Fortress Saga: AFK RPG – Quick Guide for Newbies

Newbies Guide

By Rain.

The reading for newbies is now rather dense and overwhelming, so I want to give a quick primer to get you started. Take your time learning the game, but know that newbie ranking is your absolute priority, and you should absolutely aim for 1st or at least top 3. For a more complex guidance, read ultimate Fortress Saga guide, with useful tips, farming methods and FAQs.

Progression Roadmap

First, I will give a progression roadmap so you know what goals you are developing toward.

Super Early Game

This phase lasts from stage 1 to stage 13. During this time, you simply use what you have. Use your best DPS + units that boost ATK like Soba, Bruce, and Loxia (these are blue and purple units). If you are lucky you may have Luna, who provides dmg bonus -by far the best character this early. Put gold into ATK, ATK%, Crit, and Crit DMG; check occasionally and level any of them that is lacking behind the others.

Early Game: HP Meta

After unlocking Sanctum, it becomes much more efficient to invest in HP, which the Sanctum will convert to ATK. It costs 175k gems for sanctum 5; you should prepare gems and at least be prepared for sanctum 4 immediately after unlock. After levelling your sanctum, stop putting gold into ATK and ATK% and start putting it into HP and HP%.

The critical characters are Styria 1 star and either Malleus 1 star or Milena with her Exclusive Weapon. These heroes buff HP, thereby massively increasing your damage. The best HP heroes comps will surround either Iris or Metal, as they are able to multiply their stats to extreme levels, and each enjoy an x10 HP boost at 3 stars.

Mid Game: Fort Build

After getting an engine with a HP line, you will notice that your fort does way more damage than your heroes. At this point, you switch to fort build, where you focus on empowering the fort. The critical character here is Hoya(purple unit), Tilly with Exclusive Weapon for survival, and later Mael once you get him to 3 stars and above. It is difficult to hit fort build before day 7 without spending.

Late Game: ATK Build

Once you start hitting Transcendence 5 (5 red stars) on your green heroes, you can look at switching to atk, as they give a boost to heroes and not fort, making heroes better again. By this point, Hero Path will make ATK better than HP for heroes (but not fort). You can worry about this after you get that first place newbie ranking.

Brief Intro to Team Comps

There are 4 comp-related components to dmg that are multiplicative. If you have one that is lacking, you should focus on it for big gains.

ATK of the Hero

On HP build, HP is converted to ATK, and accounts for 99%+ of your final ATK stat.

Passive Skill

This can be ATK or HP, as seen with Valentine and Styria. Valentine for example will x3 your dmg by having her equipped on an ATK build.

Gildong/Ruin Buff

This is the unique buff from Gildong and Ruin(paid only character), which shows as a red sword above your heroes’ heads, and that massively increases damage. You should include one of these in any hero comp after you get Skill Effect equipment for them.

DMG Bonus

The main heroes that have this are Luna and Mael. This is also multiplicative, so Luna is found in virtually every comp in the game. Mael is too weak early on, but after 3* he also becomes among the best characters in the game.

Regarding the components above, there are a few key considerations in maximising them:

Equipment

Apart from maximising Cor ATK/HP, it’s also important to maximise the stat of the hero. Equipment is also its own multiplier, so 100% ATK on a weapon will double your damage! See Heroes -> (i) to see a breakdown of hero stats. (Note that equipment affects heroes and not fort).

Constellations

Read through nodes yourself for those that help your team; also multiplicative.

Skill Effect

Any active skill with a yellow number in the skill description scales with Skill Effect. The magnitude of Gildong/Ruin’s buff also scales with Skill Effect.

Violet

Early on violet is not good outside of wave teams, but after Mael is strong enough consider using her to capitalise on his DMG Bonus buff.

FAQ

Is ad skip worth buying?

its almost a must for everyone, we don’t even consider it whaling. it is also a permanent feature, will never go away once purchased.

Are the slimes worth buying?

Yes all the slimes are worth buying even up to 5 ⭐️ . They all provide incredibly high possession buffs. For example the king slime will give you x59 health buff at lvl 50 compared to a regular legendary unit whose possession effect at lvl 50 won’t even be x5.

This applies even to Libo the green slime. Yes even though their poss eff is REC, which is a garbage stat, at 5 ⭐️ they unlock a cosmetic that gives you 50% attack buff (and also the border is funny).

Do not buy the weapons unless you for some reason intend to bring them to combat (don’t). Or you just wanna collect them (no reason to). Only exception is Queen Slime’s weapon, if you’re lucky enough to get the Gold/Gold Stat on it, as it it ludicrously hard to get a gold/gold legendary weapon.

Which skins do I buy?

The only skins you should rush for are the fortress skins: Opera, Paladin and Devil skins. They provide critical rate buffs which are the rarest stats in the game. All other skins provide good buffs but aren’t 100% necessary.

What do I spend my hero tokens on?

Either buy as much Iris copies as you can or buy as much pick up summon tickets as you can. It’s your preference between gamling or security.

It has come to my attention that picking summon tickets also indirectly makes you stronger by giving you dupe heroes to further increase your possession effects. Still your choice between iris or tickets.

According to the announcement on the official website, they added the ability to buy Another Dimension Hero stones with Hero Tokens. These stones are your only way to get upgrade collab characters after their banner ends. It is up to you if you think it is worth getting them via this way.

What do I buy from reroll shop?

First of all get this guy. His name is gildong. if you’re F2P you’re going to be very familiar with him. He gives you your earliest attack buff in the game. Build all Skill effects on him.

Aside from gildong, theres a lot of valuable things to buy and I don’t have the full list, so instead here is what you do not buy: Never Buy!

Food, wood, bricks, steel, loot bags, weapons, trinkets, Stella (you can get her normally via summons).

Buying items frequently will increase your affinity and thus the quality of future rerolls shop items. HOWEVER it will also decrease the odds that you will be able to keep getting gildong and other heroes as well as starting to spawn trash items like weapons, Stella and trinkets.

What do I buy from Arena Shop?

So this is different. With arena shop you want to keep raising the quality of the shop offerings so you actually should keep buying the things that cost 10 medals as each purchase always increases the level progress by 3%, regardless of the price.

In other words, buy whatever you want except for weapons, loot bags, materials and trinkets. (Unless they only cost 10 medals).

Who is Ruin and how do I get him?

Ruin is available only to the blessing package and he is a DPS unit whose real use in endgame meta is his team dmg buff and his passive which debuffs enemies. His exclusive weapon also adds crowd control but the stats on it are not helpful towards him. Do not buy his weapon with real money, instead craft it with lvl 5 Smelter in the dealer category if you still want that passive. He requires all SE built on him. You only should buy him until 1*. His exclusive weapon is not recommended the EX passive is not that good nor does the weapon provide the stats he needs.

Are the card packages worth it?

Hell yes let me explain. the 100$ gem bundle gives you only 60,000 gems. Thats it. The Legend Card Package (20$) gives you 120$ worth of regular hero summons, over 30$ worth of gems, 10 booster crystals (which are rare), 2 gold cards and 2 purple~gold cards, which will possibly lead to more gems/power/runes/swag/skins.

If you’re willing to spend 100$ on this game, instead spend it on 5 of these packages and you’ll get: 600$ worth of summons, 150$ of gems, 50 booster crystals, and 10 gold cards and 10 purple~gold cards (at last 3rd of them will be more gold cards, which are the easiest to barter with).

Only con with this is that you can’t buy more than 10 a month… shouldn’t be spending over 200$ on this game though you dummy.

Indefinite Duration Coupons

  • THANKYOUFO
  • FS100KDOWN
  • FSBESTONE

Total: 1,000 Gems, 20 Hero Tickets, 30 Cannon Tickets, 30 Repair Cat Tickets.

Helena Stamatina
About Helena Stamatina 1541 Articles
I love two things in life, games and sports. Although sports were my earliest interest, it was video games that got me completely addicted (in a good way). My first game was Crash Bandicoot (PS1) from the legendary studio Naughty Dog back in 1996. I turned my passion for gaming into a job back in 2019 when I transformed my geek blog (Re-actor) into the gaming website it is today.

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