The Abyssal Expedition

This is the ultimate guide to the new AFK Arena game mode, The Abyssal Expedition, where you join with your Guild friends to fight against the aggression of Gouldos. The guide is written and shared by AFKArty.

Entering The Abyssal Expedition

• You will first need to opt into the event. Abyssal Expedition can be found in the Dark Forest tab in the bottom left, as pictured below.
• You must be over stage 15-40 to participate.
• This event is Cooperative, not Competitive like past events.
• It lasts for 24 days, and as far as we can tell is intended to remain a permanent repeating feature.

Note: The event features 70 Players, the same as a max level guild. Players in the same guild who enroll will always be together and vacancies will include those from other guilds until a number.
You can participate even if not in a guild, you will just be randomly allocated to a “militia”

This event also uses martial rating for hero levels, which is the leveling system for HoE.

Expedition Gameplay

Starting Out

You’re placed on a massive map along with all 70 players and are asked to add a selection of 10 heroes to your pool.

I heavily suggest choosing two teams of heroes to use, these heroes will be removed and energy will be set to 0 on them, heroes can also be added as you increase your title. (This was not how it seemed originally)

Overall Gameplay

As you’re on the map you are allowed to attack any adjacent camps, each of these camps has varying enemy heroes and tiers. A list of the possible camps will be linked further below. Camps are scaled to a player’s power, and it is unknown if camps continue to scale as a player grows.

Attacking a camp will use up “food”, which is basically a stamina resource. Each attack uses a total of 12 food per hero. However each fight has rewards which give food back, the tasks are:

• Defeat an opponent.
• Defeat enemies within 30 seconds.
• Do Not Lose Any Heroes in Battle.

Food is regenerated at a rate of 4 food per hour, and at the moment there is no known cap for food.

When failing a fight, you have the option to re-battle and pay food again, with enemies energy and health staying the same as it was when the previous battle ended, you also cannot use the same heroes that lost.

There is a max amount of territory (camps) you can occupy.

The number of camps will go up as your title grows. You are also able to abandon territories in order to claim stronger ones. This works by clicking “abandon”, and after 2 minutes they will revert back to their original state until then you can undo this option.

Note: There is what seems to be a bug on the test server where abandoning a camp, leaving the event tab, and going back, will cancel the timer and instantly abandon the slot.

There is no downside to owning territory besides the possibility of needing to abandon it in the future and I suggest occupying whenever possible.

Camps and Relics

All camps produce a type of resource only available for the event called “Blessed Essence” which is used to level unique traits inside the event.

There will sometimes be an option on certain camps to “Garrison” a hero. This just takes any hero from your overall hero inventory (not selected heroes) and places them inside the camp similar to a bounty board hero, this will generate you more essence than a normal camp.

Essence is used to unlocking “relics”, which are moderate but unique stat boosts to heroes underneath an “elder tree” like structure.

A strategy section further on in the guide will dive deeper into this.

All camps naturally drop relics after a period of time as well, the level of relic dropped depends on the camp and the drop timers seem to be around 12 hours for the first level.

In order to unlock the special effect shown in each branch, you first need all the relics of the branch, then it automatically unlocks similar to the elder tree with leveling.

You can achieve level 2 Relics through Camps, Essence, or combining different lower Relic pieces.

Titles

This are where the rewards and progress come in.

Titles grant you rewards upon obtaining them and give you additional traits, these benefits include extra camps available to be owned, heroes you can use, and max relic level.

There are quests that are achieved through raw gameplay for the increasing of one’s title.

Press + for more details of each title – Credits to xSkye#4210

Miscellaneous Information

In the same tab as Titles, a “Settlements” tab shows you where all of your units are settled and the ordering they were settled in, along with coordinates.

Another tab is called “Militia”, which is the name of the combined group of multiple guilds. Interestingly, the first player to reach Duke can edit the name and icon of it, it’s unsure if others get this power as well.

Map random debuffs

Credits to xSkye#4210

Abyssal Expedition Rewards

The event rewards players immediately upon gaining a new title, and all rewards are obtainable without spending any money as there are no possible purchasables with abysmal exploration

There are no borders, skins, or other goodies. This seems to be a first time testing of a large scale feature. The rewards are however worth quite a bit, although it’s unsure how they scale in relation to other events that take less time to complete.

Progression

As you move through the event you’ll fight stronger and stronger camps. These are fightable due to the obtained relics. Some of the fights may have unique restrictions, such as a debuff to heroes of a specific faction.

City-level camps fights will also require multiple teams, similar to boss battles from chapters 31 and above in campaign, and as a result will take up lots of food. (keep in mind before death you can pause and restart just like in the Labyrinth.)

Eventually you may even reach large stages like the one pictured on the right. This is classified as a “Territory boss.”  It is unclear if the “boss” has attributes similar to those in the Solar Plane. There is a possibility these fights happen with allies as well!

The end goal is to fight Gouldos, the Lovecraftian looking creature pictured in the spoilers.

It’s unclear exactly how we get to this boss but through some data mining we can assume you must be at least Marquis in the title and move towards the right side of the map. The boss also has multiple control type abilities similar to a permanent Mehira charm, which only has one counter, which I’ll move into.

New Stats

There are four new stats added with this feature!

• Critical Amplification, or CA as it’s labeled, is a stat that can boost the overall damage from a critical strike. This stat is countered by another new stat.
• Crit Resistance, or CR. CR doesn’t remove the critical strike from happening, only reduces the damage dealt (Amplified or Reduced to a maximum of 75%)
• Insight (IS) is a stat based around confirming crowd control abilities, which has an inverse relationship with Tenacity (TY)
• Tenacity (TY), the stat-based around resisting crowd control abilities. These stats have a relationship similar to dodge vs accuracy. For more info refer back to Skye’s Spreadsheet.

These stats can be found on relics and some bonuses from the trees, but so far are only obtainable in the event and are not added onto other existing gear.

Full Stat List in Abyssal Expedition

Credits to xSkye#4210

Abyssal Expedition Strategy

As a start I suggest moving towards all available “Village” Tier 1 camps, and possibly tier 2 if you can manage to beat them. The more you attack early on and the area you control + garrison will equal more essence. Connecting with allies also allows you to attack any neighbouring area they are occupying and allows for better map travel.

Many players fear this being a fully coordinated guild event, this is not! Communication helps speed up the process but is not necessary to a dedicated player. So far there are no known benefits to linking up with an ally besides map travel.

Past this I would invest into the tree of your carries. It’s unclear how necessary Tenacity is as a whole so my general suggestion would be to prioritize Carries > Supports (Tenacity) > Tanks.

As hero selection I would suggest more bursty comps to begin with for the extra food gained back, and pivot into a stall based Mehira style comp if available to take down larger camp early.

Focus primarily on completing title quests and gaining as much essence as possible while moving towards the middle and right side of the map which contains stronger enemies.

The event is long term, and will not finish within a few days. Once more information is out I will add it to this document. If there are any questions please ask me and I’ll try to figure out the answer if I do not already know it. Thanks to you for your time and good luck on the event! For any questions, feel free to comment below!

Relics List

Credits to xSkye#4210

Old Guide

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Old Guide Section

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You can easily get access to this mode via the Dark Forest tab of the game.

The Abyssal Expedition

In the Abyssal Expedition, players will face a lot of evil enemies trying to occupy the Estrilda. And you have to defeat them.

You will start the journey on a huge map that requires thorough resource cooperation in order to defeat the enemies.

There are tons of great rewards await the adventurers in the expedition!

Phase I: Registration

Registration rules:

1. The first 24 hours of the registration phase are reserved for preregistration. During that time, players belonging to a Guild may preregister for the event. After the preregistration period ends, Guild Members who preregistered together will be placed in the same expedition.
2. Players who do not have a Guild or who did not preregister during the preregistration Period, but register during the remaining registration phase, will be randomly allocated into expeditions.
3. Players who missed the registration phase will not be able to enter the expedition at the time of this event.
4. Guilds with fewer than 70 participating members will be matched with other guilds to enter the event.

Phase II: Start of the Expedition

Event rules:

Territorial Expansion

Expand your territory by defeating enemy troops, occupying tiles and gathering tile resources.

1. You and your companions will be scattered randomly on the coastal edge of the map. To occupy a tile, you will need to defeat the enemy guards.
2. Once you occupy the tile, you can choose to cultivate it, increasing the resource output; or abandon it.
3. The occupied tiles must be adjacent to existing territory. If your territory borders your companions’ tiles, you can share the territory.
4. There are different tiers of settlements. The higher the tier, the more challenging the guards, and the richer the resources they produce.

Hero Growth

After entering the expedition, your heroes will be leveled according to the PVP Ranking. You can strengthen your heroes using the Blessed Relics system.

1. Blessed Relics are divided into 5 Classes: Support, Mage, Warrior, Tank and Ranger. Each class has 6 slots, and wearing a Blessed Relic will upgrade all heroes of the class.
2. The occupied settlement will continuously produce Blessed Relics. The higher the settlement’s level, the stronger the Relics produced.
3. Blessed Relics will be bound to a player after equipping them. When all slots of Blessed Relics are full, player can increase the Blessing level.

Boss Fight

There are two types of bosses in this event:

1. Territory Boss – after defeating this Boss, you and the companions can move to the area where the high-tier settlement is located.
2. World Boss – defeating this Boss will grant you titles and generous rewards (please refer to this link for the content of the rewards).

Damage dealt to all Bosses is collective, you can defeat a Boss with a help from your team.

Rewards

Defeat the enemies, complete different tasks, get ranked up, and earn the rewards!

There are a lot of valuable rewards such as the Faction Scrolls, Emblem Choice Chests, Stargazer Cards, Hero Scrolls, Elite Hero Shards, etc. can be obtained via the event.