AFK Journey Tips and Tricks

Before reading this guide, you should check the Beginner Guide first. It will help you familiarize yourself with the game and its various systems as this guide mainly focuses on applying the knowledge and it won't be explaining the basic stuff. You can find the Beginner guide here:

Beginner guide

If you're already read the guide then let's continue!

Don't feel pressured to spend to progress faster

AFK Journey is an idle game and your patience will be rewarded. Sure, those who spend will reach the fabled endgame faster, but with time, you will join them there and compete on even ground.

You can easily compete with spenders even in rankings and while reaching the top spot might not be possible depending on the number of 'spenders' on your server, you still will be able to reach top 20 or even higher in Dream Realm as long as you plan ahead and smartly invest your resources.

So don't stress about the leaderboards and progress at your own pace as the game is very free to play friends with tons of rewards given from various events or through progression.

It's a marathon, not a race

Casually playing for around 70 ~ 80 days should get you to level 240 and allow you to reach that 1125 Stage and finish the currently available story. While you can level past 240 now, the system was just added on the game's release, and there's just one content that is locked behind clearing the game - Trial of Abyss.

Rerolling isn't a must

Like in most idle games, it's not worth to waste your time rerolling in AFK Journey. Because:

• The first 2 pities you reach on the normal banner are 'fixed' when it comes to the
  
  S-Level characters you can obtain:
• The first pity (10 pulls) guarantees you probably the strongest story damage dealer in the game
  
  Cecia who also can be used with success in other modes, but she will drop off there in late game (due to being too slow),
• The second pity (20 pulls) guarantees you one of the 3 strongest Healers / Supports (equal chance to get each of them):
  
  Rowan
  
  Hewynn
  
  Smokey & Meerky

Still, if you want to learn more about rerolling, check our dedicated guide:

Reroll guide

• Progressing in the main story gives you generous rewards via finding hidden chests across the map, quest rewards etc, so it's tempting to focus on it first, but it's a trap,
• Clearing AFK Stages is the first thing you should focus instead as that is how you unlock additional modes and increase your passive income of
  
  Gold and
  
  Experience and
  
  Essence. On top of that, every couple AFK stages cleared you will obtain
  
  Invite Letter and
  
  Diamonds which will allow you to pull more characters, and also Equipment boxes which will make them stronger,
• Only then jump into the Open World and other modes that unlocked in the meantime like Arena, Dream Realm, Labyrinth and Legend Trial. The additional rewards you can gain from there will allow you to push more AFK Stages and the cycle will repeat till you're stuck everywhere for the day,
• Still, don't be too hasty with Arena and Dream Realm. Ideally you should always do your attacks in those modes at the end of the day as then you're at your 'strongest' and will achieve the best results,
• Join a guild as soon as possible and do the Guild Quests/Challenges. Guild currency is used to buy
  
  Celestial and
  
  Hypogean characters,
• 
  A-Level characters not only aren't useless in this game compared to AFK Arena as you can ascend them to the max tier and level same as their higher rarity comrades, but some of them are actually the best in the game in some modes. So don't be afraid of using and investing into them,
• Wait till the end of the day (or when you're stuck) before using the Hourglasses that instantly give you resources worth several hours of idling. The further you progress in AFK Stages, the more resources you will gain from using them,
• Also don't let your AFK Stage idle rewards overcap. When you start the game, the chest will only hold 12 hours worth of resources, but as you progress, this will expand to 24h,
• When it comes to equipment, you don't gear up characters but the classes and every character belonging to that class will automatically use the equipment in the battle,
• With the upgrade materials and equipment selection boxes that you will obtain as rewards, you want to prioritize upgrading
  
  Marksman gear because the damage dealers belonging to this class are considered the best for both Story progression and Dream Realm,
• Characters like
  
  Cecia
  
  Odie or
  
  Marilee will be raised on everyone's account,
• After
  
  Marksman you should focus on both
  
  Tank and
  
  Support. Better gear will help your Tank to survive longer while the Support gear will allow them to use their Ultimate faster,
• As for the which of the 6 equipment pieces you should focus on first, it changes depending on the class. And we have prepared a dedicated guide for the equipment priority:

Equipment & upgrade priority

• Don't do single pulls on the All-Recruit banner! It costs 300
  
  Diamonds to do a single pull, while a 10-pull costs 2700
  
  Diamonds as you get a discount on top always getting at least 1
  
  A-Level character,
• Also, make sure to setup your Wishlist the moment you unlock it. It only takes 30 pulls on the All-Recruit banner so you will already unlock the Wishlist during the tutorial,
• While you will spend majority of your gems on the All-Recruit banner, be sure to keep some to buy the weekly/monthly items in various shops as they are very good value,
• Check this guide for more information about what to buy from each shop.
• Be very careful with how you spend your
  
  Temporal Essence and
  
  Twilight Essence (they are used to upgrade EX weapons), as they are currently extremely rare to come by for f2p players and the income dries up, especially if you are not reaching high positions in the leaderboards,
• Some characters only need a certain investment in their Exclusive Weapon (like +5 or +10 or sometimes +0 is enough) and anything above is wasted. We will release a dedicated guide for the investment levels soon, but for now be careful with overinvesting all your Essences into one character,
• Characters gain Affinity when you use them in the battle, but you can speed up the process by giving them plants you can find all over the world or gifts bought from the Friendship store,
• 1 plant gives 100 Affinity and that's enough to obtain 50
  
  Diamonds. To get 50 more
  
  Diamonds you need to reach 700 Affinity and when you reach 1300 Affinity you will also obtain a single
  
  Invite Letter
• So don't feed all your plants into one character and instead spread it out to get more freebies.

• While creating a team, it is important to maximize your faction bonus. Whenever more than 2 characters of the same faction are put on a team, the entire team’s stats are increased by a certain percent. This means you’re incentivized to keep your teams to two factions at most, though the
  
  Celestial and
  
  Hypogean factions are here to help mitigate the issue.
• 
  Celestial and
  
  Hypogean are interesting, as they serve as ‘neutral’ characters that can count towards any faction. To make it easier to understand: if you run 4 characters of the
  
  Wilders faction, then add either a Celestial or Hypogean character, it’ll activate the 5 character matching faction bonus.
• Note that it’s not worth it to go for a mono-faction set-up. Not only do most factions not have 5 characters that both are good and synergize with one another, the extra stats are just not worth it when compared to the utility of some of the meta characters. Instead, most teams function on a ‘core’, which is a set of 3 characters of the same faction that dictate what faction the team will run around. The other two unit

For more Team Building tips, check our dedicated guide:

Team building (beginner)

• Auto-play is a trap. While it makes progressing through the game less tedious, if you're stuck, you should switch to manual and use the character skills yourself. You can progress way further into the game by doing so compared to players who only play the game on auto,
• Don't use the same formation against every team. Sometimes a slight character placement change can drastically affect the outcome of the battle. Is your tank dying to fast? Bring it a second tank and put them on the sides of the frontline - now the enemy aggro will be split, allowing them to survive longer so your backline can use their ultimates,
• A lot of the stages feature different obstacles (balls, barrels, etc.) and sometimes a slight formation adjustment will allow you to easily pass a stage that you thought was impossible to clear,
• Make use of the traps! While not every stage has them, if they are present, click on them to activate them and make enemies life harder,
• Also don't be afraid to throw less duped characters into your team. Since AFK Journey levels your whole box at the same time (based on your top 5 characters) and gear is shared between classes, you can easily throw someone you never used into your team and they instantly can fight at their full potential,
• This is especially important because of the Faction Strategies. A character deals 15% more damage when attacking a faction they counter and they take 15% less damage from them. So for example if you need to deal with the pesky
  
  Rowan hiding in the backline, you can use
  
  Silvina to quickly melt him as
  
  Graveborn counter
  
  Lightbearers
• Here's how the faction relation graph looks like:

• If nothing seems to be working, you can always check the formations used by other players who passed the stage. Just search for the small I icon placed in the bottom left corner of the Battle button and then press on Records. There you will a find of the teams who managed to beat the stage, sorted by those with lowest power, how much damage each character did and also view the replay of the battle.

Story / World Map

• Kill every enemy on the map and loot all chests for full zone completion rewards,
• Make sure you pick up every plant you find along the way. They are used in the Affinity system and can be converted into
  
  Invite Letter and
  
  Diamonds
• Make a habit of visiting both Browa Ironhoof and Keith in Holistone to see if there are gear/exp that you can claim/buy to make your characters stronger.

AFK Stages

• As we mentioned earlier, the AFK stage you've reached affects your passive income gains, so focus on progressing in this mode as a priority,
• Don't use the Instant Rewards feature unless you're stuck. As the amount of currency you will obtain is based on your current AFK Stage.

Arena

• In early game, to rank up you need to focus on ensuring victory. Try to challenge opponents with lower power only and don't try to challenge opponents with similar or higher power than you because they'll give more points,
• Early on also don't bother with trying to go for a meta team - just use your strongest PVE characters,
• Other than the daily free challenge attempts, you can also click on the + button at the upper right to get 2 more free challenge attempts. We recommend you to used up all the attempts daily,
• Advancing in rankings not only gives you a generous one-time reward but also increase your daily gains through completing tasks in Mystic Collection and unlocking new feats. If you're not far from advancing a rank, it's worth to spend
  
  Diamonds on challenge attempts since it's very cost-effective as well.

Legend Trial

• Legend trials has a limit of 20 stages of gap between each factions. All faction trials will be opened on Sundays, so that’s the most suitable time for you to make up for the missing stages.

Dream Realm

• From all PVE modes, Dream Realm is the most important early on so try to focus on upgrading characters that are great here like
  
  Odie
  
  Marilee or
  
  Kruger
• Kill Dream Realm boss daily as it's the best source of
  
  A-Level character dupes. It's a cycle - investing into characters strong here will allow to you upgrade them faster which will allow you to do more damage and reach higher ranks,
• Dream Realm runs have variance even using same characters and same positioning. If you can't find a better setup with your current characters, try running your best setup again and see if you get higher numbers,
• Unlike other modes, you can't quit/restart the battle here. So if you start the battle, your challenge entry will be consumed (and you get a limited amount of them every day). So make each attack count,
• Every Boss requires a slightly different approach, so we suggest checking our Dream Realm dedicated guides to learn more about them:

Dream Realm - Overview

King Croaker

Necrodrakon

Skyclops

Snow Stomper

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