AFK Arena — A Quick List of Tips for Advanced Players

So as I’ve been playing the game I’ve been paying attention to certain mechanics, and have come up with a list of things that I don’t see spread around here that often, but can really help if you know them.

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Gear

• Gear XP is not lost between gears. This means if you dump 600 XP into a blue item to max it, and then later feed it to another item, you’ll get the full 700 XP from this item (600 from the previous XP, 100 for the baseline for blue items).
• This means you can liberally upgrade your current items unless you are really trying to focus on specific items/heroes.
• You do lose the gold on this – it’s minimal in the early stages of progress, but gets more expensive as you start getting higher-tier gear (that also upgrades more times as well).
• Gear makes up about 20% of your total stats, per eyeballing my heroes. Assuming quality-for-quality (E+ gear on an E+ hero, for instance). That means that 80% comes from level-ups and Ascensions.
• If higher-tier gear has a different ratio, let me know. I’m at the end of chapter 8.
• HP – ~13-15%, ATK – ~20-25%, DEF – ~30-35% of your total stats come from gear at E/E+ gear and heroes. Interesting that DEF is so gear reliant (but I guess it makes sense from a real perspective).

Lab and Peaks of Time

• You can pause a battle and restart it at any time before the Victory or Defeat dance the characters do. This means there is technically no need for Dura’s Tears in Lab.
• Run your Labs and PoT battles on 1x speed for this reason.
• Taking your battles off of “Auto” can allow you to ‘store’ your characters’ ultimate abilities for use in a later combat. If you’re running a healer like Nemora or (lv 81) Lucius, for instance, and your characters are in an easier battle and not losing health, you can hold on to these defensive (or strong offensive, like Shemira) ultimates for use in harder fights.
• In Peaks of Time, you can use the easier battles to build up ult charge before taking on a boss tile. 😉
• If you can’t pass a stage in lab right now, come back tomorrow! Your characters will be stronger and the 48 hr lab timer won’t be up yet, so the lab’s denizens will be the same strength that they were yesterday.
• This is why it’s important to start it day-of. If you get blindsided by a difficult stage, you have time to overcome it until you learn the deeper nuances of Lab and which Relics to take, etc.
• Relic Tier List – Consult this, as some relics seem good but aren’t. 🙂

Leveling and Resource Management

• Level heroes one-by-one in stages of 20. This means if you’re running Saveas as your strongest hero, make him 41 while all your other heroes are 21, then perhaps your next best hero is still Hogan, so level him to 41 next, and so on.
• Once everything is 41, then level Saveas to 61 first while everyone else sits at 41.
• Damage Dealer (DD) -> Tank -> DD -> Tank -> Support/Flex is a good strategy for leveling order (as well as team compositions). Where Flex can be a third DD or tank that is less useful/strong than the other two. You can also have two Supports, if they deal some decent damage as well (like Arden).
• You can also do DD -> DD -> Tank -> Tank -> Support/Flex. It all depends on how vital your front line is for defending your back line currently. If your tanks are getting melted, level them up!
• Gold can be spent on things other than hero levels, but you should still be frugal with it. Usually spending gold on the daily hero essence in the shop will keep you just out of the red zone. Spending it liberally on gear in the shop will break your bank.
• Hero’s Essence is usually the biggest limiting factor in level ups. It takes about 20-25 levels-worth of XP to get enough essence to level up that last level, so keep that in mind when you’re looking at options of purchasing or obtaining essence.
• Diamonds should only be used for summons, resetting heroes at the rickety cart, and the 5 elite stones for 90-113 crystals (the deal on these gets better as you progress) that show up in the shop periodically. Do NOT use them on Hero’s essence or gear purchases, maybe Mythic, heavily discounted armor in the Labyrinth, but never anything else.
• If you get rid of a hero in any way (such as using them as ascension fodder), the resources you invested in them are returned to you. So if you’re done using Hogan, he’s at E+, and you want to ascend your Lucius to L and your Hogan is level 81 (not in the crystal), you can still just use your level 81 Hogan as ascension fodder for Lucius’ ascension, and all of the resources you dumped into Hogan (including his gear) will be returned to you.
• No need to waste 20 crystals to reset him first, that’s just a waste. You will be able to level someone else to level 81 instantly using the returned materials from Hogan.
• This also works if they’re in the resonating crystal. A way to ‘cheat’ the 1-day timer is to use them as ascension fodder instead of removing them manually. If you have an E Shemira in the crystal, and you’ve pulled another E Shemira but you don’t plan on using Shemira for a while, use the Shemira in the crystal as fodder for the otherShemira and it’ll open a slot in the crystal for you instantly! You can always just throw your new E+ Shemira in there anyway. 🙂
• Caveat – please don’t use an ascended-tier hero like Shemira for someone else’s ascension just to skip the resonating timer. That’s dumb. The ascension rules of “never use ascended heroes as fodder” still applies, folks.

Battle

• Characters generally do one to three of six different things – Damage, CC, Displacement, Meat Shield (“Have HP”), Buff/Debuff, and Heal.
• Damage – Usually back line. Obvious. Can be split between Single Target and AoE. EX: Saveas (ST), Shemira (AoE), Brutus (ST & AoE), Arden (AoE).
• CC – Back Line or Front Line. Stops things from moving or taking action. EX: Tasi, Arden, Nemora.
• Displacement – BL or FL. Often considered CC, but this is important in this game and often overlooked – moving enemies around the battlefield with skills, either away from your team or into them. EX: Athalia, Golus.
• Meat Shield – Obvious FL. Tanks. They are there to take hits and/or help allies take hits. EX: Golus, Brutus, Hogan.
• Buff/Debuff – Usually BL. Rarer in this game, but still present. Reducing/Increasing haste is the most common one, but there are others. EX: Safiyah, Lyca.
• Heal – Usually BL, Lucius exception. Heals allies. EX: Lucius, Nemora, Numisu.
• So someone like Lucius is a healer tank, while Saveas is exclusively a damage dealer, Brutus is a damage dealer tank, Nemora is a CC Healer, Athalia is a Displacement Damage Dealer, Arden is a CC Damage Dealer, etc.
• See this response below for further advice on battles. 🙂

Ascension

• Ascension Simplified
• Keep in mind that when you get to higher tiers (Legendary and beyond), you’ll have to plan out your fodder.If you want to ascend Shemira, and pull a bunch of Vedans, Nirus, and Silvinas over the course of a few days or weeks, and just sort of ascend them willy-nilly to Elite, this is less productive than focusing on, say, Vedan first so you can get a Vedan E+, then focus on whoever else (RNG dependent) to get another E+ and ascend Shemira to L. Once she’s L+, you’ll have to plan all of this and then take it one step further to get your ‘copies’ to L+ for a Mythic ascension.
• Keeping several copies of heroes at R+ is totally fine to do until you can ascend two of the same hero to E for an instant E+ to be used in Shemira’s (or whoever’s) ascension from E+ to L.
• Three R’s to one R+ is always safe to do, there’s no reason to hold on to R copies if they can ascend to R+, ever.
• Likewise, two E’s to one E+ is always safe to do. Beyond these two examples there are nuanced situations (like the point above these ones) that you might want to hold on to copies of something without ascending them.

Resonating Crystal

• You do NOT want your solo carry in the crystal, even if they’re of a lower ascension than some other heroes.Saveas should never be put in the crystal. Your top 3 leveled heroes should be out of the crystal, and then the other two should be your higher ascension heroes (whether you use them or not).
• I made the mistake of throwing my R+ Saveas into the crystal thinking that I had 5 other E and E+ heroes so they could be leveled higher than Saveas, only to realize that I couldn’t overlevel my Saveas at all. Cost me a day of an unusable slot in the crystal, and twenty crystals to reset a hero so I could overlevel Saveas first/second. He reached E+ before hitting 100 anyway, and he’ll be L soon, before reaching 120. 😉
• Note that if you are actually having bad RNG with pulls for a carry like Saveas (say you are nowhere near being able to ascend him to L or L+ quality and your top 5 heroes are all approaching 120/140), you can then put him in the crystal since you can level beyond their current ascension level inside the crystal.
• In other words – a Legendary-tier Saveas can go beyond 100, and a Legendary+ Saveas can go beyond 120 if at least 5 other heroes have gone beyond those levels and Saveas is inside the Resonating Crystal. Rare-base (also called Legendary-tier) heroes like Saveas and Hogan cannot, however, go beyond their hard cap of 160, ever.
• Don’t just fill a spot in the crystal to fill it. If you aren’t going to feasibly use that L Arden in a team comp any time soon, just leave him at level 1, you never know when a lucky 10-summon will give you enough fodder to get your Belinda from E+ to an instant L+ (happened to me, haha), and having that spot open for a situation like this is extremely helpful. If you remove someone from the crystal it takes a full day (or a whopping 100 crystals! Just wait it out) before it’s available again.
• If you have some unused heroes in the crystal right now, take them out right now so the crystal will be available as soon as possible for a new hero pull, or possibly a new, lucky ascension as mentioned before. Who knows, maybe you’ll take Arden out, and then get enough fodder to complete his ascension to L+ tomorrow – you can always put him back in. 😉

9-20

So you’ve seen the memes. 9-20 is the first really big barrier/wall that players hit. You might have been stuck on a level for a few hours or days, but 9-20 is a whole new monster (apparently).

Here is the section that I will be posting comps that have beaten it in the past, but that needs to come from YOU. If you could post your team comp, ascensions, and levels (rough battle power estimate would be nice too, if you know it), as well as formation order to help those coming behind you (like, uh, ME! XD), that would be very helpful. 🙂