No-brainer Heroes – Basic Guide (Core Mechanics, UI and Gameplay Elements)

This guide contains full info about core mechanics, UI and gameplay elements.

Basic Mechanics

Please note: all credit goes to Deniska!

Since there seems to be a distinct lack of guides for new players, and I’ve already got a grasp on the game, I decided to write down some information for new players who are struggling with the game.

I haven’t fully completed the game yet, so information in the guide might not be 100% accurate.

This guide won’t be helpful for experienced players – there’s nothing you haven’t already seen yourself in the game.

No-Brainer Heroes is the semi-idle RPG: it requires a little bit more time and interaction than the pure idle RPGs. While main mechanics are automatic (combat), you’ll have to perform certain tasks manually by re-adjusting statistics, doing manual combats, events, changing and upgrading equipment, buildings and characters. Yet it’s perfectly fine to leave the game running for hours once everything is done and get back only to do a new round of “manual labour”.

In this guide, I’ll explain the main components of the game, but won’t go into the actual tactics and tips.

Game Modes

Currently the game offers two modes – the Endless mode and the Story mode, with Endless mode being the main part of the game. The Story mode is not available from the start and it has to be unlocked by progressing in the Endless mode. Endless mode drops you into the game with the basic starting kit of two heroes and let you progress as you want, while Story mode can also be considered the “challenge mode”: as you progress in the Endless mode you get achievements points which then can be used to configure the initial heroes, treasures and rewards (given that they’ve been unlocked in Endless).

The game also has three difficulty settings – normal, hard and nightmare – but they work only in Story mode: the Endless mode always starts on normal.

As a new player, you have no choice but to start in Endless mode on normal difficulty.

The Town

You start the game in the Town menu – that’s where you manage your characters and buildings. Here you will be spending most of the time, waiting for your heroes to do their duty. Don’t worry, nothing is happening right now and you’re not in a rush – take your time to check all available buildings and menus – you will be using them a lot.

Lets see what we have there.

  1. A button to return to the Town overview.
  2. A button to switch to the Adventure overview. While in the Town, does the same as # 6.
  3. Shortcuts for your teams in combat. If the button is lit, the team is currently engaged in a combat and you can click on it to see the action. If the button is disabled, the team is not in a combat – you either haven’t sent them to a map or some of the characters have fallen and are waiting for a respawn.
  4. Your list of current quests. They work as a tutorial and help new player to learn the basics while providing hefty rewards. Don’t worry about them cluttering the UI – they’ll be gone pretty soon and you will continue to play on your own.
  5. The resources panel, displaying your Gold, Wood, Building stones, Land Deeds and Medals (left to right). Gold will be your main resources required in most important activities.
  6. A button to switch to the Adventure overview. While in the Town, does the same as # 2.
  7. Left to right: Hero overview, Team Edit window, Achievements menu and Settings menu.
  8. Camp – the main building in your Town. Allows you to unlock certain upgades, heal and revive heroes. This building’s level also works as a cap for level of all your other facilities.
  9. Tavern – your main source of new heroes and villagers.
  10. Market – your source of Gold. Unusable loot will be sold on the Market for Gold.
  11. Bulletin Board – displays a list of currenty active Missions: small tasks to kill certain amount of specific monsters, sell or buy items. The rewards are pretty important: it’s either some of the resources or new Item Plans.
  12. Equipment Store – your go to place to get new gear for the heroes.
  13. Merchant – a travelling Merchant who will be bringing you lots of useful items and resources. Very important for progression. Unlocked at Camp level 2.
  14. Smithy – facility which helps to upgrade your gear with special dust and crystals or to get rid of useless gear in exchange for dust. Unlocked at Camp level 3.
  15. Cave – a side activity for your heroes. An endless battle split into multiple levels, each of them having certain bonus or penalty for your heroes. Rewards with rare resources. Unlocked at Camp level 4.
  16. Altar – a late game building required to upgrade your heroes past their limits. Unlocked at Camp level 10.

Buildings

By clicking on the building you may see what it’s offering – each building has its own purpose. Some of them are not available from the very start, you will unlock them naturally as you progress.

In order to upgrade a building you need to reach certain Camp level, gather enough resources and click on the “Upgrade” button at the top of the building screen: by hovering over the button you can see how much of each resource is needed.

Some of the buildings have 3 slots (with only 1 unlocked from the start and 2 more unlocked at the later levels) for Villagers. You won’t be getting them at the start of the game anyway, but when the time comes, hiring them really helps to speed up the game a little. If you already at full capacity, the game will offer to replace an existing Villager with a newly hired one, so hire new villagers with better stats whenever possible.

Camp

While not being used too often, it’s the most important building the the Town since its level works as a cap for level of all the rest buildings: you can’t upgrade them past Camp’s level. It also increases the total amount of items you can hold in your warehose by 200 with for each level, thus allowing you to go AFK for longer without wasting any.

On the Revive tab you have slots to put your heroes in. When the hero falls in battle, he has to get to the full life before returning back to duty. By default the healing speed is rather slow, but when you place the hero in the free slot the regeneration speed increases significantly. On top of that you can also click the “Revive” button to instantly revive the hero for a very small fee.

The Technology tab offers permanent upgrades for your Town. The most important of them is “Hunting” which increases experience your heroes get from killing enemies: faster leveling means faster progression. While the first 4 upgrades are useful, the last two (which are duplicates for some reason) are almost completely useless – that’s the “Special channel” upgrade. It increases the amount of items you can sell at the market, but you will almost never have an issue with that since the selling speed far surpasses your ability to actually get enough loot for sale.

Tavern

That’s where you hire Heroes (your main characters involved in combat) and Villagers (non-combat characters that provide upgrades to the corresponding building). By upgrading this building you get new and more rare characters to hire.

Every ten minutes you’ll be offered a set of 3 characters, and you can pick only one of them. When the timer at the bottom is reset again, you must manually click on the “Refresh” button to get a new set. If you don’t refresh the list, the current set will remain unchanged – this is usefull if you don’t have enough money to hire a hero or if you’re working on unlocking their requirements. Even if you missed the character you wanted – they will remain in the roster and you’ll have them offered again after few tries.

The type of the character is indicated by the icon next to their name – if it’s a gray person, this is a Villager and they can work in the corresponding building in the Town. The other characters are heroes, and they have a special icon corresponding to their class.

The other thing to keep an eye on is the name color – it indicates rarity of the character, with white being the basic and purple and orange being the most rare ones. This also affects their price tag.

All heroes have their prerequisites: while common blue heroes just require you to reach the specific map and kill enough specific monsters (while this hero is in the Tavern menu), the better heroes may require you to do something else, like having other hero already hired.

Below you may see an example of a regular Villager and two heroes – a rare warrior Ahthur and a more or less common mage Astrid.

Market

While killing enemies, your heroes will be finding gear (which they can use or destroy for dust) and non-equippable Trophies. The main purpose of the Trophy is to be sold in the Market for Gold, but you may occasionally see events asking for a specific Trophy in exchange for a reward.

By default, you must click on the item to put it on the market or on the “One click to shelf” button to put all of them at once. The items are sold over time, so you’ll have to wait for a bit until you get the money for them.

At the Market level 3 you will unlock “Auto-Sell” button which automatically puts all the Trophies on sale as soon as they’re found. After that you will be visiting this building only to upgrade it from time to time.

You can also use the “Exchange” button to trade one resource for another, but it’s hardly worth it and can be useful only if you’re a tiny bit short of a specific resource for important upgrade.

Bulletin Board

Bulletin Board endlessly generates you Missions – a mini-quests asking you to kill certain amount of specific enemies, sell any of 20 Trophies on the Market or buy any of 3 equipment pieces from the Equipment Store. These Missions reward you with Gold, resources and new Item Plans.

The amount of active Missions depends on the level of your Bulletin Board, so keep it upgraded: when the cap is reached, you won’t be getting any more Missions until one of them is complete. Completed missions do not count towards the cap, so it’s safe to leave the game running, then return and click on “Receive All” to collect all rewards at once.

Equipment Store

In the Equipment Store you can purchase any of the gear pieces you can naturally find. The new levels of gear are unlocked as you unlock new maps: you can get gear above the Equipment Store level, upgrading it only lowers the purchase price.

By default, you only have access to Level 1 gear. New level gear is covered with question marks, and will be unlocked by doing Missions or by a special Villager which unlocks new Item Plans over time.

If the gear is already unlocked, buying it several times or finding it during Adventure increases its Refine level up to level 9. The higher the Refine level, the better stats the same item gives. The stats boost is significant and gives major advantage to your heroes. At the very beginning new gear will be unlocked to fast to bother with upgrading it with Gold, but later into the game you will be required to buy and upgrade it yourself to help your heroes progress faster.

Merchant

The Merchant’s boat allows you to purchase almost all items which can be naturally found in Adventure or events, as well as resources and some unique items. The stock is renewed every 10 minutes or by paying 500 Gold (which is too much at the start of the game). Upgrading this building unlocks more rare items and increases the maximum amount of chests you can have on the Adventure map.

At the very beginning, it’s important source of skill and experience books, and main resources. You can also unlock the “Auto-buy” option, specify the items you’re looking for and as soon as these items appear on sale they will be automatically purchased (as long as you have enough Gold). Purchased items are not added to your inventory automatically, you will need to click on the “Auto-buy” button again and click on “Receive” button at the right to collect them. There is no limit to the amount of automatically purchased items as far as I am aware, it’s safe to leave it running while you’re doing something else.

Another tab available at Merchant is the “Chest” where you can pretty much purchase the loot boxes with ingame currency. There is no other currency required and no micro-transactions at all – just the Gold. These chests reward with upgrade dusts, various trinkets and unique items which cannot be obtained otherwise. The full list of unique items can be found in the Achievements menu.

The third tab is the “Exchange” where you can purchase rare items and upgrade ingridients for Dragon Crystals – a rare currency which can ony be obtained from Missions and by completing levels in the Cave. Some of these items are extremely useful for early progression.

Smithy

Smithy is unlocked only at Camp level 3. While not being useful at the very beginning, it quickly become one of the most important buildings to keep your heroes competitive.

In Smithy you can upgrade your gear or disenchant existing gear for upgrade resources. The type of upgrades are different, but they all serve the same purpose – increase the stats of a item.

The “Enhance” tab allows to upgrade the gear with Gold and specific type of Currency (Crystal dust), up to a maximum level of 9. Each enhance level increases the base stats of the item – defense/magic defense for armor, attack/magic attack for weapons and so on. The price of upgrade depends on the item’s level. At the bottom of the screen you may see the Success chance: the higher the Enhance level, the lower the chance to enhance it again. If the enhahcement failed, all the paid resources will be lost. You can’t get past level 9 or waste resources, so for a quick upgrade you can just spam the Enhance button until you see a notification that the maximum enhancement level is reached.

The “Enchant” tab allows to enchant an item with a single bonus stat. Unlike Enhancement bonus, enchant is picked from a bigger list of bonuses: it’s possible to add a bonus HP or a magical attack to a common sword. Each time the item is enchanted the existing enchant is lost: they cannot be stacked. On top of Gold and Crystal dust this kind of upgrade requires different Enchant materials (Essences) most commonly sold by the Merchant.

On the “Refine” tab you can imbue the item with a whole set of bonus stats while increasing the Refine level at the same time. The price is some Gold, crystal dust and specific Refining material (Crystals) rarely found on Adventure map or sold by the Merchant. The maximum Refine level is also 9, each level increases the amount of bonuses you may get. Unlike Enhancement, which just upgrades item’s main stats and stops at level 9, you can keep Refining at level 9. This won’t increase level any further, but will reroll new random stats, allowing to customize the item to your liking.

The “Limit-Break” tab allows to upgrade item’s level by 1 up to the level of the Smithy. This requires it to be Enhanced and Refined both to level 9, and it resets it back to level 0 after upgrade. Normally you want to use it only for unique items (“artifacts”) that have special effects – Limit-Breaking a common gear item is a waste of resources since you can quickly find the same naturally. On top of Gold and Crystal dust, this type of upgrade requires Breach material (Fire) which can be found on the Adventure map or purchased from Merchant for Dragon Crystals.
On the “Disenchant” tab you can break the unused gear into crystal dust which is a core resource for all types of upgrade.

If you manually click on the gear piece on the right it will be marked with a check mark and selected for disenchantment. You may also adjust the item filters on the left to automatically select all items of specific Level and Refine Level. Clicking on “Disenchant” after that will destroy the selected items and give you a random amount of dust displayed in the box to the right: Weapons, Armors and Trinkets have their own Crystal dust types, the same as used for upgrade.

By clicking on “Disenchant All” buttons you may disenchant all items at once without selecting them. If you have valueable items you want to save, I highly recommend to right click on them and select the “Lock” option: this will prevent them from being sold on the Market or destroyed by Disenchanting. Such items will be marked with a lock icon and can be unlocked by right clicking on them again.

The “Auto-Disenchant” button works the same as “Auto-Selling” in the Market: it automatically disenchants all the newly aquired items. You really want to be careful with that, and use it only if you leave your PC for long. Otherwise, it’s safe to manually disenchant items when needed.

Cave

The Cave is unlocked at Camp level 4. It’s a side activity for your heroes and a place to test your builds. The other purpose of the Cave is to faster gather Dragon Crystals at the early/mid game.

It’s split into multiple levels, each level offering you 3 packs of monsters with different rewards and bonuses/penalties for your heroes: increased/decreased healing, increased crit/defense/speed of the monsters, reduced damage of male or female characters – or forbid the male or female character to engage at all. By killing any of the 3 you progress to the next level with a new 3 packs and slightly higher rewards. Every 5 levels you’ll encounter a set of 3 bosses with much harder fights and much better rewards, yielding more Dragon Crystals and often some Breach materials.

You can engage in a manual combat by clicking the “Fight” button or do the automatic combat with the “Auto-explore” button. When Auto-exploring the Cave the game will try to pick the middle choice out of the 3 offered combats which doesn’t always give the best reward – keep that in mind.

Just like with any manual combat, your characters actually keep progressing on the Adventure map, and should they die in the Cave, they’re not withdrawn from battle and don’t have the respawn timer – you can immediatelly go back.

Abilities in the “Auto-explore” mode do not consume Action Points (just like in the Adventure map combat), but you loose control over the heroes and you can’t switch the screens while they’re fighting.

Altar

The Altar is unlocked at Camp level 10 and it allows to Limit-Break the heroes past their maximum level of 100. By paying Gold, Education deeds and certain type of Hero breach resources (Magatamas) you can increase their maximum level by 20, get a significant stats boost and select one of the upgrades. These upgrades include +2 to specific stats, increases of stats (Crit, Evasion, Resistance, Speed etc), increase the level of hero-specific skill (which cannot be increased normally) and so on.

There’s no way to make a fatal mistake – even if you feel like you made a bad upgrade choice, you can always switch to the “Rebuild” tab and re-adjust all hero’s spent upgrade points by paying 100 000 Gold and only 1 Magatama.

Since this is the only way to progress in the late game, there’s no point in describing it in details – by the time you need it, you will already know what to do.

Important: Keep in mind that common heroes (with blue names) not only lack useful unique skills, but they also cannot be upgraded past level 100, making them pretty much useless. Unique heroes with purple and orange names is the way to go.

Hero Menu

By clicking on the first icon at the bottom right you can manage your heroes and their equipment. On the leftmost side you’ll see the list of all available herores which can be filtered by hero’s grade, team and class, and sorted by team, level or class using two dropdown lists.

When hero is selected, you can see their details, statistics, equipment and skills. Lets check what we have there carefully.

Hero Stats

On the hero details screen you can mouse over the question mark icon to see a tooltip about what attributes do.

Another thing to note is that the translation is not perfect. The same word can be translated differently on different game screens. Combined with the lack of explanation and tooltips it can be really confusing at first. I’ll try to highlight these issues whenever possible.

1. Character’s name, class name and class icon, current and maximum level, current experience and experience required for level up.

2. Character attributes

  • Vitality / VIT (sometimes also referred as Constitution/CON) – affects Max HP and resistances.
  • Strength / STR – affects physical damage (including ranged) and physical defense.
  • Intelligence / INT – affects magical damage and magical defense.
  • Luck / LUK – affects critical chance and critical damage.
  • Dexterity / DEX – affects character speed and evasion rate, minor bonus to hit rate.
  • Agility / AGI – affects skill trigger rate, minor bonus to Action Points and hit rate.

3. Current and maximum health points (HP) and Action Points (AP). Action Points are used only in manual combat to use skills and ultimate skills.

4. Character statistics.

  • Attack / ATK – physical damage (including ranged).
  • Defense / DEF – physical defense.
  • Spell Power / SP – magical damage. Also referred as Magic Attack on items – it’s the same stats.
  • Magical Defense / MDEF – magical defense.
  • HIT – hit chance. The chance to hit an enemy is calculated as their Evasion – hero’s hit.
  • Evasion / EVA – evasion chance against physical attacks. Also referred as Avoid on items. The chance to get hit is calculated as hero’s Evasion – enemy’s hit. If enemy’s hit is 0 and hero’s Evasion is 100% he cannot be hit at all. From my experience, Evasion doesn’t work against magical attacks.
  • Critical chance / Crit – the chance to land critical attack both for physical and magical damage. At 100 your character will always crit.
  • Resistance / RES – as far as I understand, a chance to resist negative debuff. Does not reduce the magical damage taken.
  • Critical damage / Crit dam – a damage multiplied for critical attacks.
  • Speed / SPD – hero’s speed. Affects order in battle and how often the hero can perform an action.

5. Hero’s equipment. By default, it’s a Weapon, an Armor and a Trinket. Available slots depend on the particular hero and their type: pets are unable to wear weapons, some heroes may wear two weapons or two trinkets.

6. Equipped active and passive skills. Each hero may have 1 Attack, 1 Skill, 1 Ultimate Skil and up to 3 Passive Skills equipped at a time. While you’re not limited to increasing skill’s level, it doesn’t have any effect unless equipped in a free slot (except for for Permanent passive skills).

7. Skill Points Bar, unspent Skill Points and a button to open the Skill Interface.

Each available Skill Point can be used to unlock and upgrade the skill up to level 3 (3 stars), increasing its efficiency. Your heroes do not get the Skill Points for each level. Instead, the level up fills the Skill Point bar by 1 or 2, and you get a Skill Point when the bar is filled. The other way to fill the Skill Points Bar is to consume the Skill Points books.

8. Available equipment. Here you can see all the items found on the battle field, purchased in the Equipment Store or obtained otherwise. You can only equip the gear suitable for selected hero’s class – the rest of the items will be disabled.

On the 4th tab you may access the consumables that permanently increase the stats of selected hero. For example, various apples may increase the hero’s attributes such as STR by 1, up to a maximum of 9, EXP and Skill Points books give experience and fill the Skill Points bar respectively, and Education Deeds increase the character’s level cap by 2 up to 100.

Hero Skills

Skills is another important part of the No-Brainer Heroes – well, who might’ve thought?

You may access hero skills by clicking on the “Skill Interface” button in their profile. Normally skills are purchased and upgraded with the Skill Points (you’re granted 1 when the Skill Points Bar is filled). Once unlocked, the skill is moved from the “Unlearned Skill” list to the “Learned Skill” list and can be upgraded further.

Some skills are unique. They cannot be upgraded past the initial level, and give a fixed bonus. Most of the skills though can be upgraded to the level 4 which is indicated with 3 stars next to the skill’s name. Each upgrade increases skill’s efficiency, and its effect can be seen by hovering over the skill in the list.

All skills fall under one of 5 categories:

  1. Normal Attack – an equippable skill which can only be put in the grey “Attack” slot. This is the most often performed action executed by the hero. Some heroes are limited to only 1 basic Normal Attack and it cannot be changed.
  2. Skill – a special equippable skill which can only be put in the blue “Skill” slot. This is rare action performed by the hero. Again, some heroes have only 1 Skill available to them, some have multiple options – but only the currently equipped skill can be executed by the hero.
  3. Ult Skill – an ultimate attack or skill which can only be put in the red “Ult Skill” slot. This is the most rare action performed by the hero – but normally their effect is good enough to turn the combat.
  4. Equipped Passive – a passive skill which works all the time while equipped. They can be put in the “Passive Slot” and work all the time. Normally these skills provide a boost to certain statistics.
  5. Permanent Passive – usually some kind of unique skill which works even when not equipped. Since they don’t require slots, you’re not limited to how many Permanent Passive skills will work at a time. Many heroes have their own unique Permanent Passive skills giving them various bonuses. For example, the default priest character Tina has the “Reliable supporter” Permanent skill which grants a “Skill+” buff to the character in the row in front of her at the start of the battle. I would highly recommend to check the Permanent skills of each purchased hero – they can define their playstyle or significantly boost their efficiency with correction team composition.

The skills can be swapped at any time, even when your team is out on the battle field. Feel free to experiment and see what works better – there’s no hard in dying twice or thrice if after that you can leave your heroes running for hours without interruption.

At the start you’re very limited with Skill Points, so you want to carefully distribute them. As the time goes, you’ll start finding Skill Points books which give points when consumed – this will quickly solve all your skill issues. Some heroes need just a few skill points, other – may require quite a bit of books to perform optimally, it all depends on your strat and team composition.

You also cannot go wrong with the skills – Merchant has endless supply of Skill reset sticks for only 500 Gold each. They fully reset all the spent skill points allowing you to redistribute them again.

It’s important to note that only the Normal Attack skill has to be equipped at all times. You may achieve interesting effects by unequipping the unneeded Skill or Ultimate Skill – this way the character won’t try to use them, increasing the chance of using the skill that you desire.

Team Edit Menu

In order to embark on Adventure your heroes have to be assembled into a team. By default you’re limited to a single team at the very start, unlocking up to 4 total teams by the end of the game.

Each team consist of up to 5 heroes which can be placed in 1 of 6 slots on the battle field: 3 front and 3 back rows. Heroes in the front row are the meat shield of your party: the back row cannot be damaged with the melee attacks until the entire front row is dead – the same goes for the enemy party. The ranged and magic attacks can hit anyone on the battlefield though. The back row is the place for your squishy ranged damage dealers and support heroes who can’t survive the onslaught for too long. If the melee hero is placed in the back row, he won’t be able to perform his attacks, and you’ll see a notification above his head when he tries to do so.

You may re-arrange the team composition freely, but you will have to withdraw the party from battle if they’re engaged in one.

During manual combat such as Events and Cave levels you’ll have a completely different team which is not used in Adventure.

Achievements

Achievements menu is available at the bottom left of the Town screen. In this menu you can see all the currently locked achievements. By hovering over the achievement icon you can see what has to be done to unlock it.

Each unlocked achievement grants between 1 and 30 Achievement Points. These points can then be spent in the Achievement Store available in the same window. All these offered items and character are unique and cannot be obtained otherwise. All of them have certain prerequisites, from obtaining certain amount of achievement points to slaying bosses on harder difficulty.

Whenever you make a purchase the specified amount of points is deducted from your balance – but only in this save file. It’s important to note that the achievements are shared across all save files: if you start a new game, you can immediately purchase certain items that you’ve already earned in another save file, kick starting the early game.

The screenshot below demonstrates a brand new save file on which an item worth 50 Achievement Points has already been purchased, leaving 137 out of total 187 Achievement Points unspent.

Adventure

And finally we’re here. Adventure! This is where the magic happens.

Once you’ve assembled your first team of Tina and Alex, you can click on the “Adventure” button to switch to the map view.

The Adventure consist of the map nodes unlocked one after another. In order to unlock later maps you have to achieve certain progress on the earlier maps – but not necessary fully clearing it up to 100%.

  1. By clicking on the “Town”, “Back” or “Back to town” buttons (devs surely were generous with those) you can return back to the Town view.
  2. Above each map you can see the level of enemies available on them.
  3. Below the map you can see its name and current progress. Each map starts from 0% and increases up to 100% as your heroes clear waves and waves of monsters. Progressing the map to 100% also rewards an Achievement Point.
  4. The buttons at the bottom allow to change screens with different “acts” – but for now you’re locked to the first one.

In order to see map details just click on it with a mouse.

  1. At the top left corner of the map window you can see all penalties and bonuses which will be applied for this map.
  2. Below is the current progress and map description.
  3. You can also see a list of all enemies you can encounter on this map, including bossues.
  4. There’s also a list of items you can find in a treasure chest from this map, how many chests do you have now and a maximum amount of chests you can hold. The chests are earned as your heroes fight the battles on this map. If you leave them for long enough you’ll get a few of first chests pretty fast. Keep in mind that you can hold a limited amount of 3 unopened chests: if you leave the game for too long, you won’t be getting any more until you open the currently collected chests. The rewards from the chests are not guaranteed: you can get few of the listed items – or you can get zero. Later into the game the chest content becomes very important as they can hold special books and resources essential for progression. Should you want to leave the game running for long, you may visit the Town to upgrade Merchant (+2 chest capacity) or Camp and upgrade the maximum chest capacity on the Technology tab.
  5. In the list of available teams you can edit the team layout by clicking pencil icon, give the team potions or – send them into battle. That’s what they will be doing most of the time.

Battle

As the genre implies, the combat in No-Brainer Heroes consist of doing nothing: your heroes fight on their own. But since No-Brainer Heroes is the semi-idle RPG, sometimes you have to engage in a manually controlled combat.

Automatic Battle

Lets start from the basics – by clicking on the “Battle” icon next to the team on the map screen you send your team into automatical battle. They’ll do the skills assigned to them, performing mostly Normal Attacks, with a rarer chance of Skill and even rarer Ultimate Skill. You have no control over their actions, but as advantage they do not consume Action Points needed to do Skills and Ult Skills.

Enemies come in waves, endlessly one after another. Your heroes just have to crunch through them, gaining experience and finding gear and trophies for sale.

If your team is fully wiped out or any of them is dead by the end of the battle (before the next wave), the entire team is withdrawn from the combat until all of the heroes are fully healed or manually revived by you in the camp. Once healed, they automatically return to the same map – leaving them for their endless grind is safe.

On the battle screen you can see your party on the left and enemy party on the right. Whenever character performs an action or takes damage, a corresponding message is displayed above their head. But it’s exciting to watch only for the first 20 hours.

  1. By clicking “Back to town” or “Back to map” buttons you can switch the current screen – your team will continue to find without interruption. Take your time to manage the Town while they’re doing their job.
  2. By clicking on the team icon you can return back to the battle overview – or switch between teams if you have multiple.
  3. “Retreat and back to town” button does just that – it withdraws the party from the battle, allowing you to rearrange team composition or revive them. They won’t return to the map automatically – you’ll need to send them to battle again.
  4. Above the battle field you can see current buffs and penalties applied to this particular map.
  5. To the right of it there’s a panel that allows to switch the combat speed from x1 to x3. Every minute of the sped up mode the game consumes one of your Time Stones of corresponding grade. Those can be found in different events or purchased from the merchant. If the team runs out of stones, the speed will be reset back to normal.
  6. Below the battle field you can see your team roster, characters health and current experience bar.
  7. The order of actions both of your heroes and enemies is defined by their Speed attribute – the higher the better – and it can be seen at the right side of the screen.
  8. The Statistics button displays useful information about killed enemies, aquired items and EXP/drop rate/chest rate penalty.

The Stage level shows the level of enemies on this map. Statistics about killed monsters and gathered items is useful if you want to optimize your performance – if you need cash and crystal dust, sometimes it’s better to switch to the lower level map and kill enemies faster. The Team level shows the average level of your team. If the Team level is higher than the Stage level, it will negatively impact the speed at which you find new chests as well as lower the item drop rate. Should level of any particular character be higher than the Stage level, they will be gaining less experience from killing monsters. For example, a team of 1 high level character and 1 lower lever character on a low level map will result in a small chest/drop rate, very low EXP gain of the higher level character – but normal EXP gain of the lower level one.

Manual Battle

Should you ever engage in a manual battle, the UI and mechanics will stay the same. The only difference is that you’ll be able to select what skills the characters will be using, their targets, and your skills will consume Action Points. If you run out of AP during manual battle, you’ll be able to only use the Normal Attack. In order to increase efficiency of manual battles, you may either equip items with +SP (which is actually +AP, not the Spell Power), or level up the Permanent Passive skill called “Improved Action” available to every character.
Keep in mind that manual battles are usually done by a separate team. If the heroes take any damage or die during such battles, it doesn’t affect their performance on the Adventure map at all – they’ll keep going as nothing happened, without any interruption. They’re not withdrawn from the automatic battle while manual battle is happening.

Events

While your brainless heroes happily grind the map you may notice a bubble with exclamation mark appearing above the map icon on the Adventure overview. Those are events. The bubble will be filling with yellow until it turns red – which means you can click on it to access the event. When the event is resolved – one way or another – it will be gone. You can only have two events per map, so checking them from time to time to free up the space for the new ones is a wise choice.

Each event is described with text, telling a small story. You then presented with 1 or more options on how to act. Sometimes you’ll be rewarded, sometimes you’ll have to engage into battle to resolve the event – the outcome is different each time. The same answer may result in a reward or a battle in different encounters.

If you grind the map for long enough (very “long enough”), you’ll eventually see a special event: the border of the event icon will turn yellow with spikes instead of the default grey one.

This event involves a boss battle, and is very rare. If you’re a happy owner of version 1.0, I would highly recommend to update it as soon as possible: it is not possible to encounter special events in this version unless your language has been set to Chinese.

Once you win the battle, you will be rewarded with a unique item specific to this particular map. It can only be obtained once, and it also gives you 1 Achievement Point.

In the achievement menu you may find the full list of such items by hovering over them – the one you’re looking are described as “Acquired from stage <map name>”.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15056 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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