The Definitive Has-Been Heroes Guide for Beginners and Beyond

There are quite a few beginner guides for Has-Been Heroes out there, but some of them are written by people without a lot of experience with the game, and others - although written by experienced players - don't go into a lot of detail about things. They can be good to start you off, but they often leave you to trial-and-error when there's so much more wisdom that could be passed on. Granted, there definitely is an amount of the game that you can't simply explain and have to get a feel for personally, but there is far more than that left unexplained by other guides.

If you've read all the Has-Been Heroes guides you can find and are still stuck, frustrated, and on the brink of giving up, hopefully this guide will give you a second wind. My goal with this guide is to pass on every single bit of wisdom that I can to help players who are starting off or otherwise still in the beginning portions of the game. I've been there; stuck, frustrated, and ready to give up on the game for good. I got a few wins in and got so tired of losing that I put the game down for nearly half a year. After hearing about a couple of tips (not included in any guides I read), I made a few more attempts and managed to finally break through my wall. Unlocking more heroes (and more game content) restored my enjoyment of the game, and after a short while, I grew to love the game. As of writing this, I have over 400 hours clocked and 100% completion in both the main game and the "expansion;" let that be your indication of just how much I know what I'm talking about here.

While reading through this guide, keep in mind that a lot of tips you can give about the game are not set in stone, and that a big part of becoming skilled at Has-Been Heroes is learning to think quickly, be resourceful, and roll with the punches (this is that "amount of the game you can't just explain and have to get a feel for personally" that I mentioned).

Hits & Stamina:

The tutorial should've introduced you to all of this already, but in case you need a refresher, some clarification, or happen to be one of those people in the 28% of Steam players who never finished the prologue, let's go over it all anyway. Try not to fall asleep reading this; you might actually learn something.

Here's the entire basis for the game, the thing that you will be doing more than anything while playing: enemies will approach your heroes in one of the three lanes. In order to kill them, you must first stun them by matching your number of hits to your target's Stamina. Landing a melee hit on Stamina will not deal any damage, and If you go over Stamina - for example, hitting a 2 Stamina enemy 3 times - you'll do 10% less damage, the enemy will recover all of its Stamina, it will get knocked backward a little. If you match Stamina perfectly and stun the enemy, you can attack for full damage, reduce the enemy's maximum Stamina by 1, and send them all the way to the far right side of the screen.

I should note that when an enemy has 0 Stamina, melee attacking them will no longer send them to the far right side of the screen. Of course, you'll be able to hit them for full damage without having to deal with Stamina first, but again, just something to note. I will also note that any kind of "on hit" effect from items, spells, or skills will still trigger if you hit Stamina. Lastly, a stunned enemy who reaches your heroes at the end of the lane will be sent to the end of the lane as if they were melee attacked but will not take any damage or have their maximum Stamina reduced.

Now, I know how this sounds: "Never ever hit over Stamina." No. This is the first example of one of those things that's not set in stone. You can hit over Stamina if you know you're going to kill the enemy anyway, if you really need to push the enemy back some, or if you need to change positioning - since you can only change your hero's positions after sending one out to melee attack. Sure, it's not ideal to hit over Stamina, but again, there are times when it can work out.

You may notice while playing that each hero hits a different amount of times; one who hits once per combo, one who hits twice, and one who hits three times. This is, of course, the key to breaking Stamina correctly. If it isn't already obvious to you that you can break 5 Stamina by sending out your 3 hit hero and then your 2 hit hero, you need to take some math classes. That said, also keep in mind that you can break Stamina with different combinations of hits. Honestly, it wasn't obvious to me when I started out that you can break 4 Stamina not just by sending out your 2 hit hero twice, but by sending out your 1 hit hero and then your 3 hit hero.

You may have also noticed that one of your first heroes' starting spells is one called "Doublestrike." As the name implies, this spell will double the amount of hits your hero will deal with their next melee attack. This can stack, allowing your hero to go from 1 hit, to 2, to 4, and so on. You might think to use this exclusively for Stamina-breaking, but you should actually save it for attacking health directly, and only use it for Stamina-breaking if you think you really need it.

The Stamina on your heroes works a bit differently than it does on enemies. If your hero gets hit, the attacking enemy will be sent back to the far right side of the screen - you know, since there's not space for your hero to be sent backwards instead. Your heroes will not be stunned when they run out of Stamina and they will not have their maximum Stamina reduced either. However, their Stamina will not recover at all on its own; rather, it will only recover with spell or item effects or by sleeping at a Stamina Camp or Star Camp (more on Camps later).

Let's flip the script and talk about attacks instead of defense. As you attack an enemy - whether you're hitting their Stamina or damage their health directly - you're building up your combo against the enemy (this is different from a "melee combo," which some effects refer to). As your combo builds on your target, you will start dealing bonus damage. 2 hits = +10% combo damage, 5 hits = +20%, 10 hits = +30%, 20 hits = +40%, and 40 hits and onward = +50%. If you're not good at remembering numbers, don't worry, it's not that important. Just remember that high combo = good. Combo damage is applied at each of those numbers, so on your second hit you'll get the +10%, on your fifth hit you get the 20%, and so on. The catch to combos is that you have to keep them going, as the bonus will dissipate after a short while. To keep a combo going, I generally wait for the next hero I plan to send out to have their melee half way recharged before sending out the readied hero. It's not vital to keep a combo going, so don't sweat it too hard if you can't keep them going, but obviously they can be very helpful.

Remember how I said that landing a melee hit on Stamina will not deal any damage? Here's your exception: critical hits. If you or an enemy land a critical hit, it will ignore Stamina (you will deal damage to health in addition to removing 1 Stamina) and deal double damage. Thankfully, there aren't a whole lot of enemies who have any kind of critical hit chance, so for the most part, you will be the one dishing them out. In case it needs clarifying, critical hits will also benefit from the damage bonus from your combo.

There's one last thing to know about melee attacking: Backstabs. While your heroes primarily attack going from left to right, unleashing their melee combos, they also damage enemies when retreating back to their leftmost position; this is a Backstab. Backstabs deal health damage (regardless of Stamina), reset the stun timer if the enemy is stunned, and count up your combo for every enemy struck on the way back. Note that this will not trigger any "on hit" effects nor do they deal the same amount of damage as a normal melee hit. I'm honestly uncertain of what determines Backstab damage.

Spells & The Soul Orbs:

No matter what heroes are currently in your party, spells are an integral part of Has-Been Heroes. Every hero starts with at least one spell, and each can carry a total of five - meaning you can have 15 spells total. You'll find that there are no sorts of magic meters in Has-Been Heroes, but rather simple second-based cooldowns. It's important to keep in mind that your spells will not start recharging until you cast them - which sounds obvious, but it's easy to fall into a "save it for when I really need it" mentality, especially in the case of spells with large cooldowns. Spells will always be fully recharged at the start of a battle, so don't worry about using spells with large cooldowns at the end of a battle and not having it ready for the next, either.

Here's another reason to not worry about your spell usage: the Soul Orbs. As you kill enemies, they will drop Souls, which are automatically sucked up into the Soul Orbs; when one or both Orbs are full, you can spend those Souls to cast one spell (or two, if both Orbs are full) without waiting for the cooldown to refresh. Note that you get more Souls when killing an enemy with a high combo, so again, high combo = good. I will also reiterate that it's easy to fall into a "save it for when I really need it" mentality, which is good during boss fights, but in regular fights, you want to empty the Orbs as soon as you can so you can start filling them up again. Keep in mind that it's better to use a full Orb than an already ready spell because you can fill the Orb again between uses of the spell. When you use an Orb or when the battle ends, the Souls within are banked, and will be automatically spent on unlocking new spells and items if you die. If the Orbs are full and you kill an enemy, the Souls dropped will not be collected; all the more reason to empty them often. In short, use the Soul Orbs whenever possible. Do note, however, that using a Soul Orb will make the cost to fill them higher for the rest of that battle.

You may notice that some of the spaces where spells go have special icons on them; these are simply called "Spell Slots," and they apply certain bonuses to the spell that ends up in that space. I'm not going to go over every single one, but I'd like to go over the general idea of them. You don't have a whole lot of control over how your spells are arranged in your inventory, so for the most part, you shouldn't worry if a spell matches a Spell Slot's bonus or not. If it does line up, cool, if not, oh well. The bonuses can be helpful, but not getting them isn't a huge waste. However, the "buffs apply to the whole party" bonus can be extremely helpful to align, so if nothing else, aim for that one; it can make your whole party temporarily invincible if you put Divine Intervention there, triple the output of spells like Dragonblood, et cetera. Otherwise, just use your best judgement when you pick up a spell; slots aren't everything.

There are far too many spells to talk about here (as much as I could talk about this game forever), so I'll just go over the elements. Non-elemental spells are primarily support-type spells. They don't do damage, but they have other effects to make up for it. You have spells like Earth Stomp, which removes 20 Stamina from enemies in an AoE, Charm, which makes an enemy fight for you temporarily, and Haste, which triples your melee recharge speed for 6 seconds. They're pretty straight-forward, but effective none the less.

Every spell that has an element associated with it has an additional effect tied to it that will always trigger. These bonus effects can be combined with other elemental effects to achieve new effects, and they can be spread through contact - this applies to your heroes too, so you can end up getting yourself poisoned or burned if you're not careful. In addition to the direct damage from a spell increasing a target's combo meter, status effects that cause damage over time also increase the combo meter on the afflicted enemy.

Water spells cause Soak, which is very much a great effect. It slows targets down, prevents the target from being poisoned, and it will not go away until removed by an element combination or the Cleanse spell. This is extremely helpful when fighting ghost enemies, since they can only be melee attacked when they're suffering from a status effect. If you hit a Soaked target with another water spell, it'll create a puddle, which will apply Soak to anyone who walks through it, and can be made into a poison pool that will damage whoever walks through it if an enemy afflicted with poison walks through it. Soak also combos well with nearly every other elemental effect, which is another reason why it's so good.

Lightning's elemental effect is damage-arching - note: damage arching, meaning the damage is the only thing that arches, not any effects like Fear or Stamina-removal. This is one of two elements that does not have a lasting effect on the target, so elemental combos can only be achieved with lightning by using it second. On Soaked targets and frozen targets, lightning will deal double damage. Hitting a burning target with a lightning spell will cause an explosion that deals extra damage and acts as a bonus AoE, while hitting a poisoned target will spread the poison to any enemy hit by the arching electricity.

Fire, unsurprisingly, will leave targets burning, dealing 20 damage every second. On a Soaked target (or vice versa), fire creates steam, which greatly slows any enemy that attempts to walk through it regardless of elemental immunity. Hitting a frozen target with a fire spell will deal double damage, but will also unfreeze the target, leaving them Soaked instead. When combined with poison, fire will cause the remaining dealt-over-time damage from the poison to happen all at once, and replace the poisoning with burning.

Frost, well, take a guess. Targets hit by frost spells will become frozen, becoming unable to walk, attack, or block using Stamina and pausing their combo meters until they're unfrozen. Hitting an enemy with a melee combo or Backstab will immediately unfreeze the target, while hitting them with a water spell will extend the freeze duration. If you hit a Soaked or already frozen target with a frost spell, the freeze duration is greatly extended (even more so with Soak), while hitting a burning target simply doubles the spell's damage and applies a standard freeze effect. Freezing a poisoned target will cause the effect timer on the poison to halt for the duration of the freeze, applying the same damage as before.

Toxic, as you can already tell by the previous paragraphs, poisons the target, slightly slowing the target down and dealing damage over time - 10 damage every 2 seconds, to be precise. We've already gone over pretty much all of poison's combinations except two, and here's one of them: hitting a burning target with a toxic spell will not poison the target. As far as I know, all that will happen is the toxic spell will deal damage as normal and the target will remain burning rather than become poisoned. I'll note here that both the damage-over-time effects from the burning and poisoned statues are affected by spell damage increases, though, they do not count as spell damage for the purposes of triggering "on spell damage" effects.

Wind spells will push an enemy back and refresh the duration of Stamina stun. The direction and distance depends on the spell, but they will all push the enemy back at least a little bit. Hitting a Soaked target with a wind spell will freeze the target, while hitting a burning or poisoned target will spread the effect in a radius behind the target. Hitting a frozen enemy will cause the target to go sliding backwards until it runs into another enemy or the edge of the screen, removing the freeze status and stunning the original target and whoever it collides with.

While that's all of the elements that can be combined, there is technically one more element: dark. This isn't a new set of spells per se, but rather a duplicate set of every type of spell with a special catch. Dark spells act exactly as their non-dark counterparts, except instead of having a cooldown, you can use them whenever you want at the cost of health. The health cost will be equal to twice the amount of seconds in the normal cooldown, so for example, Dark Cleanse will cost 20 health to cast rather than having a 10 second cooldown. You can't cast a dark spell if you don't have enough health left or if the cost simply exceeds your hero's maximum health, so you don't have to worry about accidentally killing yourself with a dark spell.

Though not counted as an element, there is one final set of spells: legendary spells. Similar to dark spells, legendary spells are a duplicate set of every spell in the game, but completely improved. Legendary spells have anything from a shorter cooldown, increased damage, or additional effects that make the spell even more powerful. Unlike the other spell elements, Legendary spells don't have specific merchants you buy them from. Instead, they appear completely by chance from any kind of spell merchant.

While the game never tells you this, any spell can be cast on any target. For example, you can hit an ally with Fireball, which comes in handy if you need to unfreeze them (this'll work even if your hero is immune to fire). Likewise, you can also apply buffs to your enemies, so be careful when casting. There's not a whole lot of instances where this is important, but it's good to keep in mind anyway.

Here's some miscellaneous notes on spells that I couldn't fit in anywhere else but thought were important: Draining Wind, while extremely weak, can easily kill suicide bomber enemies, flying skull enemies, and your own Summoned Bombs. If you want to cast Summon Bomb in a lane that has no enemies, you can cast in on the hero in that lane instead. Earth Stomp can not remove your heroes' Stamina, even if you try. The "potato" spells like Hot Potato, however, will remove Stamina from your heroes. Charm can be used on your heroes and it is a bad idea. Seriously, don't do it unless hitting yourself is part of your plan. Charm is also canceled if the target takes damage, but that does not apply to your heroes if they end up Charmed. The various element-based Fear spells can be used for more than just Fear; remember, they deal damage and also have an element tied to them too, so Acrophobia can be used to push bosses back, Pyrophobia can be used to kill suicide bomber enemies, et cetera. Be extremely careful with Certain Death; you definitely don't want to get it on your heroes unless they're immune. You can unfreeze your heroes by hitting them with your own wind spells; it doesn't sound like it would work, but it does. The defense-weakening effect of Corrosive Bolt will stack if you hit an enemy with it more than once - this makes it the perfect spell to put in a hero's "additional projectile is fired" spell slot.

Overall, try to remember how elements will combine and think on your feet. You can pull off some pretty crafty things if you're clever - heck, even if you're not. Sometimes I just randomly throw out a bunch of spells in a panic and it's worked out in my favor.

Movement & Events:

Now that you understand battle mechanics, let's go over the other 50% of the game: movement. Moving in Has-Been Heroes is a bit like the level-select screen in Super Mario World. Basically, you just choose the location you want to move to and hit a button, moving from spot to spot on the map, progressing towards the area's boss. You may notice when you move from one spot to another, the path you took becomes a black line. That black line indicates a dark veil that prevents you from going back the way you came unless you use a candle.

Something else you may notice is that the spaces you can move to come in two sizes, big spots and small spots. Small spots are simple; they're either empty spaces or battles. You might be tempted to try to avoid battles and go right for the boss, but do not do that. You want to do as many battles as you can so you can get as much gold as you can, which you can spend to get stronger, making battles - and bosses - easier. You'll also want to try to kill every enemy that appears during each battle, not just because the enemies themselves drop gold, but also because killing all enemies will grant you a battle clear bonus of 20 gold.

The big spots on the map can be one of several events, but they're all generally good, save for whenever they're empty (or if they're a gambling-based event, if you dislike gambling). Note that events have to be unlocked before they can start appearing, so if you've never come across something listed here, that'd be why. First, a spot can be one, two, or three chests. They can contain anywhere from 15-20 gold, a candle, a key (for unlocking locked chests), an item, and any mix of the like. Locked chests are capable of dropping more gold and keys than an unlocked one and also have a higher chance of containing an item. By no coincident at all, 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, a Locksmith might have a Master Key in stock, which costs 150 gold but is infinite use.

There are also other kind of merchants you can buy things from, like, well, Merchants, who will sell you anywhere from 1 to 3 items of various rarities; Spellvendors, who will sell you one random spell of a specific element class - including non-elemental, dark, and sometimes all spell types - for 200 gold; and Cartographers, who will sell you a random map for 25 gold that will reveal a given type of event on every area's map. While not technically merchants, you can also spend money at Item Gamblers and Spell Gamblers, who ask you to pay 40 gold and 110 gold respectively for an attempt at obtaining what they have to offer. Their game is very simple: pick one of three chests. Guess correctly, you keep the item. Guess wrong, another item or spell is added to one of the other chests and you have to pay to have another try at winning something. Note that this means if you lose twice, you are guaranteed to win something on the third attempt. Although the game looks like a game of three cup shuffle where you can keep your eye on your prize to win, it is entirely random.

On the note of gold, it's generally a good rule of thumb to keep around 200 gold on you at all times so you can buy spells as you come across Spellvendors. That said, while it's arguable that spells are the most important thing you can buy, striking a balance between melee power for killing power and spell power for crowd control is the most important thing, so don't sweat it too hard if you end up having to pass up a Spellvendor. It's better to save gold for spells, so passing up not-so-good items in favor of spells is a good idea, but it's not a big deal if you decide to buy a really good item instead of a spell or if you end up not making enough gold on the way to a Spellvendor to begin with.

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. I will note that you can only use a Camp once, so if you end up looping back to a Camp after you've used it, nothing will happen; once you've used it, it's basically an empty space afterward. This obviously means that it's generally a good idea to save Camps for later if you know you can come back to them later.

The last road event you can encounter is Shrines, which give you effects at the cost of a candle. These come in three varieties: the Lion, which gives positive effects; the Owl, which gives a positive effect and a negative effect; and the Human, which gives either a positive effect or a negative effect. While I don't have the exact statistics for the odds of getting good effects from the Human Shrine, there's a large list of positives and only six possible negative effects, so it would seem to be worth a chance if you have a spare candle. That said, I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to take a chance on Owl or Human Shrines, especially if your run is going good already.

Ideally, you'll visit every single spot on an area's map before moving on. Obviously you can ignore empty spaces or merchants and gamblers if you're out of gold, and if you simply don't have enough candles to visit everywhere then that's just the hand you've been dealt, but you really want to visit as many spaces as you can so you can get all the gold you can and buy as many spells and items as you can afford.

Items:

If you've ever played another roguelike before, you might be thrown off by how items work in Has-Been Heroes. Unlike other games where you only hold one item of a given type, Has-Been Heroes lets you 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 pick it up at least once in a run - seriously, no name or description or anything until you pick it up, and from then on, it will always show it's name and description. That part is particularly rough to get used to, but after a while, you can start making educated guesses pretty accurately. For some examples, the Jar of Souls and the Soul Shard have similar effects, as do the Necronomicon and the Wizard's Notebook; animal items generally give you extra hits to your melee combos, and wand-looking items are always magic-related.

Every item - yes, every item - grants +50 health to the hero who holds it. This means that even who holds your utility items like the Master Key and the Cartographer's maps holds some relevance. Generally it's a good idea to give such utility items to your two-hit hero (more on heroes later) to help bolster their health total and to prevent your other heroes' inventories from filling up too quickly. Note that items that say they give you X amount of health actually give you X + 50, it's kind of weird like that.

Here's what's likely the first piece of advice any Has-Been Heroes fan would give you: give plus damage items to your three-hit hero and give percent damage items to your one-hit hero. The reason is that your three hit hero doesn't hit as hard as your one-hit hero but hits three times, meaning that +10 is effectively +30 for them. Conversely, +8% of the three-hit hero's smaller damage rate is not as large as it is for your one-hit hero - in other words, 10% is a bigger number for 100 than it is for 30. On a similar train of thought, critical hit chance items are better on your three-hit hero for the same reason plus damage items are better on them; the amount is effectively tripled.

Remember, nothing is set in stone in this game, and here's why: not absolutely every item that grants +10 damage or +5% critical hit chance is necessarily geared toward your three-hit hero. The Steel Balls, for example, grants +10 melee damage but also increases melee damage by 5% for ever enemy in the lane. Sure, when it comes to critical hit chance you'd have a far smaller chance with your one-hit hero (especially because they don't have any starting crit chance), but the damage would be far bigger when you do land a critical hit. Basically, when it comes to these kind of items, giving plus damage and critical hit chance items to your three-hit hero and percent damage items to your one-hit hero is the ideal way to do it, but if you want to (or have to) distribute items differently, you absolutely can. This goes for all items, not just the ones I mentioned. Use your best judgment and you'll do fine.

Having said all that, there is one type of item that I think absolutely belongs on a specific hero type: items that add hits to your melee combo should go on your one-hit hero. The reason being that even +1 hit is double your one-hit hero's damage output, but only adds a third of extra damage to your three-hit hero's melee combo. Likewise, this means that +2 is triple your one-hit hero's melee damage output but still not even double that of your three-hit hero. There certainly are reasons why you might want more hits on your three-hit hero - maybe you want to further take advantage of an on-hit effect or their crit chance - so you definitely could do things that way if you want to, but I would argue that putting them on your one-hit hero is absolutely the way to go.

If you were reading the spell section thinking "why on earth would I ever hit myself with Hot Potato / Charm," here's your answer: while I don't recommend it, you could hit yourself to take advantage of any "when Stamina falls to 0" items you may have. Again, I do not recommend doing this, since Stamina is an important part of survival and you're probably better off leaving items like these as life-savers, but if you're desperate or want to play risky, you can do this.

For the most part, every item explains itself pretty well, so I'm not going to go over every single one, but one item type needs clarification: spell cooldown reduction. It's easy to assume that the percent shown is how much time gets removed from the cooldown, but it's actually the opposite; how much time is added to it's recharge rate. Basically, rather than a %50 cooldown reduction item reducing the count total from 25 to 13, it increases the count up from 1 to 1.5 per second. If you want the exact formula, here you go: base cooldown/(1+sum of recharge rates %). For example, Doublestrike on Tam with no items is 25/(1+25%)=20. Don't think you can remember that formula or calculate it on the spot? Don't worry, there's no need to memorize it. You can play by ear and do perfectly fine - heck, that's exactly how I play.

One last note on items: 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. I once had a run where I had the Monk's Pants and the Static Socks on Tam, boosting critical hit chance by 20% on spell damage and dealing 10 lightning damage after each melee combo respectively, meaning that the "on spell damage" effect was always triggered because of the automatic lightning damage. This also means that if an item's damage is specified as a particular element, it will act accordingly, so for example, the aforementioned Static Sock's lightning damage will arc to nearby enemies and will be doubled if the targets hit are Soaked.

Heroes:

We've come to the game's name sake and my favorite part: the heroes. While there is no in-game explanation for the hero types, you can get a pretty decent idea of how heroes work from a bit of playing. You have three kinds of heroes, all lumped into their categories by their number of hits; one-hit heroes (henceforth referred to as "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 basically your rogues. Unfortunately, your options for these heroes are the most limited of the three categories, and you'll only have Tam for a long time. As mentioned in the items portion of this guide, x3s excel at dealing on-hit effects because they hit three times per melee combo. They all start with critical hit chance and extra spell recharge speed, and most of them start with Doublestrike as well. I believe the developer-intended purpose of x3s is to whittle down enemies with critical hits while breaking Stamina, but obviously that's not the only thing they can do. I have had runs where my main killer was my x3, so they certainly have the potential to be powerful.

x2 heroes are basically your support characters. Their abilities revolve around either spells or healing in some way. You'll noticed by looking at Metacles's melee damage ratio that x2s are not your primary melee-based damage dealers - though, that's not to say you should never melee attack with them. Much like with hitting over Stamina, if you know you can secure a kill with them, you can melee attack with them, but they're going to be easily outclassed in the melee department by x3 and x1 heroes. Generally, the only items you want to give them are spell-related ones, Floating Heads (Electrohead, Airhead, etc), maps, and the Master Key. You don't have to have these be their only items (or have all your spell-related items go solely to them), but this is the general idea.

x1 heroes are pulling double-duty. They're not only your tanks but also you're main melee attackers. Generally their abilities revolve around their melee attack; extra melee damage after a Backstab, melee burns target after spell-casting, and so on. They also 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. Don't forget, though, everyone uses spells in Has-Been Heroes, so don't let their melee prowess make you think that they aren't also spell-casters.

While you can build your party however you want, generally 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. I wouldn't say "only build your party this way," but if you're having a tough time, it might be worth giving this way a shot. 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; that's the true way to build a strong party.

Heroes In-Depth:

As you play through the game, you'll not only unlock new heroes, but eventually variants of your x2s and x1s as well. I'm going to speak about each hero more generally, though, since this guide is already gigantic enough. If you want more info, like starting health totals and melee damage, check out the Has-Been Heroes wiki linked at the end of this guide. If you'd rather not spoil yourself on what characters will appear or how to unlock them, go ahead and skip this section. Though, I advise you to at least read how unlocks work to save yourself from the headache.

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, simply reaching the eight area of the game, the Underworld, will unlock Nemesis, and every win will grant you access to the Hero Chest (unofficial title). Here's where your freedom of unlocks begins: what hero you unlock depends on who opens the Hero Chest. Effectively, opening the Hero Chest will reward you with a variant of that hero, so for example, opening the Hero Chest with Crux with 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, well, 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, which is highly recommended; however, 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. Because of this, you're better off waiting to open the Hero Chest with form D heroes until they're the only heroes who have not yet done so. I also recommend saving Nemesis and Thanatos for last as well, just so that you can have more variety with party composition between runs should you get stuck. You may now be wondering what happens when Edran opens the Hero Chest, and that's plain and simple: you unlock the true ending of the game.

Tam is your Rogue, appropriately enough. She's effectively a jack-of-all-trades, or more importantly, your crit machine for 99.9% of the game. She has the second highest spell recharge speed and starting critical hit chance of the x3s at 25% and 15% respectively - but you won't be seeing the one who has the highest recharge and critical hit chance for a long time, so until then, she has the highest. Tam is good at a lot, but she's not the best at anything, and her melee damage is not great; the second lowest of the x3s, in fact. Like I said, though, you won't have an x3 that outclasses her spell recharge and critical hit chance for quite a while, so this is where she excels. In addition, her third spell slot is a party-buff slot, which can be filled pretty earlier on.

Metacles is known as "the Monk," but I find to be an odd class title for him since I think of a Monk as having decent melee power along with spell power. Metacles, however, is entirely a mage, no melee power to be spoken of. Actually, his melee power goes down as you get further into his reincarnations. Instead, spells are his game, with his abilities revolving around spell power and recharge. His first form starts with Curse of Frost, which freezes the target upon being melee-attacked (counting Backstabs). Note that the target will not be frozen until your melee combo finishes, so you don't have to worry about freezing the target and then immediately unfreezing it with your next hit.

Crux, my favorite of the x1s, is effectively a spell-sword. Casting a spell will increase his melee damage. Beyond this, Crux is pretty basic. He's not very tanky and he's not much of a damage-dealer, but I find he's quite reliable, and his starting spells across his reincarnations are all pretty good. Hot Potato, his first form's starting spell, is great not only for removing Stamina but can also for killing suicide bomber enemies, since it also applies the burning status. If you're obsessed with matching spells to slots that have appropriate bonuses, you might like Crux a lot, since most of his spell slots have no bonuses, meaning you can use him as a kind of buffer for spells that don't match up to other heroes' slots.

Favian is entirely support, having the ability to heal the party, but being pretty fragile and not having much melee power. His first form's starting spell is Riptide, which may not seem like much right away, but it's truly excellent. Its quick recharge makes it very reliable for killing suicide bomber enemies and canceling enemy spells. It also doesn't have travel time, meaning it happens right when you cast it - again, great for spell-canceling. Of course, being water, it'll Soak the target, which, as we've already covered, is a great effect.

Florencio de la Torre, or simply just "the Wrestler," is the embodiment of the x1 role; good at both taking and dealing damage, but not the best at either. Unlike other heroes, whose reincarnations' special abilities all follow the same idea, Florencio's are kind of all over the place. His first form will have his melee instantly recharge after spell-casting; his second form gains 50 damage for his next melee combo after spell-casting; his third form gains 8 extra Souls on kill; and his forth form will Charm a random enemy if his melee attack deals a less than a certain amount of damage. Kedi, though officially known as "the Weretiger," is what I'd call "the Monk." If you're sick of x2s not being good for melee damage, Kedi is your solution. Her melee power is both high (for a x2) and consistent, making her perfectly capable of killing an enemy with around 100 health. She also heals whenever she lands a melee hit - even if it's blocked by Stamina - making her a good choice for carrying dark spells. Her starting spells are all damage-oriented, her melee power only goes up as you unlock her later forms, and she'll have fire immunity start with form B onward (form D even has poison immunity too).

Zakwas, ironically dubbed "the Bodyguard," is actually you're 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, which is bolstered by his ability to deal even more damage with his next melee combo after landing a Backstab. His first form's starting spell, Icicle, is not only great for dealing with high-Stamina targets (being a frost spell) but is also capable of killing suicide bomber enemies since it indeed deals damage.

Khar is a jolly little ruckus. He's pretty decent at everything; he's the tankiest of the x2s, his ability recharges spells on hit, and his melee damage potential exceeds Kedi's. Though, Khar's damage range is not as consistent as Kedi's, so she's the better choice if you want a melee-oriented x2. All forms of Khar start with poison immunity, which is great since all of his starting spells are Toxic spells. Later forms of Khar recharge his spells if his melee deals less than a certain amount of damage, meaning you'll have to hit a target's health to get any recharge. Note that all of Khar's spell-recharging abilities only apply to his own spells, not the whole party's, nor will any of his abilities activate from Backstabs.

Roho the Robot is your tank, quite literally. He has high starting health and Stamina and starts with immunity to fire and poison, but he's not too exciting in terms of melee damage and melee recharge speed. That said, his melee is interesting in that it works differently that other heroes'. Rather than running up to the target to attack, Roho moves forward a few steps and shoots the target instead. The benefit to this is that he can safely kill suicide bomber enemies and can shoot flying skull enemies down with his melee. The down side is that his range for Backstabs is supremely small. To make up for his lack of direct melee power, Roho's melee attack can burn the target for 4 seconds after casting, effectively adding 80 fire damage to his attack. This effect can also be extended in duration and spread to other targets with his wind spell, making him pretty decent at crowd control. Overall, Roho is great at stalling. He's your damage sponge if you need to take melee hits, and the knock-back from his wind spells can buy you breathing room. On top of that, two of his alternate forms have abilities that can also buy you breathing room after casting a spell. Nemesis, otherwise known as "the White Knight," is one of your few x3s. Unlike most all other heroes, Nemesis starts with two spells: Doublestrike and Final Stand. She's a great choice if you want more melee damage going around, since Final Stand doubles your damage output for your next melee combo, and she herself has a bit more melee power than Tam - at the cost of some spell recharge and crit chance. I like to have her in my party along side Kedi and/or Roho, since she can bolster Kedi's melee power to make her even more of a decent melee fighter and can make up for Roho's lackluster melee damage ratio.

Thanatos, otherwise known as "the Black Knight," is who you pick If you want to lean on your x3 for melee damage rather than your x1. Though his spell recharge and crit chance is the lowest of all x3s, his melee power is the highest. Like Nemesis, Thanatos also starts with two spells: Doublestrike and Dark Quickstrike, which instantly recharges your melee attack and makes your next one instantaneous as well, making him a great x3 to have in your party along side an x1 who's lacking in terms of melee recharge speed. While initially you'll need to use this spell sparingly, if equipped well, you can use this spell rather frequently. Favian's healing can also help you take advantage of Dark Quickstrike more frequently.

Edran is the most support-oriented x3, having a whopping 30% starting crit chance (twice that of Tam's) and 60% faster spell recharge speed, making him great at weakening enemies when breaking their Stamina and a fast magic user respectively. The trade off is that his melee power is the weakest of all x3s, he only starts with 100 health, and has no starting Stamina whatsoever. This means that he's really not suited to direct attacks and he's very fragile. Interestingly (and somewhat painfully), Edran does not start with Doublestrike, but rather Cleanse instead, allowing him to remove debuffs from a party member. This unfortunately means that you won't have Doublestrike for bolstering your damage or emergency Stamina-breaking unless you find it mid-run. The plus side is that you won't have to worry as much about Edran (or anyone else, for that matter) dying from fire or poison easily because of his low health, since you'll always be able to save him with Cleanse.

Enemies:

We've gone over the basics of enemies and combat in the Hits & Stamina portion of the guide, so let's expand on that and go over some enemies in particular.

First, I'd like to go over a few things about the barrier ability that many enemies have. This ability puts sort of bubble surrounding the enemy that prevents it from taking physical damage, meaning your melee combo and Backstabs will not remove any health or Stamina. Critical hits will not pierce them (which was my first assumption), however, your hits can still activate other on-hit effects such as Khar's spell recharging. 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.

While playing, you may quickly noticed that some skeletons have red bandannas on. This is a rather subtle thing that Has-Been Heroes does that you may not fully catch on to: enemy outfits are tied to their abilities. The game doesn't just spawn enemies with random hats sometimes just to spice up the visuals, those hats give away what they can do. Skeletons who wear bandannas (not just red, but any color) will recover from Stamina stun faster than others. Other examples are skeletons who're wrapped up in bandages, police tape, or what have you have a ton of health; and skeletons who wear hoods or jester hats are spell-casters, who can cast healing, a fire damage spell, poison, and freeze, depending on the type.

Enemy variants also have their abilities given away by their accessories too, so keep an eye out. For example, a skeleton who wears a rabbit hood on it's head will act just like ones who wear helmets, except it'll speed up when hit by a melee attack - this includes hits that are blocked by Stamina and Backstabs too, so be careful. 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.

Of course, you can also identify an enemy simply by what it's holding, such as Lancers who have longer reach to their melee attacks because of their lances; Orb Bearers, who will collect the souls that drop and heal themselves with them unless they're frozen (note: you will not get these souls back when they die); Shield Knights, who simply have 20 or so Stamina; and Ball and Chain skeletons, who will attempt to melee attack all three of your heroes at once when it reaches a certain point in the lane, unless otherwise stopped.

Let's go over a few higher-priority targets now: the first type you'll find is Assassins, who are usually hooded skeletons who carry daggers and hop along on one leg. They are highly powerful, so do not let them reach you at any cost. Unless you either use Divine Intervention or have boosted Roho's health by a ton, you will absolutely die. This goes the same for enemies, too, so Assassins are perfect targets for Charm. The next, though less important priority target is Summoners, who often have shaman-like headdresses. They'll attempt to summon fast but weak minions one at a time, so taking them out as soon as possible is generally a good idea, if nothing else but to put an end to their annoyance. Rarely, you may encounter a Leprechaun, who'll pop up directly in front of your heroes and run away from you. Effectively, they're piñatas; the more you damage them (or strike their Stamina), the more gold you get. They're not a threat in the slightest, so only focus on them if you need/want the gold.

Of all non-boss enemies you'll fight, I would consider Rally Captains the absolute highest priority. They are the skeletons who carry staves and have a circle on the ground around them. Enemies within that circle move faster, which is why you want to kill them as soon as possible; it's very easy for them to take away your breathing room. Though this ability is not immediately dangerous and the enemy itself is not very dangerous alone, taking it out as soon as possible will prevent you from being overwhelmed by the actually dangerous enemies. That said, obviously keep your heroes' safety a priority above anything unless you have a plan that involves taking damage. In other words, if there is a Rally Captain at the far end of the lane and a Shield Knight close to your heroes, take out the Shield Knight first.

Contrary to what some reviews of the game would have you believe, skeletons are not the only form of enemies you'll encounter in Has-Been Heroes. The first of these non-skeleton enemies you'll encounter is flowers (seriously, you will encounter them first, they're at the start of the prologue). They don't get much more complex than what you first experience; they're rooted to the ground, so they only move as fast as your heroes do, can't be blown back by wind spells, and they don't usually have any Stamina to speak of - and when they do, hitting over it does nothing, so it's basically irrelevant. The next type of non-skeleton enemy you'll find is zombies. Like flowers, they're pretty simple; they're just walls of beef that move slowly, not normally having any Stamina. Despite this, however, they can indeed be stunned by the Frost-Wind elemental combo. The main gimmick to zombies is that when they die, they don't actually die, but rather split in half, becoming even slower and having reduced health. Splitting in half acts as if it's a new enemy, so when this happens, your current combo will reset and any status effects will be removed.

Ghost, as we've covered in the spells section of the guide, can only be melee attacked when they're suffering from a status effect. If you attempt to attack them with an elementally-charged melee attack to apply your status effect, such as Roho's cannon when his on-spell-cast effect has activated, it will still miss and the effect will not be applied. This also means that Curse of Frost will not work on them either unless they are already vulnerable to melee strikes. Soak is the best way of dealing with them, since Soak doesn't go away until removed by another spell, and Poison is the second best since it has a longer duration than Burning. Frost can be good too, provided you can kill the ghost with one melee combo or re-freeze them before they can reach you. Fire will work, of course, but its duration is often short, so it's not super reliable. The only statues effect that will not make a ghost vulnerable is steam. Interestingly, if a ghost is already stunned but has no status effect applied, you can still reset their stun duration with a Backstab.

Another enemy I've already mentioned in other parts of this guide is Suicide Bombers. We've finally gotten to talking about them on their own, but there actually isn't a whole lot to say about them specifically. They're easily killed, but explode on death, which will either freeze or deal fire damage to all caught in the blast. There is a few mildly interesting things to note about this enemy type, though: if they reach the end of the lane and attack your hero, they explode like you'd expect, but also remove one Stamina from the hero in the same lane as it. Also, if you Charm a Suicide Bomber, it will not explode on other enemies, but rather melee them instead. Lastly, it is not possible to stun Suicide Bombers at all.

Speaking of weak enemies, eventually in your playthrough when you've unlocked a fair amount of the game, you'll start encountering Flying Skulls. They can't be melee attacked from the front, but you can Backstab them (probably an oversight on the dev's part?). As previous mentioned, though, Roho has no problem shooting them down with his cannon. Otherwise, you'll need to resort to spells to kill them. I've never actually been melee attacked by a Flying Skull before, so if they do anything special when they reach the end of the lane, I wouldn't know. I can't imagine they do anything noteworthy, though.

I'm not going to go in-depth about bosses since I don't know all the specifics about them myself and it'd just be easier to link Val Talonheart's video guides, but I have a couple of tips to give, and this first one can be a huge help during certain boss fights: spell-cancel. 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; this includes melee attacks to health or Stamina, Backstabs, Stamina-removing spells, any elemental effect other than Soak, and any spell that deals damage (including the damage-over-time effects from fire and poison). This is extremely helpful against bosses in particular, since their spells can really shift the tide of battle in their favor.

This second tip is something of a spoiler, so skip this paragraph if you haven't reached the end of Area 8 before. The final boss of the game, the Dark Great Ghoul, is a boss rush. As Val Talonheart will tell you, it's a better idea to kill the bosses summoned rather than smashing the statues like in every other Great Ghoul fight, but there are two exceptions that Val Talonheart does not mention: the Fleshbearer and the Cabal. The game doesn't recognize that the Fleshbearer has a second phase or that the Cabal is multiple entities, so progressing to the Fleshbearer's second phase or killing one of the Cabal's three main ghosts will act as if you've killed the boss despite that not being the case. If either of these bosses are summoned during your Dark Great Ghoul fight, ignore the boss and go for the statues; your odds are better that way.

For tips on specific bosses, check out Val Talonheart's videos on YouTube, linked on the side and at the end of this guide. His guides helped me get 100% completion.

DLC:

I've mostly avoided talking about the expansion content before now because you need a fair amount of progress in the main game to unlock anything from it, but I figured this guide wouldn't be complete without at least giving it a mention. "DLC" is a bit of a misnomer, as it's 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. Though, that makes them sound more similar than they actually are; in one challenge, you're killing every enemy with Crux so that his melee power exponentially increases high enough to kill an enemy at the end who has an immense amount of health, while another simply starts you off with an item that vastly lowers the cost of the Soul Orbs but also prevents spells from recharging normally. Challenge Mode gives you a good taste of the DLC items and just how crazy they can be. 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. I'll talk about the Young Heroes more in a bit.

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. For example, Young Favian's portal is in the desert, so to enter, you must reach the desert with Young Tam, Young Favian, and a Young x1 and find the portal somewhere on the road. 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. Though, usually if you make it to the Sky Temple, you should be well-off enough that you don't need to worry about visiting every spot within, especially because of how big some can be. At the end of the area awaits a special, amplified "Hell" variant of one of the main game's bosses - which is another reason why you'll want to visit every spot you can leading up to the Sky Temple. Defeating a Hell boss will reward you with a weapon for the Young Hero who granted access to this Sky Temple (so in the above example, you'd get a weapon for Favian) and some DLC items and spells. If you're like me and decide to try to unlock some DLC content before completing the main game, it can be worth the effort. The few DLC items and spells I have as of writing this guide - Arcane Typhoon in particular - have helped me out a ton.

If you check the info chart linked at the bottom of this guide, you'll notice that Young Favian and Young Khar's portals are in the same area (area 4), which might annoy you when you realize that you can't have both in your party at once. So you have a 50-50 shot of getting the right portal and you have to restart your run if you get the wrong one, right? This is not actually the case; the game will automatically choose the proper area if you have either hero in your party. This goes for Young Zakwas and Young Kedi too, so you don't have to have both in your party at once just in case you get the wrong portal.

The new items and spells bring with them new status effects: Vital Drain and Bruising. Vital Drain will leech 4% of the target's health away and give 20% of that health leeched to the hero who activated the effect. Again, I'll tell you that remembering those exact percentages and calculating them on the spot is not necessary, just remember Vital Drain = damage + healing. Note that hits to Stamina will not activate Vital Drain, so you must be melee attacking health directly to have a chance. Just like with any "on hit" effect, you'd get more mileage out of such items with your x3, but you don't have to. That said, Vital Drain is excellent on Thanatos, since it the healing effect will allow you to cast Dark Quickstrike more.

Bruising will deal physical damage equal to your current combo (the number that ticks up as you damage an enemy) on the target five times. This means that if your combo is 5 when the Bruising deals damage, it'll deal 5 damage. This is particularly good during boss fights, where it's easy to rack up a high combo. Bruising damage will not tick up the combo count, so it's up to you to make the Bruising damage increase and keep it going. This definitely has the capacity to pay off, but I wouldn't say it's worth focusing on all that much. Keep it in mind, but don't prioritize it unless you're certain it'll pay off.

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. I'll talk more about this mode in a bit.

Young Heroes:

I'll reiterate for anyone who may be skimming this looking for the answer to the question "how do I unlock more Young Hero weapons?" Young Hero weapons are unlocked by defeating Hell bosses at the end of the Sky Temple area, found by entering portals with a team of Young Heroes. 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, contrary to my first assumption, 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 Tam's first weapon makes her essentially the same Tam as always, but better. She still starts with Doublestrike and 25% faster spell recharge speed like her non-Young variant, but her melee damage is up to par with Nemesis's, and she has an extra +5% crit chance, putting her at 20% total, and starts with a 5% chance to dodge attacks. Her second weapon increases her melee damage, spell recharge speed, and dodge chance, but reduces her crit chance and starts her off with Poisoned Boomerang instead of Doublestrike (a change I consider a drawback, for no reason other than not having Doublestrike). She'll also receive +20% spell damage, making this weapon clearly magic-oriented in addition to increased melee power. Her third weapon boosts her melee damage to a whooping max of 100, but with a minimum as low as 10 (lower than even Edran's lowest). Her crit chance goes back up some, but her spell recharge speed goes down, and she will start with Thief's Blessing. Her last weapon will round her stats back out, giving her 30-80 damage per hit, 25% crit chance, and 15% dodge chance, while also granting her 40% faster melee recharge. Basically, your weapon options are balance, spell power, melee power, and speed.

Young Metacles is none too different than his non-Young version, focusing on spell recharge speed and spell damage, but also having decent melee power comparatively which only gets better as you advance through his weapons. The main thing that separates this version of Metacles from his non-Young versions is that his melee combo makes the target take more damage from the next spell they're hit with. For his first three weapons, this ability takes the form of a non-stacking bonus, but his final weapon will make the target take 10% more damage until they die, which can stack. In all forms, this ability makes Metacles a bit more support-oriented, since the whole party will be benefiting from his spell damage-increasing effect.

Young Crux takes Crux from being a sort of spell-sword to being a melee powerhouse, but really only when you take advantage of his abilities. His first weapon's ability can be difficult to take advantage of, though, since it only activates if his melee hit (note: hit, not combo) deals more than 500 damage, which can only be done once he's received an item or two to boost his melee damage and then use his starting spell to double his melee damage at the cost of 1 Stamina - and then you need to actually land the damage and get the 50% chance to trigger. If you can manage all that, he'll get +1 hit for his next melee combo. Honestly, that power is needlessly convoluted for what you get with it, and I'm not too fond of losing 1 Stamina from casting his starting spell on himself either; I prefer using the spell to make an enemy lost 1 Stamina instead. Thankfully, his other weapon's abilities are less convoluted. His second weapon will give him +15% crit chance whenever his melee hit deals less than 500 damage. His third weapon will give him +1 hit after his melee combo until he casts a spell, which unfortunately does not stack. Note that the "until casting a spell" part is so that you can reset his hits back to 1 for the purposes of breaking Stamina. His forth weapon doubles the melee damage bonuses granted by spells and items on him, but prevents him from landing critical hits. Unfortunately this only applies to plus damage increases, not percent-based ones.

Young Favian is effectively an amplified version of his non-Young counterpart. He's still very much a healer, keeping the same group health regeneration buff, and he also has a 10% group spell recharge speed bonus on his first two weapons and a 30% faster melee recharge bonus after spell casting with his last two weapons. Furthermore, his first and fourth weapons give him a starting spell that heals the party even more, his second weapon starts with Wet Potato (a very good spell to start with), and his third weapon starts with a spell that deals 20 water damage to all enemies who enter its area of effect and slows them by 80%. Much like Young Metacles, Young Favian's melee power only gets better as you advance through his weapons, and even reaches a level of melee competence comparable to Kedi.

Young Florencio is also quite similar to his non-Young counterpart, having high melee damage output without the need for his abilities to activate first. Unfortunately, though, I'd hesitate to call him an amplified version of his non-Young self, since his abilities are rather underwhelming. For most of his weapons, he simply deals additional lightning damage with his Backstabs, but with his second weapon, Backstabs will increase his melee recharge speed by 20% until his next melee attack - which isn't great, considering his second weapon starts him off with 20% faster melee recharge speed, as opposed to the 50% his other weapons have. Of course, the lightning damage is doubled on soaked targets and arcs like you'd expect, so that trait can be rather fun, but if you're picking Young Florencio, it's for his melee power or starting spells.

Young Kedi is, once again, more of what you expect from the hero but better. 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. At her strongest, she can deal 100-150 damage per hit, or 150-200 when her ability activates, which is fantastic. Her third weapon changes the on kill effect to doubling her health regeneration for 5 seconds, which can be great if you want her as a dark spell caster, and her fourth weapon grants her poison immunity in addition to her usual fire immunity, much like her non-Young version's fourth form. My only complaint with Young Kedi is that her first and fourth starting spells aren't that great, dealing a kind-of-okay amount of fire damage to half the target lane.

Young Zakwas loses some of his glass cannon power in favor of becoming more of a support character. He's the slowest of the Young x1s (aside from Young Florencio's second weapon), but starts with increased spell recharge speed. True to his title of "the Bodyguard," his first weapon grants a -30% damage taken buff to the whole party after his melee combo, and his second grants a constant -20% damage taken buff to the whole party. His third weapon gives the party a passive effect that will heal 25 health every 5 seconds for 10 seconds (or 50 health total) after getting hit, and his fourth weapon gives him a 2% chance to recover 1 Stamina from critical hits and Vital Drains. Overall, Young Zakwas is a solid support x1 that doesn't sacrifice much in the way of melee power or crowd control in starting spells, which makes him great to pair with Young Favian.

Young Khar, much like Young Metacles, extends his special ability beyond himself to help the whole group. Specifically, his on hit spell recharging will now recharge anyone's spells rather than his own, and with his third and fourth weapons, he will recharge all of your spells on hit. In addition, Young Khar starts with Vital Drain chance; 5% on his first two weapons and 10% on his last two. Otherwise, he's quite the same as always: decent but wide melee damage range, toxic spells, and poison immunity.

Young Roho, fittingly for a robot, is more or less exactly the same as his non-Young versions. His ability is exactly the same as before: spell casting adds an element to his next melee attack. For his first weapon, this will be 20 wind damage. For his second, this will be 40 lightning damage. His third weapon will Bruise the target for 3 seconds with his next melee after spell casting, and his fourth weapon will deal 100 physical spell damage instead. He doesn't come with any extra abilities like Khar or Zakwas do beyond his usual fire and poison immunity and unusual melee mechanics, so if you're already fond of him, you'll still enjoy his Young incarnation. I'm not much fond of Roho myself, but I enjoy Young Roho's first starting spell quite a bit, being a wind spell that bounces between multiple targets.

Epic Quest:

You thought the main game was hard? You think Hell bosses sound bad? You haven't seen the pinnacle of difficulty in Has-Been Heroes; Epic Quest mode. As previously mentioned, you'll play as the heroes from Trine in this mode, and that's what makes it so difficult. Frankly put, they suck. In stark contrast to every other hero included in the expansion, 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), putting you at a very big disadvantage right off the bat. If you were hoping you'd be summoning boxes and zipping around with a grappling hook, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. 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.

It took me 25 attempts to beat Epic Quest mode, many of which ended within the first couple of areas due to your starting conditions, but the mode definitely has its own unique appeal beyond the challenge, so it's worth buckling down to get it done, if only just for one win. Don't fret dying earlier on in a run; it's pretty inevitable.

Pontius takes the role of your x3, but isn't built like a standard x3. He's the beefiest of the three, starting with 300 health, and his melee deals anywhere from 10 to 125 damage per hit (for reference, Tam hits for 25-35 damage per hit). When his health is reduced to below 50%, his melee will deal double damage until the end of the battle; although this ability can really pay off, it's not a good idea to try to trigger it early on in your run. Similar to Crux, Pontius only has one spell slot bonus, which is in his fourth slot: buffs are reapplied after use. A big down side to Pontius is that he starts with a 25% reduction to his melee recharge speed, which is a pretty big hindrance. Though his 10 to 125 damage per hit might sound unreliable, remember that this range is used three times per combo, meaning you may get 10 on one hit, but the next two hits could be 100 each. Granted, that doesn't make it that much more reliable - you certainly could get three 10s in a row - but it's not as bad as it may sound.

Amadeus is the x2 of this trio, and he certainly fits the role. He has 80 health and deals 20-40 damage per melee hit. In addition, his melee hits will slow the target by 20% for 5 seconds, which can stack. He also has a 5% chance of granting the party +1 hit to their next melee combos, and a 50% chance of getting a wind spell from any spell vendor (an effect I'm not usually fond of). Amadeus's spell slots are as follows: wind spells knock targets further back, spells forming puddles will create an additional puddle, prolongs freeze duration, poison damage is dealt twice as often, and buffs are reapplied after use.

Last, we have Zoya, who is your x1 - though, she's also built a bit like an x3 as well. Her main weapon is a bow, meaning her "melee" is just like Roho's; ranged, meaning she can take care of Suicide Bombers and Flying Skulls easily, but has basically no Backstab range. She has 100 health and deals 100-160 damage per melee hit, and she starts with 10% crit chance and a 10% chance to dodge attacks. In addition, she has a 10% chance to add 10 frost damage to her next melee after attacking, and a 50% chance of getting frost spells from spell vendors. Zoya has three spell slot bonuses: projectile spells will hit an additional random target when place in slow 2 or 4, and slot 5 will apply buffs to your whole party when used on one of your heroes. Unlike normal x1s, Zoya does not start with faster melee recharge speed - again, this is a big hindrance.

Generally you'll want to break Stamina with Zoya and Amadeus and attack with Pontius, but this can definitely change depending on the situation, such as whose melee is currently recharged and if Zoya has her frost damage ready. Items can also be a factor in this; in my successful run I had some plus hit items on Zoya, so when she had the hits, I'd attack with her instead of Ponius. Speaking of items, I would absolutely recommend giving most or all of your crit chance items to Zoya, not just to build on what she has, but because she will be attacking Stamina more than Pontius and she's guarenteed to do at least 200 damage when she lands a crit, whereas Pontius may end up only dealing around 20 damage with his crits.

Reddit user Ridry helped me out with gathering information on this mode, and his suggestion is to buy your first two spells with Amadeus, taking advantage of his 50% chance for wind spells to get something good in his first spell slot. Ridry also suggests buying fire and poison spells with either Amadeus or Zoya unless you pick up immunity during your run, since having more wind/frost spells is better than taking a risk with burning/poisoning your own heroes. While I certainly agree with this thought and fire and poison are a genuine threat, I'd argue that whether or not you should avoid fire and poison without immunity is down to your own decision; if you use them with caution and wait for the status effects to run their course before melee attacking, they're not much of a danger to yourself. Lastly, water is particularly good if you get a wind spell in Amadeus's first spell slot, since the water-frost elemental combo is immensely helpful with the extended wind knockback.

Conclusion:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it might even seem like Has-Been Heroes is overwhelmingly complex, but it's actually rather simple in execution. Has-Been Heroes is not a game about min-maxing and playing absolutely perfectly, but rather a game about knowing what you're doing and making the best out of the hand you've been dealt. The way unlocks work is meant to give you time to learn everything you have before introducing new concepts, so focus what is currently available to you and how it all interacts and try to learn something new on each run. Do not stress how many losses you have or how long you've been stuck on something; as long as you're still enjoying the game and interested in getting better, you're doing fine. Don't give up.

Some screenshots were capture in the Switch's Handheld mode and thus may not represent the quality of the game's graphics while Docked or on other platforms.

Other screenshots were taken from Frozenbyte's official press kit: http://press.frozenbyte.com/sheet.php?p=Has-Been_Heroes

Expansion content chart via Reddit (which itself was taken from Frozenbyte's official Twitter; I couldn't find the original Tweet, sorry, Frozenbyte): https://www.reddit.com/r/hasbeenheroes/comments/7d6jh8/corrected_version_of_expansion_details_via_twitter/

Has-Been Heroes Wiki: https://hasbeenheroes.gamepedia.com/Has-Been_Heroes_Wiki

Val Talonheart's boss guides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ul_9CHaRI&list=PLY8NJBQJMuxQm_kgZOMx_F-sNMfPi9RMl

Big thanks to Ella from Frozenbyte and /u/Ridry from Reddit, who helped me with info on the expansion content.