Glu hardly needs any introduction to long-time mobile gamers as the company has released numerous popular titles since it joined the industry back in 2010. With over 500 million downloads earned from its published games and a current app portfolio of 69 games, chances are that most, if not all people who play mobile games have downloaded, installed, and even enjoyed some of their games. The Deer Hunter games, the Diner Dash series, and the Frontline Commando games are just some of Glu’s most popular hits with most games banking well over 10 million downloads from the Google Play Store alone, maintains largely positive user reviews, and places well in top ten charts.
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena may have been out for quite a while but has only been released globally a week ago. Surprisingly enough, it currently stands as one of the top trending games on Android and the #1 RPG on iOS. Perhaps the fairly recent launch of Disney Plus has re-ignited the child in every mobile gamer that wanting to see their favorite Disney characters mix it out in one RPG has become very enticing.
With well over a million downloads from the Google Play Store coupled with top spots in mobile games listings, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena continues to grow in popularity as fans of the popular roster of characters as well as RPG enthusiasts have come to enjoy a perfect mix of astounding graphics and engaging gameplay that comes with the game.
Set as a sorcerer who can summon Disney and Pixar characters in the form of cards for combat, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena takes you through a legendary and magical journey towards becoming the master sorcerer. Unlike any RPG, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena comes with distinct campaign stories where a different roster of teams are required.
As you gather both heroes and villains across various Disney and Pixar franchises, some battles are meant for them to work together in while others will be a bit more selective. There are tons of features and extra game modes to partake in as well which means that a lot of time may be required. If you are up for a grand adventure with an all-star cast of Disney and Pixar characters that have never assembled before.
There are some unique features and mechanics in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena that may still come as a surprise even to experienced and veteran RPG players. However, the longer-than-usual tutorial session is more than enough to ensure that you will have a firm grasp of each basic concept before you are allowed to venture freely in the game.
For some, even, it can be painstakingly long and yet, it cannot be denied that it is very helpful especially for total beginners. If you still find yourself unable to pass a particular level then stay with us and read our Disney Sorcerer’s Arena beginner’s guide. Our detailed guide comes with a bunch of helpful tips and strategies to help you dominate each game mode.
1. Cycle Through Each Campaign
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena lets you jump in on an action-packed journey straight on as you spend the first few minutes or so progressing through the grand campaign where your first set of heroes and villains are recruited to join you in your adventure. As your hands are mostly tied and will have to follow the indicator as to where to head to next during the tutorial, chances are that you will find some of the initial battles to be quite a challenge. As such, even with hardly any choice but to follow the indicator, keep a close eye on opportunities to strengthen your units every step of the way. It may be hard to see, but there will be small opportunities to stray a bit off of the tutorial’s pull, specifically within the unit’s window or page.
After a bit of progress in the grand campaign, you will soon be able to access the hero campaign where only heroes within your collection can be used to play within the levels. Don’t worry if you are not that familiar with each Disney or Pixar character as you will only be able to select heroes anyway. For starters, your goal here is to be able to unlock the villains campaign but given that the tutorial will still walk you through the initial levels, you will have enough starting characters to be able to play in these 3 distinct campaigns.
As a guiding principle, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena is not designed in such a way that you can simply move on to the next stage and expect to beat it more so, to secure a 3-star clear victory. As each level always has stronger enemies than the previous one, you are bound to discontinue your progress within the same campaign every once in a while. In these scenarios, there are basically 3 options open for you, one is to shift to a different campaign, with a comparatively easier next level, or replay previously conquered levels to earn more experience points to level everyone up, or start farming for your character’s needed gears.
It can be a challenge enough to win in some campaign battles especially if you are lagging behind in unit levels and overall deck power. Beyond that, aiming to secure a 3-star victory in some levels, which is done by clearing it with no casualties, can be a pain to accomplish. It is okay to proceed to the next stage right after clearing the present one even if you failed to secure a 3-star rating. However, be sure to go back for it as securing a 3-star victory in each stage brings some extra benefits for you.
For starters, you can only use to auto-win function, which skips battles altogether and nabs you the level’s rewards, after you beat the stage with a perfect rating. Likewise, there are treasure chests that you can earn within each campaign that contains valuable rewards and these can be unlocked based on the number of stars you have earned. At some point in the game, therefore, you are bound to have to collect all the level stars to earn the top rewards.
Related: Disney Sorcerer’s Arena Tier List: Our Picks for the Best and Worst Characters in the Game
The campaigns will serve as your main source of experience points, gears, resources, and even shards to summon new heroes to join your roster. Given all the items you can obtain from the campaign, however, what makes it mostly important initially is the XP you gradually earn as levelling up your account is key to unlocking new features and game modes and will also boost your max energy cap so you will be able to play longer later on.
2. Avoid Relying On Auto Mode
Most turn-based strategy RPGs have an auto mode feature that seemingly makes battles a lot more convenient as you will only be a spectator as your team of characters duel it out with the enemy team totally devoid of any influence or control from you. This usually has an advantage in the sense that it runs through battle sequences faster as manually playing means spending some time to think and strategize around which skills to use and when to use them.
With that in mind, then it is hinted that teams in auto mode are not expected to perform better than you, regardless of how much of a newbie you think you are. In auto mode, the A.I will use whichever skill is available and will set their sights on a random target. This puts your team at a huge disadvantage especially since your team has 2 unique spells on top of each member having several skills. Each skill has its relative effective use that is dependent on timing and the target which is why activating them manually will almost always yield better results. Another point of consideration is the target priority as you will most likely always have to eliminate the enemy team’s support unit ahead of everybody else.
3. Get To Know Each Character And Spell
For the most part, every new player in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena will basically have the same starting characters to use on their teams and after the tutorial, rosters will be dependent on which characters you choose to farm and a bit will be based on your luck with the reassure chests. Despite that, one advantageous feature of the game that players often dismiss is that you can preview all of the available characters even if you have not unlocked them yet.
Getting to know each and every character is an important aspect of every strategy game. For one, you need to have a firm idea of what each character you have can do and even though you will barely have enough for your team early on, you will sooner or later have to choose from among them which ones will be prioritized as far as enhancements go. On the other hand, you will naturally meet the rest of the characters on the other end of the battlefield. Having a good knowledge of what every character can do based on their role and actual skill sets will help you decide which ones should be targeted and eliminated first as well as which ones to watch out for.
On the main screen, simply tap on the collection icon at the upper left side. This will take you the character page and you can scroll through the long list to check on any unit you want to get to know better. You should tap on each ability icon on the left side of the character page to see what it can do. On the upper right side of the same page, tapping on the character’s power will open up a smaller window revealing stat details as well as the character’s role. You can tap and hold on the unit’s role to see his or her specialization as well. If you do like what you see about the character, you can also click on the find button at the lower right side of the page to see where you can collect that unit’s tokens.
As far as roles or classes go, there are only 3 categories available in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena. Units in the game are either for offense, for defense, or for support. Naturally, units for offense exhibit higher attack values and specialize in dealing high amounts of damage to enemies. Defense types, on the other hand, perform the role of tanks and often taunt enemies to attract all incoming damage while sporting a naturally higher defense value. Support units have various skills that go beyond simply restoring HP. They can provide buffs that raise stat values of teammates and can also inflict negative status effects on opposing units.
You will earn 2 spells enough to equip for succeeding battles before you finish the tutorial and though additional ones may be obtained later as you unlock the Tower of Endurance, it will still help to read through each one’s description as you may encounter enemy teams that have those spells. Like each unit’s skills, knowing what the opposing team is fully capable of will help you strategize better in battle.
4. Focus On A Select Number Of Units
One of the trickiest parts of strategizing around building teams in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena comes with its trio of campaigns that essentially has a different requirement of team rosters. Well, basically, you only need one hero team and one villain team for the latter two campaigns and pick the best ones to form your grand campaign team that will also be your go-to team for all applicable game modes.
Considering the hero campaign and villain campaign, though, you will have to at least keep 5 heroes and 5 villains up to par as far as level and enhancements go to continuously meet the increasing difficulty of the challenges ahead. Beyond that, focusing on 5 units from among the 10 should be done as well to make good progress on the grand campaign and other game contents that allow both heroes and villains to be used.
Naturally the first 5 heroes and 4 villains will be the same for everyone and while you can try to proceed further in the villain campaign with only 4 units, it will be difficult to do so. Unless you are lucky enough to pull off a new villain card from the treasure chests, your priority at this point should be bagging an interim fifth member for your villain team. This can be done with a bit more hope by farming tokens from previously conquered stages in the hero campaign that has a chance to drop the tokens you want. There won’t be a lot of choices early on but as you will need a fifth member that badly, anyone will do.
With the beginner events and all other gifts you receive after starting the game as well as the elevated rate of progress on the initial hours, you will have a seemingly sufficient amount of resources to continuously upgrade your units. Do take note, however, that as each unit grows stronger, enhancements will naturally become more expensive. As such, you have to be very selective right from the start when it comes to enhancing units. The idea here is to continue to upgrade the heroes that you are using but as soon as you switch one of them out for a new character, then the investments, moving forward, should transfer as well.
There are numerous ways to enhance units in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena but the most basic one is through levelling them up. Each unit’s maximum level is capped by your account level, which means that the more active you are at consuming energy and achieving missions, the faster your account and units can reach higher levels. Levelling units up only require gold, which is the most basic in-game currency, and level up potions, which are abundant early on.
Once units have reached their current max level, you need to exert a bit of effort to equip them to the fullest. There are 6 equipment slots and gear requirements from one unit to another may vary. Given that a lot of your units will share the same needs, you will have to use the magnifying glass icon on the empty gear slots to see where the equipment can be obtained from. This is where securing a 3-star finish on a level comes in handy as you can simply tap on the auto-win button, expend some energy, and continuously do so until you obtain the needed item. After each slot has been equipped, you can tier up the unit for a huge stat and power boost. It will empty the gear slots for you to fill up with a new batch of equipment.
Whenever a unit has been tiered-up, a new skill may be unlocked or existing skills will become available for upgrades. You will need gold as well as some ability runes to rank up skills and as this may not be as easy to farm, be sure to prioritize some skills over others, preferably skills that coincide more with the unit’s role.
The most challenging part of unit enhancement is promoting them or ranking their star level up. All characters in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena have varying starting star levels but each one can be upgraded all the way to 7 stars. To promote a unit, you need to gather that unit’s specific token. You can secure these from events and treasure chests but some can be farmed on select campaign stages.
Given all these upgrade and enhancement options in the game, it is only practical to try and stick with as few characters as possible. It is important to plan ahead, as far as practicable, when it comes to targeting farmable tokens from the campaign stages early on and obtain your preferred units to focus on them immediately.
5. Practice Basic Combat Tactics
In addition to choosing to play manually especially against a challenging level, there are general tactics that you should employ and make a habit of to tilt the tide of battle in your favor. It may not always guarantee a win especially when the gap in power between your team and the enemy team is too large, but it can leave you with a much better fighting chance.
The first basic strategy is always take time to figure out which of the enemies in play should be eliminated first. For the most part, it should be the support character especially if the unit can heal, but sometimes you have to go for the strongest one as letting the unit run his turn may set you at a disadvantage.
Relative to this, pay attention to each unit’s turn meter in relation to the sequence within which the next succeeding turns will flow. This is especially helpful in deciding which enemy to target first as the one who is closest to making an action can be considered top target priority.
Another mindset that should be kept is aiming to disable an enemy if not eliminate him with the attack or series of attacks. There is nothing wrong with attacking even if it only causes a little damage to an enemy unit but strategizing to the point that once targeted, the aim is to terminate the unit or incapacitate it for its next turn. Having a deep knowledge of how much each of your units can dish out in terms of damage and waiting for the right opportunity to combo in on an enemy can lead to a much better performance in battle. This would of course necessitate keeping a close look at the sequence of turns to transpire at the lower left side of the battle screen.
Lastly, attention should likewise always be given to the number of waves you need to defeat to clear a level. This will typically be between 2 to 3 and can be seen at the upper left side of your screen in combat. AoE skills and spells as well as high damage single target attacks should be utilized well in relation to your overall progress in the level based on this waves. There will be several instances when holding on to activating these skills to save them for the last wave can spell the difference between victory and defeat.
6. Accomplish Daily And Lifetime Quests For Extra Rewards
While there are immediate rewards to be earned from every battle with extras based on overall performance as far as earning stars are concerned, more can still be obtained by accomplishing daily quests and lifetime quests in the game. For the most part, these quests all fall within the activities you would regularly engage in as you you continue your adventure in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena.
Just to differentiate, daily quests are missions you can accomplish a little easier and will reset each day. On top of earning instant rewards after completing each line of objective, accomplishing every feat earns you the best set of rewards. Lifetime quests, on the other hand relate to your milestones in the game relative to progression in many aspects of the game.
Milestones such as reaching certain levels, collecting characters, and collecting coins, just to name a few, all form part of the objectives here that offer one-time rewards. For the most part, the accomplishment of an objective in the Lifetime Quest unlocks a higher tier objective. You can quickly earn gems and Maleficent tokens by pushing to accomplish objectives set in the lifetime quest page.
Relative to these quests, you should also visit the Passholder tab within the quest window as there are also goals to reach on that feature that can tremendously boost your XP. In any case, let the quest page serve as your guide towards accomplishing numerous goals within the game so as to get the most out of every in-game energy and resource you spend. Be careful as well and read before pressing anything as you might accidentally spend hard-earned gems to up your passholder level.
7. Join A Club And Add Friends
In as much as Disney Sorcerer’s Arena can be enjoyed entirely on your own, having people to play with can tremendously boost your progress in your adventure. Once you are able to create or join a club, you should immedtiately do so. You can create your own club for only 500 coins but if you feel like joining another one instead, there are plenty of clubs available that have open slots. Although you will not readily be able to tell which ones are more active, choosing one with a good number of players is a safe enough bet.
One of the more exciting aspects of joining a club comes with the pass to partake in the Club Dungeon. The Club Dungeon is a unique game mode where you battle through waves of enemies and guess the correct door that leads to the next level. If someone from your club has already discovered the correct path, then you can immediately follow them through. The further you go within the dungeon, the more club coins you can earn and this unique currency can be exchanged for various rare items, including some character tokens that are hard to obtain anywhere else.
Another feature of clubs in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena comes from the donation feature which lets you and any member of the club be able to request for extra energy or materials from everyone else. It is a big help since both items are always needed for you to push your progress further.
Being a member of any club also leaves you with club quests that offer extra club coins as rewards. Be sure to make an effort as well to accomplish these quests and gather as many club coins as you can to focus on a specific character token you want from the club exchange.
You can freely invite more friends to join you in your adventure by sending invites through various social channels. Like club mates, you can also send and receive gifts from friends and even if you do not have as many friends in real life to join you in your adventure, your club can serve as a good source of friends.
8. Expend Daily Attempts In Other Game Modes
The triple campaign that you will be immersed in on your first moments in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena are just the tip of the iceberg. As you reach new levels, more features and game modes will become available, further testing your ability to build capable teams and exhibiting effective strategies in combat. For the most part, the additional game modes do not consume energy and typically will not earn you XP but instead, a lot of the materials and resources you need to strengthen your team will come from these extra game modes.
To start off, there are limited-time events that always transpire in Disney Sorcerer’s Arena. These are opportunities for you to earn character tokens that are otherwise difficult to obtain anywhere else. Whenever you see an indicator on the icon at the main screen, it means that there are unused attempts that you should spend on the dungeons within.
The Sorcerer’s Torunament is a form of PvP battle but is not real-time. You will be choosing from among teams of other players to battle with in the hopes of ranking up and earning tournament coins as well as some gems. Do not be intimidated if all you see are teams that have a higher deck power than yours. You will have manual controls on your side against A.I.-controlled teams, which sets you up at a big advantage. Remember as well to set a team for defense and update it from time to time as you would not want to make it easy on anyone to take your spot at the rankings and leave you with less earnings at the end of the tournament.
Summoner Challenges offer a wide variety of dungeons that cater to practically every basic resource you need. Gold, Level Up Potions, Ability Runes, as well as various gears can be easily obtained through these dungeons. Beating the initial levels will unlock the next one that offers better rewards. However, Each dungeon is only available for specific days in a week and as much as you may want to try and keep track of that, each dungeon is equally important so be sure to expend all your daily attempts to obtain valuable resources as much as you can.
The Tower of Endurance can be a little too challenging for beginners as it requires practically everyone you can spare in your roster to climb as high as you can. Each floor is expectedly more challenging than the previous one but likewise offers better rewards.
9. Take Advantage Of Free Chests And Ad Boosts
While immediate rewards you obtain from battles and extra resources gained from completing quests may already seem a lot, Disney Sorcerer’s Arena still has some additional ones in store for you. While the store typically has a price tag on each item it displays, there are actually several treasure chests that you can obtain at no cost.
There is a treasure chest that you can open once every 24 hours and another one that can be claimed once every 4 hours. If you are an avid fan of the game and want to progress as much as you can, then definitely take note of how soon you can open another one to ensure that you can get the most out of this feature. In addition to these chests, a third set of free ones can be obtained up to ten times per day, provided that you play a short video ad on each attempt.
Relative to this, you can also play video ads up to 3 times per day via the daily quest window to receive 3 gems on each attempt. As gems are a premium currency that are harder to obtain and save, every attempt to secure more for free should be considered as an opportunity that should not be missed.
And this is where we end our beginner’s guide for Disney Sorcerer’s Arena. The game certainly promises a lot more content to be added in future updates but whether these are new features, game modes, or even characters, the tips and strategies we shared here should suitably apply to all of them. We certainly hope that our beginner’s guide has helped you secure a better understanding of the basic concepts and features of the game and that you likewise enjoyed reading through every bit of it.
If you have played the game long enough to discover additional tips or strategies in addition to what we listed here, we would be very happy if you could share them with us via the comment section below!