Overview
A guide to the game, basic mechanics and character selection.
Introduction
The initial scope of this guide is going to help players with their initial picks as well as maximizing damage. This is my first guide, so bear with me as the formatting might suck as well as some of the explainations.
Intro to RPG Triangle
Tank / DPS / Healer
This is the triangle that most RPGs follow. Tank, spank and heal the damage taken. For your first run, you should follow this basic idea and get fancy later through debuffs, buffs, item stacking, life stealing and other things. For now: tank; spank and heal.
Initially you are given a very limited choices in you composition. You’ll get the choice between 2 tanks, 2 healers and 2 dps. The tanks and healers also double as a little damage, but for the scope of this guide we will place the six starters into those three roles.
Tank
In order to understand tanking, you need to understand a few mechanics:
The way the game works is it adds all of the threat from all characters and then rolls a dice of that number. Quick example:
- Paladin – 5 threat
- Mage – 2 threat
- Cleric – 3 threat
5 + 2 + 3 = 10
Roll 1d10. Result:8
1-5 = Paladin; 6-7 = Mage; 8-10 Cleric.
Cleric hit.
If you increase your threat, you increase the chance of the that character being hit instead of another and, indirectly, reduce everyone else’s chance.
tldr: mor threat on tanx= gud. mor threat on dps = bad.
Each turn you get hp back. This counts even if you are unable to take a turn (crowd controlled or cc’ed). This is VERY important for some tanks. HP regen comes from various sources and I’ll list the main ones listed from early game to late game sources:
- Character’s player
- Character passive / active skills
- Heals from other characters (see healer)
- Items
You won’t get a lot of resists early outside of skills. Even then, it’ll be minimum. This game doesn’t have “armor” like most games. It’s very beer and pretzlesque. However, there are exceptions and most is the physical resist type which will help you against most early game mobs and many late game mobs.
Don’t worry about this one until later. Long story short 10% life steal means if you deal 100 damage, you get 10 back. 100 damage is hard to do and 10 hit points is a pitance. This is a DPS tanks’ bread and butter. You’ll unlock those classes later.
Your main tank is going to be either the paladin or the warrior. Once your tank dies, the rest of your party often folds behind it. Be sure to stack EVERYTHING into survivability until he’s solid. See that damage and healing skill? Wave at it and ignore it. You’ll get an item (Room -> Objects -> Hourglass) which will give it to you in rank one form which is good enough. Last thing, passive skills are ALWAYS working. If it gives you 2 threat, you always have that two threat. You can tell these amazing skills by the (passive) suffix following the skill name.
I love the warrior. His HP regen is crazy. Woofie (a starting player) makes him even better with his hp regen. Put all your points into two skills: Taunt and Hard Skin. The other two are nice if you go for a two-tank combo, but two tanks means one less dps. Taunt is your priority. LOTS of threat, LOTS of hp regen = win. He’s a tank you sit back and watch. Hard Skin will work as a heal as well. Use it first when you start the fight for the Physical resist and then use it after when you are at ~50% health.
The paladin requires active skills to tank, so you will need to invest in some initiative items (initiative lets you go first). He’s not as durable as he relies on heals to get his life back. As I said, that self-heal is not where you want to put your points. Put a point into Holy Shield. Increase it depending on how long your fights go. Start with this one every fight to reduce all incoming damage. Next, aim for Devotion and put as many points as you can in this starting level 4 until around 13. Passive threat > active threat as sometimes the monsters go first. Last, put a point into Leader Strike at level 3 and level it sparingly. You’ll be casting this every turn that your 50% shield is up. Level the heal if you are having problems living. However, if that’s the case, you probably have a problem with the next class:
Healer
First and foremost, healers don’t seem to scale their heals based on items. They are 100% skill based. Knowing this, here are a few new concepts:
Magic is used as a resource that is used to cast active abilities. No magic = no abilities or, in other words, resorting to phsical violence with a mage. It also scales damaging spells, although with a very low coefficient (.18 from what I’ve read).
Decides who goes first. I’ve yet to figure out how initiative works, but the more you have the more likely you go first. My guess is it works with threat (add all initiative together, roll dice). You want your healers, generally, to go LAST, your dps and tank to go FIRST.
This happens through passive mp regen (good) and mana steal (bad). Mana steal is bad because it requires physical attacks, which a healer doesn’t do. MP regen will tick at the start of your characters turn, regardless of if they are cc’ed.
Basic concept: target is healed when the ability is used and then again whenever they have a turn. That means a double heal if the character has a turn right after the healer’s turn.
BEWARE, this is the first character class that you can easily upgrade to death. While putting all your points into heals is tempting, don’t do it. Take your total mana, divide it by your ability cost. That’s how many turns you can cast this thing without regen. If you have 20 mana and the spell costs 5, you have 4 turns of healing bliss. If it costs 15, you have one turn of healing bliss followed by death. Upgrade your heal only when you have a large mana pool and your tank is often injured beyond your current heal ability.
Druid
Druid is a dps / healer hybred that relies on heals / turn. He acts as a mana battery as he can recharge everyone else’s mana at the expense of his own. However, a healer without mana is a dead tank. A dead tank is a dead party. The player Hynx is NECESSARY. A single point in hibernate can save you from a wipe. Level Feral rage along with your heal as all healers double as either dps or debuff.
Cleric
This is my favorite starter healer. First, the cleric can take a hit and can double as an off-tank through smite. Ignore circle of healing. If everyone is getting hit, you don’t have a good enough tank and your dps are likely to be dead after a few hits anyways. I normally put Grandma on the tank because a) getting a little damage on her synergizes with smite well and b) she looks awesome with the pope hat.
Weakening is one of the most op skills in the early game. It can debuff 3 enemies at a time and give you a great intro to the world of buff / debuff. Level Weakening as fast as you can while keeping smite and restoration relevant. This will aid you in the AOE strategy for your next type of character:
DPS
Okay, here’s where you need to do math. Don’t like math, I’ll try and work with you. However, min/maxxing like a baws requirez crazy math skillz. This game works with various damage types that you need to understand.
This hits every enemy. Damage * number of enemies = total damage. Pretty straight forward. Doesn’t kill enemies fast, so you’ll need a solid tank / healer combo. However, it kills groups fast. Less enemies = less damage to your tank. However, less enemies = less AOE damage.
This hurts a single target with the hope of killing it and it no longer dealing damage. This is really important for boss fights as most of the damage comes from a single source.
DoTs take time and often deal a lot of total damage. However, they are single targeted and don’t kill the enemy immediately. They are, in my opinion, a secondary option for most characters as they fulfill neither of the two goals outlined below.
This is the math. I’ll keep it simple. For attack based characters, you will have the option to increase one of these three. Trust me on the math here; Crit Hit % (double damage) and skill based work identically so go with the bigger number (but remember crit hit maxes at 100%). Here’s the key:
Increase +damage until average damage * %gain > +damage.
Example
I get a +1 damage from the Poison Skill. I get a 5% boost from upgrading double attack (doubled because it’s 5% per hit). I get a 3% boost to critical hit from Vanish. My current damage (ATK) is 4-6 which is an average of 5.
5 + 1 = 6 damage
5 * 1.10 (5%*2) = 5.5 damage
5 * 1.03 (3%) = 5.15 damage
When is it better to get the percentage? When 5%*2*average damage> 1 damage. That happens when average damage is greater than 10. Just remember, +1 damage is passive and free, the other two require mana and rapidly get expensive. This leads you to want the 3% damage at 33 damage if you can’t afford the 5% boost’s mana increase. It can get more complicated, but for starting a character, this will do.
There are two Objectives of the DPS and only one if you have a solid tank / healer.
Kill them before they kill you. This shouldn’t be a problem if you build your tank / healer right. However, some fights require you to kill individuals quickly to reduce damage. Single target damage is safer as it kills individuals and drops the enemy damage, but multi-target will often deal more overall damage and finish the fight faster.
Kill them quickly. I’m talking real-life speed. That AoE fireball may not kill anyone until turn 4-5, but they ALL die turn 4-5. The single target hit will take 7 turns to kill each guy but will reduce their damage every turn.
The rogue is the king of the single target. He can one-shot trash mobs and quickly kill elites. The down side: he can only deal damage to one mob when you will often be fighting seven.
AOE at the cost of mana. Pile EVERYTHING into Stream with your first point going into Meteor. I prefer the mage to the rogue for one reason, you deal half the damage of a rogue to 7 enemies. Yeah, that elite is going to take all day, but his 6 buddies are a smoking heap on the ground.
The Shop, Experience and Gold
These three things are what you are trying to maximize. My suggestion: ignore it. Just let it come in while doing quests. The one that you are going to be most involved with is the shop.
The shop is a priority for beginners. Number one, buy the BK crown. If you aren’t fighting 7 enemies, you are wasting time. After that focus on things that give you HP, MP regen and HP regen. Ignore everything with % unless it’s the only option. I personally enjoy all money boosts, but the HP should be priority until your dps can take the odd hit. Regen should be priority until you get some items.
After you’ve gotten all of the Objects as well as one item in each slot start aiming for the +minutes to food / drink. Once you have all of these, equip the +minute items, buy food / drink and then de-equip all of the +minute items.
For reference, there are three +minute items: pet, furnature left, furnature right.
Coffee is an AMAZING item that is worth every coin.
Fight seven monsters, elites if possible and don’t fight outside of quests. Again, don’t farm money until you are finished with the main game and want to start saving up for a second run with a team that is more interesting (see next guide if I ever get to it).
Concluding Advice
In caves, the minerals are clickable. You use these to upgrade
the blacksmith. Buy four Greater Molten Rings (GMR) to decrease
the cost to 20%, boost your + dice rolls using room modifiers and
upgrade your weapons and armor as much as you can. You can buy
grindstones from the store. The blacksmith is at the first
castle that your reach as well as most major cities. I would
avoid upgrading until your shop (room) is finished and you have
all four GMRs.
Unlock the archer. He’s amazing.
Attack characters > Magic characters. The 1 Attack = 1 damage. ~5 magic = 1 damage. Attack gives life steal and mana steal. Magic gives… damage and cool animations.
Items are essential. Early game you have some gather quests that you can equip the items. It only takes those items away if you have them in inventory, not if they are equipped. Cheap items are available in the first castle and will give you some pretty nice upgrades. Minus to threat on your dps, mana on your casters and health on everyone. Don’t overspend though as you will likely get your end-game items around level 20+ which will replace everything earlier bought.
Early game health is vital as it will save you from the RNG. Get it via your shop and items.
I’ll add anything I can remember later, but I’ve already written a lot. Not sure if I’ll answer questions or add later. I’m quite ADHD, have a hard time remembering and get very distracted by…