Almost A Hero: Artifact Guide and Optimisation

Almost A Hero has a unique artifact system, it doesn’t cripple players for having bad luck. So here’s an artifact guide to help beginners with some tips and advice for more experience players as well. If you’re not familiar with the artifact system in games like Tap Titans 2 then here’s a quick summary of how it works. The cost of getting an artifact scales exponentially with every new artifact you get. You can use the premium currency to reroll an artifact but it’s really hard to come by and often times pretty expensive to purchase. All of this would be fine except that the random artifact you get can be completely useless for progression.

For Tap Titans 2, an artifact that everyone wants is Book of Shadows. It increases the total number of relics you earn every time you prestige, allowing you to eventually earn several times more relics than a player who doesn’t own Book of Shadows. Relics are the Mythstones of Tap Titans 2.

But then we take a look at Almost A Hero, we are met by an artifact system which doesn’t cost any premium currency to reroll. Premium currency does limit the number of artifacts you can own but as we’ve discussed in our guide about spending your gems. Gems are easy to come by and you’re bound to unlock all artifact slots sooner or later.

Earning enough Mythstones

Starting out fresh you’re going to run into a lot of walls where you might have to prestige a couple times before being able to reroll artifacts or purchase new ones. Gems might be an issue but just remember to spend them only on artifact slots for now. Mythsones on the other hand need to be maximised as soon as possible. This means grinding your way past your previous wall every time you upgrade your artifacts.

Avoid these QP gaps at all costs. It would have been much more efficient to simply have all the artifacts around the same QP. Instead of dropping all of our Mythstone on a single artifact

Getting unlucky is fine, everyone gets a bad roll every now and then. Remember you can always choose to keep your previous artifact if you love it so much but unless you’re at your artifact quality capacity, don’t. It’s much better in the long run to get all your artifacts to the highest QP possible. This capacity is 15k without any Mythical Artifacts. We’ll get to Mythical artifacts later.

There aren’t a lot of ways to increase the number of Mythstones you earn in Almost A Hero. Unlike other games, there is a limit to the Mythstone multipliers from every prestige. The maximum possible prestige bonus is +1500%. While the maximum number of bonus Mythstones you can get from epic bosses is just +300. The Prestige bonus also applies to Mythstones earned from epic bosses. Even though the bonus name doesn’t make it obvious. So all the more reason to keep every artifact with that bonus around.

The Artifacts

When starting fresh, your artifact page may look pretty empty but sooner or later you’ll unlock all the slots and then it’s all about optimisation. Just like any other idle game, min-maxing is the key to true progression. You might have already noticed but quite a lot of the bonuses given by artifacts have a limit to them. Maxing out some of them is helpful while some others are completely useless for most progression purposes.

Rerolls can be purchased for artifacts. They get a completely random set bonuses and their total QP increases until it reaches the current capacity. The default QP limit is 15k and it can be increased by 500 per level of the Mythical Artifact, Perfect Quasi.

As you can see in the screenshot to the right, the minimum QP of a new artifact is independent of your previous artifacts. This does not mean that it’s always better to purchase a new artifact. Especially if it costs several times more than the price of rerolling your earlier ones. Try to spend all your mythstones on either purchasing a new artifact when you unlock a slot, or to reroll the cheapest artifact available.

Mythstones is the only currency that matters in the long run. You may not need millions of it right now but as soon as you unlock Mythical Artifacts you’ll be wishing you had billions. Sooner or later you will have to maximise the number of Mythstones you earn from every prestige.

How not to balance your artifact QP

Artifact Optimisation

This is where things starts getting interesting. Often times frustrating for players who aren’t familiar with min-maxing. There is a limit to most of the bonuses you can acquire in Almost A Hero. These are hard limits which can’t be crossed, meaning there’s no reason to have all of your artifacts focus on a certain stat.

The two most important bonuses you will be optimising as a new player are:

+Mythstones from Epic Boss – Maxmium is 300, insanely helpful early game
% Prestige Reward – Maximum combined bonus is 1500%

Artifact Bonuses at their capacity are coloured yellow. So there’s no point in keeping new artifacts with that bonus, reroll freely.

The first of these is pretty simple. You might have noticed that some bosses will drop Mythstones when you kill them. Well this bonus makes sure that those bosses drop even more Mythstones upon being killed. The second bonus effects the total number of Mythstones you earn from every Prestige. Up to 1500%, meaning for every 100 Mythstones you earn from a Prestige. Having this bonus at its limit would earn you 1500 extra Mythstones. So instead of 100 Mythstones, you will be earning 1600 Mythstones from every Prestige.

These two bonuses are your bread and butter. Cherish them, take care of them, and make sure that you don’t reroll them. Especially in the early game.

There are other bonuses you need to keep an eye out for but most of them aren’t going to be of much help until later on. Another important artifact is the one which reduces your free chest cooldown. At max cooldown reduction, you will be getting a free chest every where. Giving you a healthy supply of scrap and the occassional equipment upgrade for your heroes.

Late game optimisation

Spending Mythstones on regular artifacts will become a ‘cheap’ expense. Feel free to re do your artifacts and group them up together in order to stay organised. Not everyone is a fan of it but having a row of +300% Prestige Bonus artifacts means that you’re free to reroll most of your other artifacts without having to keep track of where all your important ones are.

Eventually you’ll have to optimise your damage artifacts as well. Heroes will almost always be your primary damage source. Rings will be helpful if you’re feeling lazy and use the auto tap after a prestige to rush your way towards your highest stage. But in the long run, heroes beat all.

Mythical Artifacts

You are always guaranteed to get the same first three Mythical Artifacts. After your first three artifacts, the next are random unless you haven’t yet received Custom Tailor. If that is the case then you will get Custom Tailor after your 8th artifact,

Here are all of the Mythical Artifacts and what they do:

Free Exploiter
- After upgrading hero or ring with gold gives 21% (+1%) chance for next upgrade to be free.
- Doesn’t work on Level Up
Goblin Lure
- 10%(+0.5%) chance for a goblin raid encounter after completing a boss wave. Their chests give 35% (+5%) more reward than usual.
Perfect Quasi
- Increases the QP cap of regular artifacts by 2.00K (+500)
DPS Matter
- 1% (+1%) of your total artifact quality is added to global damage
Custom Tailor
- Multiplies the gold, health & damage bonus from your hero items by x2 (+0.5)
Life Boat
- 10% (+10%) of your total artifact quality is added to hero health
Old Crucible
- Multiplies the bonuses from COMMON artifacts by 35% (+5%)
Half Ring
- 3% chance for your ring to deal 5.00K% (+1.00K%) damage to enemy. This bonus could be critical as well

That’s not all.

Broken Teleporter
- 26% (+1%) chance to skip a non-epic stage after a boss fight. Works below stage: 155 (+5)
Shiny Object
- Very shiny and expensive artifact. Great for showing off. Is worth 100K (+100K) QP
Auto Transmuter
- After not using the ring for 20s, gain 35% (+5%) increased gold from enemies. Using the ring cancels the effect
Lazy Finger
- Automatically spends your money to upgrade ring & heroes whose cost is less than 1.00CC (+9.00CC) gold. Only works in Adventure
Impatient Relic
- Increases Gold earnings by 2.50M% (+500K%) and provides 3% chance to drop a power up from dead enemies
- [Power up: Fastens ultimate cooldowns by 25% for 5s)
Blunt Relic
- Increases all damage by 2.50M% (+500K%) and provides 3% chance to drop a power up from dead enemies.
- [Power up: Increases non-crit damage by 25% for 5s]
Band-aid Relic
- Increases health by 25.0M% (+5.00M%) and provides 3% chance to drop a power up from dead enemies.
- [Power Up: Heals alive heroes by 2%, and revives dead heroes 25% faster for 5s.]