The loop, and the three numbers at the top
You arrive in Silkwood with Frances McClane, a county sheriff sent to investigate strange sightings. Rory, the mayor, needs cash to charge up the portal that connects the town to the Dream World, and the businesses you open are how he gets it. Everything in the early game is one of four things: follow a goal, buy customers for a business, automate a business so it earns without you, and step through the portal to the next episode.
Three numbers sit across the top of the screen. Cash (green) buys customers and opens businesses, and it is what your businesses produce. Dream Crystals (blue) are the premium currency, earned from some goals and sold in the store. Nanospiders (gold) upgrade characters and renovate businesses. Under them is the episode bar: a row of goal markers with the portal at the end.
Follow the goals
Goals sit at the top of the map and tell you what to do next, with the reward shown on the goal. In the first episode they run in a natural order: open Mad Hardware, collect from it, get it to 25 customers, open the next business, reach 100 customers across the town, reach a cash total, and so on. Some goals pay cash or Dream Crystals; some unlock a new character.
Each episode has a minimum number of goals before the portal opens, but finishing more of them is usually worth it, because every goal pays something and the portal waits for you. Before you spend on an upgrade, check whether a purchase that completes a goal would pay you back.
Buy customers, and watch for the bonus
Tap a business and two chips appear under it. The top one is how many customers it has now. The one beneath is the offer: how many more you can add and what they cost. A MAX button buys as many as your cash allows in one go. When a business has earnings waiting, a COLLECT button appears above it.
Income does not climb in a straight line. At set customer counts a business hits a customer bonus: a profit multiplier (the first shows as an x2 badge), plus cards and Nanospiders. Pushing one business to its next bonus is usually worth more than spreading the same cash thinly, so watch the round numbers.
Cash, Nanospiders, Dream Crystals and cards
Cash is the working currency. Spend it freely: it buys customers and new businesses, your businesses make more of it, and it resets at the portal anyway.
Nanospiders are the durable currency. They upgrade characters and renovate businesses, and they come from customer bonuses, goals, timer coffins, trades and events, or from the store.
Cards are specific to one character or one business. An upgrade takes cards for that character or business plus Nanospiders, and each level costs more than the last. Having enough of one does not mean you have enough of the other.
Dream Crystals are the premium currency: they come from some goals and from the store, and they carry over between episodes.
Automate a business
This is the step that turns the game from tapping into idling. Automation opens from the second episode. Each business shows what it needs: a named character at a set level, and the character and level change from episode to episode. Meet the requirement and the business earns at the same rate as when you are playing, including while the app is closed.
If you cannot automate a business yet, read the requirement on it before assuming something is wrong. You may need more of that character’s cards and Nanospiders to reach the level. Automating early in each episode is what lets the town grow between check-ins rather than only during them.
Which character to upgrade
Most characters are tied to one business and raise its speed or profit when you level them. Frances, Rory and Janice are the exception: upgrading them raises every business at once.
A character upgrade does one of three things: raises the profit multiplier of its business, raises your Portal Power for the tapping challenge at the end of the episode, or meets a business’s automation requirement. Nanospiders are the scarce input, so the useful question before each upgrade is which of those three you need next.
The portal: what resets, what you keep
When you have completed enough goals, the episode bar offers Start next episode. Tap the portal and the game shows you the deal before you accept: all customers and cash reset; Dream Crystals, all cards and Nanospiders are kept. Your characters and business renovations keep their progress too, so a business you reopen in the next episode is at the renovation level you left it.
The portal sequence itself is a short, timed tapping challenge, and your Portal Power (from character upgrades) sets how much it pays out. You choose when to go: if another goal is within reach, finishing it first costs you nothing but time.
Coffins and trades
Two side systems feed you Nanospiders. Timer coffins open on a timer in the main game and pay out when you open them. Trades are offers from Frances, Rory or Janice at the bottom of the map: they ask for cards you own and pay Nanospiders. A trade only appears every couple of hours and only when you have enough copies of an eligible card, so a Complete Trades goal can sit for a while. Check whether you need those cards for an upgrade before you accept; if you pass, another offer comes along later.
Then try an event
Events are not open from the first minute: most ask you to reach Episode 5 in the main game, and some need more. When one is running, its timer shows on the main game, and you can switch between the event and your town at will.
An event runs in its own town with its own story, its own currency in place of Nanospiders and its own reward track; tap the bar at the top of the event to see what you have earned and what is still to unlock. Characters won in an event are yours in the main game, and unused event currency converts to a capped amount of Nanospiders when the event ends. Reward lists differ from event to event, so read the list rather than assuming every event adds a character.
If something goes wrong
Reopen the game first; a reward that has not been delivered is often granted on the next launch. An event that does not appear is usually one of two things: the game has not finished downloading its latest assets, or the device clock is not set to sync automatically.
If it still is not right, contact support through the Monster Country help centre, Settings → Support in the game, or scare.idle@kanoapps.com. Include your player ID, device and the episode you are on. Link your save through the in-game Settings menu before you change phones; an unlinked save lives only on the device that created it.
How this guide was put together
Written from the Monster Country help centre and a recorded first-session playthrough of an early build. Button labels, costs and unlock points can differ in the current release. If something here no longer matches the game on your phone, tell us through support and we will correct it.
