Many people started playing Loop Hero. How do I know this? It hit 50,000 concurrent users on Steam on the weekend. I was one of them. Now I have put more than 25 hours on the deck building roguelite and I have some tips for everyone just getting started.
At its most basic level, Loop Hero play yourself. Your warrior walks around a circle fighting hordes of slimes and vampires automatically. Over time, they get stronger and, if they get strong enough, they will survive to summon the boss, defeat him and move on to the next chapter. Obviously, the devil is in the details of everything you can do besides this simple concept, including improving equipment, building settlements and choosing how to play the cards you collect throughout each expedition. Here is some useful advice that I’ve gathered based on my own browsing experience in this complex challenge.
Prioritize certain statistics for each class.
The rider is tanky and knocks slowly. The Rogue is more vulnerable, but carries two weapons. The Necromancer summons skeletons to fight alongside you. Each requires a different strategy. I found that focusing on these class-specific statistics led more towards greater success and longer lives:
- Knight: Regen / Vampirism
- Rogue: evasion / critical chance
- Necromancer: Magic HP / Extra Skeletons
Survival is the name of the game, which means balancing how quickly you can kill enemies with how quickly you heal. Regen is good because it works even when you are not in battle, while Magic HP is the amount of damage the Necromancer can absorb in each battle before getting hurt.
High-level equipment is not always better.
All gears in Loop Hero it has a level and one of the four rarities: common, blue, yellow and orange. The higher the rarity, the more bonus stats it comes with. However, simply making the numbers go up is not enough. You can get a piece of armor that is two levels above the current one, but it is the least rare and therefore does not come with any bonuses. In that case, something like 10% vampirism is better than an additional 100 HP.
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The reverse can also be true, depending on the situation. On an expedition I got a regular top-level ring with a regeneration status of 4.5. I quickly switched to single digit buffs on my existing orange rarity ring. In addition, any armor you don’t wear eventually breaks down into resources, so consider waiting instead of constantly switching to new equipment with only slightly better stats.
Do not place land in one way or another.
Mountain cards offer more HP and a total of 120 extra HP when organized in a 3X3 grid. Meadows provide you with an extra resource when placed next to a mountain or set of rocks, making it more advantageous to mix them instead of placing them somewhere separate on the map. The bonus effects of rivers are doubled when they touch another land in two places, so be sure to arrange them in a zigzag pattern instead of straight lines.
It’s okay not to play all the cards.
Like extra equipment, the cards you don’t use are divided into extra features that can be used to expand and upgrade your settlement. So don’t feel like you need to throw everything that is spun in your hand, especially if you are on an expedition just to look for resources. In addition, the key to success in Loop Hero is balancing the need to create enemies to get better resources and equipment with the ability to really survive until the end of the game. Some vampire mansions are good. Dump the map with them, no.
Know when to give up.
If you think you will not survive another cycle, retire to your village when you pass. You will be able to save everything you collected on that expedition. There is a significant amount of grinding in Loop Hero, which means that you will probably do some expeditions to obtain certain resources to obtain important updates and unlock important cards, without ever intending to face the head of the chapter. Better to restart an expedition sooner than to lose a large part of your cargo in an untimely death. If the situation is difficult, you can also retreat for a minor penalty on any other square on the map when not in battle.
Signs that you should retreat are when the loop has several squares with large groups or enemies in them, and if you haven’t been able to get good equipment upgrades in a while. Enemies get more difficult with each completed loop, and if the RNG, which Loop Hero there’s a lot, it’s just not going your way, it’s better to stop while you’re winning.
Update the foundry.
Its settlement in Loop Hero it’s basically your skill tree. Updates will be transferred between expeditions and will generally be the determining factor for your survival or not. Try to unlock the Smelter as soon as possible and then upgrade it to get the arsenal. When placed, it allows you to equip an additional piece of equipment in a new slot that will give you another chance to increase the most important stats in your class.
Unlock watchtowers.
Observation towers take a little longer to install, but they are also very useful for agricultural resources. They provide archers in their settlement who can attack enemies in the surrounding squares, depending on how updated they are. This encourages playing as many monster cards as close to your deal as possible to essentially face most of the toughest fights in your loop with backup.
Obtain the Blade of Dawn trait.
Each time your character’s level goes up in a loop, he can select one of three new features to help him during the expedition. The Knight has many good ones to choose from, but Blade of Dawn never let me down. He makes his first attack of each new day supercharged, dealing twice as much damage to all enemies in an encounter. The days pass quickly outside the battle, and if you positioned enemy buildings in a moderate and intelligent way, you can start almost all major fights in this way.
For Rogue, I always choose the Son of the Forest pet trait which has a 75% chance of generating a terrible companion wolf with each fight, and for the Necromancer I really like Invisible Care, which gives you a magic HP bonus for each skeleton invoked. I usually try to choose any feature that I trigger frequently or provide some lasting benefit that adapts well as the loop becomes more difficult.
Use a Temple of the Storm to burn a forest.
Loop Hero it is full of mysterious synergies between different buildings and types of terrain. One is the Burnt Forest, which you get when you place a Temple of the Storm and hit a Forest or Grove with lightning. The burnt forest grants extra magic damage, which bypasses enemies’ defenses. Another good combination is the Hungry Grove, created when you place two Blood Woods next to a normal forest. Occasionally, it will attack you when fighting enemies close to it, but it will also instantly kill any enemy that has less than 20% health, helping you to defeat large groups much faster.
Try different combinations.
Different cards have different effects and allow you to collect different resources. If you are always playing in the same class making similar loop configurations, you will not have the full range of resources needed to quickly expand your settlement, which is the real point of 90% of the expeditions you undertake. Play around with different terrain types, enemy buildings and map positions to see what happens.
Likewise, different classes are better suited to different types of loops. The Necromancer will do better against larger mobs, while the Rogue can deliver massive critical blows that take down mission enemies (those that come up when visiting villages) much more quickly.
Use Oblivion to detonate enemy camps.
I have died to goblins more times than I can count. They hit hard and fast and usually appear in groups of three or four. The Oblivion card allows you to detonate any square on the map, not just the things you have built. You can use it to wipe out a crowd of goblins or, even better, to destroy the camp that is spawning them. The same goes for bandit camps and other enemy spawn locations that pop up automatically as you go.
Extra credit: You can also use an Oblivion card to destroy the last mountain or rock formation in a 3X3 mountain range. You can then replace the mountain or rock to reactivate the formation and obtain additional bonus resources. You can rinse and repeat as many times as you like. (Jolly2Joy user tip in Loop Hero subreddit)