Empire of Gears Game Guide

Getting Started

Empire of Gears opens on your factory floor: a grid of tiles, a handful of starting machines and a tap button. The tap button is your bootstrap. It produces cash directly and exists only so you can afford your first automated machine — after that you should rarely need it.

The first ten minutes look like this: tap until you can afford a producer, place it, watch cash per second rise, buy the next one. Don't overthink layout at this stage; empty tiles are cheap and you can rearrange later. What matters early is keeping every spare coin invested rather than sitting in your balance.

Machines

Machines come in two broad kinds.

• Producers generate output on their own with no inputs — hand-crank generators, solar panels and power plants. They're your income floor and the source of the raw material and power everything else consumes.
• Converters consume inputs from connected machines and turn them into something more valuable — steel presses, welding robots, assembly tables, robotic arm grids, nano assembly lines, fusion reactors and quantum fabricators. A converter with no supply produces nothing, so it's only worth what you feed it.

Every machine has three properties worth checking before you buy: its cost, its footprint (1x1 up to 3x3) and its recipe requirements. The Shop tooltip lists all three. A machine you can afford but can't supply is a machine that will sit idle.

Production

Production runs on a tick. On each tick, every machine attempts to run its recipe: it checks whether the inputs it needs are available from connected neighbours, consumes them, and emits its output. If an input is missing the machine stalls that tick and tries again on the next one.

Because machines pull from their connections, adjacency is the layout puzzle. A chain like generator → press → assembly table works when each stage sits next to the next and faces the right way; rotating a machine changes which side it outputs from, and the connector lines drawn on the grid show you the current flow. If a line is missing between two machines you expected to be linked, they aren't feeding each other.

Anything your chains don't consume is sold automatically, so a full storage buffer never jams your whole factory. That auto-sell is where most of your cash per second comes from in the mid game, which is why raising throughput matters more than hoarding.

The Data tab summarises all of this: total cash per second, per-chain contribution, and which stages are starved. Treat a starved stage as your next task — feeding an existing converter is almost always cheaper than buying a new machine.

Resources

Cash is the main currency and the thing every machine ultimately produces. Alongside it your factory works with intermediate goods — raw material, plate, components and the higher-tier goods later machines produce. These aren't spent in a shop; they exist to be consumed by the next machine in the chain, and their value comes from how far up the chain you can push them before selling.

Power behaves as a supporting resource: generators and plants supply it, and heavier machines need it available nearby. Reward Fuel is a separate consumable used by the optional reward generators on the Earn tab, and Factory Cores are the premium currency described below.

Key Recipes

Some recipes unlock whole branches of the build tree. The most important early one is Electronics, because several tier-3 and tier-4 machines need it as a construction material.

Once Electronics is flowing, it feeds into Robotics Assembly, Quantum Components, and the construction of advanced machines like the Robotic Arm Grid, AI Quality Control and Nano Assembly Line.

Building Your Factory

Placement is the closest thing Empire of Gears has to a skill test. Some habits that pay off:

• Build chains in a straight run so each stage touches the next.
• Put producers on the outside edge and converters inland, so supply flows inward.
• Leave a spare row. Big machines need 2x2 or 3x3 and won't fit into scattered gaps.
• Check the pulsing SET badge — a machine without a recipe is dead weight no matter how well it's placed.
• Move before you demolish. Most "broken" chains just need machines placed side by side.

When the floor is genuinely full, extra floors and additional map sections open up more space. Unlocking space is worth it only when you already have a chain worth duplicating.

For tier-by-tier grid diagrams, see Best Factory Layouts.

Factory Cores

Factory Cores are the premium currency. They unlock additional factory floors, some map sections, cosmetic items for your character, and reward generators on the Earn tab. You never need Cores to play — they change pace, not access.

Free sources include:

• Daily games, science quizzes, achievements and season rewards.
• Referral rewards under the current referral settings.
• Optional Core packs in the Shop if you want to progress faster.

Progression

Progression is measured by tiers and by how much of the map you've opened. Each tier brings a more advanced class of machine and a higher ceiling on cash per second; map sections give you the physical space and thematic perks to run those machines at scale.

The rhythm is deliberately simple: expand output, hit a wall, unlock the next space or tier, expand again. There's no reset mechanic to plan around right now — everything you build stays built. Some deeper systems are still in development and stay hidden in the menu until they're actually ready to play.

Offline Production

Your factory keeps working while the tab is closed. When you return, the time you were away is applied to your production and credited to your balance. Offline accrual is not capped, so you're credited for the entire time you were away. The same applies to reward generators, which run only while they have fuel.

Referrals

Each account has a permanent referral code on the Referrals page. When a new player starts with your code you receive 50 Factory Cores and a standing 1% bonus on the factory cash they generate. The bonus applies to up to 10 referred players, and it costs the person you referred nothing.

Account & Saving Progress

Progress is stored on your account, not in your browser, so it survives clearing your cache and follows you to any device you sign in on. Saves happen automatically as you play; the save system validates a load before applying it and holds back autosaves until a good load is confirmed, which prevents a slow connection from overwriting newer progress.

You can sign up with an email address or with Google. You can change your username, manage your character and cosmetics from the Profile tab, and request account deletion by contacting support.