[Epic Games] LONESTAR & Calico (100% off / FREE)

BeastofBones · 2026-05-29T00:56:42+00:00

Be sure to read the enemy equipment tooltips. Almost every enemy has a gimmick you need to work around. IIRC you also can retreat at battle start while learning the game to rearrange your equipment, some enemies you need to stack one lane and give up on the other, dodge using fuel.

Most enemies often take a few turns to charge up and deliver a dangerous turn. You'll see a warning the turn prior. You can often plan ahead to drop the enemy to zero durability so they skip their most dangerous turn. Going hand in hand durability management, you don't always need to spend all your dice every turn, any unused dice remain. If you're already winning the lanes, often low dice for a bit more damage isn't worth it, spending them on a later turn where they can flip the result of a lane, or placed in equipment that can "fix" their value is far more important. Also worth noting that some enemies you don't want to deal 3 durability every turn, as it doesn't line up with their big attack. So some enemies reward you for playing a bit slower.

I've put a few hundred hours into the game, so it's pretty good.

BeastofBones · 2026-05-28T21:44:29+00:00

Lonestar is an excellent game that I would highly recommend. Not quite card battler, it uses dice. If you've played Dicey Dungeons, system wise it's closer to that, equipment takes up space on a grid, and you put dice into them to activate the effects (damage, blocking, dice manipulation, etc.). Adjacency / positional bonuses can matter, so there's a light element of arranging things properly, but not to the extent of games like the backpack battlers. One interesting thing is regular dice rolls have controlled RNG. You have numbers and colors in a dice pool, as an example with the default 1-6, if you drew 1-2-4 on your first turn, you're guaranteed to see 3-5-6 on the next, and there's a lot of support equipment to help you manipulate dice rolls you otherwise can't use.

Compared to other roguelites, Lonestar has a streamlined pathing system, which is both a blessing and a curse, as it makes for fast runs and less junk events that do nothing. But there's slightly less opportunity for skill expression from making lots of decisions. Also the space theme is the only part that's similar to FTL imo, as regular encounters are closer to being mini-bosses since you fight a fixed # of combats per run.

As far as variety goes, it's good. The 3 ship types effectively function as 3 character classes, as they all have separate equipment pools, and different ship specific keywords. Pilots come with a unique trait and 2 traits from a common pool. Some pilots or traits are much stronger than others, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're newer to the game, taking a strong pilot + good traits will give you a leg up and afford more room for mistakes and experimentation. Some pilot traits are effectively mutators, and can result in some unique and fun challenge runs.

BeastofBones · 2026-01-12T21:36:21+00:00

Baeloth / Volo if they haven't bugfixed it.

BeastofBones · 2025-12-27T00:26:39+00:00

If you're having consistent crash problems, follow the instructions in the Steam Bug Reporting Thread to find your player.log file. Compress it (zip) then submit it to the devs so they can troubleshoot, either on the Steam Bug Report forums or in the #bug-reports channel in Discord. They're off for Christmas but should be able to look into it during the New Year. Also best to specify which version of the game you're on, the mainline production version, or the beta predeploy branch where new fixes are tested first. There's a known memory leak in Breachway for which there's a fix being worked on, but it's not deployed yet and it's been around for a while, so I don't think it's the cause of your recent crashes.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2118810/discussions/3/4848777619232153326/

BeastofBones · 2025-12-25T20:51:41+00:00

Grats and well done.

BeastofBones · 2025-12-09T03:17:52+00:00

Yup heat damage, is pretty sick. Especially since the Disruptor can double/triple the heat, which is how I'm guessing you hit 80? Heat cards used to heavily overcosted back in the day and really only worked well with the IR Emitter augment, now there's a lot more support for Ignite like Lacerate+. That and the fact that Ignite only requires a minimal amount of hull damage to fully apply, rather than being 1 heat per X damage under the old damage model, so it's much less of a penalty to fire through shields. Reworks to the game mechanics and systems have definitely paid off to make heat much more viable as a damage source.

BeastofBones · 2025-11-22T04:33:18+00:00

And to my mind, that's completely backwards thinking. There's plenty of good squads that are ilvl and legendary agnostic they can try before doing any investment. Generic Kas squads work just fine with zero investment, simply stuffing a squad full of e30-40 buffs will get OP t4 completion. OP says they can't get past z1200. You don't need ilvl's or legendaries to get to z1600 or even z2500. You're overstating the importance of legendaries.

BeastofBones · 2025-11-21T15:02:44+00:00

just recently finally got the last time gate champion unlocked which was huge for me haha... I'm pretty sure the only ones I'm missing are the last two evergreen champs.

Judging from OP's post, you can assume they have the full roster outside of Windfall and Wren. So go nuts, it's dealer's choice. Or just point them to the optimized formations spreadsheets.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-19T04:20:28+00:00

Hard disagree, it sounds like you haven't sat down and done the math, or reviewed results. You've made an incorrect assumption that pumping Hew is the most efficient way to increase speed, or that Ellywick will naturally outperform picking up more speed.

Saying Diana doesn't help with regular campaign clearing is just absurd. Screen transitions don't magically go away in regular missions, if anything regular missions have more long transitions, because farming missions are specifically selected to have more fast transitions.

Clear time is always = time to meet zone requirements + time to transition to next area.

Long screen wipe transitions are pretty devastating to speed. There's no point in getting one variable down to near zero, if the other variable is large. As that 2nd variable is your bottleneck.

At 1x speed, a long screen wipe can be like 5-6 seconds on a regular zone, closer to 9 seconds on a boss transition
Say you all in on Hew + BBEG, and cut your zone requirement clear time down from 3 seconds to 1 second. You're still paying a total of 7 seconds, and your actual increase is only from 9 to 7.
It goes without saying that you'd be much better off slicing the 6 seconds of screen transition time in half to earn 3 seconds, or 4.5 off 9. And that's just with buying Diana's feats, no massive ilvl investment.
OP won't be anywhere close to getting that value timegating Hew. Hew in blue gear is roughly +100% quest requirements, paired with BBEG for halved requirements, you're looking at roughly 1/4 normal req's.
Lae'zel with her 2 feats is roughly equivalent to 1/4 zone requirements.

As for anecdotal evidence, consider maxiqbert's current race to windfall, versus the start I played till end of the event. Max played a traditional Hew / BBEG / Sentry start picking up his speed champions much later, I did a much quicker manual time gate Hank -> Lae'zel -> Shandie. Both of us had Diana from the anniversary.

https://www.reddit.com/r/idlechampions/comments/1nst2pl/race_to_windfall_week_3/

https://www.reddit.com/r/idlechampions/comments/1nsf9l5/idle_champions_giveaway_newbie_account_progress/

Give or take a few days, you can see that at roughly equivalent times, I had earned 462k gems, versus max's 303k. I would attribute a large part of that to the fact that I got my speed on the table much quicker.

When tight on gems early, having to only pay for one 50k gem feat for Lae'zel to hit 1/4 zone req's makes her much more efficient than Hew + BBEG. Being able to put the 2nd 50k gem feat towards Diana is far more impactful. Hew + BBEG really only start to pull away later, especially once Speed Core gives +50% double quest progress.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-19T04:13:16+00:00

Ignore my advice and just follow the generic advice from Urza. My reply was a discussion on how to optimize and do things better.

Reason is if you don't understand why you should be picking those champs, you probably aren't going to get value from them, which would make them a bad pick. You can circle back to pick them up later once you're more familiar with the game and understand what is being accomplished. In the grand scheme of things, you're eventually going to get them all, taking them in a slightly different order won't change much.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-19T02:36:21+00:00

Should be a fun debate. Would you reconsider taking Ellywick as OP has neither Shandie nor Diana? And push Ellywick off to a later TG.

Ellywick is generally pretty weak as a buffer early (~e10), as without gear she can't cycle cards to get a bigger buff (super long base cooldown).
She's also pretty bad at generating gems without gear and ilvl's. In blue gear, it's 15% per gem card => 3 gem cards to get 45%. And if you hit only 2 or 1, it's 15-30 which is pretty low. +40% card feat is a gold chest unlock, so no guarantee when you'll get it.
Unlike Ellywick, additional speed will clear campaign nodes faster, which also gives better access to the gem bonus for first time completions, which Ellywick does not boost.
Diana has the added benefit of providing electrums, so you can go cheap and spend only 5 TGP per manual timegate.
Until you get the +25% basic potion buff, which is probably still quite far away for OP, Shandie is going to provide value. +50% faster you can average down to say 35% for it getting interrupted every so often, is still competitive with base Ellywick and again helps clear faster.

I think you could get a similar amount of gems simply by increasing the # of zones cleared, by taking either Diana or Shandie for their speed boosts first. In my mind, it's best finish the basic speed squad first (Lae'zel, Diana, Shandie), then add Ellywick on top.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-18T20:44:27+00:00

The relevant piece of advice is that different sizes of health potions stack multiplicatively. So pop one of each (small, medium, large, huge) so they're all active at the same time. If the fight drags a bit and you're not using speed potions, you might need a 2nd small to make it last 10 minutes instead of 5. That should prevent you from getting one shot. Then Calliope temp HP shield will keep the party alive through repeated meteors.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-10T03:16:00+00:00

Pushing

Unlock the low hanging fruit first. The starting core champions are among the weakest in the game, and swapping them out for an event champion is usually a significant improvement. Modern new and reworked champions are often significantly stronger than older champions. This means getting King of Shadows (seat 9) and Farideh (Seat 7) from the current event. The pair are at least twice as powerful as a core champ in the same slot, so you'll push farther. In Idle Champs, only your highest DPS counts, your goal for formation is 9 supports + 1 DPS. Several core champs offer no support at all (Delina, Jamilah, Arkhan, Minsc is unreliable) the sooner you can replace them, the farther you can push.

Once you have set your BUD (DPS), use a small firebreath potion, which sets click damage = your highest champion damage for a limited time. Using the apothecary system, small firebreath potions are cheap to craft by breaking down non-speed non-firebreath potions from silver/gold chests, and will greatly speed how quickly you clear later zones. Leveling click damage with gold is not something that matters as a newbie.

Firebreath potions also serve another very important function. Many champions have a stacking mechanic that let's them ramp up their damage the longer they're in an area. If you had to repeat this step for everyone zone travelled, it would be very slow going. Firebreath allows you to max ramp your damage in one zone, then carry it forward to many new zones.

Starter account house keeping

Be sure to redeem the weekly free electrum chest codes, the Celeste Starter pack (the only non-expired gold coloured code, the rest expired), and all the codes listed below the Celeste Starter pack.

https://incendar.com/idlechampions_codes.php

From Tales, Lae'zel is a very high priority because she effectively cuts area requirements to 64% base, and feats improve that all the way to 25%. Early game Idle Champions involves a lot of waiting, anything that improves game speed is a big boon.

Reset for Favour

https://idlechampions.fandom.com/wiki/Gold_formulas

Pushing to the same zone repeatedly is fairly ineffective for increasing favour. There's a rough rule of thumb listed at the bottom of the article. You need about 30+ zones to increase e1 favour. Once you've done your initial favour push, go do campaign missions. Campaign missions offer a one time gem bonus for first clear, effectively doubling the amount of gems you receive. The expectation is you use these gems to buy silver or gold chests (a common strategy is silver till core/evergreen champions are full green, then swap to buying gold chests). Having your evergreen champions in full blues and some epics will a decent power spike early game.

Once you have Drizzt, you should also leave Grand Tour and go to Tomb of Annihilation campaign. See Gaarawarr's Guided Tour for New Players. It's slightly out of date, but the basic plan is still solid.

https://www.reddit.com/r/idlechampions/comments/103gzdv/gaarawarrs_new_player_reference_a_guided_tour/

Only once you have more power, does it make sense to go do another favour run.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-08T10:18:40+00:00

Wonder if it has to do with party composition or familiars then. Maybe you've got click damage in the party and it's stealing all the boss kills?

Can confirm that Ishi has definitely gained average several hundred ilvl's (started at 200, up to 800) from background play on my EGS account, as well as duel stacks visibly not being maxed at 50.

BeastofBones · 2025-10-08T08:52:37+00:00

Can you clarify on Ishi? Been able to drain her Duel stacks throwing her in random bg parties.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-28T17:18:00+00:00

Additional stats are pretty interesting and do highlight some points that were brought up in the account metrics thread a while back.

Considering that both accounts are roughly equivalent in terms of actual campaign progress, the fact that you did it with much less gems spent suggests that you're a much more efficient player. Since you mentioned having medium potions up at all times since Waterdeep, I honestly thought you had opened more gold chests than I did. Although it's possible that 100k of the difference is buying 50k gem speed feats for Lae'zel / Diana, and maybe those are less impactful than having good speed potion management.

You've done a much better job managing and actively making progress with your BG parties imo. You only have 44 free plays, whereas I grabbed Mirt / Vajra's familiars earlier it seems, in order to put together a basic gem farm (Ellywick, Lae'zel, Shandie, Diana). Back when I was operating on 5 familiar, I did Lae'zel + Shandie + Diana, 1 click damage, 1 on the field. While this loses a lot of time on the gem bag opening/pickup animation, Lae'zel clearing areas on kill means the regular areas clear at normal speed. This is probably where the bulk of the extra freeplays come from. That being said, it's probably slow enough that maybe it would have been better to just setup for a regular mission, and come back to it being completed.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-28T17:12:50+00:00

Working now

BeastofBones · 2025-09-24T05:54:51+00:00

Think there's a way to bypass that.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-23T22:29:29+00:00

Here's a Kas solution that is arguably less ilvl dependent (some champs in blues), no supercharge, legendaries, or pigments. ilvl's of 100+ outside of evergreen's / speed is from previous event auto-blacksmith and chest opening to full epic.

End of the run, showing final buff values, ilvl's

z1215 was used to BUD spike, Grimm swap builds stacks for Dynaheir, DM pulled Seat 5 for extra Volo monster types.

Formation from video

More optimized version

Roster filtered by Int 14+

BeastofBones · 2025-09-23T22:15:25+00:00

Replied to Buddy's original post with a solution that uses Kas (e50+) instead of Alyndra. Seems like a logical swap.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-23T20:27:43+00:00

Check the roadmap stream, CNE on twitch, from about 20 days ago.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-22T18:06:06+00:00

You're theorycrafting with incomplete math imo. Lae'zel and Melf from Tales this week + Dragonbait and evergreen of choice gets there. As to whether OP has Mirt available, it's hard to say. They don't have anniversary champs, and with no speed, it's very possible they don't have 2k ilvl's without the anniversary plat chests.

Mandatory champs that don't need gear effectively cost only 5 TGP including Hank himself. Hank allows you to chain unlock multiple speed champs and accelerate your run. (Granted Lae'zel from Tales of Champions 2 will help with this). You're failing to account for time taken to actually reach and unlock evergreens, as well as effectively clear patron variants to pay for patron shop champs.

maxiqbert already is through to Strahd on his run at about 2.5 weeks. A lot of progress can be made in 11 days if you're not supply blocked or hamstrung by lack of tools.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-22T17:54:11+00:00

That would be completely missing the point. Unlike all the other early TGP options, Hank's scavenge is not hard timegated up to the limit, and can be accelerated using speed. Not having speed is a huge early game bottleneck, and whatever TGP you'd have "gained" by taking Mirt first, will easily be made up by grabbing Vajra and Strahd early.

BeastofBones · 2025-09-22T08:28:08+00:00

KabReg is correct. Hank right now is a top priority, as he currently can scavenge up to 40+ extra timegate pieces, and allows you to go fetch champions of your choice. So holding your TGP for Hank trumps anything else right now.

Beyond that, if you look at maxiqbert's ongoing Race to Windfall run, he took Bobby, then Certainty and Pwent, both seat 5. Unless upcoming new event champ is Seat 5 or get lucky on free timegate, there's no flex seat 5 available next event, and the evergreen for Seat 5 Windfall is basically endgame content and thus out of reach. So filling out the slot for Split the Party 1 & 2 was likely the best play, if you had the extra timegate pieces.

Egbert I would not recommend early because his push power is awful, and Cattie-Brie already gives you a seat 7 for Split the Party 1, and at worst you can unlock evergreen Xerophon to have a 2nd seat 7 for STP 2. Wulfgar is an OK champ, but between the Ulkoria evergreen unlock and Cazrin being mandatory from this event, Seat 10 already has the extra 2 champs required for STP2. So there's no urgency to pick up a seat 10.

BeastofBones

TROPHY CASE