Steep & Steam guide
How to play Steep & Steam
Steep & Steam is a calm idle game about a tiny tea shop. You brew cups of tea by hand, hire helpers that brew for you, and grow your shop one cup at a time. This guide covers the basics, a few tips, and the full numbers at the end.
The basics
- Brew a cup. Tap the big button to brew a cup by hand. It is how every shop starts.
- Hire helpers. Spend cups on tea kettles, serving trays, tea brewers and tea counters. Each one keeps brewing on its own, every second.
- Buy upgrades. Upgrades appear as your shop grows. Most double what one kind of helper brews; a few make everything faster, or make the cups you brew by hand count for more.
- Start a new season. Once your shop is busy, you can close for the season and reopen fresh. Your cups, helpers and upgrades reset, but regulars come back every season and make everything brew 10% faster, for good.
Your first few minutes
- Tap until you have 15 cups, then buy your first tea kettle. From now on cups arrive on their own.
- Keep tapping and buy a few more kettles. After 25 cups brewed by hand, Better leaves appears: it makes each tap count twice, and it is well worth it early on.
- Save up for a serving tray at 100 cups. It brews six times as much as a kettle.
- Once you have five helpers, Fine kettles appears. It doubles everything your shop brews, so buy it as soon as you can.
Within ten minutes or so you will have every kind of helper and a steady stream of upgrades to choose from.
Tips
Watch for helper upgrades. At 10, 25, 50 and 100 of a helper, a new upgrade appears that doubles that helper’s output. These are often the best value in the shop, especially the first one for each helper.
Use Buy 10 and Max. The buttons above the helpers let you buy 1, 10, 100 or as many as you can afford at once. Your choice is remembered. Max is handy after a long break.
Tapping matters most at the start. Early on, your taps are a big share of your cups. Later, your helpers brew far more than you ever could by hand, so feel free to sit back.
Come back about twice a day. Your shop keeps brewing for up to 12 hours while you are away, at full speed. After that it waits for you. Read more in idle games that work offline.
When to start a new season
A new season unlocks once you have brewed 10 million cups in the current season. The number of regulars you welcome grows with how far the season went: it is the square root of your cups this season divided by ten million, so 40 million cups brings 2 regulars and a billion brings 10.
A good rule: start a new season when it would add at least half again to the regulars you already have, and when progress has slowed so that the next useful purchase is a long way off. Your first new season will feel like a loss, but with even one or two regulars you will be back where you were surprisingly quickly. For the thinking behind this, see what is prestige?
Settings worth knowing
- Number format. Choose standard (12.4K, 3.4e12), scientific or engineering numbers in Settings.
- Sound. Sound is off until you turn it on. There is a gentle music loop and soft effects, with separate volume controls.
- Reduce motion. Turns off the small animations.
- Stats. Shows your exact cup count, cups brewed by hand, time played and more.
Keep your shop safe
Steep & Steam saves automatically in your browser every 30 seconds and whenever you leave. Browsers can clear saved data, so use the Save page to copy a backup now and then. You can paste it into another browser or device to carry on there.
The numbers
These tables come straight from the game's own data, so they always match what you see in the game.
Helpers
| Helper | First one costs | Cups each second |
|---|---|---|
| Tea kettle | 15 cups | 0.5 |
| Serving tray | 100 cups | 3 |
| Tea brewer | 1,100 cups | 20 |
| Tea counter | 12,000 cups | 130 |
Each helper you buy costs 15% more than the one before.
Helper upgrades
Each doubles what one kind of helper makes.
| Upgrade | Appears at | Costs |
|---|---|---|
| Copper kettles | 10 tea kettles | 243 cups |
| Whistling spouts | 25 tea kettles | 1,975 cups |
| Kettle rack | 50 tea kettles | 65,019 cups |
| Bottomless kettles | 100 tea kettles | 70,458,807 cups |
| Lacquered trays | 10 serving trays | 1,618 cups |
| Cake stands | 25 serving trays | 13,168 cups |
| Silver service | 50 serving trays | 433,463 cups |
| Tea trolley | 100 serving trays | 469,725,380 cups |
| Warm teapots | 10 tea brewers | 17,800 cups |
| Loose-leaf infusers | 25 tea brewers | 144,843 cups |
| Brewing timers | 50 tea brewers | 4,768,093 cups |
| Cold-brew jars | 100 tea brewers | 5,166,979,183 cups |
| Tip jar | 10 tea counters | 194,187 cups |
| Chalkboard menu | 25 tea counters | 1,580,110 cups |
| Window seats | 50 tea counters | 52,015,557 cups |
| Painted shop sign | 100 tea counters | 56,367,045,634 cups |
Other upgrades
| Upgrade | What it does | Appears at | Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Better leaves | Each cup you brew by hand counts twice. | 25 cups brewed by hand | 100 cups |
| Steady hands | Each cup you brew by hand counts three times. | 250 cups brewed by hand | 2,500 cups |
| Fine kettles | Everything in the shop brews twice as fast. | 5 helpers | 500 cups |
| Seasonal blends | Everything in the shop brews twice as fast. | 100,000 cups this season | 150,000 cups |
| Tea festival | Everything in the shop brews twice as fast. | 15,000,000 cups this season | 25,000,000 cups |
Achievements
- First cup: Brew your first cup of tea.
- Put the kettle on: Buy your first tea kettle.
- Full house: Own at least one of every helper.
- A thousand cups: Brew 1,000 cups in total.
- A million cups: Brew 1,000,000 cups in total.
- A billion cups: Brew 1,000,000,000 cups in total.
- Busy hands: Brew 1,000 cups by hand.
- A busy shop: Own 50 helpers at once.
- A hundred kettles: Own 100 tea kettles.
- A new season: Start your first new season.
- Old hand: Reach season 6.