Beginner guide
What to spend your first money on, and the two mistakes that cost new players the most time.
The loop you are actually optimising
Gym Star Simulator is a two-resource game wearing a simulator's clothes. You train to raise muscle and stamina, you win competitions to raise money, and money buys the pets and trainers that make training faster. Everything else is decoration on that loop.
The mistake almost everyone makes early is treating money as the score. It is not — it is fuel. Money sitting in your pocket is multiplier you have not bought yet.
Spend on eggs before anything else
Pet multipliers add together, so your total is the sum of everything equipped. That makes early eggs unusually good value: going from no pets to a few World 1 pets is a larger proportional jump than any single purchase you will make later.
The Deadlift Egg and Pool Egg in the Seaside Gym are where this starts. See the full list on our pets table, which shows every standard-tier pet's multiplier and which egg it comes from.
Take the free trainers
Two of the documented trainers cost nothing meaningful. Mike is 100 in-game dollars from the Trainer Shop for +20% muscle growth, and Lina is the Day 2 daily reward for +20% stamina growth.
Trainer bonuses are flat percentages that stack on top of your pet multipliers, so picking these up early compounds with everything that comes after.
Do not rush the next world
Each gym raises how much training a competition win requires. Moving up before your multipliers can carry it means longer grinds for the same reward, which reads as the game getting slower when it is really you arriving underpowered.
Clear the competitions in your current gym comfortably before you teleport onward.