting stronger.

Screenshot by Touch, Tap, Play

Of course, with the right investments, you can eventually get another weapon that surpasses the Noname Dagger in terms of raw damage, but there’s a very good chance the Noname Dagger will still be an efficient choice of weapon, thanks to the scaling and base cost.

Tip #5: Best Things to Buy with Shards

The purple Shards are the premium currency of Grim Clicker, but you can slowly earn them over time as a free player by completing the random quests assigned to you.

You can have up to four quests at any given time, and once you complete one, you have to wait the allotted time before you receive another one. Try to complete as many of the quests as you can, because you’re going to need lots of Shards.

You can buy all sorts of things with Shards, including item and gear chests, but we recommend to stay away from those. The best things to buy with Shards are the permanent upgrades found in the Shards Shop.

Screenshot by Touch, Tap, Play

Much like the Black Wax upgrades, the upgrades found in the Shards Shop are permanent and persist between rituals. They include the following:

  • +10 max energy
  • +10 max mana
  • +1 SP on level up
  • +80% Black Wax from Candles
  • +100% Rubies value
  • +50% experience gained
  • +1 starting SP
  • +50% total damage

You should be spending your Shards exclusively in the Shards Shop, as these upgrades are just too good to pass up. Though it’s expensive, the extra skill point on level up upgrade is absolutely amazing, and it should be your priority.

More Resources for Grim Clicker

We’ve only just scratched the surface of Grim Clicker‘s complexity, so if you’re looking to learn more about the game, we highly recommend checking out the Steam community hub’s guide section for the game. Tons of players are already sharing lots of helpful data, so you’re bound to find something relevant to your character.

We hope this guide helped you get started on your Grim Clicker journey. We know you probably have lots to say about the game, so please share with us your strategies and tips in the comments below, and if you’re looking for more idle games to try out, be sure to check out the best idle games for iOS and Android.

Author
Image of Jeremy Kanjanapangka
Jeremy Kanjanapangka
Jeremy is a Content Writer for Touch, Tap, Play, and has been writing in the games journalism industry for almost a decade now. With a degree in English and a passion for games, he loves to talk and write about all kinds of games. While you can find him covering the latest and greatest games, there is a special place in his heart for RPGs, action-adventure games, fighting games, and anything Nintendo related.