AFK Journey – The Ultimate F2P Guide

How to Be a Good F2P Player in AFK Journey

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By Avi

F2P is method of playing the game, experience most of the content offered by the game through extreme planning, today we’ll talk about how to be a good F2P player in AFK Journey: First of all, adjust yourself to have a good mindset.

Intro

Have faith and keep the mark of being a F2P player – the first purchase

If you choose to be a F2P player, you must have faith in yourself, no matter how far behind you are in progress, no matter how bad your rankings are, no matter how cost effective it seems, you can’t lose your faith and lost the 1st purchase. Otherwise all your hard work and persistence along the way will be lost forever.

Have faith that as long as you keep being F2P, there will be better welfares in future and you’ll be able to slowly acquire the heroes you wanted. With good planning you might even be able to compete with the micro spenders.

In short, there’s no way they can get you to spend even a single dime!

Beware of all kinds of rankings

There are lots of rewards being given to players according to rankings in AFK Journey and their greatest purpose is to tempt the players into spending.

If you’re an F2P player, under the same level of planning your progression and development will be not as good as spending players. This will surely leads to you getting worse rewards compare to them in gameplay with rankings, and you might start to have the idea of being one step behind forever and unable to keep up with them, which ultimately results in you to start spending like them as well.

So, don’t get the thought of “If I have spent in game too I’ll be able to beat them and get better rewards”, the cost-effective ratio is never clear, when everyone are spending, it means nobody are spending at all. Buyers are never as smart as sellers.

As long as you didn’t spend in game, the denominator will always be 0 and the cost-effective ratio will be infinite!

Has precise control in the input/output ratio of every content

Even though you’re not trying to compete with others, that doesn’t mean you’re just going to give up, control your investment precisely in each content, is way more important than your planning as F2P.

Progression and AFK Stages

Progression resource investment analysis

I’m strongly against investing resources into progression heroes at present stage, generalized progression consists of AFK stages, open world plots and faction legend trials. They have rich rewards, but it’s only one-time and doesn’t have a high upper limit.

Casually playing for around 60 ~ 70 days should get you to level 240, you’ll be able to grab all the rewards from these contents. The level cap currently is 240, which means they won’t be releasing new afk stage contents and rewards anytime soon. This means that the heroes that you have invested a lot into might be useless afterwards.

I don’t recommend investing too much into these kind of heroes, use replacement heroes for map progression and invest your limited resource into dream realm and arena will be a better idea.

Specific hero investment suggestions

Why Lucius and Antandra as frontlines you asked?

Because Lilith has already showed us the best solution for map progression and has given clear guidelines of course!

Currently the daily quest, growth path and Keith’s store will reward a lot of A-Level soulstones, even though you’re unable to select them all in wishlist due to how many there are, its enough for us to acquire the heroes we wanted through the randomness.

After some actual testings, Antandra and Lucius at epic+ is more than enough for casual map progression, equivalent to getting 2 decent frontlines at no costs.

• Rowan is usable at epic, he’s available in 7 days login reward or you can exchange for a copy of him from arena store.

What you should value are his health potions that can help your team to withstand the first burst from enemies and his ultimate that regen energy and gives haste buffs, you don’t need him at high ascension

• Odie is your main dps in dream realm, he’s a must built unit anyways, the stronger he is the better.
• Smokey & Meerky is the most optimal, current strongest healer/support in game, he’s a must pick in wishlist, with no limit on when to stop investing in him. If you can’t pull him, use either Marilee or Korin.
• Marilee and Korin are also great dps in dream realm, you’ll need to build them anyways so might as well use them in map progression, the stronger the better.

Both of them can be used in the 2nd team of map progression.

Dream Realm

Dream Realm resource investment analysis

For modes like dream realm that requires constant dps, its a great test of the overall strength of the team, especially the heroes’ ascension tier and the level of exclusive equipment, because it’s very easy to maxed out base resonance and equipment level. The ascension tier of heroes and level of exclusive equipment differs between players, which could widen the gap between base stats and effects of core mechanisms, ultimately reflected on the damage numbers against bosses.

As a F2P player, it’s impossible to maxed out everyone in your team, so you’ll need to focus your resources on the most crucial units.

In general, a team consist of two types of heroes, dps and utility units.

Utility units usually rely on their own skill sets’ effect to play their part, and most of these effects have fixed value, which are not related to themselves.

For example, Smokey & Meerky’s buff circle has a fixed value on how much attack and haste buff they can provide.

So for F2P players, as long as the exclusive equipment of these utility units has unlocked the most important effect, and able to stay alive long enough for a 90 second battle, you don’t need to invest anymore resource in them. Try to reduce the amount of resource you invest into this kind of heroes.

The attack stat of your main carry/dps is very important, since it’ll affect how much damage they can do, try to build them as strong as you’re capable to.

One thing to pay attention to is that the bonus stats provided by the paragon ascension tier (which is 2.5% for all stats usually for each paragon tier) is not worth the trouble, F2P players has no need to pursue this.

On top of exclusive equipments, the additional effects you gained from +10 to +15 are all increasing the value on previously acquired effects, which means it’s very hard for them to have a qualitative change. But you’ll have to invest in 200 temporal essence, even if it gets you to a stage higher in ranking rewards, it’ll still take 200 session of ranking rewards to recover the cost, it’s too cost-inefficient so I don’t recommend F2P players to upgrade an exclusive equipment to +15 for dream realm ranking.

Specific hero investment suggestions

DPS / Carry:

• Odie, Supreme+, Ex. (Exclusive equipment) +10
• Marilee, Supreme+, Ex. +10
• Korin, Supreme+, Ex. +10
• The 3 above have no controversy since they are viable anywhere.

Utility Unit:

• Smokey & Meerky, Mythic+, Ex. +5 (+8 if you’re capable to do so).
• Kruger, you only needs his defense reduction skill for bosses, which is totally not related to ascension tier and exclusive equipment. So technically you can have him at as low as possible, as long he’s able to survive the 90 seconds in battle.
• Thoran, Mythic+, Ex. +5 (+8 if you’re capable to do so).

Arena

Arena resource investment analysis

It’s very cost-inefficient to invest in arena, I recommend you to reduce investment into pvp heroes:

• The arena teams are ever-changing, it’s very common that multiple teams has advantages over each other, very difficult to just work with one team.
• Most pvp heroes are only viable in arena, doesn’t have much use otherwise.
• A slight different in stats, is possible to make a big difference, there’s no in-between, which have a very high upper limit for investment, especially paragons.
• Arena’s rewards are pretty mediocre, other than exchanging for stellar crystals weekly, arena coins can only be used to exchange for soul sigils in arena store, but most of them are for pvp or aren’t viable at all, so it’s quite useless for now.

Specific hero investment suggestions

I only recommend one hero for pvp: Viperian.

• Elites are exchangeable in store and all other graveborn units doesn’t have much competition with him in wishlist.
• The aoe abilities of his exclusive equipment can deal great aoe burst damage and doesn’t rely on movement.
• Thoran that pairs with him is a main unit in dream realm.
• Works very well with healers such as Hewynn and Rowan, both of them are exchangeable in arena store and pretty viable, most likely will be invest in too.

Complete formation set up:

Thoran, Viperian, Rowan, Hewynn and any other graveborn units.

Other than Viperian, the rest of the team doesn’t require you to invest extra resources into them and is strong enough no matter offense or defense.

Arena rank up strategies

Rank up strategies are more important to F2P players than investment planning, especially for offense.

Try to use up all the daily free challenge attempts, just fight against players with combat rating lower than yours for a guaranteed win, make sure you claim all the weekly victory reward.

Honor Duels

Nothing much, just make sure you claim all the weekly victory rewards.

Arcane Labyrinth

Nothing to talk about as well, just use your well invested dream realm team to easily clear difficulty 15, just make sure you’re able to claim all the rewards.

Battle Drills

This mode is harder for F2P players and it’s mostly a competition between top guilds, the rewards are level 5 reputation chest and doesn’t relate to ranking.

So, you don’t have to purpose invest in heroes for battle drills, just pick 15 of your most developed heroes, and set your target on the level 5 reputation chest.

If you’re unable to clear the guard pieces, wait for other players to attack it first, spend most of your energy on attack elite guard piece and boss fights, which will guarantee you to be eligible for all the rewards.

Plans Beyond Normal Contents

Pay attention to Mystic Collection

Every unlocked advantages of the collection provides great boost to accumulating resources, in early – mid game, you should focus on unlocking all the collection except for ‘King’s Glory’.

Level up technique

You can tilt resource towards marksman appropriately while leveling up heroes. The level of hands of resonance can’t exceed the resonance level above 10, so put your marksman into hands of resonance, focus your resource on marksman when leveling up your units, then go for the others afterwards.

Equipment wall level up strategies

For equipments, focus all your limited resource of forging stones on marksman class equipment, especially on weapon, accessory and gloves.

Arrange your number of logins reasonably

When you just started your account, the duration limit for AFK resource accumulation is only 16 hours, so if you only login once a day, you’ll miss out quite a lot of resources.

Plan Carefully About Hypogean / Celestial Heroes

A special note regarding hypogean/celestial heroes, even though they’re very expensive to pull for, their strengths cannot be ignored, F2P players should plan moderately for them.

1) Try to get Hypogean/Celestial heroes for free as much as you can.

• Unlock all rewards of the guild challenges as fast as possible, claim a big amount of guild medals and you can exchange a copy of hypogean/celestial hero for free.
• Buy all the monthly discounted stellar crystals in recruitment store.
• Used up all monthly attempts to buy stellar crystals with diamonds in guild store.
• Try to exchange for as much stellar crystals as you could in champion store (arena, max amount is 5).

2) Be cautious when pulling for Hypogean/Celestial heroes.

Currently Reinier is the most cost-efficient hypogean/celestial hero, but last we get an update about hypogean/celestial heroes has been quite a long time, which could mean there’s new hypogean/celestial heroes coming soon. If the new heroes are strong enough, it could be the end of the current hypogean/celestial bonus period.

F2P players will have to spend a lot more time than spending players to get a hypogean/celestial hero, this means that if they invested in the wrong hero, they’ll pay a higher price than spending players too.

Therefore I particularly recommend that you hold on to your resources and wait for the new hypogean/celestial heroes to be released, and make your decision after that.

Tier List for AFK Stages

• Cecia is the must have hero.You can get her from first 10 pull. Then from the arena store. With Rowan and a strong tank, she can clear afk stages preety quickly.
• Thoran is the best tank in the game. He can revive after death and do a lot of DMG.
• Odie is must pick for Dream relam or any other boss Fight.Also do well in afk stages to.
• Koko Is A tier hero.
• Smokey and Meerky Give a attack buff to the team,also heal very good.
• Marilee Also good for boss dmg and afk stage. Deal a lot of Dmg.
• Brutus is only used for his passive,as he can’t die for 5 sec. Other then that his DMG is very low.
• Rowan is a must have unit.Even 1 Copy is enough. He provides whole team energy and Healing.
• Dionel Is A tier.
• Eironn is a pretty Good DMG dealer but he need his Ex weapen (Lev 10) first to shine.
• Berial Is C tier as well.
• Hewynn is also good healer but she need too much time to use her super as she initially start with 0 energy. After you gain his Ex weapen (+5 lev) she initially get 300 energy.
• Reinier, Scarlita are both A tier in afk stages.

Common Beginner Mistakes

Not focusing resources on marksman/dps heroes

A lot of new players tend to spend their resources equally in leveling heroes and upgrading equipments.

As the main carry/dps, investing in marksman results in a way higher gain than other classes, this is because the increase of attack stats doesn’t have that much improvement in other classes compare to marksman, and increase in defensive stats has the same amount of impact for all the classes.

So, while leveling up/developing heroes:

• When leveling up marksman heroes, place them into the hands of resonance, focus your resource on them and level them up 10 levels above the average levels of resonance, you can level up the other heroes later on.
• Same for the equipment wall, focus your limited forging stones on marksman equipment, especially for weapons, accessory and gloves.

Leveling exclusive equipment above lv.10 too early

The resource allocation for exclusive equipment’s developmentis exactly the opposite of how it is previously in leveling heroes and equipment wall.

Leveling exclusive equipment from +11 to +15 will used up a large amount of temporal essence, and the improvement of +15 is just increasing the number of stats bonus acquired previously.

This is mainly for competing in arena and dream realm, but there’s no upper limit for competition in arena, basically ignores cost-effectiveness.

Even if you leveled up the exclusive equipment of Marilee, which is one of the most crucial unit in dream realm, to lv.15, the improvement of +10 to +15 isn’t much, you’ll still need to pair with other heroes to get better rankings.

There’s also a lot of uncertainty in whether you’re able to get back the same amount of temporal essence you’ve invested from dream realm, so I really don’t recommend that you level up an exclusive equipment over lv.10 early on when most of your other heroes aren’t built or developed enough.

Challenge Dream Realm and Arena as soon as you log into the game

In early game, the afk rewards accumulated daily can allow you to increase a lot of base levels, so surely there are smart players that only login and collect them when it’s near daily reset time to level up their heroes, then challenges dream realm and arena which are very level-dependant game modes.

If you spent all the attempts in dream realm and arena early on when you login for the first time of the day, due to having an obvious level gap with other players, your rankings probably wouldn’t be that high as you expected.

Placing too much exchangeable epic/S-tier heroes in wishlist

Currently arena store is the only place that you’re able to exchange for epic/s-tier heroes, here’s what I recommend you to exchange for:

1) Let’s talk about the heroes marked by red stars first, they’re recommended to be exchanged priorly, mainly to help in map progression/afk stages.

• Cecia: She’s great for map progression during early ~ mid stages but falls off in late game, exchange for her until she reaches mythic will be enough, not recommended to invest in her exclusive equipment.
• Rowan: An all-purpose support, has strong performances in both map progression/afk stages and pvp, viable as a subsitute support in dream realm, I recommend to be exchanged until mythic+ and unlock his exclusive equipment.
• Hewynn: A more pvp-sided healer, viable in both map progression/afk stages and battle drills, has lower priority to be exchanged in early game compare to Cecia and Rowan, but it’s recommended to exchange for her until she reaches supreme+ with exclusive equipment unlocked after you have completed map progression/afk stages.

2) Next, we’ll talk about the heroes marked by yellow stars, you can exchange for them according to your own needs, usually players will only start to consider this after they’ve completed map progression/afk stages.

• Bryon: Thoran is very popular in pvp, and Bryon is the marksman that can deal with him the quickest, has very well rounded mechanism and abilities that suits pvp well, if you’re looking to build a marksman for pvp purpose you can prioritize Bryon.
• Igor: A pvp-sided hero for defenses paired with Damian from wilder, can be very annoying since he’s able to stall a lot of time together with Damian’s repeatedly refreshed chariot’s sustainability, and there’s currently no effective method to counter this. He was nerfed in patch 1.11, so now his performances rely on how well invested he is, able to return to how strong he was before when he reached supreme+ tier.I recommend players that loves/focus on pvp and are capable to invest in Damian additionally to exchange for him.
• Cassadee: A constant dps hero exclusively for battle drills, able to deal more than 1.2 billion damage to Bloom Mother (Battle Drills boss) when paired with Odie which is quite exaggerating, recommended to be exchanged for players in top guilds.

3) Lastly, we’ll talk about the heroes marked with the blue cross, and why they aren’t recommended to be exchange for

• Brutus: He has nothing else to offer other than his few seconds of invincibility, currently the game doesn’t really have a mode that requires extreme tanking, which caused Brutus to have a mediocre overall performance.
• Lumont: A pvp-sided hero, his abilities makes him more suited with melee heroes, but melee heroes can stuck each other out very easily; Eironn who’s currently the meta in pvp clearly counters the melee hero.
• Granny Dahnie: The strongest tank below Thoran, but Thoran is too powerful and basically every player are pulling for him, you don’t need her anymore if you have Thoran.
• Atalanta: An aoe marksman that has mediocre performances in arena, but currently the only mode that requires aoe capabilities is the guard pieces in battle drills, investing in an epic hero just for this purpose is too cost-ineffective.

As we can see from the recommendations, there’s not much strong heroes that are exchangeable in arena store. So, if players keep them in wishlist and maxing them out (in terms of ascension tiers) too early, this will lead to players can only exchange for those weaker or currently useless heroes, wasting their arena coins.

You can set your wishlist like the chart below (Recommendations of the og guide writer from cn, you can use this as an reference):

• Special mention for Koko, she’s stronger than you think she is. Team wide damage reduction then life drain (life steal) and haste afterwards. She also has single target heals, damage amplifications, stuns and also shields. She can turn the tables of a fight, and is actually used a lot when going against stronger enemies.

Randomly join a guild / Not joining a guild at all

There’s guild chest in AFK Journey, it requires each guild member to participate in dream realm, arena and the rest of the battle modes, and contributes chest to guild according to their result and rankings.

It is concluded weekly, everyone that meets the requirement will be able to participate in the distribution of these chests, which contains large amount of resources, the picture below shows the rewards of guild chests from a player in an active guild on Monday:

If you just randomly join an inactive guild, the contributed chest would be way less which leads to you getting distributed less chest as well, and could greatly impact your accumulation of resources.

Not joining a guild is an even more undesirable behaviour, this means you’re missing out the most important guild store, which you could get a copy of hypogean/celestial hero for free and even purchase epic invite letter and stellar crystals with diamonds.

Picking targets randomly while attacking in arena

When you’re challenging in the arena early on, the main purpose here is ranking up in arena and claiming all the weekly victory rewards, challenging players with higher power are totally unnecessary.

When you’re picking opponents, you can see the total power of their defending teams and also check your own teams’ total combat power at the upper left corner.

Avoid picking opponents in the middle or right side, they are usually players with the similar or higher power than you, challenging them wouldn’t be a sure win and may result in a loss.

I recommend that you only challenges the players on the left side which usually has lower power than you, acquiring more warrior’s guarantee (arena attempts) is better for ranking up in the arena to reach champion tier as soon as possible and unlocking all the advantages provided by mystic collection (Annihilation Blade).