Archero 2: A Beginner’s Guide and Top Tips

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Basic Game Mode — Campaign Levels

The campaign levels are the core gameplay of Archero 2. These levels have a few forms, but mostly you’ll be fighting waves of smaller enemies until you reach a boss level. The boss levels are usually the hardest, forcing you to manage your health so you don’t get taken out quickly. As you progress through a mission, you’ll get the chance to pick up abilities as you level up. By the time you reach the end of a mission, you’ll have a ton of abilities that radically change how you play. I recommend trying out as many combinations of abilities as you can, so you can get a good feel for which are the best by the time you get to the harder missions.

In terms of the form campaign levels take, there are a few common ones. The standard is a 50 level mission with boss fights every 10 levels where you move from room to room (with each room being a new level). But there are some more. Another is a six minute survival round where you’ll find a boss at the 3- and 6-minute marks. Then there’s a style similar to the standard one, but where you don’t move to different rooms. These allow you to stack up hearts and save them for later, so I think they’re a little easier overall. You never know exactly what to expect in a new campaign mission, so they don’t really get too repetitive.

Upgrading Your Armor and Gear

If you want to succeed in Archero 2, you’ll have to upgrade your armor and other gear. You get new armor in a few ways. The easiest is by picking them up in campaign missions, but you can also get them by opening chests. You can get free keys for these chest either by logging in each day or through various tasks/rewards. You can also purchase them with gems (a currency you can acquire for free, but you can buy them too) in the shop, so it’s worth checking that out daily since it changes often.

To level up your gear, you’ll need scrolls and gold. Scrolls drop in each campaign mission, so it’s not too hard to get them. But there’s also the Blacksmith, who allows you to upgrade your gear into a higher rarity. To do this, you’ll need three of the same piece of gear (or the same rarity for some). For example, if you have a rare item you want to upgrade to epic, you’ll need to fuse three of the rare ones together via the Blacksmith. Above epic rarity, you’ll just need to use gear in the same slot to upgrade to epic +1 and higher. This changes up, but you can click an item in the Blacksmith to find out exactly how to upgrade it.

Runes

While we’re discussing gear, we also need to briefly look at runes. Runes give small bonuses that all add up to a major change in your stats. Some of them give generic bonuses like extra health or weapon damage, while others are specialized. For example, there are runes that increase the effectiveness of Sprites, Sword Strikes, Meteor damage, etc. It’s important to try and focus your runes for the specific playstyle you want, but when starting out it’s hard to get a perfect loadout. Even if a rune you have gives boosts to a damage type you’re not interested in, they still also give generic boosts too. So no rune is entirely useless on any build, even if you’ll eventually want to get them more focused.

Talent Cards and Artifacts

Talent Cards and Artifacts are another passive way to increase your stats. These cards are one of the main ways to spend your gold, and each one you unlock gives you an increase to a stat. These cards range in effects, from Swift Wind (+1.5% attack speed and movement speed) to Iron Wall (collision damage reduction +24) to all kinds of things. Every time you unlock one you already have, it’ll increase its star level and give a boosted effect.

Artifacts are harder to come by. You mainly get them by using Wish Tokens in the shop or purchasing rolls in the “Wish” section for 400 gems each. Artifacts are basically the same as Talent Cards in that they give you passive bonuses, but they are more powerful. You won’t get as many of them, but when you do, it’s worth taking note of their powerful effects.

Extra Game Modes and Events

So, now that we’ve covered the most important parts of Archero 2, let’s take a quick look at the “events” over on the furthest right tab. The first one at the top is the Sky Tower. Sky Tower makes you play through 5 levels similar to those in the campaign, but with an additional modifier like “no red hearts will drop” or something similar. Once you beat 5 levels, you’ll get a handful of solid rewards. There are also bigger rewards to claim at certain points (25, 50, etc.), and you can check how close you are to the next one in the bottom right of the Sky Tower screen.

Arena is an honestly strange auto-battler which acts as a form of PVP. It’s really complicated, but basically each player gets the same upgrades for each round and automatically fight each other without the player having to do anything. I don’t really know how I feel about it yet, but it’s certainly interesting and worth checking out.

Seal Battle is a boss fight game mode which you can attempt up to twice daily. It’s got a ranking system where you get grouped with other players and the focus is to do as much damage to the boss as possible in a short time.

Gold Cave is an easy set of battles that primarily exists to give you a bunch of free gold. It’s simple and doesn’t require much work, so it’s definitely worth doing. Then you have Rune Ruins, which allows you to play a little mini-game to get a chest full of runes. Whenever you get the ability to do it, it’s worth doing since it’s free and doesn’t really require any effort to do.