Seoul Apocalypse Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Level Up Fast and Crush Your Enemies

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: highly irradiated and deadly surfaces, superpowered individuals, huge underground bunkers that are filled to the brim with desperate survivors. No, I’m not talking about that other post-apocalyptic RPG; I’m talking about Seoul Apocalypse.

Seoul Apocalypse is an AFKRPG from Super Awesome, where you take control of superpowered individuals who managed to survive in Seoul’s irradiated surface, now dubbed Hell. Played from the POV of Thunder, a young man armed with a baseball bat, you’ll need to find new friends, make new enemies, and face ever-increasing odds to pay off your numerous debts and build a life for yourself. Seoul Apocalypse is available on both the App Store and Google Play.

As an AFKRPG, Seoul Apocalypse has all the nuances that those games in the same genre have: expensive levels, only really needing to level up 5 characters, and increasing a character’s rarity to improve stats and level cap. If you’re a seasoned veteran of those game types, feel free to skip this entirely (or just peruse through the quick tips section). If you’re new to this type of game though, then be sure to read on for some useful tips, tricks and strategies for Seoul Apocalypse!

The Biz of Kiz

Quick Tips:

· Tap the i button on a Kiz’s page for a detailed breakdown.

· You can go to the collection to preview a character’s stats at max level.

· Rush through the game to unlock the Sync Center (after 4-25) to cheat out levels for your other characters. This also means you only basically need to level up 5 characters, with everyone else just copying their levels.

· Always keep pushing stages, and drip feed your characters a few levels at a time if you can’t get past a level.

· Upgrade your rarer equipment to get even more mileage out of them. Equipment needs to be at least Heroic (purple) rarity to be upgraded and the number of upgrades depends on rarity. Dismantle equipment to get upgrade materials.

· Skill levels require Kiz Supplements which can be annoying to get. Use the drip feed method to make the most out of your beginner resources.

· 2 damage types (slash/blunt) and 2 different defenses for each; in general, Kiz has balanced defenses though there are exceptions.

· Some skills also boost specific defense types, allowing you to better combat enemies utilizing a specific damage type.

· Rarer Kiz = higher base stats and more skills. Promote Kiz by sacrificing dupes or same-class Kiz of the same rarity level. Promotion = higher rarity, meaning better stats and a higher level cap.

· Each Kiz also has a collection level based on the highest rarity you’ve gotten them to. Collection level = passive boost to all your characters.

· 2-3 formation; put your hardier melee kiz in front and your rangers/assassins in the back.

· A good basic formation is one tank, one control, and at least one DPS.

· Some characters to look out for are Bastard, Bullseye, Tiger D, Crux, and Jumbo for potential DPS, Scar or Yelena for tanking, and Doctor H, Needle, Mr. Pump, or Pwangko as support.

Related: Seoul Apocalypse Tier List: A Complete Ranking of All Characters

Kiz is the umbrella term for your heroes – characters who can not only survive on the highly irradiated surface of Hell but use the contamination to augment their strength and agility. Your Kiz will come from all walks of life: regular high schoolers, salarymen, athletes, and even more exotic fare. But to get ahead, you’ll need to learn how to maximize your Kiz and draw out their full potential.

Stats

Seoul Apocalypse’s stat system is straightforward. You’ve got health, strength, and defense. You’ve also got other stats: attack speed, move speed, block, evasion, crit rate/damage, and percent damage reduction. 

If you want detailed information on a Kiz’s stats, tap the info button on their page. The rarer a Kiz is, the higher its base stats. In addition, if you’d like to preview a Kiz’s stats at max level, tap on Kiz (the gas mask icon on the leftmost lower panel) then collection. Tap on the Kiz you want to see, then tap Max on the lower left.

One distinction that the game has in stats is that the defense stat is split into two types: Blunt Def and Slash Def. It should go without saying that each type of defense reduces blunt and slashing damage, respectively.

Increasing a Kiz’s stats is simple: feed them resources and level them up. A Kiz’s level cap depends on its rarity. This can be enhanced – see the promotion section below.

The Sync Center and Saving Exp Resources

The Sync Center is a facility that’s unlocked once you clear stages 4-25, and it deserves special mention here. As with other hero collector games, the Sync Center allows you to synchronize lower-level characters with your 5 highest leveled characters. This means that you can vastly save on resources by only investing in 5 characters.

On the heels of that is this advice for this type of game – just enough power is good enough. Don’t overinvest in the characters you get at the start (like Thunder and Jumbo) as you’ll probably want to shelf exp items and other resources for characters that are better at their specific niches. 

And since we’re already talking about that, let’s talk about the drip feed leveling method. This method entails leveling up your starter characters to the bare minimum to pass a stage. As there’s no energy system nor any penalty for losing a fight, you can keep pushing your heroes – and who knows, they might be able to eke out a win. This saves you resources in the long run and will help you get strong heroes up to speed much faster.

Equipment

Each Kiz can also equip up to 4 pieces of gear to raise its stats. These items are exclusive to attack types.

You can get equipment via auto-combat and clearing stages, as well as from achievements and other game modes. To outfit a Kiz, tap on it, then tap on one of the 4 slots to the left and right of the model. Or you could just tap auto-equip on the lower menu.

Gear that’s Heroic or higher rarity can also be upgraded. You’ll gain access to this rarity of equipment at around chapter 5 of the main campaign. Upgrading equipment improves its stats but take note that to upgrade a piece of kit, you’ll need to use resources from dismantling other equipment, as well as Sindorim coins.

To dismantle the equipment, go to your inventory, tap Gear, then tap any piece of gear. You can manually select which items to smash, and you can also configure automatic rules for scrapping equipment.

Skills

Each Kiz also has skills that they can use in combat. Kiz has up to 4 skills, but always has an ultimate, which requires them to expend the Rage they build up while fighting.

In general, skills level up every 10 levels. A level that would cause a Kiz to gain a new skill or skill level requires Kiz Supplements, a tertiary upgrade material. Kiz Supplements are harder to mass harvest than other resources, so I highly advise using the drip feed method and Sync Center to save your supplements for the heroes that actually need them.

Note that you should always avoid using non-heroic Kiz as they have fewer skills!

Damage Types

To see the type of damage a Kiz does (as well as if it’s melee or ranged), look at the icon on the upper left of the character screen.

· Knuckles mean a Kiz uses melee/blunt.

· A knife means a melee/slash kiz.

· A grenade indicates ranged/blunt damage.

· A bullet indicates a ranged/slash kiz.

In general, most Kiz has balanced defenses. However, you can skew the system in your favor (especially if your opponents are going heavy on a single damage type) with skills that boost defenses.

Rarity and Promotions

Each Kiz also has a rarity. If this is your first foray into a hero collector game, the long and short of it is that you should avoid using anything above the highest starting rarity – heroic in this case. I mentioned this in the skills section, but to reiterate, heroic characters not only have higher base stats, but they also have four skills. Rare characters have three, and common characters only have two.

Rarity isn’t just for determining who you should and shouldn’t use. The higher a Kiz’s rarity, the higher its base stats and level cap. 

To promote a Kiz, you’ll need to sacrifice either duplicate of that Kiz (for non-plus rarities) or characters of the same class and rarity (for next-level rarity). For example, to get Thunder to Heroic+, I need another Thunder. But if I’m ranking him up to the rank beyond Heroic+, I can use other Attackers of that rarity instead.

This system means that yes, you can fatten up even your low-rarity characters to serve as fodder for the Kiz you do use. But wait, there’s more: each character also has collection levels that provide exp to your character collection level. Each time you get a character up to a new rarity level (and yes, this includes common characters), you can get some collection exp from them to feed your collection level. And what this character collection level does is that it gives passive stats to all your Kiz based on its own level. Nifty, eh?

Classes and Affiliation

Each Kiz also has a class: attack, defense, support, control, and heal, which is self-explanatory. You can find a Kiz’s class besides its attack type.

Each character also has a faction. These are Independent, Sindorim, Bidol, Gangbuk, and Outlaw. Each of these factions has its own icon: a green triangle for Independent, a blue S for Sindorim, an orange B for Bidol, a red fist for Gangbuk, and a purple skull for Outlaw.

Formation Buffs

A Kiz’s class and faction are important because of the game’s formation buffs. If your party has 2-5 characters of a type and a faction, all of them gain a passive bonus. And naturally, the more of each you have, the bigger the bonus.

By fine-tuning your team to make use of specific formation bonuses, as well as leveling up different Kiz of different classes and factions, you can create a stockpile of characters who can deal with Seoul Apocalypse’s ever-evolving challenges.

The Actual Combat Formation

In practice though, formation buffs tend to be secondary in actual combat as you’ll need to position your Kiz well to both ensure their survivability and allow them to do their jobs properly.

Battle formation in Seoul Apocalypse is 2-3, with 2 characters in front and 3 in the back. The implications of this are:

· The two Kiz in front are going to draw the most attention and enemy fire.

· If you’re running more than two melee characters, any other melee Kiz will spend more time running to engage the enemy.

· Thus, it’s best to save offensive powerful melee Kiz by putting them in the back row. This allows them to avoid the brunt of your enemy’s attacks and lets them do their job of dealing damage for longer.

Now, you could just load up completely with attack-type Kiz to get the most out of your formation bonuses. On paper, that works, but in practice, it’s a great way to get killed. I’ve found the most success to be with a combination of one tank, one support, and at least one DPS, with the DPS, positioned in the back row regardless of if they’re ranged or melee.

Some characters who are good for these roles are Bastard, Bullseye, Tiger D, or Crux for DPS. If you don’t get any ranged units, Jumbo already has 4 skills dedicated to damage (and I would argue he and Bullseye are technically interchangeable depending on what you want).

For tanks, you might want to go with either Scar for his taunt and self-regen, or Yelena for her powerful party shield (though note that you won’t strictly require tanks until much later in the game).

Support-wise, you’ve got a lot of choices: Doctor H is a great healer, Mr. Pump passively grants Rage to his allies, Pwangko has a powerful ATK down debuff and can serve as an off-DPS, and Needle pins enemies to the ground which makes them easy pickings for your ranged DPS.

Picking Fights in Hell

Quick Tips:

· Rush the campaign ASAP to unlock these new modes, especially Battle Operation.

· Bounty Hunt gives targeted resources. Only specific modes are open per day, and 3 runs per day.

· Infinite Dungeon = clear floors, get prizes. One time per floor.

· Battle Operation = floors of increasing difficulty, event every 5 floors. You can pick up permanent (for that run) buffs after every fight. Very important to do this as it fills up the Battle Pass and gives you tokens to buy characters.

· Path of the Strong gives you a powerful guest character. Clear stages while keeping all characters alive to get max rewards.

· Arena = PVP. 5 fights per day. Set a good defense team. Daily and seasonal (2 weeks) rewards.

It’s not just the main campaign you need to worry about. By picking fights on other battlefields, you can amass the resources you need to grow your Kiz and secure your place in Hell. However, these game modes are locked behind the main story progress, so you must rush the main campaign (I suggest until 5-30, or the beginning of chapter 6) to unlock all of them as soon as you can – especially Battle Operation, as that mode gives you battle pass points and gives you the means to buy characters.

Once you have them unlocked, it’s time to dissect what each of them does.

Bounty Hunt

Bounty hunting is a great way to get targeted resources. You’ll be able to fight a set enemy team to gain Kiz exp, rare Kiz fragments, and most importantly, Kiz Supplements. The higher the level of the enemy you select, the more rewards you get.

Two important things about bounty hunts: you can only do 3 hunts per day (and yes, this is shared between different targets), and certain hunts are only open on certain days.

Infinite Dungeon

The Infinite Dungeon is a sprawling labyrinth that houses both fearsome foes and rich rewards.

This dungeon is a permanent addition to the game, so there’s no time pressure to complete each floor. However, clearing a floor not only nets you rewards – including Diamonds and supplements – but also counts as progress towards your Dungeon Pass for extra prizes!

Battle Operation

Battle Operation is the most important of these game modes.

Battle Operation consists of a total of 20 stages where you’ll be pitted against increasingly more difficult enemies. Take heart, though – you can select a permanent buff at the end of each fight, and every 5 floors nets you a new albeit temporary ally.

The reason you want to unlock and clear Battle Operation as soon as possible is that it not only is the sole means of progressing your Battle Pass but also gives out Battle Tokens that you can use to redeem characters at the shop. Battle Operation also resets every 2 days, so be sure to clear it on time.

Path of the Strong

The Path of the Strong is the last base feature to be unlocked, and if you were following the story, documents characters who aren’t exactly on the wrong side of the tracks.

Path of the Strong fights is the same as regular combat. You have a series of stages and clearing them all nets you a good sum of rewards. There are two key differences though: you have a powerful guest fighter that you must include in your party, and you’ll be given several stars per stage based on how many characters you had left standing. Get 3 stars on every stage to get the most rewards – including a copy of the guest character!

Arena

The Arena is Seoul Apocalypse’s PVP mode. 

In the Arena, you compete with other players for ladder placement. You do this by picking fights with players – up to 5 free fights per day and more if you pay – and if you manage to beat their defensive teams, you’ll gain some PVP points, and they’ll lose some. Other players will be trying to do the same though, and you’ll need to set a powerful defensive team to ward them off.

While I understand not everyone likes PVP, it’s worth dabbling in this mode as you get both daily and seasonal (every 2 weeks) rewards depending on your placement on your PVP ladder.

The Post-Apocalyptic Economy

Quick Tips:

· Your base is where you scrap Kiz and materials and buy stuff. You can dismiss common Kiz, reset the levels of your Kiz (costs Diamonds), and revert Kiz of rarity greater than Heroic+ into their material parts.

· You can access the Shop via the base. You can buy gear and resources with Diamonds and/or Sindorim coins. This is also where you turn in your Parting Mementos and Battle Tokens.

· Upgrade your Power Station facilities ASAP to get passive boosts on some economic activities.

· Autocombat is your friend – it gives basic resources, supplements, and equipment. Always go as high as you can. Auto-combat spoils beyond 20 hours go poof.

· Daily, weekly, and one-time achievement quests give rewards; daily and weekly quests also provide a means to go full F2P as they give out Diamonds and recruitment tickets.

· Battle passes: get prizes for story progress, daily/weekly quests, Infinite Dungeon progress, and participating in Battle Operation. Mission and Battle passes reset monthly. Go to Shop to access the battle passes (bottom of the screen).

· Collection level gives Diamonds when you first get a character.

· Errand Center to do fetch quests. Doing quests increases the grade of your Errand Center, which in turn gives you better quests and rewards.

· Server achievements = free Diamonds. Tap Ranking on the battle screen.

· Events give free stuff; 30-day new player login rewards as well as a 7-day launch celebration.

· Make friends with randoms to get Friendship Tokens. Friendship Tokens = free gacha pulls.

· Mileage: pull in gacha, get free stuff. Friendship gacha doesn’t give you mileage.

Despite their superpowered status, your Kiz still needs money and materials not just to survive but improve themselves. As our protagonist Thunder demonstrates, bounty hunting in Hell isn’t just a lucrative business but a way of life. However, there are also a ton of ways to get resources for growing your Kiz.

Your Base

The base is where your Kiz can (hopefully) kick back and relax after a hard day of kicking ass. To access your base, tap on the 4th button on the lower menu.

At your base, you can upgrade facilities and take on errands (more on those later), as well as recycle, reset, and revert Kiz via the Recycling Center. Recycling Kiz means permanently parting with them in exchange for Parting Mementos – and you can only recycle common-grade Kiz. Resetting Kiz means reverting them to level 1 and getting a full refund on materials spent, at the cost of Diamonds. Finally, reverting Kiz allows you to split a Kiz with a rarity greater than Heroic+ into the materials they consumed.

The base is also where you can access the all-important shop. This is where you can buy resources and equipment for Diamonds and/or Sindorim Coins. It’s also where you spend the Parting Mementos you get by scrapping common characters, as well as the Battle Tokens you get from Battle Operation.

The Power Station

I highly recommend upgrading the facilities at your Power Station if you haven’t already. 

This will allow you to get a lot more mileage out of your economic activities. In particular, the Agricultural Area increases your base resource income from auto-combat, the Industrial Area gets you extra income from dismantling specific types of gear, and the Research Center passively improves the abilities of all Kiz of a specific class.

Auto-Combat and Fast Hunt

Auto-combat is by and large the most reliable way to gather resources. The farther you’ve reached in the main campaign, the bigger your auto-combat rewards. As I mentioned above, the Agricultural Area in the Power Station directly increases the base resource income of auto-combat, so try and upgrade that before you settle in for a break.

Auto-combat mostly gives out account exp, character exp, and Sindorim Coins. To a lesser degree, it also pays out Kiz Supplements and equipment. To collect your spoils, as well as to view your basic income stats, tap on the safe in the lower half of the battle screen.

Note that auto-combat has an upper limit of 20 hours. Any resources beyond that simply vanish into digital oblivion. If you’ve got notifications on, the game will warn you if your stockpile is full.

On a side note, you’ll also eventually unlock Fast Hunt, which gives you 2 hours’ worth of resources for free once a day, and you can pay Diamonds to do it again. I’d skip this: 2 hours of resources aren’t actually that much, though do be sure to redeem your free resources from this every day.

Quests

Almost all mobile games have quests; Seoul Apocalypse is no exception.

These quests come in daily, weekly, and one-time achievement flavors. These not only pay out in basic resources but also premium ones such as Diamonds and free recruitment tickets, so be sure to do them all. Oh, and don’t forget to actually redeem your rewards by tapping the crates in the activity bar section of the daily weekly quest menu.

Battle Passes

There are several battle-pass like features in Seoul Apocalypse, each one of them scaling off a different activity. All of them are definitely worth doing though, because of the rewards.

The four battle passes in Seoul Apocalypse is the Growth Pass, which unlocks levels based on your main story progress, the Mission Pass, which rewards you for doing dailies and weeklies, the Dungeon Pass, which pays out depending on how far you’ve gotten in the Infinite Dungeon, and the Battle Pass, which fills up when you do the Battle Operation mode.

Note that the Growth and Dungeon passes are one-time things. The Mission and Battle pass, on the other hand, reset on the first day of every month.

To access the battle pass menus, go to the shop, then tap on the corresponding pass at the bottom of the screen.

Character Collection

I mentioned the collection level bonuses earlier, but they bear repetition. I’ve already said that increasing the rarity of characters gives you collection exp, but did you also know that getting a character for the first time entitles you to some diamonds from this screen?

The Errand Center

The Errand Center is a hub where your Kiz can grab and complete fetch quests.

While the prizes are nice, consistency is key here: the more quests you do, the higher the grade of your Errand Center. And the higher the grade of your Errand Center, the better the quests (and quest rewards) you’ll get!

Ranking Prizes

Just because you’re not at the top of the heap doesn’t mean you don’t get any rewards.

Depending on the progress of other players in your server in both the main campaign and the Infinite Dungeon (every new chapter in the campaign, and every 5 levels in the Infinite Dungeon), everyone in the server gets prizes. Go to the battle screen, tap Ranking in the upper right, then tap on First Achievement in the lower right to get your free stuff.

Events

Events always pay out a ton of free stuff.

You’ll automatically get the launch celebration screen the first time you log in in a day. However, some other event screens sometimes fail to pop up. Tap Events in the upper left of the battle screen to see the current events, as well as get your login prizes and other rewards.

Friendship Points

Friendship with other players in Seoul Apocalypse is what my grade school science teacher would call a “symbiotic relationship”.

Aside from playing with friends, the real use of the friendship system is to both send and claim Friendship Tokens. These heart-shaped coins aren’t just for show, as 10 tokens will allow you to claim a free pull on the friendship banner.

Mileage

Lastly, let’s talk about mileage.

Mileage builds up whenever you pull on either the basic or targeted type banner, and no, you never get mileage from the friendship banner. This mileage can be exchanged for free stuff at every interval of 100, culminating in a Heroic Recruit Token at 500 mileage. The other levels aren’t half bad, though – you get resource piles of various basic resources, including the all-important Kiz Supplements.

A Cozy Apocalypse

Overall, Seoul Apocalypse uses the same mechanics as pretty much every AFKRPG, and you’re 100% free to progress at your own pace. 

That’s the end of my beginner’s guide to Seoul Apocalypse, and I hope that players new to AFKRPGs were able to learn the ropes and pick up something new. If you’ve got anything to add or suggestions and tips of your own, make yourself heard in the comments below!