A beginner guide for AFK Journey that will teach you everything you need to know about the game!
Last updated: 25/03/2024
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.
Characters
If you've played AFK Arena, you will see a lot of familiar faces in AFK Journey, but the character system has quite a lot of differences between the games.
Summary
Characters belong to one of 6 factions:
Maulers
Lightbearers
Wilders
Graveborn
Celestial
Hypogean
,
Celestial
Hypogean
are the 'Angel / Devil' faction of the game and they are harder to obtain and ascend,
Characters belong to one of 6 classes:
Mage
Marksman
Rogue
Support
Tank
Warrior,
Characters in this game are split into
A-Level
and two
S-Level
,
A-Level
characters are easier to obtain from gacha and also cost less in various shops compared to
S-Level
ones,
But this doesn't make them weaker - among the
A-Level
characters you can actually find some of the best characters in the game,
Both
A-Level
and
S-Level
can be ascended to the highest tier (Supreme +),
The fodder system has been removed and instead, you just need dupes of the character you want to ascend or Acorns (faction-tied currency that you get from shops and pulls),
Each character has 3 skills which will automatically level up whenever they reach the required level,
A character needs to reach the Legendary+ tier to unlock Hero Focus that gives them bonus to one of their stats or gives a brand new effect,
A character needs to reach the Mythic+ tier to unlock Exclusive Weapon which gives them a new passive skill (that can be upgraded up by leveling the EX Weapon),
A character needs to reach the Supreme+ tier to unlock Skill Enhancement that give an additional effect to one of the their skills,
Characters don't need to be equipped with gear anymore, as the system has been replaced by Class-based Equipment system - you simply gather gear that the Class can wear and every character within the Class will automatically wear it in the battle,
Thanks to the Resonating Hall, you just need to level 5 characters and automatically every other character on your account will be leveled up to the lowest level among those 5 - no need to reset characters or switch them around with limited spots like in AFK Arena,
Also at any point, you can change the top 5 characters in the Resonating Hall by simply dragging them around.
Factions
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 a main faction in AFK Arena, and also in Journey. Their main goal is to destroy the Hypogeans and any remaining Darkness plaguing Esperia.
The Hypogeans are the main villains of AFK Arena, and maybe they serve the same role in Journey. Their main goal is to destroy any of Dura's creations by spreading evil all across Esperia.
Resonating Hall takes the best elements of various idle games and improves them, so the 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:
Upon unlocking the Resonating Hall, your 5 highest leveled heroes will become Hands of Resonance,
Other heroes who you have leveled before unlocking the Resonating Hall will have their level reset to and all used resources will be refunded.
The Resonance Level is determined by the lowest level member of the Hands of the 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 normal heroes with those in the Hand position - you can do it at anytime without any costs attached,
The level of the Hands of Resonance cannot exceed the Resonance Level by more than 10 levels,
The improved systems means 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 leveled character.
Leveling up - before 240
To level up a character you will need
Gold
and
Experience
- both can be obtained from AFK Stages and as various rewards,
Still, every 10 levels, on top of
Gold
and
Experience
you will also need
Essence
. And Essence will usually be the material you will lack the most and you will have to 'idle' for hours (and later days) to obtain enough of it to push a character through the level 10 upgrade.
Leveling up - post 240
This system changes once you reach the 240 level cap on your top 5 characters and now instead of leveling them, you will level the Resonance Hall. And the level cap will increase by 5 for every Supreme+ character you posses. You will also need only
Essence
moving forward and on top of that you will obtain
Diamonds
every time you level past level 300.
Ascension
As mentioned earlier, in AFK Journey the concept of fodder has been removed and the whole Ascension system has been simplified. Now, to ascend a character you either need to gather their dupes or faction-tied Acorns (which can be obtained from various shops or from pulling). The table below shows all the currently available tiers in the game and the requirements to reach them.
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).
Unlocks
A character needs to reach the Legendary+ tier to unlock Hero Focus that gives them bonus to one of their stats or gives a brand new effect,
A character needs to reach the Mythic+ tier to unlock Exclusive Weapon which gives them a new passive skill (that can be upgraded up by leveling the EX Weapon),
A character needs to reach the Supreme+ tier to unlock Skill Enhancement that give an additional effect to one of the their skills.
Equipment
Characters in AFK Journey don't need to equip gear anymore, as the system has been replaced by Class-based Equipment system - you simply gather gear that the Class can wear and every character within the Class will automatically wear it in the battle. 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:
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:
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 units are then added based on synergy or power.
Standard team setup
Even though there are many possible teams in this game, more often than not, they will follow the same style of building when deciding between which characters to use.
Pick a Tank. Tanks are the key figures in a team, even if their presence doesn’t often decide the other characters that will make up the team. Tanks have an exceedingly small roster, so be careful with who you pick to build around the faction bonus.
Pick 2x DPS. At the time of writing this, there is no real reason to run just 1 DPS. There aren't enough characters that can support that kind of playstyle, so most teams opt to run at least 2 DPS.
Pick a Support Supports are often the backbone of a team. Though most Supports (depending on the character) can provide enough sustain on their own, sometimes their kits trade raw healing output for things like buffs or debuffs.
Flex spot. Pick a Specialist, a second Support or a second Tank.
Specialists are either characters with quirky kits, or characters that focus on multiple roles at the same time. A key observation you may have is that the “good” Specialists often provide something in terms of buffs, debuffs or enhancements for your other characters,
You can also run a second Tank to split the agro, allowing the frontline to survive long enough for your team to use their Ultimates or a second Support - so you get more healing and more buffs. There's no one team setup to rule them all and who you choose for the flex spot depends a lot on the enemy formation.
To learn more about team building, check our other guide:
AFK Journey even on its release has a ton of various gamemodes available. In this guide we will only list them all without going into too much details, but soon we will release detailed guides for each!
The section below gives a brief overview of the mode and the moment you unlock it.
World Map
Instead of jumping from stage to stage like in AFK Arena, the main story progression has been replaced by an open world experience. You can roam around it while doing quests, kill enemies, find treasure, gather materials, solve puzzles etc!
The world is still split into areas and chapters and you have to finish the quests within each area to progress further.
Unlocks: Default
AFK Stages
AFK Stages are basically battles against ever-increasing in power enemies. To unlock most of the other modes or game functionalities you have to reach certain stages in this mode first.
The stage you've reached affects your 'idle' rewards, so always try to progress here as deep as you can. Thankfully, this mode has an auto-challenge feature available which allows you to automatically challenge the next stage after beating the current one - so you don't have to sit and and constantly press next button for hours if your team is strong enough.
The current max level stage you can reach on PTR is stage 1125 and by default you have gather the afk loot every 12h (but this can be increased using the achievement system).
Unlocks: Tutorial
Dream Realm
Dream Realm is a boss rush mode where you compete against every player on your server in who will deal the most damage to it.
There are 4 bosses in total and they change every day,
The more damage you do the boss, the better your score and the better the rewards you will obtain at the end of the day,
Each boss has 6 available difficulties and once you kill him in one, you will advance to the next which makes the fight harder, but also gives you more points/better rewards,
For killing each boss for the first time on any of the available difficulties you will obtain
Invite Letters
When a boss comes back in the next cycle, you will instantly start at the highest difficulty you've reached - so you don't have to waste time on killing him again on the lower ones.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 16
Honor Duel
Honor Duel is a fair play PVP mode where you can challenge other players and fight on even ground - you're not using your heroes, but the ones given to you by the game via a mode-specific card/shop system.
While building your team you have to focus on synergies between heroes and who counters who. As here both sides have to 'place' the heroes on the battlefield in waves, so you can see what your enemy is planning and try to counter him - but watch out as he can do the same so don't be too fast with showing your strong hand.
The mode has a weekly reward track that gives you rewards for achieving wins.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 16
Arena
The Arena is another PVP mode, but here you use your own roster of heroes and fight against defense teams setup by other players.
For winning a fight you receive rank points and lose them by losing a fight. As you gain points, you will progress through the League system, starting from Novice and ending on Champion. The higher your league, the bigger daily and weekly rewards you will receive.
The battles are a team vs team - there's no 3vs3 PVP yet in the game.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 20
Arcane Labyrinth
The good old Labyrinth makes a comeback in AFK Journey but as with the rest of the game, they added some improvements to this mode too.
The gameplay itself also has slightly changed as now you enter a room and select one of two other rooms - each will give you a different reward for beating the enemy hiding inside.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 100
Battle Drills
Battle Drills is a competitive available only to Guilds that is very similar to the Abyssal Expedition though on a much smaller and more manageable scale.
The goal of this mode is the progress through the monster-infested map by killing scouts, camps and then bosses. You can gather various buffs for conquering strongholds that will make your heroes stronger, making it easier to push deeper into the enemy territory.
Coordination is important if you want to achieve the highest rankings!
Unlocks: AFK Stage 121
Legend Trial
Legend Trial is basically renamed Factional Tower system known from AFK Arena.
Different Trials are opened based on the day of the week and you can obtain Acorns, Essence and materials needed to Ascend Artifacts from here.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 166
Primal Lord
Primal Lords are boss monsters that spawn on the map and the whole server has to work together to defeat them. The faster you manage to do that, the better rewards everyone will obtain. This is a cyclical event so various Primal Bosses will spawn from time to time on the map.
Unlocks: cyclical event
Trial of Abyss
Trial of Abyss unlocks once you finish the initial story campaign and clear all 1125 AFK Stages, but also the server needs to be at least 18 days old. The mode is basically a dungeon you have to climb down and beat a team guarding each floor.
Here you will encounter teams featuring multiple
Celestial
and
Hypogean
characters who will test you.
Unlocks: AFK Stage 1125
Artifacts
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 game and you unlock them as you progress thought the main story.
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 and Glory Expedition. What is super important is that unlike in AFK Arena, in AFK Journey, guilds are not cross-server.. Which means you have to play on the same server as your friends if you all want to join the same guild. We're really hoping this will be changed for the release (or shortly after) as trying to recruit anyone for an old server after let's say a month will be impossible - nobody will join an old server where they can't compete in PVP or Dream Realm.
To learn more about Guilds, check our other guide:
