Strictly speaking you don't need top buy any games, you can just buy the cards and craft the badges.

Also you can do these tasks for some XP
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/profiles/76561199004692353/badges/2

Cheap badges: https://steam.tools/cards/
Sort by set price then look for the biggest booster price discounts, for example grimm, you can play the demo, it's a cool game and the cards are cheap if you buy boosters:
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/market/listings/753/252150-Grimm%20Booster%20Pack

You can trade either via STM scan www.steamtradematcher.com/compare or get ASF (archi's steam farm) to trade cards for you but that's a steep learning curve to use.

If you want the games then you can steam search for discounted cheap games with cards:
psteamproxy.yuanyoumao.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&maxprice=4&category1=998&category2=29&specials=1

30 games, steam ignores any more than that. Idle Master extended will idle 30 together automatically under fast mode.

broken right now, see other discussions

Idle master reads your badge pages to see what drops you have remaining.
You don't need to have games installed for them to be idled.

If you have a newer account or if you've ever refunded a game then the 1st drop for each game takes 3 hours now.

Recker lähetti viestin:

bro go to use steam achiviment mamger ok !

'steam achiviment mamger' is for changing achievements which is strongly shunned by many gamers. Idle Master is for getting your alloted card drops, the 2 programs do different things.

Other game idlers are Archi's Steam Farm, Idle-Daddy (Android) and Card Idle Remastered.

I don't know if the Idle Master Extended creator can fix it or if it needs to be fixed by steam.

Seems like valve have mucked up the login page again or their login servers are having problems.

Login page didn't ask for auth code, Steam problem.

Free games typically don't drop cards unless you spend a lot of money on DLCs or micro-transactions. You're better off buying cheap games on sale at 90% discount or buying games bundles like:
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/IndieBundleTracker/announcements/detail/1707361155521472871

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/idlemastery/discussions/0/133257636766989675/

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/idlemastery/discussions/0/1290691937722380084/