Basic intro to more challenging unofficial MWI playstyles (such as NGIC)

Introduction to some of the most popular self-imposed alternative playstyle variants that add more challenge to the official IronCow mode in Milky Way Idle.

Introduction

At the time of writing, the game Milky Way Idle allows you to have up to 3 characters on your account, of which up to 1 can have full market access, while the rest must be using the IronCow mode.

IronCow characters have the following restrictions imposed by the game:

• No marketplace access except for buying cowbells and looking up items
  
• Group combat can only be done with other IronCow characters

IronCow characters have [IC] at the end of their name (before the : symbol, in a more gray color) in chat and in their profile.
Some players who played self-imposed by the IronCow rules before it became an official mode are called Legacy (Iron)Cows and have [LC] instead.

Some people choose to dedicate one or more of their IronCow characters to more challenging playstyles that add more self-imposed restrictions in addition to the ones mandated by the game for IronCow characters (as mentioned above).

The most popular such playstyle is the No Gather IronCow (NGIC), which adds the restriction of not doing any gathering skills (milking, foraging, and woodcutting), and means that they get all of their resources from combat.

Most other challenge playstyles take NGIC as a base and then restrict even more skills from being used.

Since there is currently (at the time of writing) no way to delete or reset a single character, only whole accounts, and you can only have one active account, I think it is useful to know about these playstyles so you can decide if you want to try them before you make all your characters and possibly lock yourself out of playing them outside of the test server.

No Gather IronCow (NGIC)

No Gather IronCow (NGIC) is probably the most popular of the playstyles that add more challenge to the IronCow mode.

This involves making an IronCow character, and avoiding doing any gathering skills (milking, foraging, and woodcutting).

As a result of this, NGIC characters are unable to do the tutorial, which means they don't get the free 80 cowbells (and cheese sword) from the tutorial reward, and don't get to unlock the tasks system.

Some people choose to do a slightly less restricted version where they do just enough gathering actions to complete the tutorial, in order to unlock tasks, but making sure to not level up those skills.
While this is also a valid playstyle, it is quite different from having 0 xp in all the gathering skills.

Many NGIC players choose to not do group combat with other IronCows unless they are also NGIC, and perhaps also only in dungeons.

The NGIC playstyle also results in having much less access to food and coffee consumables, as well as jewelry, but it is possible to get access to these by transmuting materials with the alchemy skill.
Some houses also require materials that an NGIC can only get from alchemy, such as regular milk.
For this reason, a lot of the NGIC combat grinding may be done without food or coffee.

Combat Only IronCow

One of the most restrictive playstyles is the Combat Only IronCow. As they are only able to use equipment that is dropped directly by enemies.

At the time of writing, this means that the only equipment they are able to get is the Gator Vest from Sherlock, and the different Gobo weapons (usually just the melee ones, due to skill requirements, but they could use ranged or magic abilities to level those skills enough to equip those weapons as well).

A variant of this could be to allow buying basic weapons from the (npc) shop, in order to more easily level up ranged or magic enough to equip the gobo weapons, but since you can level those with abilities regardless of weapon, most players going for this challenge would probably avoid using the shop as well.

Combat and Enhancing Only IronCow

A playstyle that is around the same level of popularity as Combat Only IronCow is one that does that but also allows using the Enhancing skill.
Since the equipment for Combat Only IronCow is so limited, adding enhancing helps a lot with raising the limits of how strong they can get.

Due to the lack of cheesesmithing, it can make sense for this variant to allow buying an enhancer tool from the (npc) shop.

Another variant of this playstyle could be to add the alchemy skill as well, though its use without other production skills is probably pretty limited.

Other Single-Skill Only variants

Single-Skill Only variants are mainly a thing for characters with market access, but some people do an IronCow character that only does a single gathering skill for the memes.

People who decide to chase the leaderboards of a single skill mainly do that one skill, but often do at least a little bit of other skills to support that one skill and make it more efficient, especially if they are IronCows. This is in part due to some skilling equipment requiring levels in multiple similar skills to equip.

Production skills (non-combat skills that are not gathering) require some kind of source of materials, so doing only one of those skills is pretty much reserved for characters with full market access. However, some IronCows could do just a pair of skills like milking and cheesesmithing if they really want that focus.

Regarding Dungeons

Dungeons in Milky Way Idle are designed for groups of 5 characters of combat level 100+.
Entering/attempting a dungeon requires a dungeon entry key for that specific dungeon.
The entry key is only consumed at the end of a successful run.
Opening the chest from defeating the boss at the end of the dungeon requires a dungeon chest key for that specific dungeon.

Since dungeon entry and chest keys are made with the crafting skill, any IronCow variant that wants to do dungeons will have to allow leveling the crafting skill.
Depending on the other restrictions on the playstyle variant, including who they group with, it may also require other skills to get enough consumables to be able to successfully do the dungeon, since there is no respawning of player characters during a dungeon attempt, other than by someone else in the group having the revive ability.

Typically, challenge variant playstyle characters only allow themselves to group with other characters using the same variant ruleset, and possibly also only for dungeons.
Dungeon chest keys require key fragments that drop from planet bosses, which may be too hard to do solo for some/many variants.

For these reasons, some variant playstyles may simply never do dungeons.

Regarding Tasks

The tasks system gives the character access to a variety of different tasks, which reward coins and task tokens.
Task tokens can be used to buy various permanent upgrades to the tasks system from the task shop (the second tab in the tasks menu), as well as large lootboxes which otherwise drop from doing higher level content in respective skills, and task crystals.
Task points are a tally of how many task tokens you've gotten from tasks, and is used for competing in the task points leaderboard as well as earning Purple's Gifts.
Purple's Gift doesn't cost anything, and gives some coins and task tokens (tokens from gifts don't give task points), as well as various lootboxes, and also has a chance to drop a task crystal, and a small chance to drop another Purple's Gift!
Task crystals are used to craft, upgrade, and enhance, task badges, which equip in the trinket slot and gives bonuses that make you faster at doing your currently active unfilled tasks.
After completing the tutorial and unlocking the tasks system, you start with a full set of tasks in all your task slots, and get a new task at the end of your task cooldown if you have an available slot for it at the time. It is very common for a lot of the initial tasks to be ones for killing the fly enemy.
More task slots can be purchased in the cowbell store.
The task cooldown starts at 8 hours, and can be upgraded up to 4 times, bringing it down to 4 hours.

The only sources for star fragments, which are required to make jewelry, are from meteorite caches which drop from doing gathering skills (and can be bought from the task shop), and from transmuting in the alchemy skill.

As mentioned in the NGIC section, unlocking the tasks system requires completing the tutorial, which requires doing at least one action of some gathering skills.

As a result of this, some people choose to do a slightly less restricted version where they do just enough gathering actions to complete the tutorial, in order to unlock tasks, but making sure to not level up those skills (and someone crafting their task badges could do so while remaining level 1 crafting if they want that and are careful about avoiding experience buffs/bonuses).
While this is also a valid playstyle, it is quite different from having 0 xp in all the gathering skills.
The same playstyle with or without access to tasks can be considered different variants, but it can help make the playstyle more enjoyable or interesting if you find it to be too restrictive without them.

Final thoughts and notable profile examples

My thanks go out to the many players who pioneered these challenging playstyle variants.
If you think I've missed anything, or if new playstyle variants rise to prominence later, feel free to let me know in the comments.

In the ingame chat you can open the profile of a player character with the button in the menu that opens if you click their name in chat, or by typing "/profile name".
For example you can paste the following line into the ingame chat to see the profile of my own NGIC character:

/profile MaxioNG

Here are some notable examples of players who either pioneered their playstyle variants, or are otherwise notable examples of how far someone in such variant playstyles can get:

• DemonNG
  
• moolissa

Thank you very much for your interest in this topic, and for reading my guide! :)
~Maxion