AFKandia - Epoch of Idle

[h1]Edit & Update[/h1] I reached like the level 270 areas & onward, the gameplay loop is not very fun, you have to get the next level gear in each area of higher tier, the issue is, since gear is extremely rare, it's boring with no progression, I've got 99% success when smelting, that's how much I've grinded this game, along with luckily getting Melee Wings Tier 3 which has helped until now, most of the time I'm undergeared due to drops not giving the gear I need & as you can tell I put in over 600 hours now active idling since there's no offline idle [i]While I do not recommend it, I personally did enjoy it, but not anymore, but I believe the fact that it's labeled idle & it's missing a lot of what people would find fun & rewarding doesn't exist, some features are heavily unbalanced & the ability to achieve some of those unbalanced features aren't possible yet[/i] [b]WARNING[/b]: [i]No Offline Idle Functionality, you must always have the game open for it to function properly[/i] I played this through start to finish with a total of 155 hours currently & reaching the last area which requires level 95 to enter + a special key, I'm currently level 99 & reached the end result of the game essentially as from thereon it's just an endless grind [h1]Just Starting[/h1] You're dropped in clueless of what to do, you enter an area, spammed with drops of items, what type of style do you choose, melee, okay takes strength/melee gear, everything is pretty straight forward, just know the weapon you use has required stats, try to focus on one Primary Stat as later gear will need more of it [h1]Areas[/h1] Each area has a set amount of monsters that can spawn, 1 & 1-2 up to early on & up to 4-8 that you have to deal with at any given time, you don't have that many monsters to kill to get to a boss, until you reach the point where you must kill 1,000 monsters before entering the boss wave, loot is dropped by any of the normal monsters not in a boss wave, so you'll be rolling those normal loot drops on the bottom list of the loot menu, during the boss wave, no loot is dropped by any monsters & only until you kill all monsters will 1 loot drop after defeating the last boss monster & rolling the boss loot via the top menu in the loot menu [h1]Rarity & Gear[/h1] The most of what you'll see are items from common to the most at green in the first & only area you can enter until you reach higher levels, it seemed promising at first & felt a sense of rewarding, but when it comes to higher rarities, Epic (Purple) & Legendary (Orange), they will seemingly seem non-existent, but that's not the only issue, even if you get the rarity of drop highest for your area, it gave you an item you're not using the primary stat for, so you have to get rid of it, oh well, better luck next time [b]Note[/b]: [i]You can view the loot from each area in the top left corner by selecting the button that states [b]Loot[/b] & selecting any area on the left side will show you what the [b]Max Rarity[/b] you can obtain, [u]This does [b]NOT GUARANTEE[/b] that color of rarity of drop[/u], so you'll still be getting just a lot of common gear anyways[/i] [h1]Quality of Life[/h1] There are some features from the start, but many other people want more, the features I liked from the start was being able to sort what items I wanted to receive in my inventory & at what level of enhancement, being able to manage when I automatically would use a healing item to heal, you can set it to heal when falling belowing a certain percentage or a certain amount of HP & which healing item to use, same works with Mana as well if using skills that use Mana, can compare items with a click of a button as well as toggle bonus stats on items to see their make value chances to obtain [b]Note[/b]: [i]One I can think of off the top of my head is if I had stacking items like gems or resources in the 4th inventory storage that it would treat it as it's in my inventory, either when Enhancing Gear or when receiving items from drops, instead they all drop in the first inventory only[/i] [b]MAJOR Additional Note[/b]: [i]The crafting menu features T# gear to craft, despite the max monster soul available being that of T2 Monster Souls, where T3+ up to T14 doesn't exist, despite there being different colored icons for higher tier Monster Souls, they don't actively exist in the game currently, unsure if planned, but since they exist in the crafting menu, it bloats the crafting menu scroll fucntion as you have to scroll through a lot of useless things which don't exist in the game to get to what you want[/i] [h1]Enhacning & Upgrading[/h1] You can increase the effectiveness of your gear by upgrading them to higher Enhancements, for armor it will be for more Defense & HP/MP as base stats, if Uncommon Rarity or above it will also have special bonus stats which are rolled randomly & of which amounts, higher rarity gear will gain more base stat increases than that of lower quality gear when enhancing them, be mindful of the gear you are leveling, as you enhance your gear, the Primary Stats also increase, so unless you have unused points to put into your stats, you may be risking not being able to equip them if their Primary Stats are too high for you to equip them [b]Note[/b]: [i]Gear dropped by any of the areas will be a max of +3 Enhanced that will be available to drop, despite there being settings in the [b]Pickup Menu[/b] that allows the value to go up to level 50 Enhanced, there is no such, as I have set my common to +4 Enhancement & have yet to get a single +4 drop from any rarity[/i] [b]Additional Note[/b]: [i]I found that using Legendary Gear is better than using T2 gear in which you get access to T2 in areas level 51 & up, the base stat increase still remains the same as T1 gear in the lower areas, so I was still using my T1 Legendary Gear until I got to Epic (Purple) drops, which you start getting at level 70 for defeating the boss wave or at area for level 80 you get Epic (Purple) normal drops & Legendary (Orange) for the boss wave[/i] [h1]Smelting[/h1] Simple function, insert gear you don't need, must be Uncommon+, then you'll have a chance to get the gem of that rarity based on a percentage, which will increase over time the more items you put into it & convert to gems will earn you the XP needed for the smelter to increase its level & chances to get gems per extraction of gear [h1]Combat/Shop[/h1] Basic, but you can use skills, which can bet setup that may use Mana to use, you can set it to only be used with the amount of monsters on screen say if your area spawns 2-6 monsters but you set it to 5 to use your skill, it will only be used if there are 5 or more monsters on screen, or you can just simple set it to 1 & it will always activate, you can also order your basic attack & skill attack to be prioritized over the other, the shop simply has HP & MP potions to heal, or apples to start with, you'll later unlock 35% & 50% potions, they will be available automatically whenever their goal is met [spoiler]Killing 1,000 monsters & only obtaining 13 drops, mind you one of those is from the boss drops which is guaranteed to drop, that's having filtered out common armor/gear meaning of those 12 drops from 1,000 monsters 988 are all common drops[/spoiler]

Other reviews point out flaws that are true. It's slow, grindy, and pretty boring reward loop. However, I do like this quite a bit, now that i'm over 100 hours in, I feel it's a very niche group of people that would enjoy it. There aren't many idle games with ARPG mechanics out there, especially ones that do it right, so this scratches that itch for me. I think this is well worth the low price, and the demo has a good chunk of what you'll end up doing in the full version.

Quite the burden to play. Lacks so many QoL elements and needs item optimization. It does the one thing in loot games that I can't stand by making higher tier gear weaker than your upgraded lower tier gear. Inventory management is a pain and basic features of grid management that have been solved for 20+ years such as things like potion, reagent, and crafting gear bags are non existent. The entire game is just too cumbersome.