Emerald City Games has just launched a new mobile RPG for iOS and Android devices called Lionheart: Dark Moon. If you’re the type who enjoys single-player RPGs with a few multiplayer features baked in, you’ll want to try this. You will be given a wide variety of characters to choose from when building your army of heroes, and you can also back them up with some pets to help them fight through different battles. The game boasts of “strategic and story-driven battles,” and tons of gems and potions to go with the epic pets you can collect. With the Darkness returning, could you put an end to evil and save the very fabric of the world?
Every RPG has a steep learning curve in comparison to other games, but can you hack this exciting new title? We’re confident that you will be getting the hang of things after a couple days or so, but we can also help you out right now, as we bring to you our Lionheart: Dark Moon strategy guide. We’ve tried to cover every possible topic here, so read on if there’s anything about the game that doesn’t seem too clear to you.
1. You Need To Get That Quick Loot
After completing all the missions in a chapter, regardless of the difficulty level, you’ll unlock the Quick Loot feature of the game. That’s going to allow you to redeem one free Quick Loot token per hour, but there’s a bit of a caveat here — you can only redeem so many tokens. But even with that limitation in mind, Quick Loot can help you make progress quickly in Lionheart: Dark Moon, as you move up the ranks and complete more of the game as you go on.
2. How Does Quick Loot Work Anyway?
Obviously, this is quite an important mechanic, as we’re devoting two whole tips to it. So now that you know the importance of Quick Loot in itself, how does it work in specific?
Well, for starters, you won’t be taken right to the battle anymore — it’s basically a case of auto-battle once you use the Quick Loot feature, but only with a sure win this time. You’ll also earn yourself a ton of goodies, such as XP bottles (your heroes gain no XP via Quick Loot, so that should be a nice consolation). If you’re trying to level up your heroes quickly, the XP bottles you can earn via Quick Loot can be a godsend. But their main purpose, we’d say, would be to help you get hero shards faster.
All of the missions in the game give you a fair chance of winning some shards for a specific hero — you’ll know which hero this is by looking on the right side of your screen. Again, there’s a catch — you’ll only be able to get the shards once every 24 hours, which means you should do this once per day so you can evolve your best or favorite heroes and improve their stats and skills. Indeed, Quick Loot is a great feature in the game, and it’s probably the most important feature for anyone who wants to make good time when playing this new title.
3. Know Your Heroes, But Don’t Collect ‘Em All
To phrase that better, we’d advise you not to get all bent out of shape trying to collect and max out all the possible heroes in the game. After all, you’ve got a whopping 120 heroes in Lionheart: Dark Moon, and you’re going to have to play the game for a long, long time before you can max them all out. What you want to do instead is to look at everyone’s stats (or at least several heroes and their stats), and choose the ones whom you want to use in the game in the long term. Take note of their elemental affinity, meaning their color, in other words, as well as their starting skills and stats. Obviously, bigger numbers means better, and those are the heroes you want to start with.
On the other hand, you also have to be aware of which heroes play nice with others, and which ones don’t. That’s what makes it important to be familiar with the elemental affinities, and know which ones are strong or weak against the other. What you can do is to have a few heroes per element, so you’re sure that you’re always bringing heroes that have the elemental advantage over the enemy. You don’t want to bring more than one hero that has the elemental weakness against the enemy — none is better, for obvious reasons.
Summing everything up, don’t overwhelm yourself by training too many heroes. Over time, you’ll have a stable of tried-and-true heroes, and arguably no need to work with anyone else in the game.
4. Complete Your Daily Missions
This is a game where it’s not just the premium currency, but also the regular currency that’s hard to come by. But the daily missions can be a good source of currency if you work on them, so make sure you’re always checking the Daily Goals menu to see what new missions are on tap. Complete the missions as quickly as possible, as you won’t just be rewarded with common coins. You may also end up with keys and premium currency, both of which could also serve you well as you keep on progressing in the game!
5. Unlock New Skills And Upgrade Them
Each of the hundred-plus heroes in the game have their own skills, and while some of them will already be unlocked from the get-go and ready to upgrade, there are others which you’ll need to unlock first. And while that sounds like a fairly easy task to pull off in this game, you should take note that both tasks will require you to have different elementals, which are like ingredients or materials for a crafting recipe. That makes it even more important to stick to a tried-and-tested few heroes, rather than going through the “collect and select” or “try them all” approach. Elementals are hard to come by, so don’t waste them on a new hero you find interesting — use them on the ones you send off to battle.
6. Don’t Sell Pets Until You Have Surplus
Pets are the epic beasts that accompany your heroes in battle, and at some point in the game, you’ll have more pets than the number of heroes you’re recommended to have. But don’t sell those pets until you’ve got at least 10 to 15 in your team, or a good number of similar pets that prove superfluous to your needs. Remember that you can switch pets from one hero to another, depending on what’s needed in the battlefield at any given time, but also bear in mind that it may also be better to stick with the same pet from the start.
Regardless of what strategy you choose when it comes to pets, you should always take a look at their stats, and see how they’ve improved. Make sure you’re assigning a pet to a hero that needs them, and make sure that you level them up, but not to the point where you’re going broke. Leveling up costs money, and the cost of moving a pet from one level to the next can rise exponentially over time!
7. Fight In The Arena For Even More Rewards
Need more rewards on top of the ones you’re already getting? Try fighting against some real players and taking part in the arena battles, which reset on a weekly basis. You will, of course, win better prizes as you go from strength to strength, or from league to league, and that would also mean more premium currency, or crowns, as you move up the rankings. You can also get yourself some new keys and some new heroes, and if you win at the arena for five times, you will get the Daily Gauntlet. It all depends on the league you’re in and where you placed within it, so do your best at the arena, and don’t be shy to go up against some human opponents!
8. Your Heroes Can Become Friends Over Time
There is a social element to Lionheart: Dark Moon, but surprisingly enough, we’re not referring to the aforementioned arena battles. This is actually an in-game social element, as the game, believe it or not, allows each hero to earn friendship XP on top of their regular XP. Your heroes will get friendship XP for each battle you complete in story mode, and that simply means that your heroes will become fire-forged friends, to use the expression, becoming closer as they fight alongside each other more frequently. More friendship XP also means a much better chance of heroes attacking together during a regular attack, which could be a game-changer of sorts in the battlefield!
All in all, the game allows your heroes to have eight friends each, but the caveat is that you cannot replace friends once you’ve filled up all the eight slots. So there you go — that is actually another reason why keeping it simple and refraining from going overboard with the hero collection is the best way to go in Dark Moon. You need a tight rotation if you want friendship XP to remain high, and if you want your heroes to attack together, instead of independently.
9. How Should You Build Your Squad?
There are many ways for you to build a good, or better yet, perfect squad in Dark Moon, but there are a few things to keep in mind above all when it comes to forming a team.
Taking stock of all the tips we mentioned above, you’re probably better off sticking to 16 to 20 heroes out of a possible 120. Why 16 to 20? First off, you should have a main team of eight heroes where their levels are maxed out, or as high as possible. After that, you’ll need another eight backups, with good, not necessarily great stats, and this will serve as your second unit. Mix and match heroes from those teams so that you can maximize the friendship XP bonuses, and don’t be afraid to grind! Replaying completed levels will be very important to this end, after all.
When talking about formation, there really is no specific preference, but you need to absolutely have one healer in your team. Any offense dealt out by this healer will be mere gravy, but you’ll need them to bring your top heroes back to the thick of the fight. Make sure that this hero is accompanied by a pet whose buff increases defense and HP, thus allowing your healer to become less squishy and to stay alive when they’re needed the most in battle.