Optimal Builds

A Basic Guide to help you build a winning team.

Introduction

I like playing idle games from time to time. I felt inspired to write a guide for this game, so here we go. I will update this guide as I play the game, and as I have time to do so. I hope it helps some.

(P.S. If I get anything wrong, please let me know, and I'll update. Thanks.)

Hero Statistics

In this game, you're given a party of (max 6) heroes made up of four classes defined by four statistics (Health, Damage, Armor, and Healing):

• Ranger (Health and Damage)
  
• Warrior (Health, Damage and Armor)
  
• Cleric (Health, Damage and Healing)
  
• Paladin (Health, Damage, Armor, and Healing)

When the game starts, you're given points to allot to your first Hero. Once the Hero is chosen and battle begins, first the player's Hero's attack followed by the Ai's. For the player Heroes attack from right to left, top to bottom, and the Ai attacks like reading a book, left to right, top to bottom.

Health and Damage interact the way you think they do. For example, If your Hero has 10 Damage and the Enemy has 100 Health, 10 Damage will be applied resulting in 90 Health left for the Enemy.

Armor in this game gives a flat reduction of damage. Continuing the above example, the enemy strikes back with 10 Damage, too. However, unlike the enemy, your Hero has 5 Armor; thus, you take his 10 Damage minus your 5 Armor for a mitigated 5 Damage.

Healing is the simple restoring of any lost Health. For example, if you have a Cleric in your party and another Hero is injured, the Cleric will heal the injured for whatever that Cleric's healing characteristic is currently at.

The Armory (Basic Items)

I forget when the Armory gets unlocked, it doesn't take long. (If someone could fill me in on when, that would be much appreciated.)

The first row of upgrades in the shop just give an exponential increase to all stats of a given class. These upgrades with their formulas are given below (I assume the level of each item starts at zero):

Gold Cost per Level = 10^(Current Level + 1) of the items.

• Dragon Steel Sword
  Boosts the Warrior's Health, Damage and Armor by times 2 per level.
  
  
• Oakwood Staff
  Boosts the Cleric's Health by times 2 per level and Healing by an initial times 4 for the first level and times 2 every level after. Note, this item doesn't boost Damage for Clerics.
  
  
• Longbow
  Boosts the Ranger's Health by 2 per level and Healing by an initial times 4 for the first level and times 2 every level after.
  
  
• Holy Hammer
  Boosts the Paladin's Health, Damage, and Healing by time 2 per level. Note, this item doesn't boost Armor for Paladins.

The Armory (Unique Upgrades)

Let's break down the unique armory upgrades here. Some of these items, at least at first glance, seem to break the game. Then again, I'm only so far in.

The Middle Row of Items:
Cost of these items is 400 for the first upgrade and 8000 for the second. (Once I know the cost for more levels, I'll be able to pin the formula. Right now, it's a guess.)

• Ironskin Shield
  The first level halves the Damage Warriors take. The second level causes the Warrior class to take only a fourth. Note, this reduction applies after Damage reduction due to Armor.
  
  
• Mystical Cape
  This item gives the Cleric class the ability to Bless the party by 5% every time they heal a Hero. In other words, every time a Cleric heals a hero, every stat of every hero is increased by 5% permanently. (At least until the next time you Prestige.) Anyone who understands compound interest knows this can scale rapidly. More on this in a bit.
  
  
• Pierced Arrows
  This item gives Ranger's a x4 to critical strikes on the first purchase and a x8 to critical strikes on the second purchase. As far as I can tell, the critical strike chance starts at 0%; thus, to get any value from this upgrade, you must first purchase Quiver of the Hawk item at least once, listed below.
  
  
• Banner of the Knight
  The first purchase of this item gives Paladins 50% Morale, which translates to a 50% boost to all stats of all Heroes in the Paladin's party. This boost is multiplicative with other Paladin boosts. In otherwords, a party comprised of 6 Paladins would give a total boost to stats of 1039% (1.5^6 = 11.39)

The bottom row of items:
Cost of these items is 100 for the first purchase and 10000 for the second purchase.

• Bloodrage Trinket
  This item gives the Warrior class 10% Overkill on the first purchase and 20% on the second. Overkill means that percentage of excess damage when a Warrior makes a kill is applied to the next Enemy.
  
  
• Divine Book
  This item gives the Cleric class 10% Overheal on the first purchase and 20% on the second. Like other games where you've heard this word, Overheal works similarly here. When a Cleric heals a Hero, that percentage of excess Healing is saved as excess Health on the healed hero.
  
  
• Quiver of the Hawk
  This item gives the Ranger class 10% chance to critically strike on the first purchase and 20% chance on the second.
  
  
• Ring of Righteousness
  This item gives the Paladin class 10% Synergy on the first purchase and 20% on the second. Synergy is interesting. Basically, when the Paladin attacks, that percentage of his Healing stat heals him, and when the Paladin heals a hero (including himself), that percentage of his Damage stat is applied as an attack to the Enemy.

How the Classes Operate

Unlike other games, the Heroes in this game are completely autonomous, so knowing how they operate will aid us in developing an optimal party. (CAREFUL: What I am about to say should be taken with a grain of salt since I have not finished the game yet. As I discover new things, I will share update the guide.)

• A Ranger will only ever attack regardless of his or her position.
  
  
• A Warrior will also only ever attack regardless of his or her position.
  
  
• A Cleric will always heal a Hero if any are hurt, and will attack otherwise. However, if the party is all Clerics, a Cleric will only heal a hero who is below half Health.
  
  This behavior changes once Overheal is purchased from the Armory. A party of exactly 5 Clerics will heal the non-Cleric Hero as soon as it is hurt. A party of 4 or fewer Clerics will always heal the front-most Hero.
  
  
• A Paladin will heal a Hero when he or she is below half health, including him or herself. Otherwise, they will attack.

As a fellow game developer, I feel it would have been interesting to have some control over the autonomous behavior of the Heroes, but that's just my opinion.

Floors, Levels and Gold

Before finally discussing some optimal builds, let's discuss how this game handles Floors, Levels and Gold.

Our Party of (max 6) Heroes advance from Floor to Floor defeating randomly generated enemies (anywhere between 1 to 6 of them). In the current version of the game, the enemies have only Health and Damage statistics; I suspect that will eventually change. You clear a Floor by defeating every Enemy in it.

Progressing through Floors awards an equivalent amount of Gold.

As you defeat Enemies, your party gains experience and will Level up. The Level number is shared by all members of the party, and each level gives a boost to each Hero's statistics.

Party of One

You might be surprised to discover it doesn't really matter which class we make our first hero. Anyone we choose will allow us to progress through the game.

However, if we are seeking fairly optimal progression, some starting classes are a bit better than others. Remember, when combat starts on each Floor, our Heroes get to attack first. This means it is perfectly fine with starting with either a Ranger or Cleric class. We will be able to one-shot many enemies and gain Levels, which are retained if our party dies and resets (unless we auto-Prestige).

The problem is when we face multiple enemies at once, Since we can only kill one enemy at a time, if we encounter 6 enemies (for example), we will inevitably take 5 enemies worth of damage. Even if we're the Cleric class, if they do enough damage in the first round to trigger our healing, then we won't be doing anymore damage this Floor; in fact, we auto-lose.

So, for the first Hero, a class with some Armor is ideal. I prefer the Warrior class at the start.

Where Multiple Gather

Once, you have multiple Heroes in your party, you can start to compartmentalize the tasks of each member. I like to view the Party as many making one unit, and I build it that way.

We want our party to be resilient while also able to hit hard enough to clear a given Floor. Since Enemies hit the leftmost, topmost Hero first, put the tanky Warrior or Paladin in front. For myself, I keep a Warrior with maxed Armor in the front. If anything can get through his defense, there was probably nothing else my party could do to begin with.

For even further defense, I put healers like a Cleric or Paladin behind my tank.

In the rear, like I said, I put my heavy hitters like the Ranger, Warrior or Paladin classes. Since I compartmentalize, I usually go full damage, or nothing but Rangers.

Thus, one build that has done very well for me is four Rangers in the rear, followed by a Cleric, followed by a Warrior (with maxxed Armor).

Some side comments for thought:
Since the Warrior class is the only one that get damage reduction upgrades from the Armory, they make the ideal tank.

Since a Ranger can often one-shot their target, it is ideal to put your healers right behind your tanks. That way, they are sure to heal their ally if needed before the next Floor. It's just a small optimization.

This is Intended Right?

So...

This is where things might break apart for the game (or it's intended, I'm not sure yet- I still only just started playing today). Consider this party with Heroes in this order:

Ranger, Cleric, Cleric, Cleric, Cleric, Warrior.

At first glance, this seems hardly optimal because if the enemies are strong enough to defeat the Warrior, four Clerics will hardly make much difference. However, things change once both the Overheal and Blessed items are purchased for Clerics. Remember, with only four Clerics, the Clerics are programmed to heal the forward most Hero, which means our tankiest Hero is getting even tankier with an Overheal shield. In addition to the shield, though, every party member is receiving at least a 20% boost to all stats.

Because Enemies only seem to advance my at most times 10 to stats between Floors, any adantage the enemies have over our Warrior quickly diminish, and we're able to clear seemingly every room.

Even if we're pitted against 6 enemies who have statistics 10 times higher than our, consider how combat plays out...

First our Warrior strikes (dealing little damage, admittedly), but then our four Clerics heal him four times, each time boosting all stats by 5% and giving him an Overheal shield which compounds with each Cleric. So, if the first one gave a shield of 100% his Health, it immediately scales to 105% his Health, so our Warrior has 205%/105%. The next Cleric gives 100% of that new Health and scales that increase by 5%, too. After our final Cleric has healed, our Warrior is sitting at about 595%/120% (I'm estimating) compared to his original Health.and his Armor is now 121% to what it was originally, meaning, the enemy is only going to deal about 80% per enemy to our Warrior. With 6 enemies, that is 480% damage, putting our Warrior at 115%/120%.

Then the healing cycle begins anew, and the enemy auto-loses at this point because each time the enemy fails to kill our Warrior, we gain a compounding 20% to all stats to all Heroes in the party. Eventually, our Ranger will be able to one-shot each enemy. The fact, he can kill only one enemy at a time works in our favor because it gives us time to compound our stats even more.

Closing Comments

Since building the above Party, I haven't lost to a single room. Have I officially beaten the game, or is there more in the future? Hope you enjoyed the read.

[Varangian]

This guide isn't very optimal for one proclaiming such... check the Updated Basic Guide for optimized setups.

And no, you haven't beaten the game. In fact, this strategy won't even let you get out of the earliest part of the game.

[Abattoir]

This strat doesn't after a day. You can't notice if you go to 10000000000000000000000000000000000 or 10000000000000000000000000000000020.

[Rasha]

IIRC you get armory at floor 10 when you start erning gold.

[DSJ and Co.]

yeah, its always nice to see people come to this setup, its nice and does effectively allow you to push indefinitely but sadly as you get further in floor jumps become more significant for earning prestige layer points and in turn progress, especially once you reach enemies with double exponential (ee) stats where blessed just starts to look like it does absolutely nothing

its a shame because at the very early game it does feel like classes matter but as you get further they start to matter less and less and theres just setups that are just "the best" for doing short fast climbs/prestiges that make the use of your floor jumps before the gains get drained into the floor

[menz]

Indeed this works. But "beaten the game" is the question. It takes at least several seconds a floor (as for me it's about 5 seconds), let it be 3 sec/floor -> near 1000 floor/hour. At prestige level 12 (even before ascension) i'm on 3e5 floor. So it will take 300 hours to achieve 3e5 (for me it took about 30 in lazy mode). I doubt ascension is possible this way.