Bard Idle is an auto battler and despite having Idle in the name, is not an idler until much later in the game. Bard Idle offers a lot of quality of life mechanics that will eventually make it an idler but the early stages require a bit of human intervention. That being said, this guide is intended to help people get to that point of being able to set up a run and have it be successful.

Current progression: Zone 351, Arena Stage 35 (Champion)

Build a team of heroes to battle through zones of increasingly stronger enemies. Each zone consists of 10 waves with each wave gaining one more enemy than the previous (wave 1 has one enemy, wave 2 has two, etc.) Clear all 10 waves to advance to the next zone. After every 10 zones, you will encounter a boss. Defeat the boss to acquire a special item: Ambrosia. Ambrosia allows you to turn a hero into a flower (flower is dependent on the hero race/class.) After every 100 zones, you will encounter a dragon. Defeat the dragon to acquire the Dragon's Blood and Dragon's Eye (The Dragon's Blood offers 9 upgrade options for your squad. The Dragon's Eye allows you to skip right to the highest dragon zone cleared. You'll gain all the gold and inspiration you would have received from clearing all the previous zones.)

Clear through zones and write ballad lines to generate pens. Pens are used to unlock and upgrade books in the Writer’s Shop.

Reach zone 25 to unlock the Arena. The Arena is a separate event where you go up against waves that rapidly increase in difficulty to earn Glory. Glory is a unique currency used to upgrade damage/gold/heath/pen multipliers specific to the arena tab. NOTE: Entering the arena will forfeit your ability to end/burn your ballad or give a concert/tour and ending/burning your ballad or giving a concert/tour will RESET your multipliers by a certain percentage depending on your arena rank. Arena should only be used if you’re looking to push past a certain stage.

Reach zone 50 to give a rock concert. Concerts give notes which give a percentage increase to gold, total damage, health, pen gain and inspiration. Collecting a certain number of notes also grants access to different gameplay upgrades such as additional books and game mechanics. NOTE: Giving a concert will forfeit your ability to end/burn your ballad and will RESET arena and book progress. If you haven’t reached zone 75 to gain manuscripts, you might want to hold off on giving concerts until you’ve saved your important books.

Reach zone 75 to unlock ballad burning. Instead of ending your ballad to gain pens, you can now burn your ballad to gain manuscripts. Manuscripts give you the ability to remember your books so they do NOT reset when giving a concert/tour. They can also be used to add pages to books to upgrade them further.

Reach zone 125 to give a tour. Tours are the same as concerts except the amount of notes you gain is increased.

Reach zone 150 to create a guild. Guilds offer additional book pages that are unlocked by having the required number of heroes specified by each guild.

Reach zone 175 to unlock the Comedy and Tragedy bonus. This bonus adds a x10 multiplier to your pen gains and a x5 multiplier to your manuscript gains.

Reach zone 250 to unlock the Dragon Obelisk. Once this is unlocked, starting at zone 200 you will be able to encounter special types of dragons and dragon alters that drop crafting materials to use on runes to further increase your stats and unlock additional bonuses.

Strength, Dexterity and Wisdom are the primary damage combat stats, also referred to as characteristics. The total damage of the hero is increased by both increasing the combat stats and the weapon’s scaling.

Constitution increases the health of the hero.

Accuracy increases the hero’s critical strike chance.

Initiative increases the frequency that the hero attacks.

Cunning causes the hero to generate gold with every hit.

Inspiration is what allows you to write ballad lines.

Gourmet is a racial bonus that increases strength by +3 when a soup is currently active. The Onion and ballad line "Delicious taste will inspire heroism (Gourmet only: x5 cheese effect)" will only affect heroes who have the Gourmet racial trait.

Dark Mark is a debuff applied to enemies and last until the enemy dies.

Dark Mark is a debuff placed on an enemy by a Dark Priest, Dark Hand, an Undead hero with the Death tarot card, an Undead hero with the "Dark Mark on Attack" quest reward or through the ballad line, "One Hundred Dark Marks for a Dead Man's Soul (Undead units gain a resurrection charge. When an undead unit dies, a random enemy unit receives 100 dark marks.) Each application increases the damage the enemy takes by 10%.

Courage Charge is a stacking buff that will reset at the start of a new zone or if the hero dies.

Courage Charge is a buff applied to your heroes by Priest of Light or through the ballad lines:
-Body Fears, Soul Never! (Heroes with invulnerability get a Courage Charge for every second of invulnerability (minimum 1 charge))
-Let Courage Be Born in Battle! (Hitting an enemy grants 1 courage charge (50% chance). 1 Courage Charge increases damage by 1%. Courage Charge resets every wave)

Admiration is a buff applied to your heroes that either deal x10 damage on every hit or reduce the damage of each hit by x10.

Admiration is a buff applied to heroes through the "Charge Pumping" book or through the ballad lines:
-WOW! TOAD! So beautiful! (At sight of dragons and toads all heroes get +4 admiration.)
-Perseverance of the Undead Is Infinite (Undead gain +10 wisdom. When undead hero dies and is reborn, at moment of rebirth all heroes in team gain +5 admiration. Admiration: spend an admiration charge to deal x10 damage, or reduce damage you take by 10.)

Upon reaching zone 5, you'll receive your first quest. When you start up a run, you have the option to pick a quest that you've unlocked at various milestones. Each quest has its own stipulation when you select it and each quest has its own reward.

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 5

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 10

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 20

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 33

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 44

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 55

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 66

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 88

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 111

Achievement Required: Reach Zone 125

Current as of 11/10/2023

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a pyramid of milestones that offer additional books and gameplay mechanics. This page will detail all the different leagues and what to expect as you gain more notes.

Wooden League: Nothing

Stone League: Opens the shelf of Ancient Knowledge in the Writer’s Shop.

Iron League: Unlocks Enhanced Weapon Mode.

Bronze League: Unlocks Megadwarf mode.

Silver League: Unlocks Mad Artist mode.

Golden League: Opens the shelf of High Tech in the Writer's Shop.



The Friend of my Friend Class Groupings


Healthy Body is Healthy Spirit Calculation

Your primary objective is to reach zone 100 and acquire the Dragon's Eye.

Starting out, you only have the ability to earn pens which is determined by this formula. The longer your run and the further you get, the more pens you'll receive.
Pens are important as they allow you to upgrade your books in the Writer's Shop. Your primary source of damage, health and gold gain will be from books. There are also different classes you can acquire to add some synergy to your squad.

As you progress through the game, you'll find that health is not very important as your heroes will be getting one shot and you'll be relying on Dark Hands and Cherry Jam to keep your front line established. It's not the worst idea to throw some pens in your health books starting out but when you unlock Chiromancy and have enough gold to reliably get Cherry Jam, you won't need to prioritize health upgrades.

Book of the Novice is your largest book with a whopping 250 pages. This is your end game book that while it also increases health, the damage multiplier is absolutely insane. You should be upgrading your damage and gold books along with Book of the Novice.


As you go through your books, be careful not to be enticed by the number of different classes available to unlock. While it may be nice to have them unlocked, it will make it harder to find heroes you really want as you hire more in your runs. Until you have the ability to cycle through heroes with a large amount of Ambrosia, you're going to be limited with what team comps you can build.

That being said, you have the ability to hire up to 25 heroes for your squad. In the current state of this game, less is more. You want to pick a hero that you can funnel everything onto (Flowers, gems, etc.) and you don't want too many heroes wasting time attacking and eating through your soups. Having a couple Knights, a thief, and a priest (Elf Priest will allow you to receive blessings from the alters AND trees) along with your primary DPS hero will ensure you maintain buffs, spawn rabbits for gold income, and be able to loot chests.

Zones 50 and 75 are crucial milestones. They introduce Notes and Manuscripts.

BEWARE: If you perform a concert, all of your books will be RESET.

To prevent this, you need to use Manuscripts to preserve your book progress.


Ideally once you preserve your important books, you can give concerts to increase your gold gain, total damage, HP, pen and inspiration gain. Notes are permanent and will never be reset.


Your journey to defeating zone 100 and every other dragon will be a combination of burning your ballad and giving concerts/tours.

As of creating this page, my Human Cultist comp is at stage 351 and has reached arena stage 35 which grants you the champion rank and makes it so you no longer lose your arena stats when you give a concert/tour. If you're at the point where you can attempt to build this comp, I highly recommend it for pushing to a certain stage. At this point we don't have a sandbox yet so we can't play around with damage capability of other comps very easily. This is just an example of one of the strongest comps currently available.

My Squad Composition:
(1) Human Cultist
(8) Dagger Masters
(5) Cheese Mages
(5) Bandits
(1) Master of Candle
(10) Dark Priests

Illustrations:
Power of Fire & Sing Me Some More

Why Human Cultist?

Cultists have the ability to scale indefinitely.
-Their passive ability gives them +1 weapon damage every time they hit an enemy and +3 every time they kill one.
-This damage is multiplied when you have the Dragon Blood ability Ritual Daggers which multiplies the overall base damage by 15 and multiplies the damage based on the number of combo hits.
-The scaling is increased drastically when you reach chapter 7 and get, "To ashes we shall wipe out traitor god" which allows you to desecrate alters. This gives you +300 damage and a "Cult" buff which increases your normal damage AND fire damage by x10. Combine this with chapter 1's ballad line, "The movement of the universe is chaotic" and you'll be encountering alters constantly.

Currently humans are the strongest race in the game.
-There's a book on the Questionable Techniques shelf allows us to modify the human racial ability. In this case we pick Hedonism which gives humans +1 strength and cunning AND gourmet.
-The new ballad line in chapter 9, "Let's find solace in philosophy" increases the bonus from Hedonism to +30 for strength and cunning
-On the High Tech shelf there's a book called Fighting Machine that increases melee damage based on the hero's cunning. The ballad line, "Caravan will have a bad dream" gives us +30 cunning for each caravan successfully robbed.
-For the soup, the Onion doubles the human's stats and the kiwi increases the blessing multipliers
-The Master of Candle doubles the blessing multipliers
-Chapter 6 offers lines such as, "Bless me with a strength of the dragon" which multiplies the strength blessing by 3

The Set Up:

It's important to not have too many heroes unlocked as they flood your hero choices. The new phantom shelf allows you to forget base classes. For the best possible chance to get favorable picks, you should only have these classes unlocked going into your run:
-Cultist
-Dark Priest
-Master of Candle
-Thief
-Bandit
-Cheese Mage with all spells unlocked and saved via manuscripts

I use the "We Tell No Tale" quest.
-I found it was much easier fishing for a human cultist using the undead reborn mechanic.
-It also benefits from the balled line, "Perseverance of the undead is infinite" since your entire squad is undead. Every time one of your undead heroes die, you get 5 stacks of admiration.

I did this run using the caravan contract. You need about 45 robbery to successfully rob every type of caravan and with the contract 5 bandits lets you do this (IF YOU CONTINUE THE RUN AFTER YOUR CONTRACT RUNS OUT, YOU WILL NEED 3 MORE BANDITS TO CONTINUE ROBBING CARAVANS WITH A 100% SUCCESS RATE) The caravan gives class items and while there are other classes that can contribute to your robbery, Bandit's class item increases your loot power and chance to encounter caravans.

Cheese Mages increase the amount of Chee-strike you can have without needing the Cheese Cellar illustration. Having 5 makes it so it can stack indefinitely and frees up an illustration slot.

Chapter 6 offers the ballad line, "For ancient dagger, whom in a chest, there is apprentice found (chrous)" which turns your thieves into dagger masters. Dagger masters give your cultist one additional combo hit per dagger master. This is a chorus line so you can have up to 20 dagger masters if you REALLY wanted to but that's a lot of rerolls you're looking at. A decent amount is 4-8. MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT GET THE TAROT CARD, "THE TOWER" OR ELSE YOUR THIEVES CANNOT LOOT THE DAGGERS. You can get this card after all your thieves are upgraded.

Dark Priests offer a couple different benefits as a support class.
-Dark Priests stack dark marks on enemies, increasing the damage they take. The amount of marks and the amount of damage can be increased from ballad lines and the class item that increases the number of marks by 1 for each item.
-Cultists and Dark Priests are paired on the High Tech book, "The Friend of My Friend" so just by having one will increase the damage of your Cultist.
-Cultists get an increase to fire damage from their, "Cult" buff. Having Dark Priests along with the chapter 4 ballad line, "We shall burn our enemies to the ground!" which increases fire damage by an additional 40% per priest.
-Dark Priest's ballad lines are choruses and benefit greatly from the, "Sing me some more" illustration which doubles the effectiveness of every chorus line. Chapter 4's, "And darkness grew in them (chorus)" and chapter 7's, "hello darkness my old friend" are huge for making the most out of your dark marks.

Master of Candle is the strongest overall master. Every comp benefits from having one.
-Master of Candle doubles the blessings effectiveness. Overall extremely strong.
-Master of Candle's class item increases fire damage for each blessing currently active. Having chocolate in your soup will ensure you keep your blessings.

8/10/2024: Farming Dragons for The Dragon Obelisk

The introduction of the Dragon Obelisk provides us with a bunch of bonuses ranging from increased damage, gold, and even increasing the power of flags. There's a huge incentive to max out the obelisk at least once.

To create runes for the obelisk, you need basalt and dragon blood. There are four types of dragons and all of them require modified comps to attract them. Killing the dragons provides dragon blood. The runes have different requirements for how much dragon blood you need to create them and some runes will require a combination of different dragon blood.