Idle Iktah is a game with a lot of combat. Quests, game progression, drops for alchemy, all require combat. But… what if you didn’t want to fight? I’ve been working on the first ever level 3 skiller (1 attack / strength / defence, 10 hp), here’s a few things I discovered along the way!

This guide assumes that you know a fair amount about Idle Iktah already, this definitely isn’t recommended for a first playthrough. You might also find my previous Idle Iktah tip post helpful, since it contains plenty of information about the end-game.

For my skiller, the rules were very simple: 0 xp in attack, strength, defence, hitpoints. Killing enemies is fine, so long as no XP is gained.

How to kill things

Yes, you can kill enemies without gaining any XP!

Reflecting Potion

Reflection Potions are the key combat item in the entire playthrough. When active, 10% of received damage will be dealt back to the enemy. By soaking up massive amounts of damage, you can eventually kill enemies with plenty of health without dealing a single attack yourself.

Note that the 10% damage rounds up, so an enemy that hits 15 will receive 2 damage.

Unfortunately these are only accessible from traders, hence why unlocking dugouts is so important.

Equipment

Unlike normal playthroughs, you want to receive as much damage as possible and deal as little as possible. As such, make sure you’re wearing things with no boosts to attack or defence. I use the Royal Goblet with the improved rare drop chance enchant (from Shadow Broker chest).

Combat insight

After completing enough quests, you’ll have access to the “Combat Insight” teaching in the bottom right of the upgrade menu. This lets you see the hit chance of enemies, and more importantly yourself.

Using this, any enemy that you have a 0% hit chance on can be safely AFK’d, as you’ll never deal any damage. Just turn on the reflecting potions, and leave the game until you run out. Unfortunately some enemies are too weak, and you’ll deal damage to them unless you…

Cancel attacks

If you have a slower attack speed than the enemy (e.g. 4.0 vs 2.2s), you can cancel your attack before it lands, ensuring you’ll gain no XP! For some enemies, this is the only way to kill them.

Make sure you’re using the slowest weapon possible, I always used the Royal Goblet as it has an attack speed of 4.0s. All you need to do is double tap the pause button after you’ve received damage (and reflected some), but before your attack lands. This is pretty tiring to do for long periods of time, so I only did 2-3 kills at a time like this.

This is only required for the Azurite Avenger quest.

Challenging unlocks

I’m pretty confident my skiller is almost “done”, in terms of having every useful unlock possible, all 99s, maxed out house, etc. Whilst I could grind a few more high level enemies for drops, none of them are actually useful, so they’re just a pointless flex.

Dugouts

Dugouts let you pick your trader, buy more potions at once, access rarer items, and just generally speed up your playthrough. Unlocking them is super helpful, but unfortunately they aren’t accessible until towards the end game!

Unlocking them requires completing “Trading Troubles”, which requires an Iron Adze (easy) and 10 cooked steak (not at all easy). On a normal playthrough this can be done almost from the start, but for a skiller you’ll need to kill mammoths for steak. These require primeval tokens, which require the rare mining drop amber.

I only gained dugouts after I had 99 in all skills. The plus side of this is you can skip straight to Cedar Dugouts!

Alchemy pet

In the main game, pets are just fun little extra. As a skiller, you need “Newton”, which gives the perk “Alchemy rarely rewards reagents”. What this means is during potion making, you’ll occasionally receive a bonus ingredient from a random potion.

Early in the game this will just be unneeded items like claws and eyeballs. Later on however, this will be the only way to gain rare high level items like Teratorn feathers.

Quests

I have 55x “Explorer’s Mark” (quest points), I believe this is the maximum for a skiller. My remaining quests are Battle Basics (can’t kill a spider), Squatch Watch (can’t access Sasquatch), Better Beds (can’t access Heavy Leather for Maple Beds), and all the quests with a minimum combat level.

Storage space

Early on, I found it extremely tricky to manage my inventory as I didn’t have access to much leather. Buying light leather from a trader and making a few “Small bag”s helped a bit, but far more beneficial was levelling up carpentry and getting large food and armour storage crates.

Beds

A red fir bed is relatively easy to get, you just need to buy 10 light leather from a trader. However, that’ll be your only bed for a long, long time, since no other leather is available until end-game ancient leather!

Killing mammoths will very, very slowly let you collect the 50 ancient leather needed, whilst the alchemy pet will very, very slowly let you collect the 100 Teratorn feathers. I’m around 65% of the way to unlocking this bed.

Expedition’s Echo

True, you can’t play this minigame. You can unlock it though!

  1. Open “The Lost Expedition” quest whilst it’s unlocked.
  2. Tap the “Captain’s Pendant” it requires.
  3. Tap the “Go to area” button beneath it… and you’ll be within Expedition’s End.
  4. Fight here using Reflecting potions (and anything you have that helps rare spawns & rare drops).
  5. Eventually you’ll get the Wavesong Key, which can be used to unlock the minigame.

This is definitely a bug, but safe to say it’s pretty niche.

Inaccessible content

Lots of restrictions can be worked around via various techniques, but some stuff is completely off limits to skillers. Here’s what I couldn’t access, no matter how I tried.

Play Expedition’s Echo

Whilst you can unlock Expedition’s Echo (more on that later!), you can’t actually compete in it without gaining combat XP.

Combat level quests

Some quests require a certain combat level to unlock. Unfortunately there’s no way to boost combat level (even with potions), so these will never be accessible.

Tomes

Tomes require level 5 combat. We will never have this, so no tomes for us. This is a real shame, since the purple tome would be great for extra damage!

Dummies

The combat dummies (accessed via tokens) have a max hit below 5, so can never be damaged.

Conclusion

I’ve played skillers in plenty of other games before (notably RuneScape, of course), but this is the first time I’ve had to invent my own techniques. I’m especially happy with obscure unlocks like Expedition’s Echo, and achieving all 99s.

It’s somewhat disappointing that there’s no particularly challenging content, the hardest is probably attack cancelling against weaker enemies. Obviously I’m not playing the game as intended though, so I can’t really complain!

Once I’ve finally grinded out the final bed, I’ll probably train combat so I can prestige and start again. Next playthrough idea: combat-only ⚔️