Archero is a popular action-oriented dungeon crawler that puts players in the role of one of several archer heroes as they progress through dungeons filled with all kinds of monsters and boss levels. Developed by Habby, Archero’s been around for quite some time, but if you haven’t played it in a while, make sure you check it out since there’s been a ton of new updates.
In Archero, players have to progress through tougher and tougher dungeons as they earn currency and craft materials. These items can be used to equip or upgrade your hero, giving them enhanced capabilities, and sometimes even changing your playstyle entirely.
There’s a lot of depth to Archero (and, in the later stages, a lot of difficulty, too) but if you’re a fan of bullet-hell games with deep progression systems and rewarding gameplay, then give Archero a try. New players might find our Archero beginner’s guide particularly useful, as it introduces players to some of the best practices and most important concepts right away.
However, if you’ve been playing Archero and are familiar with the game mechanics, read on and check out our Archero strategy guide for advanced players. Here we talk about advanced mechanics and strategies to help players get through higher-level content. If you’re stuck at a certain level and just can’t push forward, then hopefully these tips and tricks will help you improve your game.
1. Choose Your Weapons Wisely
In Archero, players can gain access to a wide variety of weapons. Although you’ll mostly find them in Chests, weapons also sometimes drop from level bosses or can be gained through other rewards. While weapons in Archero are all oriented towards the same thing – increasing your total attack damage – they also come with unique effects.
These effects synergize with the different upgrades you get as you progress through a dungeon, and are often the core choice when it comes to building your hero especially in the later stages of the game. Once upgraded to Epic quality (through Fusing), each weapon receives an Epic effect that adds to the weapon’s effectiveness. For your information, the available weapons int he game are the following:
Brave Bow
Epic Effect: Increases Critical Damage from 200% to 250%
+ Starter weapon
+ Decent damage, speed, and knockback
+ Fast projectiles
+ Very common, so it’s to upgrade
+ Versatile, so it can be built several ways
– Small hitbox, so enemies are harder to hit
– Doesn’t really excel at anything
The Brave Bow is a decent weapon with average stats and makes up the core gameplay of Archero. This weapon can get you through the early stages of the game, and with enough upgrades, it can even get you through to mid-game. However, compared to the other weapons available to players, the Brave Bow starts to fall off in the later stages.
Death Scythe
Epic Effect: 50% Chance to Headshot vs. Enemies with 30% Health or Less
+ Highest base damage in the game
+ Big hitbox, so enemies are easier to hit
+ Great at executing low-health enemies
– Slow attack speed
– Slow projectiles
The Death Scythe is the slow-firing, hard-hitting choice for players who like to be rewarded for their precise attacks. With high damage and excellent knockback, Death Scythe is an extremely rewarding choice for players who like to test their skills.
Related: Archero Weapons Guide: Best Weapons and Equipment in the Game
However, because of it’s low attack speed and slow projectile speed, misses and mistakes while wielding the Death Scythe are often more costly, making it a very challenging pick for new players.
Tornado
Epic Effect: Deal 25% more damage on the return arc
+ Fun playstyle with returning boomerangs
+ Decent attack speed
+ Big hitbox
+ Pierces enemies
– Slow projectiles
– Low knockback
– Low base damage
Our personal favorite, the Tornado is an excellent pick for most players and can make farming runs progress that much faster with the right build. Perfect for taking on massive enemy numbers, the Tornado’s low base damage is easily counteracted by its ability to pierce foes and deal damage again as they return to the player.
Although they start off relatively weak, the Tornado gets better and better the more upgrades you pile on top of it, benefiting more from them compared to other weapons.
Saw Blade
Epic Effect: Greatly increase attack speed for 3 seconds upon entering a boss level
+ Fastest attack speed in the game
+ Best-in-class for boss fights
+ Lots of fun builds to discover
– Low base damage
– Low knockback
– Small hitbox
The Saw Blade is an extremely fun weapon to use in Archero, especially for players who like turning their archer hero into a machinegun-firing dealer of death. With its high base attack speed (the highest in the game), the Saw Blade benefits from pretty much every projectile-based upgrade you throw at it.
Anything that increases damage, critical hits, and even more attack speed benefits the Saw Blade greatly, making it a weapon that trades in a not-so-good start for an epic, boss-killing finish.
Brightspear
Epic Effect: Attacking the same enemy increases damage vs. that enemy
+ Fastest projectiles in the game
+ High base damage
+ Decent attack speed
– Small hitbox
– Low knockback
The Brightspear is one weapon whose effectiveness in combat depends entirely on how you build it. Unlike the other weapons available in Archero which are more or less flexible in terms of ability builds, the Brightspear is much pickier. Choose the wrong or suboptimal upgrades, and you’ll feel like you’re basically throwing sticks at the enemy with how little damage you’re doing.
However, get lucky in your run and choose the optimal abilities for Brightspear, and you might just be complaining about how broken the weapon is and how easy it makes the game.
Stalker Staff
Epic Effect: Higher critical chance scaling with enemy health (lower HP = higher crit chance)
+ Homing projectiles
+ Fast attack speed
+ Good damage
+ Let’s you focus on avoiding enemy projectiles
– It’s like playing Archero on Easy Mode
The Stalker Staff is arguably the strongest weapon in the game, and also the most difficult to upgrade and acquire. With its high attack speed and good base damage, players can take advantage of its homing projectiles to make sure that they only ever have to focus on staying alive.
While the playstyle is not as involved (or as fun) as the other weapons, there is no doubt that playing the Stalker Staff can help you push your level cap by a mile, especially since you don’t even have to aim.
Of course, there are other items in the game like Armor, Spirits (basically, pets), Rings, Lockets, and Bracelets, and while these items also enhance your character and shake up gameplay in their own ways, none of them has as much impact as your choice of weapon.
You won’t get all of these weapons right from the start. In Archero, players start with the default Brave Bow and have to rely on luck and grind to get the rest. Here’s a tip: don’t get rid of weapons! Even if you don’t plan on using a weapon, it’s always good to have a full arsenal to help you discover new playstyles and possibilities.
2. Planning Your Build
Now that you’re familiar with the different weapons available in Archero, it’s time to start planning out your build with your weapon of choice. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “How can I possibly plan a build if everything in Archero – from the upgrades to the rewards – are all completely random?”
The trick here is to plan out your build depending on the first upgrade you get at the start of each run. Yes, even those are completely random, and you might not always get a good one, but planning your build around that very first choice already gives you a +1 advantage. It might not seem like a big tip, but you’ll start seeing more success with your builds once you allow yourself the flexibility of building your character according to that very first upgrade.
Pushing vs. Farming
There are basically two types of builds in Archero – pushing builds and farming builds. As you progress through the game, you’ll realize that it’s getting harder and harder to make it all the way to the dungeon boss, and even harder to take the boss down. That’s when you start having to optimize your builds and start making more careful decisions regarding each of your runs.
If you want to push past a level and take out the boss, you’ll need to orient your build towards pushing. In general, pushing simply means pushing past your current highest level. If you’re in dungeon 3-15, then your push objective would be to get to dungeon 3-16, or higher.
Of course, pushing involves a level of challenge that you need to prepare for. That’s why pushing builds often revolve around dealing crazy amounts of damage while having access to some form of defense or sustainability in order to get players to the boss level and stand a fighting chance.
Farming builds, on the other hand, are all about speed and mass destruction. Farming builds revolve around taking out huge hordes of enemies in as little time as possible, allowing players to acquire and accrue resources like crafting materials, items, and gold as fast as they can, so they can upgrade their characters efficiently and effectively.
Related: Archero Ultimate Guide: 12 Tips, Hints & Strategies to Dominate Your Enemies
When planning your build, it’s important to first determine what the goal of your run is going to be. Are you going to aim for fast clears to get as much gold and materials as you can? Or are you aiming to go all the way to the boss and defeat him to unlock the next level?
Some of the best skills that can be utilized by just about every build in the game include the following skills:
Multishot
Multishot is one of the best upgrades you can get and is a top-tier pick for just about every single viable build in Archero. What it does is it enhances your attack in such a way that instead of firing a single projectile, it adds one additional projectile in sequence. This means that you’ll basically double your damage output every single time you fire. Multishot can be selected several times, each time adding another sequence of projectiles including whatever other bonuses you have. This includes additional projectiles, critical modifiers, damage modifiers like Fire and Poison, and more.
Combine Multishot with other projectile-increasing abilities like Front Arrow, Side Arrow, and Diagonal Arrow to turn your weapon into a rapid-firing tool of death and destruction. Even if you don’t know what build you want to run (although you really should have an idea at the start of each run) then you can’t go wrong with Multishot.
Front Arrow
Similar to Multishot but just a little bit less useful, Front Arrow adds an extra projectile that launches alongside (not in sequence to) every volley fired forward. Front Arrow is another top-tier pick for most builds but is increasingly effective when combined with more Front Arrow upgrades and damage and critical modifiers. In some runs, players can be lucky enough to gain two or more Front Arrow upgrades, turning your weapon into an amazing boss-killing shotgun that’s lethal up-close, especially to larger targets.
Combine Front Arrow with Multishot for the insane damage output, or with other abilities like Ricochet to help deal with large mobs of monsters more easily. Front Arrow also increases the effectiveness of every single Damage, Attack Speed, and Critical upgrades that you get throughout the game, so it’s often the ideal choice if you’re not sure what kind of build you want to run.
Ricochet
Ricochet is the ultimate farming ability in Archero, allowing players to clear levels much faster than any other skill available in the game. Ricochet basically makes your attacks ricochet or bounce between targets, mechanically similar to chain lightning attacks in other games. If you’re trying to push your level up and need as much power as you can for the boss fight up ahead, then Ricochet might not be the optimal choice. However, if you’re planning on farming a dungeon for currency and materials, Ricochet can help net you your rewards much faster and much more efficiently.
Combine Ricochet with damage modifying upgrades like Multishot, Blaze, and Poisoned Touch to deal massive amounts of damage to hordes of monsters. Speed up your clearing speed by upgrading Damage and Crit, although you might want to avoid Attack Speed if you’re running a damage-over-time build with Fire and Poison.
Piercing Shot
Yet another necessary skill for speed-farming dungeons in Archero, Piercing Shot makes it so that your projectiles don’t disappear when they hit an enemy. Instead, they’ll pierce through enemies and hit any other enemies behind them. While this doesn’t sound like a good skill at first glance, Piercing Shot combines well with a handful of lesser-picked abilities to make some of the strongest farming builds in the game.
Combine Piercing Shot with Bouncing Walls and any other added projectile skills like Side Arrow, Diagonal Arrow, and Multishot to turn every single level into your very own Bullet Hell, hitting just about everything on the map.
Honorable Mention: Wingman
Once you have a Spirit or two equipped to your hero as damage-dealing pets, you’ll want to get the Wingman ability which turns your pets into neigh-invincible shields that block damage for you. This is arguably one of the most cost-efficient upgrades to get – all you have to do is get it once and you’ll get that much more utility and defense from having your pets around.
3. Popular Builds
Now that you have a better understanding of how builds work, and how abilities synergize with each other, here’s a short list of some of the most popular ability builds in Archero. Remember, you won’t always get the abilities that you need to complete your build, so we’ve added a few guidelines to each build to help you counter the negative effects of bad RNG.
ANY WEAPON BUILD
Front Arrow > Multishot > Attack Boost/ATK Speed Boost > Crit Master
One of the most straightforward pushing builds, this combination of abilities is effective on just about every weapon in the game. Ideally, this build should be used when any one of the four abilities listed – Front Arrow, Multishot, Attack Speed, or Crit Master – is available at the first level.
For this build, the priority is to stack as many Front Arrows and Multishot upgrades as possible, while improving attack speed as well as damage through Crit Master. When done well, this build should provide players with near-unmatched damage potential against single targets, as well as decent damage against multiple targets.
If you come across upgrade choices that don’t include any of the four listed in this build, then popular alternatives are Ricochet for some additional multi-target damage and faster clear speed, Diagonal Arrow for shotgunning bosses up-close and personal, and Bloodthirst for the somewhat decent sustain. Mix and match this build with any combination of HP Boost and possibly Strong Heart upgrades to help keep you healthy until the last level.
SCYTHE BUILD
Ricochet > Multishot > Bolt/Blaze/Poison > Piercing Shot/Bouncy Walls
This build takes advantage of the Scythe’s innately high base damage (the highest in the game) to make full use of the elemental abilities that scale with equipment damage. This means that the lightning-element upgrade Bolt, the fire-element upgrade Blaze, and the poison-element upgrade Poisoned Touch, all do much better damage on the Scythe compared to any other weapon.
Maximize the use of this build by taking a combination of these elemental abilities. Prioritize Jolt for faster clears or Blaze/Poisoned Touch if you’re having a hard time dealing with bosses.
With its innately low attack speed and projectile, the combination of Ricochet and Multishot makes it more capable of clearing levels. Prioritize these upgrades if you’re aiming for a versatile farming build that’s also pretty decent at boss fights, or try to mend the Death Scythe’s weakness by taking a major Attack Speed Boost when available.
TORNADO BUILD
Multishot > Bouncy Walls > Side Arrow/Diagonal Arrow
Our favorite farming build and easily accessible to even the newest players, this Tornado build will literally turn your screen into a storm of boomerangs. Taking advantage of the Tornado’s innate Piercing Shot ability, this build is a top-tier choice for fast clears and farming. Take Multishot, Bouncy Walls, and Side/Diagonal Arrow to unleash hell on your enemies and clear levels with amazing speed.
Related: Archero Skills & Abilities Guide: A Detailed List of the Best and Worst Skills
Another great thing about this Tornado build is its flexibility. It only relies on three core upgrades but can be further enhanced to become more effective at either farming or pushing depending on the other upgrades you get. If you’re struggling to come up with good choices to add on top of this build, we recommend beefing up on Attack Boosts, Attack Speed Boosts, and Crit Master upgrades since you can’t go wrong with those.
4. Advanced Tips & Strategies
The builds we mentioned earlier in this Archero guide are popular because they’re effective and they’re fun to play, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only way to play. Archero lets players take the game at their own pace, and play the way they want. If you have something else in mind and want to design your own builds, here are a few advanced tips and strategies to help you along.
Don’t Scoff At Spirit Upgrades
A lot of players might look at the minor increases when they upgrade their pets and think that their gold would be better spent elsewhere, but that’s only because it’s very hard to see immediately how much utility and firepower these pets provide.
Especially in later stages, where you’ll be shuffling around dodging bullets more often than you will be firing them at your enemies, having powerful pets at your side could help keep your damage up while you focus on staying alive.
Upgrade Your Heroes One At A Time
In the latest update to Archero, they added new Archer Heroes that players can unlock and upgrade. While these heroes have minor bonuses and effects attached to them, choosing one and upgrading that one to the max unlocks global upgrades for all of your heroes, so it’s worthwhile focusing on just one.
Watch Your Enemies Closer
Archero may be an action-oriented dungeon crawler, but in later stages, you might come to find yourself in ridiculous shmup levels of bullet hell. Make sure you pay attention to the different enemy types – know their tactics, what kind of projectiles they fire, how fast and how much damage.
This knowledge will help you making split-second decisions later on, and could very well mean the difference between victory and death.
That’s it for our advanced player’s guide to Archero! We hope that these tips, tricks, and strategies will help you level up your Archero game. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, we’d love to read about them in the comments section below! Check back with us soon for the latest guides and updates on Archero!