Fortress Saga: AFK RPG - Understanding HP Meta (Early-Mid Game)

Quick Guide to HP Meta (Early-Mid Game)

By Kaiton.

This concise guide will focus on HP build for newbies since it’s the new meta.

Dormants:

Se on all heroes.
You can technically use bdmg dormants for boss team but you’ll have to reroll them to se later when you get into late game.

Boss team (newbie starter build pre-sanctum):

Dps (marcille/ungu/annie)+ATK buffers (ruin/gildong/iris)+passive buffers (val, luna, soba, etc)+dmg buffers (mael, luna, ruin). Gear ATK.

Heroes need to be 1 star+
Sanctum unlocks after beating 13-19 and u should max it asap (175k gems total).
Try to have all 3 types of buffers. Read Buff section.

After sanctum is upgraded, focus on upgrading HP, getting Iris to 3 stars+, and building strong hp engines.

Boss team (sanctum, HP hero build):

With sanctum upgraded, use ruin, iris, styria, boomer, Tilly, Elrond.
If 5 slots, drop Elrond.
If no ruin, use marcille/ungula.
Use this team until you have strong enough engines for fort build.

Boss team (sanctum, fort build):

Once you have strong engines, fort will do more dmg than heroes until you get T5 boosts from green heroes.
Use hoya, chilchuck/mael, Luna, Elrond, Tilly with laser+hp deck with laser+hp engines. Alternate hoya’s and chilchuck’s casts. If 6 slots, add Mael/styria.
These heroes are designed to buff dmg for fort. Ruin does not buff fort.
Gears don’t matter since fort does most of the dmg. Use ex for effects.

Gears:

Iris, winter, mael, violet, Tilly, milena with HP.
Ruin, marcille, dealers with bdmg for bossing (try to make dealer’s se%=bdmg%) if use iris.
Ruin/gildong with se if don’t use iris.
Styria, chilchuck, and boomer with gold (for farming cuz they’re just passive buffers).
Jib, ungu, lan hua, Luna with se for conquest, gold for farm.
Runes from cards: get battlefield roar to prep for end game. All HP stuff will be worthless.

After you get t5 greens, augment 7+, violet 5 stars+, max abyssal constellations, switch to ATK meta.

Farming:

Jib, Ungu, Iris, Styria, Boomer, Louis

Se dormants everyone
Gear iris HP, the rest gold
Can replace styria with scarecrow if u have him t3+ for more gold runes
Burst+cogwheels

Wave:

Iblis, Elizabeth, Lilith, Meph, Violet, Louis with Knockback+Wrench

Auto everyone except meph. Manually cast meph only after mobs have been charmed.

Conquest (OW after stage 40)

Jib, Ungu, Iris, Styria, Luna, Louis

Se dormants everyone
Gear iris HP, jib and ungu se, gold on styria and louis is ok
Knockback+wrench

Arena:

Since Tilly is much easier to have higher power than Mael, you could focus on Tilly and go for a slugfest to see whose fort is stronger.

Tilly, styria, boomer, elrond, hoya/chilchuck, iris with burst+protection kit
Gear Tilly with ex and max hp

But if too lazy to go through a slugfest, use malleus, mael, Elrond, styria, boomer, meph (but make sure your mael is higher power than opponent’s mael and Tilly)

Malleus in 1st slot to be protected by meph since he can die mid-flight
Can also use kubera+tilly instead of malleus+meph
Gear mael max hp

Constellations:

After upgrading sanctum, focus on constellations that give HP to fort first then heroes. Don’t forget cannon ATK SPD.

Understanding Buffs:

There are 5 types of buffs in this game that can influence dmg output:

ATK buff (actives of iris, gildong, ruin)
DMG buff (passives of mael and ruin, active of Luna)
Passive buff (atk-Luna, val, soba, etc; hp-styria, boomer)
ATK SPD (Yaksha, gildong)
Cooldown reduction (Louis, Falin)

You can think of these 5 dimensions of buffs as being multiplicative with each other. Buffs of the same type stack additively. Try to always have at least the first 3 types in your team.

ATK SPD buff mainly only benefits Lan hua.
Cooldown reduction is mainly for farming to reduce skill downtime = higher kpm. Cooldown reduction isn’t good for boss fight since there are many buffers that buff more dmg than you’d get from the number of extra casts.

How to upgrade gold (after sanctum upgrade)

Get crit% to 50% asap while following the guide missions for rewards
After that, to optimally invest ur gold, we calculate for the power gain per cost and try to keep this ratio the same for hp, hp%, cdmg.

Steps:

Put on ur boss team preset with gears equipped
Upgrade HP. Check ATK power increase. Divide ATK power increase by cost of upgrade (just keep 3 significant figures).
Upgrade HP% and record the ATK power increase. Divide this ATK power increase by the ratio from step#2. This will tell u how much cost for HP% should be to be optimal.
Repeat step 3 for cdmg.