Royal Crown is an interesting mix of action-RPG and battle royale. Presented in a cutesy fantasy anime visual style, it sees you skydiving from a steampunk airship onto an island and then duking it out with the other players in …
Royal Crown is an interesting mix of action-RPG and battle royale. Presented in a cutesy fantasy anime visual style, it sees you skydiving from a steampunk airship onto an island and then duking it out with the other players in the map in a bid to become the last one standing.
And while you’re fighting for your life you’ll need to devote some time to crafting runes and potions, looting gear and material, and doing other RPG stuff like that.
The upshot of this novel blend of genres is that Royal Crown is deeper than your average battle royale, and shallower than your average action-RPG, with an emphasis on streamlined simplicity.
This beginner’s guide should be more than enough to help you hit the ground running in Royal Crown.
You begin Royal Crown with a fairly limited selection of heroes to choose from, though you can buy more later with gold or gems. Each hero has its own class, stats, damage type (magic, physical, etc), attack type (on a sliding scale from long range to close quarters), and skills.
Classes include Warrior, Mage, Sniper, Assassin, Supporter, and Tank.
Let’s take Leo as an example. Leo is a warrior whose damage type and physical and whose attack type is close quarters. He has good attack, movement, and crowd control stats, excellent defense, but no support.
He also has five skills, which we won’t bother describing. Every character has the same number, made up of an ultimate skill, a passive skill, and three others.
Each character can also be customised in a couple of cosmetic ways. You can change their skins, weapons, hats, and face accessories, with items that you either buy or obtain by opening chests as you tier up.
There are three gameplay modes in Royal Crown: Squad, Solo, and Training. Squad places you in a team of three, Solo sends you in alone, and Training takes place in an offline map where your only enemies are mobs and AI enemies.
Now let’s get into the action
Each round begins with you skydiving onto the map. This map is carved up into territories, some of which are only connected to the others by bridges or gates. Each territory has its own characteristics and mobs, the levels of which are displayed above their heads so that you know whether it’s worth taking one on.
The flight path of the airship is always different, and you can choose when to jump out. Over time, the playable area of the map closes in until everybody’s crammed into a small area. If you make it to that stage, you’re doing well.
Once you’ve landed, the aim is to build yourself up, and you do this by looting. The items you can loot vary slightly from region to region, but they largely consist of chests, which you’ll find in buildings within villages, and lying around in the unpopulated areas, and naturally occurring objects like trees, wheat, papyrus, mushrooms, plants, and mana stones.
You can also loot the coffins of the other players you kill, plus any coffins you happen to find lying around, and the bodies of any mobs you kill – though the main appeal of killing mobs is to gain XP. Every so often there’s a loot drop too.
When you loot a chest or coffin you’re given the option of accepting all, which automatically picks up the equipment that’s better than yours, but discards the rest. This eliminates the need to pore through your inventory trying to work out what to equip, which wouldn’t really work in the heat of battle (royale).
Alongside the sizeable solo campaign there’s also the option to play co-operatively via the Squad Mode which allows you to enter the fray with two friends. It’s a good idea to approach this MOBA-style, building a team in which the members perform complementary roles. For example, you might want to team up a solid all-rounder warrior like Leo, a supporter like Nina to heal everybody, and a tank like Bastine. Bear in mind that each champion has an attack type as well as a class – e.g., Leo is a warrior who inflicts physical damage, while Morgan is a warrior who inflicts magic damage.
That means there are tons of permutations. There are 15 champions, six classes, and only three spaces in a squad, so experimentation is key.
Also, don’t forget that squad mates can heal each other at healing points within villages.
There are 48 craftable items in Royal Crown, and these break down into a few categories.
Runes, which you can either loot or craft with mana stones, give your gear buffs such as extra power, speed, and so on. Accessories, meanwhile, give you buffs like improving HP recovery speed.
Then there are Attribute Cards, made from papyrus. Again, these give you buffs, such as increased attack speed, attack power, and damage. Runes and Attribute Cards can be upgraded.
Once you feel you’re ready for a throw down, you can start hunting mobs and taking on other players. You need to make sure your skills are activated, and it’s important to keep levelling them up whenever you get the chance. Skills are everything in combat.
You can also craft potions and food items, as well as logs that you hurl at your enemies. These potions let you restore your health, slip into stealth mode, gas your opponents, and so on.
Cooking is important, as it allows you to combine edible items into dishes like soup and pie, which magnifies the impact of their ingredients.
Royal Crown is simpler than your average action-RPG, but there’s still a lot of detail to master in the various attributes of the weapons, gear items, potions, and so on that you find and craft.
However, the game is designed to be accessible from the outset, so you’ll be able to find your favorite load-outs at your leisure through experimentation and repetition.
Happy hunting! Check out Royal Crown for yourself via the App Store and Google Play right now.
