Ghibli movies have an unbeatable charm to them. Fortunately, we have a mobile for you called Fortress Saga – AFK RPG that is able to successfully bring that charm to your hands. Literally.
Made by CookApps and available for both Android and iOS, this AFK RPG has an art style that is similar to the Ghibli movies we all know and love. Additionally, the gameplay is super easy and accessible, and literally, anyone can just pick the game up and have a blast.
To ensure you’re able to make the most of this game and that you know what you can expect when you first launch it, we’re here with a complete guide. This guide will be going through everything you need to know before you begin your journey to build the ultimate fortress.
Starting Off
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At the very start of the game, as soon as you download the additional files, you’ll see a beautiful cutscene play out. The cutscene will be followed by you having to choose a name for your fortress. The main goal of the game will be to upgrade your fortress to clear levels and beat monsters.
It’s important to keep in mind that you can’t take a name that has already been taken, so you’ll have to think of a completely unique name for your fortress. This makes the whole experience all the more personalized.
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When you successfully choose a name for your fortress, you’ll meet Louis, the main character of this game. How do we know she’s the main character of this game? Well, she literally tells us that she is.
You will also meet some other important characters, including Cor and Iris. This introduction will be rather short as you’ll almost instantly be thrust into battle.
Embracing the AFK Aspect
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Now that the formalities are out of the way, it’s time to get into the meat and potatoes of Fortress Saga. That’s right, we’re talking about the gameplay.
If you’ve played any other AFK RPG before such as Hero Adventure then you’ll know what you can expect in certain aspects. The game is designed in such a way that you don’t have to necessarily do much if you want to progress in the game.
What this means is that your fortress is constantly moving forward and destroying monsters it comes across even without you tapping the screen. Of course, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to do anything at all.
Using Hero Skills in Fortress Saga
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The first thing you’ll be asked to do is to use a hero skill. This can be done by simply tapping the icon at the bottom right of the screen. It should be noted, however, that using a skill will make it go into cooldown mode and you’ll have to wait a couple of seconds before you can use it again.
Fortunately, you can keep track of the cooldown pretty easily as it’s shown to you both in number form and with the icon slowly gaining color as the cooldown decreases.
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If you want to unlock more skills then you’ll have to unlock more heroes. Every hero in Fortress Saga has a unique skill that you can use if you equip that hero in the fortress placement screen.
While some heroes deal heavy damage, others might have active skills that are constantly in use. For example, the first hero you unlock in the game will constantly be moving in front of the fortress while dealing damage to monsters.
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If you don’t really want to have to tap the screen manually, then the game has you covered in that aspect too. You’ll eventually unlock the auto skill feature which can be enabled or disabled by tapping the arrow icon near the leftmost skill.
As the name suggests, this enables skills to be used automatically without you having to do anything. AFK powered activated!
Clearing Stages
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Now, it isn’t as though Fortress Saga doesn’t have any sort of progression. As you defeat enemies, you’ll come across bosses that spawn automatically.
These bosses have a pretty large health bar that appears on top of the screen and depleting it completely means you defeated it.
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Alternatively, sometimes it’s also required for you to tap the boss icon near the top of the screen to spawn the boss. This usually happens when your stats are not up to par and it’s very likely that you’ll be defeated.
The more stages you clear the more difficult this game will get. Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you stay on top of upgrades to ensure you don’t have to see the defeat screen too many times. Trust us, it isn’t a good feeling.
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Naturally, clearing stages also gives you a variety of different rewards including gems, tickets, and gold.
Building the Strongest Fortress
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Now that we touched on everything you can do while being AFK or idle, it’s time to go through things you actually have to be present for. Almost all of these things work toward one thing, which is making the fortress as strong as it can be.
Collecting Gold in Fortress Saga
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Perhaps the most important gameplay mechanic in Fortress Saga – AFK RPG is collecting as much gold as you can. Of course, there are other currencies and collectibles as well, but you’ll find that gold will be the currency you gather and use the most.
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To use gold, the best thing to do is to tap the bottom left icon of the screen labeled ‘upgrade.’ Here, you can upgrade Cor, the fire that keeps the fortress running, to level up the stats of your fortress.
While it’s up to you to choose what stat you want to upgrade, we recommend you try to equally level everything up. Trust us, we upgraded only the attack stat at the start and paid the price when a boss took us down with one shot.
Leveling Cor Up in Fortress Saga
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In addition to being able to upgrade Cor using your hard-earned gold, you also gain experience that can be used to level him up. To level Cor up, you have to tap the level-up button on the upgrade screen.
When you level up Cor, two things happen.
- Firstly, your base power and health increase by a small margin.
- Secondly, and more importantly, you get the lifeforce currency.
This lifeforce currency can be used by tapping the mastery section when on the upgrade screen. Here, by exchanging lifeforce, you can massively upgrade your statistics and gain new abilities. Talk about a handy item!
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The best upgrade you can do is expand the entire fortress. You can do this by tapping the fortress option and then looking for ‘expand.’
While this uses relatively rare boost crystals, as well as other parts, expanding the fortress increases all of your stats and lets you equip one more hero to your fortress.
Unlocking Fortress Attachments
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As you progress throughout Fortress Saga, you’ll unlock new attachments you can get for your fortress.
While they’ll start with regular cannons that you can attach to your fortress, you’ll eventually have cats that will heal your fortress and heroes. No, we aren’t joking.
Now, you might be wondering how you get your hands on these attachments. Well, we’re about to say something a lot of you might be very familiar with.
Gacha system. That’s right, just like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, this game also has a gacha system.
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To do so, you have to tap the ‘summon’ option at the bottom of the screen. When you do, you’ll have options to summon different things.
Whether you want to summon new cannons, cats, or even heroes, you’ll need to collect different currencies first.
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Additionally, as is to be expected from games with this system, all items also have a different rarity level.
The more rare the item or hero, (or cat) you get your hands on the more useful it’s likely to be, so best pray to your lucky stars before you tap the summon button.
Upgrading Attachments
Collecting Upgrade Items in Fortress Saga
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Now, unlocking and leveling fortress attachments is all well and good, but you also have to level them up if you want to ensure they’re useful enough to make a difference. This is where the Dungeon comes in.
In the dungeon, you’ll find that there will be many different types of stages that you can participate in. All of these stages unlock at the same time as the fortress attachment, and therefore, are used to obtain level-up materials for those attachments.
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For example, let us say you want to level up a specific hero. To do so, you’ll go to the Dungeon and take on the Sketchy Bakery.
By defeating the baker, you’ll obtain items you can use to level up heroes. Similarly, there are different stages for different fortress attachments.
Progressing in the Story
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Oh, did you think progressing through the stages was all you had to look forward to in terms of progression? Not at all! There are a bunch of things you can expect to unlock and take advantage of as you strengthen your fortress and defeat bosses.
Quests
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Firstly, there is an abundance of quests you have to complete in Fortress Saga. While most of these quests can be seen as filler as you’ll be very likely to complete them without even trying, others are surprisingly difficult to complete and require you to go out of your way.
Naturally, these quests also handsomely reward you with gold, gems, keys, and other goodies. You better get used to tapping the same point on the screen though to obtain your rewards.
Additionally, there are also daily, weekly, and repeat quests that you can complete to obtain even more goodies. Talk about a generous game, am I right?
Main Story
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In addition to quests, there’s also the main story of Fortress Saga you have to look forward to. Remember that beautiful cutscene you saw at the very start of the game? Well, there’s much more where that came from.
As you progress in the game’s stages, you also unlock more parts of the main story you can watch. Every main story part is animated in the same Ghibli-like style and gives you more of a glimpse into the world of Fortress Saga.
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Oh, and did we mention that by watching parts of the main story you can also obtain gems and other goodies? That’s right, another incentive to partake in the world of Fortress Saga.
Side Stories
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As you watch more parts of the main story, you’ll also eventually unlock some of the side stories to watch. Side stories delve more into the side or support characters of the game and require you to complete specific parts of the main story before they’re unlocked.
These side stories are a breath of fresh air in mobile games as we’re able to see the backstory of characters that most games wouldn’t give a second thought to. For example, there’s Quartermaster Beretta, who we can go to if we want to exchange goods for other goodies.
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However, the side story is what truly gives Beretta an identity of her own and makes her memorable. Therefore, we recommend you try to watch both the main story as well as the side story to truly make the most of this game.
Collection
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The final thing we want to go through is the collection feature of the game. Fortress Saga features not only a bunch of different monsters but also a bunch of different parts you’ll obtain throughout the course of your journey.
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Well, how about getting rewarded for coming across as many of these parts and monsters as possible? That’s right, the collection, located at the top right of the screen, is a sort of encyclopedia that rewards players for collecting and obtaining as many things as possible.
This gives players an incentive to not roll with just the same items and heroes and go out of their way to obtain things they otherwise might not have been interested in.
Conclusion
This concludes our ultimate guide for Fortress Saga – AFK RPG. We honestly can’t get enough of this game and its beautiful art style and highly recommend you give it a shot to see if it’s your cup of tea. Don’t worry, you can even go AFK if you want to.
If you’re looking for more games with a similar anime-like art style then we recommend you give games like Danmachi, Omniheroes, and Master of Knights.
