HeyDaniko // October 3rd, 2022
It’s an extremely difficult thing to make a case for any idle game, as those who already play them know what they’re all about, whilst those you who don’t tend to see them as little more than games “that play themselves.” And whilst that categorisation certainly isn’t completely inaccurate, it is also more than a little reductive.
It’s true that the combat aspect of idlers tends to take care of itself, but what many prospective players don’t realise is just how much micromanagement actually goes into successfully progressing through a game like Idle Champions. And I am suddenly aware that a game about “micromanagement” probably has even less sex appeal than a game that runs itself but, please hear me out. This article is only about 1,500 words, so it won’t take long.
I often argue that a good idler can be an extremely rewarding second-monitor distraction, for those times when your main game is loading, or you’re just waiting in a dungeon queue. And Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms just happens to be one such good idler.
In a nutshell, most idlers, sometimes even less flatteringly referred to as “clickers,” are about managing your team. You select your characters, each with different levels of damage, support, gold farm, etcetera, and you set them to work. The little guys will then go on about their business, automatically farming their way through enemies, zones, levels, adventures, whatever the format the game presents. Enemies will usually drop gold when defeated, which you, the player, yes, you are in fact required to play the game, can then use to level up your team. Classically, this was pretty much all idlers really had going for them, although that too is a little reductive. Idle Champions’ appeal, however, is in just how ways there are to empower your team of micro minions and allow them to progress further and further into the game as you go.
For a little background information, Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is an officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons video game, created by Canadian developer Codename Entertainment, and set in the D&D flagship fantasy setting of the Forgotten Realms. As the name suggests. What makes Idle Champs particularly alluring to D&D fans is the plethora of recognisable characters being continually introduced into its roster. And I’m not just talking about pre-established Forgotten Realms heroes like Minsc, Drizzt Do’Urden, and Jarlaxle, most well known for their appearances in the Baldur’s Gate series of games, as well as several novels that predate them, but the incredible number of player characters from the vast wealth of broadcast campaigns online. To name but a handful, heroes from the Black Dice Society, High Rollers, Acquisitions Incorporated, Waffle Crew, and, my personal favourite, Oxventure, all make an appearance with more heroes added on a month-to-month basis. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Oxventure was the main pull for me, as there are currently no other places that I can get a fix of my beloved, dysfunctional vagabonds in digitised form. But there are doubtlessly countless other players who feel exactly the same about their chosen bands of heroes, sharing in my joy of seeing them animated on screen, chopping through wave after wave of opposing cannon fodder.
Presentationally, the game is arranged into “campaigns,” each taking place in a particular location, with its own narrative, and comprised of several “adventures.” These adventures are essentially levels in the old school understanding of video game structure, and each comes with a collection of “variants” adding different rewards, achievements, and challenges for their completion.
Importantly, progressing through Idle Champions requires a decent understanding of its chief grinding mechanic, and that is the endless feedback loop of gold find and favor. Working through any individual adventure will award you with gold. In the short term, this gold is used to upgrade your characters during that particular instance, allowing your team to push further and further into the waves of enemies. However, all of these upgrades are lost upon completion. In the long term, conversely, the total gold that you accumulate during any particular adventure is then converted into something called “favor” at the end. Much like the gold itself, favor also has two distinct uses. First and foremost, it increases the gold find that you begin any future adventure with by quite a staggering amount. With high amounts of favor accumulated, enemies who once rewarded you with 10, 100 or maybe even 1000 gold upon their defeat, will suddenly be shedding out millions, trillions, billions, and eventually whatever a billion times a billion is called, and beyond! This speeds up your progression through any particular campaign by an understandably incredible amount! But favor really becomes quite tactical when you start looking into using it as a currency. Blessings are campaign-wide buffs purchasable by spending favor. Some buffs remain active across all campaigns, but on the whole, most blessings only affect the campaign in which they are purchased. Whilst these buffs can be extremely powerful, increasing your team’s damage by hundreds, even thousands of percent, spending too much favor in one go could result in losing a noticeable amount of gold find during your adventures. The trick is to find that sweet spot in which massively accumulated piles of gold are no longer powerful enough on their own to brute force your way further and further into the adventure, or indeed the campaign. At this point, spending favor to purchase some blessings would be more beneficial than holding onto it purely for the sake of farming up more and more gold.
In addition to using favor to build up more gold and gold to build up more favor, all the champions featured in the game have their own unique abilities, roles and specialisations. Just like the traditional role playing games from which all of the heroes are drawn, the characters are divided into their groupings of damage dealers, healers, tanks, and supports. Creating balanced teams that allow you to press on through the content is crucial to the game’s progression, much like any other RPG or MMO you might have played. Teams comprised exclusively of damage dealers may clear out the first hundred waves or so quite rapidly, but you’ll most certainly have an issue once your enemies start becoming more and more resistant to harm. At this point you’ll likely be needing a tank or two at the front of your formation to soak up the oncoming damage. But tanks alone cannot live forever, so just like in any good team composition, you’ll be needing the occasional healer placed throughout your group as well. Support champions are a little more specialised, however. Some provide the team with substantial damage boosts, increase the speed at which your heroes attack, decrease the time your skills require to cool down, and even increase the speed at which enemies spawn, allowing you to progress through the adventures much more quickly. Shockingly, some support champions even go so far as to increase your gold find even further than your accumulated favor does. This makes for some truly over powered farming teams that enable you to press through campaigns at quite a game-breaking rate. Only, it isn’t game-breaking, its just designed to feel that way for the cheap hit of serotonin we all crave so much. But, as we touched on earlier, even the almighty gold find has its limit. Striking a balance and finding a team that works best for you is one of the game’s key charms and certainly one of its more active aspects for those times that your main monitor game is loading. Or your tank is pooping.
Believe it or not, that’s not actually as deep as the rabbit hole goes, as there are even more customization choices and ingame rewards, all geared towards rapid, efficient farming and progression. But it would honestly be somewhat surplus and a little overwhelming, assuming the wall of information listed above isn’t already, to delve any further into the mechanics of Idle Champions. The chances are you won’t be worrying about feats, patrons, influence, trials, time gates, or events for quite some time after you begin playing, and by the time you do need to start paying them any attention, you’ll be well versed in the way the game handles and presents itself that you’ll have no trouble in figuring them out.
All this to say, please consider giving Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms a spin, if only for something to do between levels, dungeons, raids, or even paragraphs as I have been doing for the last hour. You may just find it considerably more hands-on than the name suggests. If I had my way, the game wouldn’t even have “Idle” in its title. And the entire genre itself could even use a little PR as far too many potential players simply don’t understand just how much there is to do in these games. But as someone who has played quite a few idlers of the years, I feel genuinely comfortable in recommending Idle Champions as my favourite to date. And not just because it features the Oxventurers. Although that probably contributes.
It definitely contributes.
Lots of love,
Daniko
Thunder's Remnant 