Wander Hero – Useful Tips and Tricks

Hints and Tips

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Starting Out

• You’ll get a random starting benefit from Aqua (pick from 3 chosen from several) on a new character. +10 HP or +1000 Souls are probably the best. HP is especially good for a Mage MC, that’s instantly a 25% HP boost. Open an Artifact chest is decent (be sure to equip it after the first fight), but may not be useful for your build. Potions gives 10x HP Potion 2 (which is 20% heal, not bad). Don’t take an enchanted item, its random and is often garbage. 3x Leaf of Life acts as an auto-resurrect item, which is a decent choice if you have permadeath on (and are also ironman, not reloading battles). 10K cash isn’t much, but handy when poor initially.
• Occasionally, you can get rarer options, like +15 HP, starting with experienced Mercs (which gives 2x fully upgraded random Tier 2 Mercs), starting with XP enough to instantly level to about 3, and once I’ve seen it give an extra random S-Tier perk replacing your worst perk, and once an extra Slave Girl. Most of these are good.
• After the first battle, the answer you give to the scared spearman determines your starting Mercs. These mercs are experienced and start with both card abilities.
  • Angry Choice (1) gives you 2 Spearmen, 2 Slingers.
  • Cautious Choice (2) gives 2 Spearmen, 2 Slingers, and 2 Apprentices.
  • Sneaky Choice (3) gives 2 Guards and 2 Apprentices.
• You may think (2) is the obvious best pick since its more, but the 2 Apprentices aren’t very good and bloat your deck (see Merc Codex). I’d usually go with (1) personally. (3) is ok if you’re a Mage MC with no HP bonus for the two Guards that might protect you (but you sacrifice power, this is the weakest set).
• After the prologue, ~always immediately~ pay to reveal all of the 4 starting merc shadows in the Tavern. There’s an almost guaranteed Heroine among them, with a very high chance to be a unique SSR one. Not 100% chance though. Regardless, you’ll want the manpower as this is all you get for the subsequent 2 sheriff quests.
• For more details of this part, see main quest walkthrough, below.

Levelling

• Don’t forget to Level Up your MC. There is no reminder to do it, so check your Deck Screen every so often. You’ll be able to level from 0 => 1 after the prologue, and very likely to be able to hit Level 2 after Hussar Knight’s two starter Quests. 3 comes slower. You need souls = (New Level x 100). After Level 10, you need Elite souls.
• It should be fairly obvious, but Leadership, Command, and Action are the best choices for levelling, for more Merc Capacity, Better card Draw, and more AP respectively. All of these flat out increase your combat potential. No best to worst, all A-Tier.
• If you’re set for those (or the RNG hates you and doesn’t give you one of them), I’d say Logistics > Collection > Medical > First Aid for support stats, in that order. Logistics means more time on quests and faster move. Collection means more loot. Medical is slow but constant free healing without wasting time. First Aid is a 75% chance to resurrect a merc once a stage, which is alright when the bounces screw you over.
• Others: Cooking > Alchemy > Trade > Forging. Cooking allows you to craft 10% Team HP restores like Wine and Fruitloaf for cheaper, which alright to start. Similarly, Alchemy 1 allows you to make basic potions. Trade is poor, only +5% profit is awful and extra things for sale is meh. Forging allows you to craft your own gear, but it requires AN INSANE number of points to be truly useful (at least 5, where points are super precious). I can’t comment on Charm yet since it will require more testing to see what exactly the Social system helps with in the game (it’s a new stat).

General Tips

• On dungeon maps, it doesn’t cost extra supplies to not choose an adjacent space, so feel free to bounce around the map.
• Basic supplies are added whenever you arrive at a town or village (for apparently 0 cost?). After doing a quest, don’t forget to click on the town you took the quest from after completing it to restore your supplies (why this is not automatic, I don’t know).
• Cities and Castles always charge you Gate Tax for entering. It’s usually fairly cheap so you can just take it, but there also doesn’t seem to be any repercussion for constantly trying to sneak in until you succeed if you’re feeling tight on cash.
• Food items can be used from inventory as a mass HP restore, though not much. Wine & Fruitloaf is the best with 10% all party restore.

• A Slender deck being best is common sense in any game like this; but its REALLY important here, since your Mercenaries and Heroines ARE also in the deck.
• Hence, you should only take a card as a battle reward if you are dead sure that will help you out. +25 Souls is often more valuable, as you use these to level and to pay costs in event spaces (temples, libraries etc).
• Elite fights have a higher chance of Uncommon cards. Boss fights usually offer you at least a couple of Rare cards.

• Difference between Block and Armour? Armour never goes away, so is inherently more valuable. Block reduces with each hit, but can reach much higher values.
• If you have AP remaining or choose to not use your MC’s melee pinball, you’ll gain your Block value shown on your card at turn end. Usually, this isn’t worth it unless you’re carrying a great +Block Item, as it’s only 2-3 by default.

• Critical is 0% by default. When you crit, it is indicated by a star next to damage numbers. It is always double damage, so it’s not bad. If you have Critical over 100%, it gives a chance to crit the crit to further increase it.

• This isn’t Slay the Spire. Don’t feel like picking Card Upgrade at Campsites is mandatory. 20% all team healing is very valuable, as heals are rare, and upgrades can be found at libraries too (for a Soul Cost). Upgrading low-rarity cards is also usually not all that worthwhile. SSR Heroines also have Campsite ability (which isn’t on their card, annoyingly- I cover them in the girls section).
• At Libraries, you’ll usually want to use them to remove cards that are poorly performing, or get upgrades. The random card pull isn’t usually good, it nearly always pulls generic cards.
• At Temples, you nearly always want to pick the 150 souls option. The other options are rather detrimental to your run; but if you want, you can sacrifice a Tier 1 Apprentice or something. Temples are very essential as the only way to improve the MC’s or Girls cards, though.
• At Mercenary Site, you should either hold a contest (2 random mercs get +1 card ability), or choose to hire the merc there. He’ll always be Tier 2, and have all his abilities already unlocked, which is a decent deal for 800 gold.
• Mercs can gain their card abilities via battle experience (generally kills, but they get 1 XP per battle for just being in the deck as well), as well as from the Merc event site. Most mercs have 2 abilities, one of which is unique, and one of which buffs their stats or other ability.

• Retreat from battles and failing quests IS VERY HARSH. Literally 50% of your stuff and mercenaries will be stripped! So do be careful if you’re not ready for a scrap when wandering the main world, and also be wary of stuff collection quests; you can easily fail these if you try to use Auto-collect. It’s also this reason why healing at campsites is a good option.

Mercenary Management

• You can temporarily withdraw mercenaries and girls from your deck (“Stay” button) when you’re in a town. They will move to a seperate section, Camp. In Camp, they will still continue to draw a salary and follow you. However, they will heal to full the next time you complete a quest (though they will also NOT benefit from your Medical stat, if you have any).
• Mercs and Girls that are in the ‘Camp’ section can also be fired. On the deck screen, simply click the X under their portrait.
• Girls are expensive (lol). They typically cost 220+ gold a month, regardless of rarity, whereas a tier-3 merc is 180. As you might be aware, they’re also 1-turn wonders, whereas a Merc, once played, stays out until the end of combat (or until they die, which removes them from your deck).
• You can only give potions and items to yourself and girls (poor mercs). Food items heal the entire force, though, which is why carrying Wine is useful. To use them, drag the item in question from your inventory to main portrait of who you want to heal.
• Because of this, most buff potions are fairly worthless. They last a single battle and affect a single character, and don’t even have a very strong buff.

Equipment & Upgrading

• Your MC and any and all girls can be equipped with up to 3 pieces of gear to boost their potency.
• Weapons and Armour have +1 Cost, which means the users cost to play increases by 1. This mostly applies to the deploy cost of Heroines. Do not overload girls with +Cost equipment. Consider only +1 at most, as you don’t want to pay huge amounts of action points to play them; so this means either a great Weapon or Armour, usually, not both, unless you’re swimming in AP.
• However, equipping +Cost items onto your MC DOES NOT actually raise any costs. Presumably since the MC is auto-deployed. The wording implies it might affect all the MC’s skills but it does not (which is good; that would be awful for action economy and would make most items a penalty). So always give your MC a good weapon and armour.
• Peridot Pendant reduces ES cost by 1, so can be a good idea if you really want to stack an amazing armour and weapon on a girl, even if you’re wasting your third slot in the process. It’s usually expensive to buy, though (10-15K from high end Accessory Shops) and rarely drops.
• Gear can (and should) be upgraded if you intend to use it long term. You can do this in any village, town or city. Go into the Inventory Screen, click the item in question to get its details page, and press the upgrade button. The first upgrade costs 1K gold, the second 3K. The third will start to require relevant T1 crafting materials, which you must obtain from drops, gathering points, or buy from specialists (see city section). After 2-3 more upgrades, ones after that will require Rare drops, which can generally only be found from Hard or Danger level quests. Very rarely, they can show up at Markets or high end specialists.
• Gear can also be enchanted, which gives it another random bonus (and sometimes, a penalty). To enchant yourself, the town needs a Rune Master, and the cost is quite high (5K gold and 100 Elite Souls). So, unless you have an un-enchanted but heavily upgraded item you like, you should try to usually get enchanted gear from drops.
• Artifacts are dropped from bosses, some elites, and some high-tier treasure chests (if you manage the unlock mini-game with all three rings). To equip them, go to the deck screen, click the treasure chest icon in the top-right. I think you can have 6 at once. You can upgrade them with relic shards in this screen as well. Some are very good passive bonuses, and some are kind of rubbish.

Paragon Tiers

• After completing the main quest-line (normally you’ll be level 5-6), the game goes into Endless mode.
• Once you are both level 6 and Endless mode has started, [Hard] quests start to spawn. They tend to have more extreme and dangerous biomes, and new scenarios with tougher foes. Pay attention to enemy abilities. [Hard] Boss fights nearly always have multiple stage modifiers.
• However, in [Hard] quests, all upgrades will allow cards to enter higher tiers than before, including the MC and Girls, your Mercs, and your normal deck stuff. Getting the 4th Temple upgrade for the MC or Girls will make them Paragon. A ‘II’ will appear on their card, multiplying all their stats by as much as double. Adding in 5th-7th upgrades will then enhance your card abilities (i.e. Warrior Jump Slash becomes Jump Slash II, which adds extra damage).
• Similarly, Mercenaries will be able become Paragon if they already have both card abilities. This takes longer than getting their usual upgrades, but mercenary site can force it quicker as usual.
• After the second Demon King appears (and you kill it and it’s armies), and you are Level 11, [Danger] level quests start to appear as well. The name is no joke. Everything is amped up to 11 (appropriately), with big dangers, big rewards. In these quests, if you are already Paragon, you can upgrade everything further to Epic [III].