Has Been Heroes Guide: Mastering the Roguelike Adventure

Has Been Heroes Guide offers comprehensive strategies for players of all skill levels, aiming to dominate the roguelike adventure with expert tips and techniques. At CONDUCT.EDU.VN, we break down complex mechanics, provide hero-specific builds, and offer tactical advice to elevate your gameplay and ensure your success in this challenging title. Equip yourself with knowledge and conquer the heroes’ journey by exploring various facets of this captivating game at CONDUCT.EDU.VN! This includes combat tactics, strategic hero selections, and effective utilization of in-game resources for a game conquering.

Table of Contents

Understanding Hits & Stamina: The Core Mechanics
Spells and Soul Orbs: Mastering Magical Combat
Movement & Events: Strategic Exploration
Items: Maximizing Your Arsenal
Heroes: Assembling the Perfect Team
Heroes In-Depth: A Comprehensive Guide
Enemies: Identifying and Overcoming Threats
DLC: Unlocking the Expansion Content
Young Heroes: Embracing the Next Generation
Epic Quest: Conquering the Ultimate Challenge

1. Understanding Hits & Stamina: The Core Mechanics

At the heart of Has-Been Heroes lies the intricate interplay between hits and stamina, a core mechanic essential for survival and success. Mastering this dynamic is crucial for effectively engaging enemies and managing your heroes’ defenses. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how these mechanics work:

Enemy Approach: Enemies advance towards your heroes in one of three lanes. Your primary objective is to defeat them before they reach you.
Stamina Stun: To defeat an enemy, you must first stun them by matching your melee hits to their stamina. Each enemy has a stamina bar, and each hero has a different number of hits per combo. Matching your heroes’ hits to the enemy’s stamina allows you to stun them.
Perfect Match: If you match the stamina count perfectly, you will stun the enemy. The stunned enemy will be sent to the far right of the screen, and their maximum stamina is reduced by one.
Overhitting: If you exceed the enemy’s stamina, you’ll deal 10% less damage, and the enemy will recover all their stamina and be knocked backward slightly.
Zero Stamina: When an enemy has zero stamina, you can attack for full damage without having to deal with stamina first. Melee attacks will no longer send them to the far right side of the screen.
On-Hit Effects: Any “on-hit” effect from items, spells, or skills will still trigger if you hit stamina, even if it doesn’t deal direct damage to the enemy’s health.
Stunned Enemies: A stunned enemy who reaches your heroes at the end of the lane will be sent to the end of the lane without taking damage or having their maximum stamina reduced.
Hero Stamina: Stamina on your heroes functions differently. When hit, the attacking enemy is sent back to the far right. Your heroes are not stunned or have their maximum stamina reduced. Stamina recovers only with spell or item effects or by resting at stamina or star camps.

While avoiding overhitting is generally advised, there are strategic exceptions:

Securing Kills: If you know you can kill the enemy with the extra hits anyway.
Pushing Back: If you really need to push the enemy back some.
Changing Position: Since you can only change your hero’s positions after sending one out to melee attack.

Each hero hits a different number of times per combo: one, two, or three times. Use these combinations strategically to break stamina effectively. Don’t forget, “Doublestrike” doubles the number of hits for the next melee attack, which can be stacked. Save “Doublestrike” for attacking health directly unless you really need it for stamina breaking.

Here’s a tip: when an enemy has 0 stamina, melee attacking them will no longer send them to the far-right side of the screen.

When you attack an enemy (stamina or health), you build up your combo against the enemy. The more you keep the combo going, the greater the bonus damage you inflict on your opponent. High combo = good. The bonus will dissipate after a short while, so keep it going by sending out the next hero before the next one is ready.

Critical hits ignore stamina, deal double damage, and benefit from the damage bonus from your combo. Aim to maximize your critical hit chances to deal substantial damage.

Finally, consider backstabs: retreating back to the leftmost position damages enemies, resets the stun timer, and counts up your combo.

Key Takeaway: Mastering the interplay between hits and stamina is essential for success in Has-Been Heroes. Utilize different hero combinations, manage resources effectively, and adapt to changing battlefield conditions to overcome challenges and achieve victory. For additional insights, visit CONDUCT.EDU.VN where we provide regular updates and strategic guides to help you conquer every level. You can contact us with the following information. Address: 100 Ethics Plaza, Guideline City, CA 90210, United States. Whatsapp: +1 (707) 555-1234. Trang web: CONDUCT.EDU.VN

2. Spells and Soul Orbs: Mastering Magical Combat

Spells are an integral part of Has-Been Heroes, adding depth and strategy to combat. Every hero starts with at least one spell, and each can carry up to five, totaling 15 spells for your party. In Has-Been Heroes, spells do not use a magic meter, but rather work with second-based cooldowns. Spells will not start recharging until you cast them, so it is important to cast them.

As you kill enemies, they drop souls, which are automatically collected into the soul orbs. Spend the souls to cast one or two spells without waiting for cooldowns. You get more souls from killing an enemy with a high combo, so high combo is always good.

Tip: Empty the orbs as soon as you can so you can start filling them up again. When you use an orb, the cost to fill them becomes higher for the rest of that battle. Soul orbs are spent on unlocking new spells and items if you die. Any souls dropped after the orbs are full are not collected. In short, use the soul orbs whenever possible.

You may notice the spell slots have special icons on them, or spell slots. The “buffs apply to the whole party” bonus is extremely helpful, so prioritize that one.

Here are some examples of spells:

Non-Elemental: Support-type spells that don’t deal damage, such as Earth Stomp (removes stamina), Charm (makes an enemy fight for you temporarily), and Haste (triples melee recharge speed).
Water: Causes soak, which slows targets down, prevents poison, and is removed by element combination or the Cleanse spell.
Lightning: Damage arches to other targets, dealing double damage on soaked or frozen targets.
Fire: Leaves targets burning, dealing 20 damage every second.
Frost: Freezes targets, preventing movement, attacks, and blocking.
Toxic: Poisons targets, slowing them down and dealing damage over time.
Wind: Pushes an enemy back and refreshes the stun duration.
Dark: Duplicates of every spell, usable at the cost of health.
Legendary: Improved versions of every spell, with shorter cooldowns or additional effects.

It is important to remember how elements combine and think on your feet.

Tip: Any spell can be cast on any target, so you can hit an ally with fireball to unfreeze them.

Here are some miscellaneous notes:

Draining wind can easily kill suicide bomber enemies and flying skull enemies.
Earth Stomp cannot remove your heroes’ stamina, but “potato” spells will remove stamina from your heroes.
Charm can be used on your heroes, but it is a bad idea.
Element-based fear spells can be used for more than just fear, as they deal damage and have an element tied to them too.

Overall, try to remember how elements will combine and think on your feet. Sometimes throwing out a bunch of spells in a panic can work out in your favor.

Key Takeaway: Spells are an essential component for success, so understanding the combinations and timing is important to your success. Visit CONDUCT.EDU.VN where we provide regular updates and strategic guides to help you conquer every level. Address: 100 Ethics Plaza, Guideline City, CA 90210, United States. Whatsapp: +1 (707) 555-1234. Trang web: CONDUCT.EDU.VN

3. Movement & Events: Strategic Exploration

Strategic movement is key to success in Has-Been Heroes, allowing you to maximize resources, optimize hero development, and approach each challenge with the best possible setup. After each battle, choose the location you want to move to, moving from spot to spot on the map, progressing towards the area’s boss. When you move from one spot to another, the path you took becomes a black line. This indicates a dark veil that prevents you from going back unless you use a candle.

The spaces you can move to come in two sizes, big spots and small spots. Small spots are either empty spaces or battles. Do as many battles as you can to get as much gold as you can. Also, try to kill every enemy that appears during each battle to receive 20 gold.

The big spots can be one of several events, but they’re all generally good. Spots can be one, two, or three chests, containing 15-20 gold, a candle, a key, or an item. If you’re lucky, a big spot on the map can also be a Locksmith who will sell you three keys for 35 gold each. If you’re lucky, the Locksmith might have a Master Key in stock, which costs 150 gold but is infinite use.

There are also other kinds of merchants you can buy things from:

Merchants: Sell anywhere from 1 to 3 items of various rarities.
Spellvendors: Sell one random spell of a specific element class for 200 gold.
Cartographers: Sell a random map for 25 gold that will reveal a given type of event on every area’s map.
Item Gamblers and Spell Gamblers: Pay 40 gold and 110 gold, respectively, for an attempt at obtaining what they offer.

Ideally, you’ll visit every single spot on an area’s map before moving on.

Tip: Keep around 200 gold on you at all times so you can buy spells as you come across spellvendors.

Thankfully, you won’t have to save any gold for healing, as camps are completely free. Resting at a camp will fully restore your stamina, health, or both, depending on what kind of camp you find. Camps can only be used once.

The last road event you can encounter is shrines, which give you effects at the cost of a candle. Shrines come in three varieties:

Lion: Gives positive effects
Owl: Gives a positive and negative effect
Human: Gives a positive or negative effect

Key Takeaway: Master your movements to get to events and camps to build your team. Visit CONDUCT.EDU.VN where we provide regular updates and strategic guides to help you conquer every level. Address: 100 Ethics Plaza, Guideline City, CA 90210, United States. Whatsapp: +1 (707) 555-1234. Trang web: CONDUCT.EDU.VN

4. Items: Maximizing Your Arsenal

Items play a crucial role in enhancing your heroes’ capabilities and adapting to the challenges in Has-Been Heroes. In Has-Been Heroes, you can pick up 11 items per hero with no limit on multiples of the same type. You can’t drop or sell items or manage your inventory at all, so you have to be sure the hero you want to keep an item picks up the item. You also don’t know what an item is until after you’ve picked it up at least once in a run.

Every item grants +50 health to the hero who holds it.

Here’s a piece of advice: give plus damage items to your three-hit hero and give percent damage items to your one-hit hero. Also, critical hit chance items are better on your three-hit hero.

Here’s why nothing is set in stone: not absolutely every item that grants +10 damage or +5% critical hit chance is necessarily geared toward your three-hit hero.

Items that add hits to your melee combo should go on your one-hit hero.
Items that grant “when Stamina falls to 0” can be triggered by hitting yourself with “Hot Potato.”
Damage dealt by items is counted as spell damage, so any item or ability that boosts spell damage or triggers on spell damage will apply to damage dealt by items such as the Electrohead or Thor’s Hammer.

Here’s one item type that needs clarification: spell cooldown reduction. Percent shown is how much time is added to its recharge rate.

Key Takeaway: Equip your heroes with the right items and remember they all grant +50 health to give your team the best chance for success.

5. Heroes: Assembling the Perfect Team

The heroes are the main component of your team and are an important part of a successful run. There are three kinds of heroes, all lumped into their categories by their number of hits: one-hit heroes (x1s), two-hit heroes (x2s), and three-hit heroes (x3s). You have to have one – and only one – of each type in your party whenever you start a run, and you can’t switch to new heroes until you finish your current run (win or lose).

x3 heroes are your rogues. They excel at dealing on-hit effects, start with critical hit chance and extra spell recharge speed, and start with “Doublestrike.” They’re intended to whittle down enemies with critical hits while breaking stamina.
x2 heroes are your support characters. Their abilities revolve around either spells or healing.
x1 heroes are your tanks and main melee attackers. They start with faster melee recharge speed, which puts a bit more emphasis on the fact that they’re probably the guys who should be sent to attack once an enemy’s stamina has been broken.

When you build your own party, keep in mind the elements of each hero’s starting spells and how those interact, and any weaknesses one hero may have that another can cover.

Tip: I like to have a spell for high-stamina targets and a spell for killing suicide bomber enemies. You can, of course, get away with not having either, but then you have to rely on getting one of these kinds of spells down the road.

Key Takeaway: Building the right hero combinations for your team will lead to a greater chance of success.

6. Heroes In-Depth: A Comprehensive Guide

As you play through the game, you’ll not only unlock new heroes but eventually variants of your x2s and x1s as well.

Starting off, you’ll have access to Tam, Metacles, and Crux, and every win will unlock a new hero. This will happen six times as you unlock Favian, Florencio, Kedi, Zakwas, Khar, and Roho, in that order. After this, reaching the eighth area of the game, the Underworld, will unlock Nemesis, and every win will grant you access to the Hero Chest. What hero you unlock depends on who opens the hero chest. This will reward you with a variant of that hero, so for example, opening the Hero Chest with Crux will grant you a new form of Crux. With the exception of the x3 heroes, this will unlock up to three additional forms for every hero, referred to as forms A, B, C, and D. Note that you will only get one hero per other hero, so opening the Hero Chest with Crux A a second time will not reward you with anything.

Opening the Hero Chest with Tam will unlock Thanatos. Opening the Hero Chest with Thanatos, Nemesis, or any form D hero will not unlock anything immediately. Instead, opening the chest with them will merely net you progress towards the very last hero, Edran. To unlock Edran, you must open the Hero Chest once with every other hero. I also recommend saving Nemesis and Thanatos for last, as well.

Here is a breakdown of the heroes:

Tam: Jack-of-all-trades and crit machine.
Metacles: Entirely a mage, with his abilities revolving around spell power and recharge.
Crux: A spell-sword. Casting a spell will increase his melee damage.
Favian: Entirely support, having the ability to heal the party, but being pretty fragile and not having much melee power.
Florencio de la Torre: Good at both taking and dealing damage, but not the best at either.
Kedi: The Monk. Her melee power is both high and consistent, making her perfectly capable of killing an enemy with around 100 health.
Zakwas: The glass cannon. He’s the least tanky of all the x1s, but he makes up for that by being one of the most lethal ones.
Khar: A jolly little ruckus. He’s pretty decent at everything, with immunity to poison.
Roho the Robot: The tank, with immunity to fire and poison.
Nemesis: A great choice if you want more melee damage going around.
Thanatos: Pick if you want to lean on your x3 for melee damage rather than your x1.
Edran: The most support-oriented x3, with a whopping 30% starting crit chance.

Key Takeaway: Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of the heroes to create a well-balanced, power team for your runs.

7. Enemies: Identifying and Overcoming Threats

Understanding the types of enemies and how to combat them is crucial for success in Has-Been Heroes. Many enemies have a barrier ability that prevents it from taking physical damage, meaning your melee combo and Backstabs will not remove any health or stamina. These barriers will also prevent the enemy from losing any stamina from effects like “Hot Potato” or “Earth Stomp,” so be careful. As far as I’m aware, there is no way to remove the barrier from the enemy, so the only thing you can do is wait until the barrier wears off.

Enemy outfits are tied to their abilities. Skeletons who wear bandannas will recover from stamina stun faster than others. Enemies like this don’t spawn much until a few areas into the run, so you won’t have to worry about them if you’re just starting out.

Here are some important targets:

Assassins: Highly powerful, so do not let them reach you at any cost.
Summoners: Attempt to summon fast but weak minions, so take them out as soon as possible.
Leprechauns: Not a threat; the more you damage them, the more gold you get.
Rally Captains: Top priority; enemies within their circle move faster, so kill them as soon as possible.
Flowers: Rooted to the ground and don’t have any stamina.
Zombies: Walls of beef that move slowly. When they die, they don’t actually die, but rather split in half.
Ghosts: Can only be melee attacked when they’re suffering from a status effect.
Suicide Bombers: Explode on death, dealing either fire damage or freezing all caught in the blast.
Flying Skulls: Can’t be melee attacked from the front, but you can backstab them.

Tip: Bosses’, mages’, and summoners’ spells, along with the mid-lane attack from ball and chain skeletons, can be canceled if you attack the caster with anything that will make them flinch.

Key Takeaway: Knowledge is power. Understand the enemy attack to effectively combat them.

8. DLC: Unlocking the Expansion Content

“DLC” is technically an update for Has-Been Heroes rather than an optional expansion pack, but I’ll keep referring to it and it’s content as “DLC” for the sake of clarity.

Your starting point is Challenge Mode. These are seeded (not randomized) battles that start you off with specific hero, item, and spell set-ups that task you with killing every enemy before time runs out. Unfortunately, you can’t start a challenge if you don’t have one of the heroes who’re involved in it currently unlocked, so to clear them all, you’ll need every hero up to Thanatos and Crux’s third variant. Completing a challenge will reward you with a Young Hero variant, and clearing all eight of the challenges will reward you with Young Tam.

Starting at Area 4 and onward, you’ll be able to encounter portals while moving around the map, which require a specific hero in a party of Young Heroes.

Going through the portal will lead you to the Sky Temple area, in which you can find legendary spell merchants and special chests that contain spells. Visiting all the spots you can is even more vital in a run leading up to the Sky Temple, since your run is effectively cut short.

At the end of the area awaits a special, amplified “Hell” variant of one of the main game’s bosses. Defeating a Hell boss will reward you with a weapon for the Young Hero who granted access to this Sky Temple and some DLC items and spells.

The new items and spells bring with them new status effects:

Vital Drain: Leeches 4% of the target’s health away and gives 20% of that health leeched to the hero who activated the effect.
Bruising: Deals physical damage equal to your current combo (the number that ticks up as you damage an enemy) on the target five times.

Once you’ve collected all of the Young Heroes’ weapons, you’ll unlock Epic Quest mode, in which you play as the three heroes from Trine.

Key Takeaway: Unlock the DLC content to amplify your team with new heroes, weapons, spells and items.

9. Young Heroes: Embracing the Next Generation

Unlike the main game, you are not required to use your newest Young Hero weapon to unlock the next, so you can go with whichever you prefer. Thankfully, Hell bosses do not get stronger as you unlock weapons with your respective Young Hero. The general idea of each hero is the same as their non-Young counterparts, especially with the x2s, but some of the x1s roles were swapped around a bit, so they’re not exactly the same. It might be worth noting that the final weapon for each Young Hero starts with the legendary version of the spell their first weapon starts with.

Young Hero versions:

Young Tam: Starts with Doublestrike and 25% faster spell recharge speed but is even better than the original with an extra 5% crit chance and 5% chance to dodge attacks.
Young Metacles: His melee combo makes the target take more damage from the next spell they’re hit with.
Young Crux: He’s a melee powerhouse, but really only when you take advantage of his abilities.
Young Favian: Focuses on healing with a group health regeneration buff.
Young Florencio: Has high melee damage output, with lightning damage with his backstabs.
Young Kedi: In addition to the same on-hit healing effect that her non-Young version always has, most of Young Kedi’s weapons also give her extra melee damage after killing an enemy, which gets better as her melee damage does too.
Young Zakwas: Loses some of his glass cannon power in favor of becoming more of a support character and has a -30% damage taken buff to the whole party after his melee combo.
Young Khar: His on-hit spell recharging will now recharge anyone’s spells rather than his own.
Young Roho: More or less exactly the same as his non-Young versions.

Key Takeaway: Get the team together and use Young Heroes to unlock Sky Temples to enhance their attributes with weapons and new abilities!

10. Epic Quest: Conquering the Ultimate Challenge

In Epic Quest mode, you’ll play as the heroes from Trine, and that’s what makes it so difficult. The Trine heroes Pontius, Zoya, and Amadeus have worse starting conditions than the main game’s heroes. None of them start with any spells or Stamina (and can never gain any Stamina through items or shrines). The upside is that you’ll start with 600 gold rather than 300, but that’s honestly not much of an upside when you consider that you’re missing 600 gold worth in starting spells.

Heroes are:

Pontius: Has a 25% reduction to his melee recharge speed.
Amadeus: His melee hits will slow the target by 20% for 5 seconds, which can stack.
Zoya: True to the range, she has range and her “melee” is just like Roho’s, meaning she can take care of Suicide Bombers and Flying Skulls easily, but has basically no Backstab range.

Generally, you’ll want to break stamina with Zoya and Amadeus and attack with Pontius, but this can definitely change depending on the situation.

Key Takeaway: It took multiple tries to beat Epic Quest, so don’t be discouraged if you fail early.

Conclusion

The insights in this Has Been Heroes guide should serve as an effective manual to improve your gameplay. Mastering the various components of the game—the strategic employment of stamina, spells, character skills, and items—can make a substantial difference in your success. Remember, persistence and strategic planning will lead you to victory.

We encourage you to visit CONDUCT.EDU.VN for more resources and strategies to enhance your gaming experiences. Our commitment is to provide you with clear, actionable guidance that not only enriches your understanding of game mechanics but also improves your proficiency. Whether you’re grappling with difficult challenges or aiming to refine your skills, CONDUCT.EDU.VN is here to support your progress. Engage with our content and transform your approach to gaming. We are located at Address: 100 Ethics Plaza, Guideline City, CA 90210, United States. Whatsapp: +1 (707) 555-1234. Trang web: conduct.edu.vn