King Croaker

Guides

King Croaker is one of the six available Dream Realm bosses you will encounter in AFK Journey. In this guide we will go over the boss mechanics and the best characters and teams to use against him.

Boss Mechanics

At the start of the battle, King Croaker will designate the player’s closest character as the “Tank” and will keep attacking that character, pausing to attack the Backline with a Ranged AOE attack from time to time, or to cast his Instakill Bubble on the Closest character. This allows us to choose between two different boss movesets, the Melee Tank Moveset and the Ranged Tank Moveset.

  • Choosing a Melee Tank will cause the Boss to use his Melee AOE attack, damaging all Frontline attackers, and attack the Tank directly moderately with basic Melee attacks, along with the rest of his moveset,
  • Choosing a Ranged Tank will cause the boss to use only his basic Ranged attack, but he will use it twice as often, while also using the rest of his moveset except for melee attacks, unless the Ranged Tank dies.

Action Summary

King Croaker takes about 30-34 actions in the span of 90 seconds (the full length of the battle - if you survive through all of it that is). Here's a list of all possible actions:

Melee Tank Moveset
  • Melee attack on Tank (up to 2 times per cycle)
  • Ranged attack (up to 2 times per cycle – only if Melee Tank is far from the boss)
  • Ranged AOE attack on area with most enemies, usually Backline (9x)
  • Melee AOE knockback + stun attack on Frontline (6x)
  • Instakill Bubble cast on Closest character (3x)
Ranged Tank Moveset
  • Melee attack (up to 2 times per cycle – only if Ranged Tank is dead.)
  • Ranged attack on Tank (up to 4 times per cycle)
  • Ranged AOE attack on area with most enemies, usually Backline (9x)
  • Melee AOE knockback + stun attack on Frontline (only if Ranged Tank is dead.)
  • Instakill Bubble cast on Closest character (3x)

General Information

In all stages of the game, the number 1 choice of tank here will be

Thoran, because he can eat all the Instakill Bubble attacks by himself with his EX Weapon at Mythic rarity. He is the only one in the game who can bypass this boss ability.

You will want constant healing, especially for your Backline in order to deal with the Ranged AOE attacks, which will quickly wipe out your entire Backline in the early stages of the game. This stage does not feature skill channeling interruption, so

Smokey & Meerky is king here as they are able to keep buffing the team throughout the entire fight with little trouble while also healing the Backline.

What’s the meta team?

Realistically speaking, your meta team will depend on your specific box, and your account focus, so use your highest rarity DPS carry characters, along with whoever can best boost their damage. Try running Dual carry, as currently there is no way to boost a Hypercarry’s damage high enough to make it worth running only one. Keep faction bonus in mind but don’t run suboptimal characters just to force it.

Still, below you can find a few example teams. Big thanks to

AFK Analytica
AFK Analytica for the team building tool. You can find their website here and their discord here.

Team #1 - Safe
Guides

Character information:

Here's the damage the team managed to do:

Guides
Team #2 - Risky
Guides

This team has currently issues staying alive even at around 220 seasonal level and is very RNG-heavy, but if everything goes your way, the damage potential is the highest. Most likely this will be the best team once we level up further. Credits to Anna from AFK Analytica for coming up with this composition.

Character information:

Character info

This section will be updated soon with Seasonal information, so we moved it at the bottom of the guide for the time being!

Debuffer

Anyone who inflicts debuffs that decrease enemy defenses or increase enemy damage taken. There are other debuffs too, but we’ll focus on those that directly contribute to team damage output the most.

Best in slot

Viable alternatives

Honorable mentions

Not 100% uptime, low debuff value/not the best option or poor faction bonus synergy.

Buffer

Anyone who provides buffs that increase team damage output. We’ll focus on offensive buffs, defensive buffs are less important if you can already stay alive.

Best in slot

Viable alternatives

Honorable mentions

Healer

Best in slot

Anyone who can keep your team alive while also increasing team damage output. Smokey is a safe choice as he does not get interrupted on this boss.

Viable alternatives

Honorable mentions

DPS Carry

Best in slot

Anyone who has great sustained single target damage output. Preferably ranged damage.

Viable alternatives