Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

My Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms Review - 485 Hours In
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4/5)
After 485 hours in Idle Champions, I can safely say this game is a wonderfully addictive blend of idle gameplay and D&D strategy. Here’s my take on what keeps me coming back to it:
Gameplay - Surprisingly Deep for an Idle Game
While it’s an idle game at heart, Idle Champions is layered with tactical depth. Experimenting with different team compositions, optimizing formations, and adjusting your Champions’ specializations add real strategy to your progression. Perfect for D&D fans who love finding the best setup to crush their enemies!
Heroes and Skills - Diverse and Fun to Collect
Each Champion has unique skills, abilities, and synergies that make every team feel fresh. Gathering Champions from across the Forgotten Realms is a huge part of the fun. There’s always a new hero, event, or upgrade that keeps things interesting, making every grind feel worth it.
Progression - Satisfying Grind with Tons of Goals
It’s definitely a grind, but a satisfying one. The game’s progression system has layers: leveling up, gear upgrades, and unlocking perks from the blessings tree. It’s perfect for checking in periodically or grinding to the next milestone when you’re feeling ambitious.
Visuals and Sound - Charming D&D Vibes
The artwork and animations bring the D&D universe to life in a fun, stylized way. The Champions, maps, and enemies all have a distinct fantasy feel, and the background music is catchy without being intrusive – perfect for a game you might leave running for a while.
Final Thoughts - A Must for D&D and Strategy Fans
For anyone who enjoys idle games with a strategy twist, Idle Champions is an easy recommendation. It’s a game that doesn’t demand all your attention but offers satisfying rewards when you do dive in. Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms will scratch that D&D itch.
Highly Recommended for players looking for a strategic, idle adventure!
If you found this review helpful or enjoyable, please give it a like or an award! Thanks for reading, and may your Champions be ever victorious!

Clicker game set in the Forgotten Realms (though you do get to journey to other worlds). Decent. No need for money to play, but it will help.

This game is so very addicting. It's got a mindless aspect, like playing slots in Vegas, that I sometimes just need to experience, to zone out. It also has a story mode with a lot of Lore, and got me into different D&D youtube groups. Really find the game enjoyable and rewarding, love this.

Great game, and they they really screwed up by adding platinum so you could buy things in game . Worst choice to make,

Don't look at my playtime - I'm playing on EGS and probably have over a thousand hours(of wasted overnight energy). And I would be playing here if Steam had regional prices and if the developers had crossplatform or reasonable transition. As it stands - I have to beg them for a once-a-lifetime offer and I don't feel the need to. That's probably one of the major disadvantages of this game, because one would think that a modern, big budget, idle brainless game about watching the paint dry - should be seamlessly transitionable between any device. Well, they have their reasons and you better not complain about it on any of their community hubs - their fanatics will CRUCIFY you.
So why do I recommend it? Well, there's more than meets the eye with this game.
First of all - it's not "quite" that brainless. There's stuff to figure out. You'll need to learn how to build formations, how various abilities work. There's some strategy involved.
Then... if you are a fan of D&D - there's some ingame fanfic to read. The characters and art are nice. The game is woke, but that's the publisher's pressure. Don't bring it up on Discord and you'll be fine.
But perhaps the best part of the game is that it's actually quite... consumer-friendly. To the point that community veterans will tell you that you SHOULDN'T BUY any characters. Because, really, you don't have to. That degree of honesty and affordable game design I have to respect.
There is, however, an asterisk. You should NOT play this game legally. There is an actual scripting channel on their Discord, this game FULLY SUPPORTS BOTTING. And while the game has built-in "modron automation" - it's the scripting, combined with "one" particular character(Briv) - that steamrolls your progression. And it's all "allowed". So not using that is just wasting the time in this GaaS that you could've been spending to get somewhere\something.
There is another trick. One that doesn't get Discord coverage, but one that also doesn't "break" the game as much as the "allowed" scripting. It's called making the game go faster by third party means. I won't name names, but I'll give a hint: "The game engine doesn't handle cheating well". That said - I'm talking only about speed virtualization. Everything else is at your own peril. However, that virtualization is EXTREMELY helpful if you are new, don't have "speed champions" or speed potions, but want to progress without watching the paint dry.
It can also be combined with the "allowed" scripting to make even more gems per hour, but there are... certain issues that I don't have the space to describe here, I can make a separate blog post about them if anyone is interested in detailed starter\cheater guide.
Moving on - the game a nice number of challenges or things to pursue. The beginners should really aim to beat all the campaigns, get all the default Evergreen champions and get most of the blessings. Again - making the game go faster helps.
After that you can pursue more tricky variants to unlock stronger Evergreens(that scale well into endgame), and you can tackle the Events. Events happen every month and basically give you 3 free characters, two of which are Spotlight(reworked or new, usually STRONK) and the rest being "flex", the first is free, the rest cost only 3 TGP(a resource that you'll probably get more than enough in a month to afford all flexes) instead of 6. Once you start getting 10k+ gems per hour, you'll be able to buy enough event chests for event currency to fully-epic these characters(and later maybe fully-shiny, once you make at least 200k gems per hour(preferably 500k+ if you aren't lucky)).
Then there are some endgame campaigns, and particularly tricky variants that would challenge even advanced formations, so this seemingly idle game would actually give you things to chew.
However.... as I said before - you don't have to buy anything. There are only two items on two champions that matter for gem farm and progression - Briv's Unnatural Haste and Hewman's Carefully Balanced(both slot 4 items). You have to get an epic for both of, and if you don't want to spend money - you'll have to farm patron variants for patron currency(not time-restricted or anything) and pray that you'll be lucky with the drop, especially if you have a large champion pool(unlikely for beginners).
The devs nerfed patron currency some time ago, but for the reference, I have some 60+ champs, they are 95% fully-epic. I have cleared only about 3 campaigns out of 7 campaigns, so I have at least 50% more patron currency available for the remaining ~100 champions.
Until you have 1J+ Briv, you should aim to clear those patron variants and get epics for your event characers. But ONLY and ONLY after you fully-epic your EVERGREENS. This is important. Do not open patron chests until your evergreens are fully epic from "standard" gold chests.
Once you have those 2 epic items, you'll need to Shiny the Hewman item, and preferably Gild the Briv one. Or at least Shiny. Shiny is enough if you don't plan to farm beyond 4J, but if you do - Gilding is necessary and that costs money.
The cheapest way to get a Gilding potion is to buy a 3-chest pack(with a free golden epic item) for a REWORKED champion at the current event, then use the option to Full Dismantle them. This would refund the Golden Epic potion that you can use on Briv's slot 4.
Other than that - you don't have to spend money on anything.
A few more notes:
-If you spend 6 time gate pieces to get a champion, and only unlock them(and maybe do some freeplay for silver chests), but don't do their variants - you can refund 1 TGP. This is EXTREMELY important for new players' TGP efficiency. This WORKS for FREE time gates(1 per month), meaning that you get 1 free TGP.
-Do NOT buy the patron golden epics. After you start making 10k+ gems per hour one way or another - you'll swim in gold chests, you'll regularly get Shiny drops from gold chests for your evergreens. If you buy a patron GE for an item that is Shiny - you'll be refunded a "Potion of polish" that turns any item Shiny. This is a VERY LIMITED quantity item that you normally have to PAY for. Every patron normally sells you one, but if you abuse that refund system - you can get up to 3 per patron.
-Only flex the strongest event champions, because you can FULLY EPIC them relatively easily. Do not flex speed or gold find champions that do not scale well with gear.
-Try to timegate the following champions first: "Hewman, Briv, Ellywick, Nahara,Thellora, BBEG". You can skip Nahara and go for BBEG, but Nahara works out of the box(important for new players) and BBEG takes some progress\potions to enable him. These 5 champions will be the core of your hundreds of thousands of gems per hour, especially with "extra speed"(if you don't want to third party speed up - add Diana and Widdle to the list, they are in-game speed cheaters, but practically don't stack with third-party).
-If you really want to support the developers, try to set it up so that you pay some country's regional currency. And my priority for "donations" are:
1. Reworked champion wild offers. They cost a little bit more than 3-chest packs, but also offer event boon level(and thus supporter slot for an extra flex champion). A nice way to both get GE potion, an extra champion, and some buffs on the side.
2. Briv(or Hewman) 4th slot GE Wild Offers. You won't get an event boon for it, but that could be a "ready-immediately" solution for those champions.
3. Unobtainable Modron cores(that only appear in Wild Offers)
4. Familiar packs that are the cheapest. In my regional currency it's ~1.3$.

Chill game, low cost, runs well in the background. So far hasn't punished me too hard for not spending money.

Works fantastically on PC, Steamdeck (Wifi relant though, if you have bad wifi it's not gonna play) and mobile.

I love D&D in general, so playing more into the Forgotten Realms lore and 5E settings is great. I can have it on in the background and still be enjoying the gameplay and small details.

It's even helping my BG3 experience.