So long as you aren't impatient and have the self control to not buy stuff to speed progress. Passable as an idle game.

The only annoyance is that maybe 1% of adventures aren't at all idle and need to be babysat.

Probably no at this point. Idle in its name is a misnomer. From this point on, CNE will be focused on mastery variants. Newbies won't be able to touch them for two or three years, and there is absolutely no guarantee the game will live that long.

Originally posted by DRIFTER:

Depends.

Are you okay with *not* getting all the achievements or completing the game? Then you're fine.

The endgame content is incredibly difficult and buggy, and requires encyclopedic knowledge to prepare and execute. You will hit dps walls as you need resources and champs to progress, and those are time gated to some degree.

I don't advise spending on the game, because such investments are not long-lasting.

I really was looking forward to getting all the achievements at some point, even if it was years away. I may still dip my toes into the game, I really enjoy the charm of the art style and themes, but im definitely not spending a dime on it.

It's probably possible to get all achievements in F2P mode, although it will take quite a lot of time. However, it will be difficult to maintain 100% completion because a bunch of new achievements is added every month, and some of them are outright sadistic.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

It's probably possible to get all achievements in F2P mode, although it will take quite a lot of time. However, it will be difficult to maintain 100% completion because a bunch of new achievements is added every month, and some of them are outright sadistic.

what would be the most sadistic one for a good example?

From the latest batch, it's probably Force Grey Takes Sides. Even its basic version isn't doable for me now without TWO exploits, although I play the game since 2020.

Some other new variants take 8+ hours to finish even at 10x speed because all speed champions are unavailable in them, and the game has to be restarted every few minutes due to its extremely poor optimization. Mastery challenge in the previous event was just like that, and Van Richten still remains unfixed, and therefore almost completely unusable, although he was a required champion in that challenge.

CNE stopped doing any QC about 5 years ago and uses palyers as the beta testers. There were multiple cases when new bugs made the game completely unplayable for several days.

You can be sure that any new champion will have multiple skills not working in background mode, and they will remain unfixed for several weeks (or for 5+ years like Freely's An Adventurous Tale).

Originally posted by Mayo:

Originally posted by kab_reg:

It's probably possible to get all achievements in F2P mode, although it will take quite a lot of time. However, it will be difficult to maintain 100% completion because a bunch of new achievements is added every month, and some of them are outright sadistic.

what would be the most sadistic one for a good example?

very simply: for an IDLE game, you have to babysit every 50 areas where a champion is ejected permanently for the run who has lowest dps. Mind you, even if you meticulously plan, a certain boss can disable their attack and make them zero, so if you blink / use the bathroom / get distracted and kill the boss you potentially lose the champion you were trying to retain. and the objective is like 1300 zones. there's no feature to pause progression other than manually be present.

The game is less and less idle with every unreasonable update.

Originally posted by DRIFTER:

Originally posted by Mayo:

what would be the most sadistic one for a good example?

very simply: for an IDLE game, you have to babysit every 50 areas where a champion is ejected permanently for the run who has lowest dps. Mind you, even if you meticulously plan, a certain boss can disable their attack and make them zero, so if you blink / use the bathroom / get distracted and kill the boss you potentially lose the champion you were trying to retain. and the objective is like 1300 zones. there's no feature to pause progression other than manually be present.

The game is less and less idle with every unreasonable update.

oh my god, what in gods name were they thinking doing this

And there are such variants in every single campaign.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

And there are such variants in every single campaign.

unless i get really wasted at some point in the future, i aint downloading this game anymore, Jesus christ.

I highly recommend NOT getting into it. They keep the whale carrot-and-stick variants going when they should be letting the game die. Then lie and say we all asked for it. I have yet to see a single comment on here asking for this BS haha. CNE suck.

Originally posted by Mayo:

Originally posted by DRIFTER:

very simply: for an IDLE game, you have to babysit every 50 areas where a champion is ejected permanently for the run who has lowest dps. Mind you, even if you meticulously plan, a certain boss can disable their attack and make them zero, so if you blink / use the bathroom / get distracted and kill the boss you potentially lose the champion you were trying to retain. and the objective is like 1300 zones. there's no feature to pause progression other than manually be present.

The game is less and less idle with every unreasonable update.

oh my god, what in gods name were they thinking doing this

That's not even a Mastery variant. That's just a regular variant.

There's a Mastery variant where you have to clear every area within 20 seconds of starting it or your formation instantly wipes and falls back an area (resetting your progress on the next area). This includes the areas that contain enemies that take a minimum of 50 hits to kill. Because of the way the game is set up, with only one champion in any reasonably built formation doing any rational amount of DPS, it's basically impossible without sufficient armor shred. There's like, 2 champions in the entire game that qualify for that variant that also have armor shred.

Overall, the mastery variants are terribly balanced such that they physically cannot be done without weeks worth of investment into the correct champs, and I don't mean "correct" as in "meta", I mean "the champions who actually qualify", which changes for every variant so even if you invested in the "correct" champions you only did so for one variant, etc.

There's a rework for one of the biggest power vertical systems that's imminent that should hopefully fix the issue, but it's not roadmapped yet so its mere existence is in question. These are the same developers who released a feature in 2025 that they said they'd release in "early 2023", after all.

Overall there's just too much pain and not enough reward in the late game content to bother doing it.

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

There's a Mastery variant where you have to clear every area within 20 seconds of starting it or your formation instantly wipes and falls back an area (resetting your progress on the next area). This includes the areas that contain enemies that take a minimum of 50 hits to kill. Because of the way the game is set up, with only one champion in any reasonably built formation doing any rational amount of DPS, it's basically impossible without sufficient armor shred. There's like, 2 champions in the entire game that qualify for that variant that also have armor shred.

IIRC, CNE promised to make it easier by replacing 20 seconds of in-game time with 20 seconds of real time. In its current state the restriction is just plain ridiculous.

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

There's a Mastery variant where you have to clear every area within 20 seconds of starting it or your formation instantly wipes and falls back an area (resetting your progress on the next area). This includes the areas that contain enemies that take a minimum of 50 hits to kill. Because of the way the game is set up, with only one champion in any reasonably built formation doing any rational amount of DPS, it's basically impossible without sufficient armor shred. There's like, 2 champions in the entire game that qualify for that variant that also have armor shred.

IIRC, CNE promised to make it easier by replacing 20 seconds of in-game time with 20 seconds of real time. In its current state the restriction is just plain ridiculous.

Ideally variants wouldn't be released in a state where the devs and community unanimously agree they need to be patched in the first place.