Part 1

Learn the essential beginner strategy for Loop Hero, including crucial warnings about common mistakes, optimal build orders, and how to approach early-game challenges effectively.

This is a simple guide to a fairly simple game. The beginner strategy focuses on first giving a couple of warnings if you're new to the game and then giving some basic ideas on how to have the right mindset to challenge the game.

Advanced strategy is about how to easily farm areas, use efficient combinations as well as a guide to each class.

Oh and one thing that took me a while to figure out: This game sometimes refers to "armor" or "magic armor". That might sound good. It's actually just "max hp" and "max magic hp". So it's not impressive.

By the way, Magic HP is far better as it recharges every battle.

Beginner Warnings

Before you consider other strategy, there a couple of warnings you should know. If you already made these mistakes, it's not necessary to restart. It's quicker to rebuild. But save yourself time and keep these warnings in the back of your mind.

No Wrong Answers

The first thing you should know is that it's safe to experiment. You can't really do anything too wrong. You gain resources every run, even failed runs. So don't worry.

Experiment.

Worst Mistakes

There really is only five mistakes one can make in Loop Hero.

A. RETREAT IN TIME
When you die, you lose all items and 60% of the resources you've collected in that run. If you retreated before the fatal battle, you would have kept them.

When you retreat, you lose 30% of the resources you've collected in that run, unless you do it while you are at the campfire tile. Most of the time, you should have retreated while at the campfire.

B. WAITING TOO LONG TO FIGHT THE BOSS
The more you develop your little village, the stronger you get. But you don't need a lot of development to beat the bosses of the game if you play it right. Get a feel for their strength by facing each boss a couple of times so you don't spend more time on city development than necessary for your skill level.

C. BUILDING A BUILDING WITHOUT ROOM FOR UPGRADES
There are a couple of buildings, like the Crypt and the Smithy, that have subsequent buildings that have to built adjecant to the previous one. Make sure there is room for them, so you don't have to destroy and rebuild.

Particularly the .... is important to place well. You are going to build 2 warehouses, that each have to be adjecant.

D. BUILDING THE FARM OR LUMBERJACK IN THE WRONG PLACE
When you place a farm, every tile adjecant to it (including diagonal) is turned into a garden. A good placed farm has 8 tiles. A badly placed farm has very few. It is worth pointing out that one of the last developments, the "river", uses a set amount of terrain on the bottom right. It looks like this:

OOOOOO
XOOOOO
XXXOOO
OOXOOO
OOXXOO
OOOXOO

Every X is a river tile. Keep that in mind, as it may steal farm tiles from you as it did for me.

The lumberjack is like the farm, except you have to manually build each forest tile. In any case the farm and lumberjack aren't too important. They help grow a little bit, but you get far more from runs anyways so it's not really worth fussing too much over.

E. UNLOCKING THE WRONG TRAITS
This is a very UNUSUAL tip. After you build the gymnasium, you can receive traits during a run for the duration of that run. Now there is no risk with experimenting with this and trying out which traits work best. Except for one exception.

Each time you defeat a boss, you can choose a bonus. You can either get extra resources, or unlock one of the locked traits. This doesn't just give you the trait for that run, in the future each time you get a trait, this unlocked trait may now be one of the three options.

If you unlock worthless traits, this means you might have less good choices during each of your future runs. If you unlock good traits, this means you'll have more good choices in future runs. If you want to unlock everything in your run, you'll have to unlock them all after defeating bosses.

Beginner Strategy

Build Order

It's worth going for the gymnasium ASAP. Gymnasium unlocks traits. They are upgrades after you get a certain amount of XP each run. Very useful. It also unlocks villages. Villages are a mixed blessing. They heal HP, but they give quests, upgrading the HP of the monster they want you to kill.

Villages shine in combination with vampire manor, which helps get the orb of expansion, that you only get from fighting large groups of enemies. When you just take 7 type of tiles, two of which are vampire manor and village, you can farm orbs of expansion like crazy.

After Gymnasium, the best goal is going for the crypt. The necromancer class is much better than the other two classes, especially when you haven't yet unlocked much. Getting to Necromancer is the end of the early game.

The next goal should be the intel center. The intermediary supply depot helps unlock items, which become useful in the mid/late game, but are not worth worrying about when you have just a couple. The intel center itself is really great. It unlocks gold cards, which are really good cards that you start a new run with. If you went for the crypt first, you now have access to ancestral crypt, which is pretty great.