Loop Hero is an addicting mash-up of tower defense, deck-building, and city management. But it doesn’t do a good job of explaining what to do. Here are some tips to get you started.
The core gameplay of Loop Hero is satisfying and the game does an okay job of explaining the basics. But the developers leave a lot up to experimentation on subsequent runs. The core aspects of Loop Hero are the deck-building, loop management, and city-building aspects of the game. While you can manage aspects of your character, your chosen class mostly fights and interacts with the world on their own.
It’s the players job to create a world that generates loot to help the hero get stronger. That’s done through placing cards like meadows, rocks, and new obstacles like swamps and groves. It’s important to manage the cards as they come in, since it can be easy to get overwhelmed if you drop them all as you get them.
Think About Card Placement
Card placement is a huge part of making the loop manageable for a fledgling hero. How you place the cards determines what kind of monsters show up. For example, placing mountain and rock cards in a 3×3 grid will introduce a harpy to the loop every few days.
Cards that introduce monsters to the loop like Vampire Mansions, Groves, Cemeteries, and Ruins should be placed sparingly. You don’t want to create a portion of the loop that takes up too much of your hero’s health. You should also make liberal use of the Oblivion card from your deck. It’s a delete card that can be used to remove anything on that tile – including active monsters.
Some of the combos can result in powerful monsters that reward great loot, but are very dangerous to heroes who aren’t well equipped.
Choosing Stats to Focus – Loop Hero on Switch
Part of surviving the loops you’re creating as a planner means regularly upgrading your character’s equipment from loot drops. The slots you’ll have open depends on the class you’re playing, but each stat is useful across all classes. Some stats are not created equal, so they shouldn’t be prioritized.
For example, Vampirism seems pretty great on the surface, right? Free heals during combat is great. But it requires getting off hits and putting yourself into combat situations where you will be losing more health than you’re gaining. Passive regen per second and evasion are far superior stats to focus on for that reason.
Retreat!
The course of Loop Hero plays out over several acts, but your first few hours and several loops won’t be successful. You should make liberal use of the retreat function to gather materials and build up your camp. If you survive a loop and retreat at the campfire, you can leave a level with all of the materials you’ve gathered.
However, if you have to retreat mid-loop, you’ll only get to keep 30% of what you gathered. It’s important not to over estimate your abilities in the first few hours. Feel free to retreat instead of pushing your character so you can gather materials to get your camp leveled up. There are several buildings that will help you survive for longer during your loops.
Do you find the font in Loop Hero to be too hard to read in handheld mode? The developer has added multiple font options including one to make it easier for dyslexic reading.
Experiment with Your Deck Slowly
As you progress through the story of Loop Hero, you’ll unlock new cards to add to that character’s deck. You should introduce these challenges one at a time to keep them manageable. Sometimes you’ll need a certain combination of monsters to reliably gather a resource, which requires experimenting with the deck.
You’re also limited in the number of cards from each tier that you can select. You want to create a balanced deck with enough resources and challenges to progress through the acts for gathering resources in the early game. Don’t worry too much about progressing until you can build a character that survives until the end of an act.
Camp Focus – Loop Hero on Switch
Once you unlock the camp, you should focus on the Herbalist’s Hut. The hut adds the ability for your hero to use potions, which can be regenerated (x2) each time you rest at a campfire.
Your hero has enough slots for three healing potions in the beginning, so this can help you progress quite far in your loops. Upgrading the hut to the healer’s hut will increase the amount individual potions heal and how many potions your hero can carry.
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