Hero Tale – Ultimate Combat Guide

Sub 7H Hours Combat Guide

By Dawidax.

This guide will provide you step by step detailed information on what to do to achieve it.

Minimum requirements to follow the guide:

• Sub 17h rewards.
• 12 dark skill points.
• First 2 fairies active (3rd not needed, but it’s helpful).

In this guide we will heavily rely on block mechanics, if you die in early game it’s not a big deal, you can use potions to heal to full quickly and stop runtime.

Dark Skill Tree

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Starting Items

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Skill Tree

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If I don’t say anything about equipment, it means that we go our full damage equipment (starting items), if we need to skip a certain enemy, I will mention it.

There is a high chance that you are not used to a block mechanic, this whole guide heavily relies on block, Melee play style can be very challenging at first, but once you get consistent with your blocks, it’s actually quite enjoyable (at least for me).

I hope you can achieve sub 7h run by following this guide, GL.

We will start by finishing quests in first town:

• Kill 3 rats.
• Dad’s Juice.

After completing this quest, it’s good idea to clear our inventory.

I also used ticket here, selling sub 9h rewards will give us about 4000 gold, if you don’t have 9h rewards, it’s not a big deal.

Buy 40g boots from shop, they might save us from getting 1shotted.

• Kill 8 Brats, skip Rats.
• Kill 6 Drunks, skip Brats.
• Kill 4 Thugs, we don’t need to skip anything here as long as there are 4 Thugs in 8 fights.

Now that we finished the quests, we will move towards farmer/flycatcher.

• Town entrance: Toad will do some dmg to use, use potions/fishes to heal up.
• Small lake: same as Town entrance.
• Farmer’s hut: Farmer should die on 2 hits, if he doesn’t then you have to block his attack, his attack animation is very delayed so be careful of that.

After 1 farmer kill we should get level up, and from that point we will just 2 shot him every time.

Level up on farmer until lvl 9. Once you are lvl 9, move to Timber fields and unequip Vagabond leggings.

We’re gonna kill 8 mushrooms, we have to block the first hit and tank 1 hit to kill it. Spam potions/meat/fishes/carrots to not die.

After 8 mushroom kills go to backwoods, equip your Vagabond leggings, bow and boom boom arrows.

We have to drop a mace from flycatcher using a maximum of 9 boom boom arrows.

If you do not drop mace in 9 arrows, reset the run. This part is very important for our Runtime, we do need that mace.

I believe that dropping mace using maximum 9 arrows should have a 40- 50% success rate, so it’s not as bad as it looks, mace is a yellow rarity drop, and we have big increases in drop rate from our dark tree.

If you had to use less than 9 boom boom arrows, save it for later. Equip our new weapon, and finish the druid quest.

Beach-Dense Forest-Druid

All those enemies are pretty easy with our new weapon, use healing items if you take too much damage.

After finishing the druid quest we will push into Side Bog asap.

• Grasslands: Easy fights.
• Waterfall: In order to beat Bandit we need 7 small attack speed nodes, if you dropped your mace very early, you might not have that yet, in that case level up on farmer until you have 7 attack speed nodes.
• Heath: Avoid Berserker Cultist, and kill bandit only, this might take a while.
• Green Hinterland: Those fights will be pretty hard, but we can defeat them with good strategy. To kill them we need falcon agility, and man of focus (19 skill points).

If you don’t have it yet,level up on farmer/bandit.

• Little Jen: Switch glowing shield to wooden shield, we will tank first hit, and block second hit
• Middle Ken: Equip bow and boom boom arrow (that’s why it’s important we have at least 1 arrow left), we can tank 1 hit and then 1 shot him
• Big Ben: Our standard damage setup with glowing shield, unequip Vagabond leggings. Block his first hit (his attack is somewhat slow), tank second hit, we should be able to kill him just before he hits us again. It’s possible that you will lowroll damage and not kill him, or he will high roll his damage and kill you, but most of the time you should be able to kill him.

After killing them you should level up, and killing Big ben shouldn’t be an issue. Kill 5 more enemies, either Little jen, or Big Ben, I prefer Big Ben.

• Wetland Border: Equip Bell Helmet and Lucky Shield.

Skip Fluffbird, kill Bandit and Brawlhopper, Bandit can deal some damage to us, but Brawlhopper hits us for 0.

Erza’s Convoy

This is how it looks like in my run. If you are a few minutes late, dont worry about it, we should have enough spare time to make it sub 7h.

Buy Silk culottes from Erza shop, if you do not have money, come back here later.

• Swamp Entry: Kill Mosquito and Turtle, skip Fluffbird.

For Turtle we should have enough dmg to kill him before he hits us.

For Mosquito: block first hit (his attack is very fast), tank second hit.

He will deal a lot of damage to us, if you don’t have enough hp (90+), look for Turtle/heal up with items/heal. Feel free to use whatever is left of your hp healing items, we will start dropping 90hp potions from Turtle, so we don’t need other healing items. 

Side Bog

This is the best exp spot for a long time. Once we get node nr 24 and more combat levels, we will start 1 shooting Turtle and 2 shooting Mosquito.

To 1 shot Turtle we need to deal 225 damage, and that is exactly half of mosquito hp, meaning if you can 1 shot Turtle, you will also stop taking damage from Mosquito.

Drop as many 90hp potions as possible, and do not use them to heal up, we will need a lot of them for Captain’s Guard and Demon push. I skip the other 2 enemies here, their drop is terrible, and exp is not great, I believe that killing only Mosquito and Turtle is more efficient, they also have amazing drops.

Important Note: Block gives us attack speed, but it also changes our block timings, if you find 2 Mosquitos in a row, you won’t be able to block the first hit of the second Mosquito, you will have to cancel the combat if you don’t have enough hp.

Spam heal spell between fights, and use berries if you don’t have mana.

Once we have node 31, and 28 combat level, 2 mosquitos in a row no longer damage us, you can just hit second mosquito twice before it hits us.

We will farm on Side Bog until we get node number 45.

This is how first hour of my run looks like, there will be more pictures like this so you can compare time. If you are behind a bit, don’t worry, we will have some spare time to reach sub 7h.

You may noticed that talent tree order might look a bit weird at this point, if we start taking nodes 40-43 earlier, we will ruin our block timing on mosquito, and you will constantly take damage from it, what I like to do, is take nodes 40-45 at the same time, this is enough attack speed to hit mosquito 2 times before it hits us.

Once we get node 45, we can begin our push towards the city, and Side Bog will be our heal up/exp spot, feel free to use berries/cookies to replenish mana.

Important Note: Do not use our 90hp potions while pushing to the city, heal up on Side Bog, you can use other healing items dropped there (you can save Steak).

• City Entrance: We can kill both Lazy Guard and Drunk Guard.

Lazy Guard – We will either 3 shot him, or tank 1 hit, block.

Drunk Guard – It takes some time to catch up to him, but we got nice block timing and we take no damage, I killed a bit of both at this point.

• Downtown: Skip Rebel, rest should be easy.
• Skidrow: If you are fighting Assassin, block his first hit, he will still deal a lot of damage to us.
• City Storage: We can kill both of them, but we do take damage, Aristocrat deals less damage to us. Kill 1-3 of them, and go heal up on Side Bog.

After that we have access to the Throne room, and Market. You can buy mana potions to finish our thunder quest, and we can begin our rebel quest.

• Slums: We can kill both Rebel and Beggar here, Beggar is decent exp and gold.
• Rebel: With node number 47 we can block his first hit, but we have to tank second hit.

If you are running out of health, heal up in our healing spot (Side Bog). Once you kill 12 rebels, finish our quest and we will push towards Barracks.

• Training Grounds: Kill only Swordsman here. We can block his attack and kill him without taking any damage. Attack speed buff from blocking can mess up our block timing on the next Swordsman, so just wait until it runs out.
• Barracks: If you have boom boom arrows left, now is the time to use them, 3-4 arrows should be enough to kill him, if you don’t have arrows left, we need to go shopping.

Do not forget to switch 1 equipment piece.

This is me setup for this fight, mail equipment+plate shield+mace. For safety, challenge him when you have node number 49.

Heal spam+90hp potion spam+few good blocks+1 or 2 Big hp potions  will win us the fight. If you have better healing items (Steak,Big healing potion) now it’s the time to use them.

This is my fight with Captain’s Guard, check it out to see what to expect.

After we beat him, buy 2k combat training, and 15k combat training. If you can’t afford 15k training, farm Bog Side. Once you have 15k training we can start pushing towards Demon Market.

Important Note: Do not get node number 55 before having access to demon market.

• Reserve’s Entrance: Kill only Hound here.

Eq setup is same as Guard’s Captain, but I equip Silk Culottes over mail leggings.

• Demon Hound: Block his second hit, this alone should be enough to just barely kill him, if you get more blocks, you can block his 5th attack to take less damage

Use your 90hp potion right after you get hit with his first attack, this will give you time to use the second potion if you won’t get any blocks. Need 1-2 potions per fight.

• Rocky Plateau: Kill only Gremlin Rogue here.

Eq setup same as Captain’s Guard, full mail+mace.

• Gremlin Rouge: Strategy same as Hound, tank first hit, block his second hit, that should be just barely enough to kill him, make sure to use first potion (90hp) right after he hits you, this will allow us to use second potion before he kills us.
• Gremlin Nests: Kill Gremlin Rouge again.
• Demon Settlement: Kill Demon Brat only.
• Demon Brat: Equipment same as Hound or Gremlin Rouge, strategy is also the same, block his second hit and that’s good enough, need 2 potions per fight.

There is a very high chance that you will run out of potions, feel free to buy more on the market, and drop more in Side Bog. Once we clear the path to Demon Market, we can make a lot of money anyway.

When we have access to Demon Market you can take Node number 55 (big attack speed). Do not take node number 67.

Once we get to Demon Market, we will buy a Demon Dagger, Carapean Helmet,Armor and boots. We don’t need to buy pants, Silk Culottes are better.

If you have money for Demon Dagger, buy it, if not, that’s not a big deal, save your money for now.

Once we have node number 54, we can farm Commander in Ship Deck. Enemies on the way are very easy at this point, so there is no explanation needed.

Tavern “Fishy Legs”- Shipyard-Ship Deck.

• Ship Deck: We will farm Commander here and skip bosun.

• Commander: His first attack is a crit that deals massive damage, but we can block it.

With node 54 we have a very easy time blocking it, just press block right after your second attack starts, our character will just block automatically, we don’t have to time anything. Commander is a very good exp and drops tons of money, with his drops you can buy a Demon Dagger (if you don’t have it yet) and Carapean equipment that we need (no pants). We don’t need Demon Dagger to farm him, but it will speed up the process a lot, so buy it when you can afford it.

We will farm here until we can take nodes number 65-67, take them all at once,taking 1 attack speed node will ruin our block timing on Commander.

Once you have all attack speed nodes in a tree (node nr 67), we can start farming Dark Forest, it has amazing exp, and we will level up very quickly here.

• Dark Forest: When you start farming here, skip Black Widow (Big spider).

And kill only Spiderlings (Small spider). Block timing is also very easy here, just press block after you start your 3rd attack animation, our Character will auto block next hit, it’s very easy to do.

With node number 72 spider dies on 3 crits, but we don’t have 100% crit chance so you have to keep blocking after your 3rd hit just in case we don’t crit.

With node number 75 we have 100% crit chance, and you no longer have to block small spider attack, he will die on 3 hits every time.

At lvl 71 we can start casting thunder, go ahead and buy bunch of cookies . (Ezra, 7 mana) and magical herbs (Market,12 mana), I bought 100 each.

You should still have money left from Commander farm, if we run out of those, we can buy more from spider drop. Just cast thunder when you find an encounter, a small spider will die on 1 hit+1 thunder. You can skip Big spider.

We should be able to cast 2 thunders per level, if you level up and thunder is on cooldown you can restart your game, or wait for thunder cooldown.

Once we have node number 78 (about 57 combat total) We can start farming big spider, it will help speed up our farm, since we don’t have to skip combats anymore

• Black Widow: Press block after 5 hits, we should have enough attack speed and damage to kill it before it attacks us again.

After taking node number 78 you should stop taking more nodes for now.

At combat level 60/61-64 we cant fight 2 big spiders in a row, similar to Mosquito in the past, and at combat level 65-69 we can no longer farm big spider, can’t block his attack. Ideally you want to stop at combat level 59 (maybe 60 is fine too, not tested).

And take multiple nodes at once. What i did in my run was wait until i naturally hit combat level 59, and then took nodes 79-89 at the same time, that boosted my combat level to 70. After combat 70 we no longer have to worry about block timings in spiders. 

Keep in mind that with combat level 70+ we need to block after our 6th hit, not 5th against big spider.

We will farm spiders until we get node number 106 (crit damage).

• Shadow Temple: Kill only Necromancer, avoid Skeleton.

Necromancer

To start our Necromancer farm and make it consistent we need:

• Minimum 2.2 movement speed+dash.
• 79 combat level.

We can start farming necro with 78 combat level, but it’s not consistent yet, we can lowroll the dmg and randomly die, I suggest starting to farm here once you have combat level 79 or higher. If you want to farm necro at combat level 78, you have to watch your damage, we need to deal over 1k on average to kill Necromancer. Necromancer farm will be our best heal/exp spot for the rest of the game. Once we start farming here, we no longer have to buy mana items.

Cursed Apples and Dark Meat is more mana than we will ever need.

At this point my thunder was 122/150. When you have 100k gold, buy combat training. Once you master lightning, we can go ahead and get poison spell.

While fighting sensei make sure that thunder is set on autocast, so that you use it right away, make sure to not have glowing shield equipped here, you can equip plate shield. He will do some damage to us, but that’s not a big deal, go heal up on Necro.

Witch fight is a joke, just kill her. Once we get poison, go back to Necro farm and spam poison and thunder. When you have 100k gold, buy combat training.

Once you have 87 or 89 combat level we can move towards inventor.

• Abandoned Bastion: Kill Night Watch only, block after 7 attacks, we have enough dmg to kill him before he hits us again, easy fight (glowing shield).
• Icy Premises: This fight is actually much easier than it looks, we can kill him with our standard damage build (glowing shield). block timing will depend on your combat skill, for 87 combat, block after 20 hits, and thunder to interrupt his second attack.

For 89 combat same strategy, but block after 21 hits. Block timing at 88 combat is a bit tricky to perform, I suggest that you go for him with combat either 87 or 89. When you have thunder-clear Icy Premises, thunder on cooldown-farm Necro.

Once we clear Icy Premises and master poison, we can challenge inventor.

At this point in the game we will have only 2 big purchases left: googles 50k, and fireball 24k, all gold over that can go whenever you want (mostly big hp potions).

Before we challenge Inventor, we need to farm Health Ectoplasm.

• Graveyard: Kill Big skeleton only, skip small skeleton.

Required stats: 87 combat+ 77 magic+. Equip our usual damage setup with glowing shield.

Important Note: After taking node number 136, i had 78,1 magic and could farm Monstrous Skeleton, if you don’t have enough magic, you can put few points in magic, until you have 76/77+, or farm him with plate shield (it’s slower).

• Monstrous Skeleton: After 8 attacks you can block his attack, then attack 5 times and cast thunder. That should give us just barely enough time to kill him before he hits us. We could farm him earlier with a plate shield, but it would be slower and we would take 1 hit. We will need a Health Ectoplasm for Inventor, Prince and Final Boss. Whenever you have thunder, go farm big skeleton, thunder on cooldown, farm Necro.

• Inventor’s Atelier: There aren’t any big requirements for this fight level wise, as long as you have node 140, mastered poison, and 3+ Health Ectoplasm, you are fine.

The most important thing about this fight is to not cast spells right away, if we do that, we cast spells instead of walking up to him, and that uses our dash ability, then we get debuffed and cant damage him. What we want to do is use our spells (thunder and poison)  after we get to him and start hitting him.

Our attack speed will be slow, but every now and then we crit him for 600+. Thunder dmg+poison dmg+our dmg will do the job. You will need 3+ health ectoplasm in this fight. Inventor doesn’t actually deal a lot of dmg, health ectoplasm can pretty much outheal his dmg.

In a fight I used cursed apple for mana, don’t do that, just spam Health Ectoplasm.

• Magical Circle: Requirements: node 143, skip the other 2 encounters, and wait for the Heretic Leader to show up. This is the most fun “boss” encounter for our melee build in the game, because we can block his first attack. Equipment: plate shield, rest damage.
• Heretic Leader: Once you find him, you can block his attack, after attacking 3 times. After that the fight is easy, cast poison, reset his attack with thunder. He will hit us 2 times, but we can just use potion and heal  and tank it. Very easy fight as long as you can block his first attack. With thunder on cooldown, go back to Necro.

Once you finish the Inventor quest, we will begin the most boring part of the guide.

At this point you should have ton of Cursed Apples, most likely 100+.

Go to Runic Site, put Apples on first quickslot, Fairy automana consume at 30%, search for the fight, use Ice, restart the game, repeat 200 times. This is incredibly boring, but it allows us to master Ice spell way faster.

I started using Ice at 5h 24 minutes in my run, and mastered Ice at 5h 36 minutes. I’m playing PC version of the game, it might take longer on other devices. Once we master Ice spell, we can start pushing towards Prince.

• Ooze Fields: This fight can be a bit tricky, but as long as you block and use potions you should be fine.
• Suspicious Guard: Casting poison right away was giving me nice timing to block his first attack, I used our damage equipment+plate shield, if you are struggling here you can use full tank equipment (mail), similar to our Captain’s Guard fight, but with dagger.

• Castle Entry: This fight is slightly harder then previous one, get node number 145 to make it easier, can also add more Defence or Hp nodes.
• Strange Guard: I used same equipment as fight before, without node 144 and 145 you can die if he highrolls damage, but as long as you use big potions and sometimes heal, it should be just barely enough.

At this point we have two options:

• Exp farm on Necro and get more Defence/Health/Magic.
• Farm Strange Guard, and go heal up on Necro.

I believe both options are viable, but i prefer option number 2.

Strange Guard drops Health Ectoplasm that we will need for Prince and Final boss, he also drops Sturdy Armor that is amazing. Sturdy Armor will allow us to beat Prince few levels earlier, we will need less Defense/Hp nodes from the tree.

It’s also a yellow rarity item drop, Meaning it’s not actually that hard to drop it.

I believe on average Sturdy Armor should drop every 20-30 kills, i dropped it after about 20. You can go learn fireball now, we will need it for an easier Prince Fight.

• Main Hall: This is the hardest, and most important fight in the game, I went for this fight while being underleveled, but with sturdy armor. The most important thing in this fight is to have a way to deal with his buffs, we cannot tank his dmg while his buff is up, no matter our equipment. We will deal with the first buff by using bow+ice, it will make his buff run out, for the second buff we will use Thunder, but the timing has to be really good, we need 95+magic for thunder+good timing to negate/almost negate his buff. For the third buff we will have Ice up again so that’s not an issue. After that he should be dead. If you do not have 94/95+ magic, go level up. There is a high chance that with low magic and even perfect thunder timing, we just die to his second buff.

The most important stat here is magic, if your magic is high enough, but you are still struggling, it means that your thunder timing is off. To make the fight easier you can take more Defence/Hp nodes. I died on my first try, I miss timed thunder and rip.

I ended up using 2 suspicious ectoplasm here, could use 1 if I played better.

Important Note: I fight final boss with 1600hp, if you do not want that, put more points into hp nodes.

If you Defeated Prince, Congratulations, we have only 1 big fight left before we finish. Before going into the hole, spend all your money on big potions, we will need quite a lot of them for the next part of the game (Final Boss).

• Secret Laboratory: Both enemies are easy, but I only fight the Abomination Chomper here. You can fight both enemies, but the Chomper (7k hp enemy) drops Health Ectoplasm. I farmed about 10 before going into Final Boss. I still had some Mana Ectoplasm from Suspicious Guard.
• Creepy Underground: The final fight of the run, turn up your volume because music is epic here. I went there with 1600 max hp, it’s a bit risky but there is a consistent way to beat it as long as you have 1500+ hp. Eq setup is Longbow+cool bolts+inventor goggles+full tank.

The trick here is to use consumables after his fireballs. You can use Health Ectoplasm after the first fireball, and second fireball. If you use Health Ectoplasm after a second fireball, thunder will come shortly after, dealing 1,5k dmg, it’s important that you stay healthy before the thunder.

If you used consumable after his second fireball, you can also use consumable after thunder, and we can survive 3rd fireball by doing that. Rest of the fight is easy, go full tank, don’t die, spam poison and heal.

In the video you can see that I miss timed my consumables, and was still fine after that, for ideal Runtime we should try to beat him as early as possible, but it is risky.

Thanks for reading the guide, I hope it was helpful to you!