A beginner guide for AFK Journey that will teach you everything you need to know about the game!
Last updated: 28/01/2026
Isekai Train Simulation and Strategy RPG! Conductor, Your Trade Journey Awaits!
Introduction
AFK Journey is a top-down open world auto-chess style gacha game with a combat system revolving around activatable Ultimates and automatically activated skills. The game focuses heavily on teambuilding, team variety, and utilizing interesting character combinations to take on the content ahead of you. The game is noteworthy for its colorful cast of characters and unique artstyle, something that’s been imported from its sister game: AFK Arena, but this time in a 3D setting instead of 2D sprites.
AFK Journey also concentrates on making the game more accessible to new players, providing multiple ways of getting your hands on the characters you want and their dupes to upgrade them further. Even the feared Celestial and Hypogean factions, who are usually a rarity above other units, are currently obtainable from shops for in-game currency.
For the people who are looking for a chill idle game with easy progression, surprisingly extensive team building and a more upbeat story, AFK Journey appears to push an agenda that revolves around allowing the players breathing room and more comfortable pushing of content. With a competitive PVP mode and leaderboard for those who want to flex on others.
To note is that this is not a ‘main game’ as you will be locked out of certain parts of progression while you idle your resources, and you realistically only have to log-in once or twice a day to do your things outside of potential events. Not that this will stop you or us from sitting behind the screen all day watching our silly little characters beat up a few bandits over and over.
If all that’s gotten you interested, you’ve stumbled right into the beginner’s guide. Let us take you through the basics of the game.
Homestead
With Season 6 introducing a new beginning for AFK Journey, players will first be guided into the Homestead gamemode. This mode serves as a base-building and player housing system where players can design, customize, and share their Homestead with others. It functions as a social hub, offering a space for creativity and interaction alongside the game’s auto-chess–style gameplay.
Check our dedicated Homestead guide to learn more about it:
Heroes in AFK Journey are the characters that you can play as and pull for in the gacha systems.
Factions
Heroes belong to one of 7 factions. There are four ‘standard’ factions and three ‘special’ factions. The standard factions are the ones normally available to pull for and include most of the rate-up banners characters in the game. They can be added to multiple banner Wish Lists as targets and are much easier to obtain.
The standard factions are:
Lightbearers
The Lightbearers are heroes who serve in the name of Dura. They mainly fight with Hypogeans, Maulers, and Graveborns. Their main goal is to restore the land of Esperia from evil.
The Maulers are a warrior culture who believe strength is everything, with the worth of something or someone judged by might and usability. Though some have fought for the Hypogeans according to some Peaks of Time stories, this is relatively rare and as a whole are still fighting on the side of Dura.
The Wilders hold a magical connection with the forest and with Yggdrasil, which is often exhibited in their skills. It is said that Dura planted Yggdrasil, and left the spring of life as a parting gift to the Wilders.
The Graveborn are heroes who serve in death, revived as the Undead, and who seek immortality through dark arts and necromancy. It is not confirmed however if the Graveborn serve the Hypogeans.
The Celestials are the good, ‘angelic’ faction and their goal is to destroy the Hypogeans and any remaining Darkness plaguing Esperia.
Obtained from very limited sources and cannot be wishlisted outside of their specific banner. They are also harder to ascend to higher character tiers.
The Hypogeans are the main villains of AFK Journey and their goal is to destroy any of the goddess Dura's creations by spreading evil all across Esperia.
Obtained from very limited sources and cannot be wishlisted outside of their specific banner. They are also harder to ascend to higher character tiers.
The Dimensionals are primarily limited time only cross-over event heroes that cannot be obtained again after their banner ends (though you can 'borrow' them from other players). The one exception is Pandora, a unique AFK Journey original hero that does sometimes have banner reruns and can be wishlisted on one specific regular banner.
Each Hero has a class. There are 6 classes in the game:
Mage
Marksman
Rogue
Support
Tank
Warrior
Rarity
Heroes will be one of two rarities:
A-Level
- These heroes are easier to obtain than S-Rank heroes, as they have a higher chance of appearing in banners, and cost less to purchase in various shops when they are available. You also receive more copies of them when they have a rate-up banner. Despite being more common, many A-Rank heroes in AFK Journey are an important part of the meta and used frequently in the highest tier content.
S-Level
- These heroes are harder to obtain than A-Rank heroes, but on average are stronger and more meta-defining as well.
All Characters
If you want to check all characters that are available in the game, go here:
Ascension is the dupe system in AFK Journey. As you obtain more copies of each hero, you will hit points where you will need to ascend them and push them into a new tier. Doing so will unlock stat bonus, upgrades to their skills and abilities, and even unlock their weapon and its ability.
Each ascension level has a base level and a + level, ie: Mythic and Mythic+.
To ascend heroes, you will need dupes of the hero and/or acorns.
For
A-Level
heroes, you mostly need a lot of dupes to ascend them, with acorns only being needed if you want to ascend them to the Supreme tier (only recommended for very meta units.)
For
S-Level
heroes that are NOT Celestial/Hypogean, you need dupe to get to the + level for the tier and acorns to promote to the next base tier.
For
Celestial
and
Hypogean
heroes, you only need dupes, no acorns, but the amount of dupes you need increases as each tier increases.
Acorns can be pulled from banners, gained as rewards, or purchased in various shops. Acorns come in 5 versions: one for each standard faction (Maulers, Lightbearers, Wilders, Graveborn) that can only be used for heroes of that faction, and a universal version that can be used on any hero.
Each hero has 3 skills which will automatically unlock whenever they ascend to specific tiers:
At Legendary+ Hero Focus is unlocked and will give a bonus to a stat or sometimes a brand new effect.
At Mythic+ the hero’s Exclusive Weapon is unlocked, which gives them a new passive skill (that can be upgraded up by leveling the Weapon).
At Supreme+ Skill Enhancement is unlocked and will give an additional effect to one of their skills.
Ascension requirements
Current Tier
Target Tier
A-Level
S-Level
Celestial / Hypogean
Elite
Elite+
1x
-
-
Elite+
Epic
3x
-
-
Epic
Epic+
4x
1x
1x
Epic+
Legendary
5x
50x
1x
Legendary
Legendary+
8x
2x
1x
Legendary+
Mythic
10x
100x
2x
Mythic
Mythic+
12x
2x
2x
Mythic+
Supreme
200x
200x
2x
Supreme
Supreme+
20x
2x
4x
To upgrade your characters past Supreme+ you need to obtain 25 characters of that tier. Also, you no longer get skill upgrade or unlocks past this point. Instead, the base stats are increased (2.5-3% per Paragon level), but on top of that a new type of stats called Rivalry stats are added (they only are active in PVP modes, but really strong there).
Supreme+
Paragon 1
45x
6x
4x
Also, to unlock the ability to tier up a character to the Paragon 1 tier, you need to posses 25 Supreme+ heroes. There are also Paragon 2, 3 and 4 levels and to check the requirements for them visit the Ascension Info guide.
Summary
To ascend an
A-Level
character Supreme+ tier you will need the original copy + 63 dupes (64 in total) and 200 Faction Acorns,
To ascend an
S-Level
character to Supreme+ you will need the original copy + 7 dupes (8 in total) and 350 Faction Acorns.
To ascend
Celestial
and
Hypogean
characters to Supreme+ you will need the original copy + 13 dupes (14 in total).
Equipment
In AFK Journey, you do not equip gear to individual heroes. Instead, you equip and level gear for each class and it will apply to any hero in that class automatically. This makes gear management not only much easier to handle, but also it allows you to try different characters and easily swap them before the battle when you need their specific skillset.
Equipment pieces
Each class can equip 6 different pieces of equipment: Weapon, Gloves, Accessory, Helm, Armor, and Boots. Each piece also comes with different stats - some are more offensive, some more defensive - and this means that for different classes, you want to prioritize upgrading different pieces first.
Equipment upgrading
While you can drop higher item level equipment from the AFK stages or obtain them as rewards from quests, you can also Forge and upgrade the pieces manually using Casting Shards you obtain from Recycling gear you no longer need.
The level of the equipment you can forge is tied to your Resonance level.
To find out the best priority of equipment upgrades for each class and more information about the Equipment, check our other guide:
When you upgrade a character to their Mythic+ tier, their Exclusive Item becomes available to unlock and upgrade. This Exclusive Item grants a set of stats tailored towards the character it is for and unlocks a 4th ability in their kit (known as an EX or Exclusive Skill).
EX Levels
New passive?
Stone (total)
EX+1 to EX+5
Yes
150x
Tidal Essence
EX+6 to EX+10
Yes
75x
Temporal Essence
EX+11 to EX+15
Yes
200x
Temporal Essence
EX+16 to EX+20
No
125x
Twilight Essence
EX+21 to EX+25
No
500x
Twilight Essence
To learn more about EX weapons and which characters should you prioritize when it comes to upgrading it, check this guide:
Resonating Hall takes the best elements of various idle games and improves them, so players don't need to waste their time while managing their characters in AFK Journey. And you unlock it during the early stage of the game, so you can quickly get all the benefits from the system. Here's how it works:
Here's how it works:
Upon unlocking the Resonating Hall, you unlock 5 Hands of Resonance slots to add your characters on,
The Resonance Level is determined by the lowest level member of the Hands of Resonance. All Resonance heroes owned by you will be leveled up to this level,
Only Hands of Resonance can be leveled up,
But nothing stops you from swapping heroes with those in the Hands of Resonance slot- you can do it at anytime without any costs attached,
Hands of Resonance level cannot exceed 10 levels above the Resonance Level.
The improved systems mean that you don't have to worry about making any mistakes with leveling characters, as you can always 'fix' everything on the fly. Did you level the wrong DPS as your carry? No problem! Simply switch it with another one, and he will instantly become your highest-level character.
Gacha
Now that you know everything about characters, it's time to learn how to obtain them. Currently, there are three types of banners available in the game and you can find information about them below.
All-Hero Recruitment
This is the standard banner of the game where from you can get every non-Celestial/Hypogean character available in the game. You can pull on this banner using
Invite Letter
and
Diamonds
. It costs 300 Diamonds to do a single summon, but when you do 10 of them at the same time it costs 2700 - so you get a discount. So don't do single pulls with Diamonds.
After doing 30 pulls, you will unlock the Wishlist System that will allow you to ‘favorite’ two
S-Level
and two
A-Level
characters per faction - after filling the wishlist, every character you will pull will match those on the wishlist. This helps you narrow down the team you want to run.
As for the pity on this banner. It starts at 10 pulls and increases every time you pull an
S-Level
character - the pity stops increasing at 60 pulls. Also, if you're doing a 10-pull, you will always obtain at least one A-level character.
Rates:
S-Level
hero - 2.05%
A-Level
hero - 22.5%
Faction Acorn x30 - 0.5%
Faction Acorn x4 - 15%
Faction Acorn x1 - 59.95%
Rate-up Recruitment
This is the rate-up banner which will be used to introduce new characters to the game (or promote older ones). If the rate-up hero is
S-Level
, you are guaranteed to obtain them whenever you pull an S-level character. And when the rate-up hero is
A-Level
, you will obtain 8 copies of them.
In the Rate-up Recruitment, the number of rate-up heroes you can obtain is determined by the highest tier of your other heroes.
As for the pity, it's set to 40 and it never increases after you hit it, so it's very good. The rates for this banner also are better compared to the All-Hero Recruitmen:
S-Level
hero - 3%
A-Level
hero - 10%
Omni Acorn x30 - 1.5%
Omni Acorn x4 - 15%
Omni Acorn x1 - 70.05%
Epic Recruitment
This is the second banner which has better rates and a wishlist available from the start, but you can only use special
Epic Invite Letter
to pull - you can obtain the Letters from shops, various modes and progressing through the main story.
Compared to the previous banner, on the Wishlist here you can place only 5 characters, but it's unlocked from the moment you get access to the banner. The pity also starts at 10 and increases when you pull an S-level character, but it caps at 30 pulls here.
The rates for this banner are also way better:
S-Level
hero - 5.22%
A-Level
hero - 18.75%
Faction Acorn x30 - 1%
Faction Acorn x4 - 25%
Faction Acorn x1 - 50.03%
Stargaze
This is the only banner from which you can pull
Celestial
and
Hypogean
characters, but it will take you quite a while to unlock it. As to get access to the Stargaze function you need to do 400 pulls on the previous banners.
You can select any
Celestial
and
Hypogean
you want here and you will have 3.25% chance to obtain them with each pull. Other things you can pull from the banner are: Diamonds, Dazzling and Ruin Stones (used to upgrade Exclusive Equipment) and universal Acorns. The pity is also set at 40 pulls and doesn't increase compared to the previous banners.
What's important is that you can't use Diamonds on this banner as you can only pull using
Stellar Crystal
- a rare currency you can buy from Guild and Recruitment store (and the amount you can buy per month is limited).
Wishlist
The wishlist unlocks after doing 30 pulls when it comes to the All-Hero Recruitment banner and is available from the start for the Epic Recruitment banner. When you fully fill the wishlist, any character you pull will come from the Wishlist. This will help you a lot in narrowing down the heroes you want to obtain and smoother your progression. That's why properly setting up the tier list with strong heroes is very important.
For the All-Hero Recruitment banner Wishlist, you can select 2x
A-level and 2x
S-level characters per faction.
For the Epic Recruitment Banner the Wishlist has only 5 spots, so in most cases you will only fill it with
S-level characters.
Keep in mind that you can select
A-level units on this Wishlist too, but you will always receive an Epic version of them if you pull them (this means that you get 4 soulstones of theirs if you already own the unit, a quick way to upgrade them to higher ranks).
Now you might ask, what are the best units to put on both Wishlists? Check our other guide to find out:
Team Building strategies in AFK Journey are highly dependent on the game mode and are split into two broad categories: Phantimal-Enabled Modes and Phantimal Disabled Modes.
Phantimal Disabled Modes
In these game modes, the faction Phantimal is disabled, removing the strict requirement of deploying at least 3 heroes from the same faction on the team. This allows for more flexibility in team composition, including utilizing Celestial and Hypogean heroes as fill-ins for faction bonuses.
Faction bonuses activate when there are 3/4/5 heroes of the same faction on the team. While faction bonuses do get stronger on mono-faction teams, it is usually not worth trying to create a mono-faction team because you give up a lot of utility from heroes in other factions, or may exclude powerful meta heroes from your team as a result.
Celestial
and
Hypogean
heroes act as ‘neutral’ heroes and can count towards any faction. So, 2 Wilder heroes + 1 Celestial hero will activate the Wilder faction bonus as if there were 3 Wilders on the team.
3 heroes of the same faction (including Celestial/Hypogean heroes) is the sweet spot - activating the faction bonus for extra stats while still allowing you flexibility in the other two spots.
The following modes have Phantimals disabled:
Arena
Honor Duel
Arcane Labyrinth
Dura’s Trials
Regular AFK Stages
Dream Realm
Dream Realm (Endless)
Battle Drills
Most Special Event Stages
Phantimal Enabled Modes
The list for modes where Phantimals are enabled is much shorter as you can only use them in the Seasonal AFK Stages, Seasonal Tower and Supreme Arena.
Team Composition
Even though there are many possible teams in this game, it’s important to understand some general team-building concepts to create functional teams that will help you progress in the game.
Damage Mitigation
It is usually important to have a hero on your team that can act as a frontline damage soaker, protecting the rest of your team from taking damage. Generally, these heroes will have damage mitigation skills, high HP and DEF, and utility that helps them survive. The Tank class is the premier choice for this slot, but some Warriors can also play the role fairly well. The roster of heroes that can fill this role is relatively small, but the following characters are good choices for each faction:
Most teams will want to include 1 or 2 heroes that focus on healing, buffing the team, or debuffing the enemy teams. These heroes play support roles on the team, helping to make your other heroes shine. Some common things they might offer are: healing, haste buffs, damage or defensive buffs, and crowd control for the enemy teams (slows, stuns, defense and attack reductions, etc). The Support class is the premier choice for this slot, but some Mages can also play the role fairly well. The roster of heroes that can fill this role is pretty large, and who you choose to add to your team will depend on the rest of your team composition or the enemy team composition. The following characters are good choices for each faction:
Artifacts make a return in AFK Journey, but the system has been drastically changed compared to the original here. The biggest difference is that Artifact's aren't tied to characters anymore and instead you select one that's going to be used in the battle - either once or periodically throughout the battle.
There are 6 Artifacts currently available in the non-seasonal version of the game, and you unlock them as you progress through the Dreamdelve permanent event.
Guilds in AFK Journey allow you to play together with your friends by doing challenges and progressing through the game, but you also can compete against other guilds in Battle Drills, Clashfronts and Glory Expedition. What is super important is that unlike in AFK Arena, in AFK Journey, guilds are only cross-server if they are in the same District, which is a group of servers put together for Leaderboard and Guild purposes.. Which means you have to play on the same district as your friends if you all want to join the same guild.
To learn more about Guilds, check our other guide:
AFK Journey’s major update patches are delivered in the form of Seasonal Content, lasting around 4 months each. Seasonal Content is unlocked once you have finished the base game’s story, and reached 240 Resonance Level.
Each season brings major changes to the progression, as well as new game modes and new characters released as the season progresses:
New Seasonal Levels and Equipment. These levels and equipment levels are added on top of the base levels, and reset at the start of every season;
Season Milestones
New Map and Story content;
New Characters;
New Charms and Charm skills;
New Supreme+ Level 2 skill upgrades, often used as a way of buffing underused characters;
New Game Modes;
New Bosses;
New Events;
New Seasonal Artifacts;
New Seasonal Team effects (Faction tiles or Phantimals - this changes every season);
Seasons also introduce Phantimal Challenge, a type of AFK Stage, and Supreme Arena, a PVP Game Mode, both having Seasonal Phantimals, Charms and Artifacts active.
Now, below we’ll provide an explanation for each major new mechanic:
Charms
Charms essentially act as a new equipment system, though with different stat buffs based on which charms you equip.
Charms have 4 Quality Tiers: Elite, Epic, Legendary and Mythic.
When you have at least 3 Elite or higher quality charms equipped, you unlock a charm skill (shown in-game as Quality Bonus), which gets an extra effect at higher quality tiers.
Mythic Charms (Shown in-game as “Magic Charm V”) can be upgraded further, up to V+ and V++ using currency earned through salvaging duplicate charms and through events and stores.
Having 3 Mythic charms upgraded to at least V+ earns you an additional bonus shown in-game as “Type Bonus”.
For more information on charm effects, check out our charm guide below
Season Milestones are a new reward track introduced with Seasonal content. In this reward track, you complete Season Quests to earn Points that grant Season Milestone Rewards. Initially, most of the rewards are time gated, but this limit is slowly lifted as the season progresses.
End of Season Rewards
At the end of the season, you get awarded extra rewards based on your final Season Resonance Level, Season Equipment, Artifacts and Magic Charms.
Enhance Force Upgrades
As a way to buff older and underperforming characters, Enhance Force level 2 upgrades were introduced to the game. To activate them, you need to upgrade your character to Supreme+ first and then use Shadow Essence to activate it. Shadow Essence can be obtained from progressing through the season via milestones. Every season a few more characters receive the upgrades (4-6).
For the list of characters who have this upgrade available and who should you prioritize, check this guide:
