is this game 100% f2p?

[charlie white]

just wondering

[shane]

Technically, you can play for free. I wouldn't want to. The game is designed to be really annoying unless you have a lot of familiars. You can get 12 of them for free (gems/patrons), plus occasionally they will give you a freebie during an event. That's still not enough, but it's a decent amount and you could get by okay with it. Everything else can be ignored if you don't want to buy the constant items and skins, but I'd at least keep an eye out for some $3-5 familiars.

[OldGamer]

Yes you can get everything for free of which is in the game.

Champions (tick)
Content (tick)
Familiars (tick)
Gear (tick)
Everything (tick).

Shane is talking about progression.
like with any free to play clicker game you can pay to get progress quicker.

And this game does their shop correctly. The only dubious thing you may have a critique of is their new feature called Trials of Tiamat, where it's so unbalanced now you will have to pay to get into the higher levels of it. I take this as naivety (or lack of awareness) rather than a cash grab but others may disagree. There are plenty of critics out there but mainly this game does well from a "pay to win" aspect IMO.

ps all definitions used correctly in my post.
Free to play = can you play the game totally for free and none of the mechanisms that make that game is locked under a paywall (like a feature, content, character etc)
Pay to win = the NEED to pay in order to play the game or "complete" said game and have "advantage" over other users playing that game.
It is why strictly this game couldn't be a "pay to win" game, as you will never "complete" the game as long as they are live updating it. Plus, it doesn't matter that a 3 year old veteran is further a long in the game than a 1 month old. It just doesn't matter as there is nothing for those players to ever "compete" over in terms of game mechanics.

pss As I say in my guide The Things YOU should NOT Worry About When Just Starting Out, don't worry about paying when you first start. Just enjoy the game and think as paying like a "tip". Initially this was why I spent 20 pounds on the game in July 2020 as I enjoyed the game for the best of 3 months and just wanted to give something for that time I spent. I did not know back then, that I would continually pay for bits here and there every quarter. But I still enjoy the game for the most part and the money spent is still, therefore, (to me) validated. Even though, as a company, they are testing me with some of their decisions being way off IMO (one of them I noted above).

[shane]

Don't confuse progression with not having to manually upgrade champions. Until you can avoid that, this is not an idle game, though initially it is unavoidable. Of course, as I indicated, you can, eventually, do that for free, more or less and if you're willing to sacrifice elsewhere.

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by shane:

Don't confuse progression with not having to manually upgrade champions. Until you can avoid that, this is not an idle game, though initially it is unavoidable. Of course, as I indicated, you can, eventually, do that for free, more or less and if you're willing to sacrifice elsewhere.

Then you are confusing the term idle game. This just means the game can run on it's own with player inputing a few data clicks here and there. This, gets easier, through QOL (Quality of life) features by the developer such as familiars and modron cores etc. But that is not the essential meaning of an idle game.

We take a couple of examples for comparison here:

Idle Champions vs Football Manager (FM) series

Idle champions, you can click a couple of buttons and leave them on their merry adventure for several hundreds of levels (or if you die, just them there collecting gold which also increases your overall progression.)

FM you can go on holiday to make it an idle game, but you probably won't progress at all and likely be fired. No the user has to make decisions with each click and even in the player's matches they have to be actively there, unless they know their team is 100% better and tactics will overcome the over sides team.

This is what makes the "idle" in "idle" Champions. It has nothing to do with features and QOL often seen in other clicker games that makes it idle. Then Idle Heroes wouldn't be idle at all by your definition.

[Phantom]

You CAN play it F2P, indeed I do and I'm pretty end game (have two tiamat levels left to do, but I've got a bug where it is EXTREMELY difficult to enter the screen that lets me do them for the last few weeks... so I kinda need some randoms to carry me ATM)

the pay things do add a lot of 'win' to the game

You can get extra familiars (auto clickers essentially) which are by far the best perk from things in the cash shop (You can get a handful without paying real money)

Certain (very select) gold equipment buffs would be a huge game changer too

Potions you get a ton of just playing the game
Heros all get unlocked just by playing the game

[Blood]

definitely not

[Govi]

i normally keep two teams on an auto play 15 level loop, to collect gems

and only play one myself manually

It's slow but i get by

[Coo Coo Pigeon]

many people do that and then complain about FPS issues...

[Noeh23]

you can play this game for free and enjoy it. I did so for about a year.
Ultimately if you get into end game you will see that the developer has more and more ways to hook you into paying for stuff and they are implementing new P2W features. However as this is a singleplayer game (with some minor social elements) its up to you whether you succumb and start paying for some of the content

[RJM]

Originally posted by shane:

Technically, you can play for free. I wouldn't want to. The game is designed to be really annoying unless you have a lot of familiars. You can get 12 of them for free (gems/patrons), plus occasionally they will give you a freebie during an event. That's still not enough, but it's a decent amount and you could get by okay with it. Everything else can be ignored if you don't want to buy the constant items and skins, but I'd at least keep an eye out for some $3-5 familiars.

You can easily play the game without familiars. Everyone had to for the first months after release, because they didn't exist. A free auto clicker app helped with that, but not using one was not a barrier if you couldn't. It certainly goes faster as your number of familiars increases, but for anyone happy to have it playing in the background with a check-in every hour or two to spend gold, they're not essential. They just improve your speed, but in an idle game that's not essential. If you've got used to the convenience of having lots of familiars and then lost access to them I am sure you'd feel the loss, but you don't miss what you've never had. You have to play a hell of a lot before you'll unlock those patron familiars or earn enough gems for the more expensive gem store ones.

[Saiph]

If you discipline yourself to playing 100% f2p, then it gets very boring and tedious after a while, and you can't use automation much at all. I've been playing since the Epic Games promotion back in May, and sometimes I wish I'd never heard of the game. I think it's my completionist OCD which makes me keep logging in to the game occasionally, although I am trying to wean myself off the addiction. I've ended up spending far too much money on IC, especially when I could have bought a quality AAA game for a similar amount.

[marmot]

If you f2p you're going to need to script some of your repetitive actions since you are not buying familiars.
The legendary trials definitely needs someone to buy prismatic blood to keep opening high level trials.

[Evil Henchman]

yes but you will need an ungodly amount of hours grinding to catch up to content if you start now.

[Konachibi]

I wouldn't say the cash shop is a shop done right. Some of it is good, on rare occassions, but the price they charge for some familiars and champion packs is ridiculous for what is given in it. There's a hell of a lot of greed contained within it.

£15 for a familiar and a handful of potions is a ridiculous price. Compare that to other games, such as warframe, where £15 will give you a whole warframe, with a core installed, and a couple of weapons, and usually some forma too, and sometimes some kind of temporary buff like an increase to exp or money gained.
Some are even worse, such as the Force Grey pack, which is as expensive as an entire retail-price video game. $45 for a bunch of uncommon gear and some gold chests that can all be easily farmed in just a few days, for champions that you get for free from the beginning of the game, and they claim that the pack has a value of $133????

I get that the game is free so it needs some way to make money, but the cash shop, in many regards, is heinously over-priced, and the packs need to be given some ACTUAL items of worth at a reasonable price, instead of them pretending like the garbage contained within them has some sort of imaginary monetary value and then charging some over-inflated price for it. A skin and a feat is not worth $25, as much as they want to think it is, a familiar and 6 potions is not worth $15, in any circumstances, and 25 gold chests are not worth $45, and anyone who believes they are needs to seek medical help.

[Ordack]

Is this game 100% f2p? No
Can you play it without spending money? Yes

Originally posted by Konachibi:

I wouldn't say the cash shop is a shop done right. Some of it is good, on rare occassions, but the price they charge for some familiars and champion packs is ridiculous for what is given in it. There's a hell of a lot of greed contained within it.

£15 for a familiar and a handful of potions is a ridiculous price. Compare that to other games, such as warframe, where £15 will give you a whole warframe, with a core installed, and a couple of weapons, and usually some forma too, and sometimes some kind of temporary buff like an increase to exp or money gained.
Some are even worse, such as the Force Grey pack, which is as expensive as an entire retail-price video game. $45 for a bunch of uncommon gear and some gold chests that can all be easily farmed in just a few days, for champions that you get for free from the beginning of the game, and they claim that the pack has a value of $133????

I get that the game is free so it needs some way to make money, but the cash shop, in many regards, is heinously over-priced, and the packs need to be given some ACTUAL items of worth at a reasonable price, instead of them pretending like the garbage contained within them has some sort of imaginary monetary value and then charging some over-inflated price for it. A skin and a feat is not worth $25, as much as they want to think it is, a familiar and 6 potions is not worth $15, in any circumstances, and 25 gold chests are not worth $45, and anyone who believes they are needs to seek medical help.

You are right, the prices are ridiculous, as yet another example, now you can buy Death Stranding for 17€ the same as some Wild Offers, there is nothing in this game that comes close to the quality of DS, but according to them, they are offers, and the real price is higher for a familiar and a handful of potions, than a AAA translated and dubbed into a lot of languages.

Just look the offers that are now available for this game, for that price you can buy full games.

Un saludo!