The world of Ardura is under attack by unknown forces! In these dire times, people cried out, “If only there was a great and wise master to lead our brave heroes to battle!” Your eyes slowly open, summoned to heed the call of the people once more…
…or so the dungeon master says.
Available on iOS and Android platforms, Magnum Quest is an idle RPG that – while it doesn’t offer anything new – has a really nice tabletop aesthetic and plays to its genre’s strengths. Perhaps one of Magnum Quest’s main draws for me is its presentation as a tabletop game. Your heroes fight and conquer evil, true – but when they’re not active, they stand neatly (and rather nicely) on plastic plinths, just like the tabletop figures of yore.
The game’s main menu screen looks like a board game or a pen-and-paper RPG that’s in the middle of being set up, with dice, charts, and figurines strewn about the table. Further menus fold out neatly like a pop-up book or an in-depth board game play area, and a glass cabinet contains figurines of heroes and enemies.
But before you sink your teeth into the world of Magnum Quest, give our beginner’s guide a glance – maybe it’ll have something that will let you get a leg up on the game and help you set up a solid foundation for the battles that await! So with that said, let’s delve into our Magnum Quest beginner’s guide!
Assess Your Heroes
Heroes represent the forces you’ll both be using and staring down. Getting to know your heroes and learning how to make the most of them is core to not just victory, but glory in Magnum Quest.
Hero Stats
As may be expected of any RPG, your heroes have a few stats that help you figure out how they perform in battle.
Level is a measure of a hero’s general strength and overall progression.
Health is how much damage a hero can takes before it dies and becomes unavailable in battle.
Attack and Defense are measures of how strong each hero is in terms of offense and defense, respectively.
There’s also a helpful hexagon in the lower part of the info panel. This will help you see, at a glance, what each hero’s strong suits are. The hex is divided into six areas – Healing, Control, Debuff, Buff, Survive (survivability and self-sustain), and Damage (which also helpfully includes what type of damage the hero utilizes).
Related: Magnum Quest Tier List: Ranking the Best Characters in the Game
Factions
Each hero belongs to a different faction, and each faction is both weak and strong against another faction. At a quick glance, the faction alchemy is such:
- Fortress -> Wild -> Forest -> Shadow -> Fortress
- Divinity <-> Abyss
Leah here is of the Fortress faction. This faction is mostly composed of humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and their many allies. Their members are dressed in medieval fashion – robes, tunics, full plate mail, and the like. They also bear more than a passing resemblance to a certain alliance; if you know, you know. Their color is blue. Fortressheroes are strong against Wild heroes, but weak against Undead ones.
Len the beastman belongs to the Wild faction. Savage strength, ruthless cunning, and matchless courage define the members of this faction. Their members range from beastmen, kobolds, satyrs, and of course, orcs. They dress in a tribal fashion and seem to prefer simple, yet effective weapons such as clubs and pickaxes. The Wild faction uses brown as their color. Wildheroes are strong against Forestfaction members, but are weak to Fortress heroes.
The Forestfaction includes both the wild and civilized things of the woods, from the graceful yet secretive elves to predatory insects. They deliver nature’s wrath to their foes through claw, bow, sword, and sorcery. The Forest faction is colored green. They’re strong against the Shadow faction, but weak to the Wild faction.
Those who dwell in darkness either by choice or coercion belong to the Shadow faction. Their ranks swell with the living dead, such as liches, skeletons, and vampires. Dark elves, too, have been seen among their armies. Although they are perhaps motivated by nothing but hunger, this faction is no less heroic than their peers. The Shadow faction’s color is purple. They are strong against the Fortress faction, but are weak to the Forestfaction.
Divinity heroes descend from their castles in the sky. These angelic beings bring the full force of the light to bear against their enemies. Divinity heroes both deal and take more damage from members of the Abyss faction.
Beings that should perhaps remain nameless and forgotten belong to the Abyss faction. These nefarious beings delight in destroying any foolish enough to oppose them. As part of the eternal struggle between light and dark, Abyss heroes both deal more damage to and take more damage from Divinity heroes.
Classes
As well as factions, Magnum Quest’s heroes also have dedicated classes to easily identify what role each hero plays in combat.
Warriors and Guards make up Magnum Quest’s melee classes. These fighters use heavy armor and weapons to deal significant damage and protect themselves. While Warriors are oriented towards offense, Guards work as team tanks.
Hunters and Rogues prefer far-ranged combat to pick off enemies. They’re powerful, but not as hardy as melee heroes. Hunters use bows, crossbows, and other projectile weapons to dispatch their foes. Rogues, on the other hand, use more unconventional weapons: kunai, shurikens, throwing knives and the like.
Mages and Priests use spellcraft to help their allies and hinder their enemies. Mages use their understanding of the arcane arts to inflict major damage to their foes. Priests, on the other hand, weave spells of healing and support, providing their allies with greater strength and fortitude.
Hero Leveling
Magnum Quest’s heroes are leveled up by feeding them experience scrolls and gold. By leveling a hero up, you increase their base stats and unlock new skills for them to use on the battlefield!
When a hero’s next level would unlock a new skill or a level up one of their skills, their next level up becomes more expensive. These levels require more resources – particularly beryl – to break through and effectively serve as a soft cap to progression until you can accrue enough resources. In return, you’ll make their skills significantly stronger or unlock new abilities for them to use!
Hero Skills
Naturally, each hero has skills that they can use in battle as their respective energy gauges fill up. To check each hero’s skill, go to the Skill tab of that hero. It’s important to note that skills are both unlocked and upgraded just by leveling up, but keep in mind the beryl cost of learning new skills.
Rarer heroes have more skills. Bronze heroes have 2, silvers have 3, and gold tiers have 4. It’s entirely possible to draw a lower-tier hero at a higher rarity, so use the number of skills as a guideline as to whether or not you have a genuine gold hero on your hands.
Hero Equipment
Your heroes can also be outfitted with equipment to improve their stats and their performance in battle. Each hero has a slot for a weapon, body armor, a helmet, footwear, and runestones – which are unlocked much later in the game. Refining and upgrading equipment is key to bolstering your heroes and getting a much-needed edge over your enemies.
The type of gear each hero can equip is dependent on their class. Melee heroes like Arthur or Katos don heavy metal armor, while mage like Aeluin use cloth armor and staves.
Equipment can also be upgraded by sacrificing upgrade tokens or other equipment; however, an equipment’s rarity will determine its maximum upgrade level. Common equipment like rusty sword and helmets can’t be enhanced at all.
Hero Ascension
Like other gacha games, Magnum Quest offers an ascension function for those blessed (or cursed) with multiple copies of a particular character. By feeding copies of a character of the same faction, or even multiple copies of that character, you can ascend a hero, increasing its base stats dramatically. If you’re ascending a hero that’s already on your team, don’t worry: the new hero will carry over that hero’s level and equipment!
Since you can eventually upgrade your silver heroes to gold ones, it’s suggested you build up a fodder base. This way, you’ll have a pool of sacrifices to use for powering up the heroes you actually use. Divinity and Abyss heroes are exceptions to this rule – they strictly require copies of themselves to be ascended.
Keep Summoning Heroes
As expected from any hero collection game, Magnum Quest has a character gacha.
Magnum Quest’s character gacha becomes available once you clear stage 1-12, which is a relatively simple task. At this point, the game will direct you to tap the orb/palantir/20-ish sided die to the right side labeled Summon to start pulling heroes.
Using Different Currencies
As you may have guessed, summoning heroes requires currency. You can use Dragonshards – the blue crystals that you get by completing achievements or progressing through the story – to summon new heroes. You can also buy more Dragonshards from the game’s cash shop, if you really want to.
You can also use Friendship Points or Faction Draw Coupons to summon heroes. To change which banner you’d like to pull characters from, tap on the three banners to the left of the screen. It’s important to note that the third banner is a factional banner that changes after approximately one day. This banner has a higher chance of yielding characters of that particular faction.
Character summons aren’t restricted to just gold heroes. More often than not, you’ll pull rank-and-file mooks as bronze tier heroes, or more common silver-tier heroes. The rarest heroes – gold tier – are among the best units of the game in terms of both raw stats and growth potential.
The Magic List
The Magic List becomes available after you’ve used Dragonshards to pull heroes 20 times. This is essentially Magnum Quest’s pity system, where you can slate which heroes of each faction you’d like to have a higher chance of getting. It’s important to note that Divinity and Abyss heroes are automatically on this list. For best results, it’s best to fill the lists out whenever they’re empty, and reconfigure them to get heroes you want.
Test Runs
You can test run heroes if you’re not sure who to put on your magic list. To try a hero out, go to Portraits on the main menu, then tap on the Ares figurine in Portraits. All heroes you don’t have yet will be grayed out, and if you tap them, a test run button appears where you can try the hero out against an infinitely respawning horde of weak enemies. This lets you get a feel for every hero in the game and makes it easier to build teams as you move forward. Take note that you can only try out heroes that are inherently gold-tier here.
Mileage
On top of all this is a mileage reward for summoning heroes, depicted by a meter at the bottom of the screen. The more summons you do, the more this bar fills up, with you getting prizes at certain milestones.
Soul Dice
You can get silver and gold soul dice from achievements, weekly activities, and completing Trials. These dice serve as an alternative way to roll a character. Once you’ve accumulated 60 of a kind of dice, you can spend them to gain a random character of that rarity.
Occupational Achievement Points
Magnum Quest also has a mechanic called Occupational Achievement Points. What it boils down to is simple – the more gold heroes of a class you pull, and the more you’ve invested in them, the more points you get.
These points contribute to a passive bonus that affects all units of that class! With that in mind, it may be wise to build up units that you don’t plan on using purely for the passive benefit they can offer their comrades. To check your current Occupational Achievement buffs, just tap on your profile on the upper left of the main menu.
Hero Retirement
Bronze heroes are generic, nameless soldiers that perform dismally compared to silver or gold tier units. They’re not entirely useless however, as you can retire them to gain retirement coins and beryl for your troubles.
Master The Combat Controls
Like some other mobile strategy games I’ve played before, such as Girls’ Frontline or more recently Blue Archive, Magnum Quest is an auto-battler. The difference here is that Magnum Quest usually places you directly in front of the opposition.
Assign a Capable Team
When you embark on a mission, you’ll be asked to select 5 heroes from your roster to be deployed in a 2-3 linear formation. At the same time, you can see the enemy’s lineup.
A general indicator of combat power is visible as a number above the enemy team and below your team. This is a quick way to assess whether or not your team is up to the task of clearing the next stage. Numbers aren’t everything though – each hero’s skills also serve a pivotal role on the battlefield.
Formations and Factions
The more heroes you have from the same faction in your combat team, the more effectively they’ll fight. There are 4 kinds of bonus formations that you can set up:
- 3 of the same faction: all allies have +10% attack and hp.
- 4 of the same faction: all allies have +15% attack and +20% hp.
- 5 of the same faction: all allies have +25% attack and +25% hp.
- 3 of the same faction, and the other 2 belong to another, similar faction: all allies get +15% attack and hp.
Be wary that these bonuses also apply to your opponent’s team!
Divinity and Abyss heroes serve as a wildcard in team compositions – they count as being a member of every faction, but only count as one unit at a time. In effect, this means that they can be used to fill in the slot to attain the highest possible formation bonus possible.
In addition to their wildcard role, Divinity and Abyss heroes offer a unique buff or debuff to either your team or the enemy’s. Each deployed Divinity hero increases your team’s energy recovery by 3%, while each Abyss hero lowers the enemy team’s energy recovery by 3%.
Use your Hero Skills
As mentioned earlier, heroes have powerful skills that can turn the tide of battle. As they fight, a hero builds up their yellow skill meter, or ultimate.
These ultimate skills are the first skills that heroes unlock and are usually very, very powerful. To use a skill, you can tap the hero’s portrait in the lower right when their skill gauge is full. Their portrait will also flash with a gold aura when their ultimate becomes available.
When a skill activates, the game pauses for a little bit while the hero’s quote and animation plays. More importantly, during this bullet time phase, you can activate any other hero’s ultimate activity as well! This works even during autocombat, where the AI will use skills in sequence rather than tandem.
While heroes can unlock other skills, these are used automatically as battles go on. These usually complement the hero’s ultimate skill and augment their role.
You can also set heroes to use their skills automatically by tapping the auto button on the right side, or manually toggling each hero’s auto mode below their portrait.
Speeding Battles Up
It’s fun to see your heroes in action, but there may come a time when you just want to rush through the campaign as quickly as possible to unlock new content. If your heroes have an overwhelming level advantage over the enemy party, it’s possible to just turn off auto skill and leave the battle to play out.
There’s no battle ranking here unlike in other similar games – there’s only victory or defeat. As long as you’re not running out of time in your battles or fighting a boss, you can let normal attacks carry the day. While we’re at it, you can double the game’s speed by tapping the 1x button on the right side of the screen.
Like the skill slowdowns, the voices can become repetitive if you’re forced to listen to them every time a hero activates a skill. You can toggle skill voices off in the pause menu or the settings menu.
Instanced Content Is Paramount
Much of Magnum Quest’s content requires you to clear the main story up to a certain point. These modes have a lot of goodies and serve as the bulk of the game. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to rush to unlock these modes as quickly as possible. We’ll be covering the trials, dungeons, and arena modes here.
The Roguelike Trial
Trials are unlocked relatively early in the game and are my personal favorite content, with its roguelike elements.
Trials are a series of 21 battles where you’re allowed to draw a card at the end of each encounter. These cards provide powerful passive effects to your team and let you snowball in strength very quickly. But beware, as the deeper you go, the more powerful your foes become.
On every floor that’s a multiple of 7, you’ll fight a boss, which is a much more difficult encounter than the previous floors you’ve cleared. Clearing a boss gets you access to a rare and normally very good passive card for your heroes. You’ll also get Valor Coins from beating a boss, which serve as exp for filling up the Wanted Order.
At each junction, you’ll have a selection of 3 rooms to chose from. Most commonly, these will be enemy encounters – the higher the enemy team’s combat strength, the more prizes you earn. Prominent among these prizes are trial coins, which can be used to buy items from the trial shop. You also get more gold and hero exp scrolls from beating harder enemies.
Trials reset every so often, making them farmable.
There’s also a Wanted Order, which serves as a sort of battle pass for clearing trial content. Be sure to check in whenever you’ve made significant progress, as you can get gold and invaluable beryl from the order.
Dungeon Delving
The dungeon is a permanent fixture where each cleared floor nets you a small amount of Dragonshards, gold, hero exp, soul dice, and other good stuff. This nest of evil becomes more difficult as you dive deeper and deeper into it, but the rewards are great. And naturally, the lower you desced, the better the treasures you find.
Since it’s a permanent feature, the dungeon doesn’t reset. Instead, there’s a leaderboard on the lower right for the lowest floor anyone in your server has achieved.
Into the Arena
The Arena serves as Magnum Quest’s PVP zone. PVP in this game is quite similar to other gacha games – there’s no actual live PVP; instead, players set up defense teams that will fight for them, should another player throw down a challenge.
You get daily and seasonal rewards depending on your daily and final position on the PVP ladder. These rewards come in the form of Dragonshards. If you’re feeling feisty, try and land high on the ladder for a windfall of shards when the season ends.
Each battle you initiate consumes an arena token. These tokens refresh daily, but you can also get them from clearing quests.
Join A Guild
Guilds are core to progression in Magnum Quest. As soon as you can find a guild that’s accepting players, jump right in.
The All-Important Guild Store
You may be wondering “where do I spend all the different currencies I’ve been getting, like trial coins?”. Look no further than the guild store. Seriously, even if you don’t like interacting with other people, join a guild just for store access.
It’s here that you can exchange retirement tokens, trial coins, guild badges, and yes – gold, to buy stuff. There’s a huge selection of items you can get, and it’s always worth checking in for the daily refresh. Additionally, guild stores stock better items the more of the main story you’ve completed.
Guild Bosses
The only other content that guilds offer at the moment is guild bosses.
You can challenge guild bosses once a day. Don’t be deceived by their low combat power – they are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. The challenge in a guild boss lies in your ability to both deal as much damage to it as possible within the time limit to generate as much hatred as you can. The more hatred you generate, the more prizes you can redeem at the end (tap the chests on the boss screen).
In addition, you get Dragonshards, equipment, and guild badges from fighting the guild boss. This also contributes a bit to your guild activity, which will allow your guild to unlock more content and raids down the line.
Grab The Free Stuff
Magnum Quest has a lot of free stuff up for grabs, and with the amount of resources you’ll need to bring your heroes to the apex of their strength, it’s in your best interest to get resources whenever and wherever you can.
Free Heroes!
Gifts from the Legendary Archmage is a 7-day login event that new players get. Not only do you get Dragonshards, but you also get 2 gold-tier heroes – Aeluin and Winden – for free!
Hero Stories
Whenever you get a new non-bronze tier hero, be sure to tap on their story. This lets you read up on the hero’s lore, but more importantly gets you 50 Dragonshards.
The Trial for Beginners
The Trial for Beginners is available to new players. It offers rewards for completing increasingly difficult tasks over a 7 day period, and also serves as a great way to ease yourself into the game’s mechanics. You’ll even be able to get Ione – a gold-tier hero – for free if you get enough medals!
Finish Your Dailies and Weeklies
Almost every mobile RPG has daily and weekly quests that players can complete to gain additional prizes. Of note are the golden chests that appear as you complete more quests – be sure to tap them to get an extra prize!
It’s important to complete these quests as they’re a renewable source of silver soul dice. With all the heroes you need to sacrifice to power up your elite characters, you’ll definitely want as many silver heroes as you can get.
White Tower Hero Order
The White Tower Hero Order is unlocked after you’ve rolled enough in the gacha, and is the name that Magnum Quest uses for its battle pass. Fortunately, this one comes in both paid and unpaid versions. Be sure to nab your Dragonshard rewards whenever you gain a new battle pass level.
Idle Rewards
When you’re not playing Magnum Quest, you automatically gather resources. These resources go into your idle chest, which you can open at any time to claim gold, exp, and hero exp scrolls. The higher you player level, the better this resource generation becomes.
You also have the option to claim fast rewards if you need a quick infusion of resources. This can be used for free two times a day, and will give you resources equal to how much you would have gathered idly in 2 hours.
Redeem These Magnum Quest Codes
Finally, Magnum Quest has a lot of redeemable codes that you can enter to nab neat stuff, like Dragonshards, gold, and hero exp scrolls.
While the redemption button has been temporarily disabled due to maintenance as of writing (January 3, 2022), here’s a list of codes that have been verified as still active by players before the takedown. Be sure to plug them in as soon as you can redeem codes again!
- arcanecard
- fbfan100kgift
- halloween2021
- herovoice
- mq123
- mq999
- thanksgiving
Become Ardura’s Hero
With its bevy of activities and tons of collectible heroes, upgradable stats, equipment, and other items, Magnum Quest is a game that’s easy to pick up, but difficult to put down. With this guide, we hope you’ve learned something new, or found a new way to play the game more efficiently. If you have anything to add, or want to point out some things we might have missed, let us know in the comment section below!