Legendary Hoplite – Beginner’s Guide

In preparation for our second prologue “Arachne’s Trial” and the upcoming full-game launch, we are publishing this guide to help new players get started and master the basics of the game.

Welcome, Legendary Defenders of Ithaca!

Legendary Hoplite is all about strategy and making wise choices to fend off waves of enemies, from upgrading your character and the defenders you bring with you, to choosing the correct equipment and positioning the defenders in the best possible way. Every aspect of the game works hand in hand, and when used correctly, victory and glory await you!

This guide will help new players get started and master the basics of the game. The content of this guide was first made public over on the official Discord server by Dan-Cristian Culea (Username: Dan), so full credit goes to him!

An Important Note:

As with everything, this is a guide that we hope can help you to understand the game and give you a solid foundation. That said, Legendary Hoplite heavily promotes experimentation in how you play, and even if you read this guide, we heavily encourage you to experiment with the various builds, pathways, upgrades, items, and so on, and find a gaming style that is most enjoyable for you.

Understanding Items, Abilities, and Stats

Let’s start with the basics, the abilities, and character stats. Legendary Hoplite differentiates itself from many of the other Tower Defense games by giving you RPG features such as equipment (that comes in various rarities), unique abilities tied to the equipment, and various character development paths.

Items

Items can (and will) vary greatly in how useful they are based on two key criteria:

• The rarity (common, uncommon, and rare)
• The level of the item.

Every time you get a new item, we highly recommend that you closely inspect it to see if it is an upgrade to what you have. When doing so, there are two main things to pay attention to.

The first is the raw stats of the item. Every item will give a bonus to a specific stat, for example, a shield will always give you a block rate increase. Just how much of an increase, and what other (sub-stats) the item gives you is dependent on the rarity.

Check out these two items

The spear on the top is a common item, and only improves your core stats, the damage, attack speed, and how much stamina it requires.

On the other hand, the spear on the bottom is a rare item, and as you can see, it grants you various other bonuses that are not present in the common item.

Though items of a higher level tend to be stronger, we advise you to compare items carefully as a rare level 5 spear can (and in many cases) be stronger than a common spear of a slightly higher level.

Beyond just the regular stats, Legendary Hoplite has a unique feature where each item will grant you a specific skill. This ability is often the most important part of your character, which can lead to situations where an item (A) that is weaker than a new item (B) in raw stats, may be significantly better than the new item, entirely due to the ability.

This may apply to specific levels where certain abilities are much more useful than others, or it may apply to “everything”.

Take a look at these two items and the abilities that they have, and you’ll see that depending on the challenge you’re facing (e.g. the types of enemies on the battlefield) one will be better than the other.

Balancing Your Character’s Stats and Abilities

This section will be especially true if you are an avid gamer as you are more likely to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to build your character in a single direction to be the strongest, essentially, min-maxing your character.

However, this is not true for Legendary Hoplite. Thanks to how all the features work together, from abilities to stats, to the defenders, and even the types of enemies you encounter, the game heavily encourages a balance between a generalist and a specialist.

Our top tip is to simply avoid extremes and strive for a well-rounded character, with a healthy amount of defensive, offensive, and support traits.

Army Composition, Upgrades, and War Techniques

The army is what we call the defenders that you bring with you when you enter a battle. Each army unit fills a specific role and can be individually upgraded following one of two paths, a red path, and a blue path.

The upgrades, and the path that you take, play such an important role in the game that we have made it a feature that you can, at any time, reset the progress for free. Doing so returns all the points and gold that you used, allowing you to choose a different path, or invest the gold in an entirely different uni.

Remember, it is generally accepted (within the community) that there is no “one size fits all” development and upgrade path for units, so we heavily recommend that you experiment with different paths, builds, army formations, and so on.

War Techniques are acquired by completing special missions within certain levels. These techniques are unique to the individual army types, so a Phalanx war technique can only be used by the Phalanx units.

What is special about these techniques is that they level up during the level. They will start on one star, but as the unit type is deployed on the battlefield, they will generate experience and eventually, the technique will level up.

Important: The war technique level is universal for that unit type. That means that all units of a specific type will have the same star level.

General Tips

• When considering weapons, especially spears, calculate and compare the DPS of your spears when equipped. A higher level does not always mean a stronger weapon. Check out the bottom half of this image, the stat changes (compared between the equipped item and the item you are hovering over) will be displayed in a specific color. Red means weaker, and green means stronger!

• Starting from Chapter 2, focus on building one lane at a time rather than spreading your defenses too thin. Consider alternating lanes (e.g., 1-3-5-7 or 2-4-6) since enemies tend to come in groups on lanes 1-3-5 or 2-4-6.

• Certain levels have missions. It’s advisable to complete them as they grant your character’s stats and unlock passive abilities, which can be crucial to your success.
• Finally, the DPS of an item is among the most important stats in the game. That said, we won’t go into too much detail regarding this aspect as it plays a big part in the game, just keep this point in mind if you ever find yourself stuck!

With these tips and strategies, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a legendary hoplite commander! Good luck in your tower defense battles and enjoy the game.