TEOCH 40

(This is a guide posted on an internet site)

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[Typical Hero’s Story Basic Guide (ver. 1.7.8) 1. From Companion Selection to Tutorial]

Posted: 20XX/2/8 21:01 Author: Ginger man

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Typical Hero’s Story (called ‘Heunyong’ in our country and ‘THS’ abroad) is a single-player roguelike game available for purchase on Steam for $29.99.

Originally, roguelikes referred to games with unfriendly ASCII graphics and equally unforgiving difficulty, where you conquer dungeons. Nowadays, though, with so many derivatives, any game with no saves and high difficulty gets called a roguelike. I’m using the term in that sense, so please bear with me.

The developer, SeeZer, calls it a “third-rate trash roguelike game,” but that’s just them trying to stir up attention. In reality, it’s one of the higher-quality games released this year. It even has official Korean localization, which is rare.

The story follows a classic structure: a hero defeats the demon king in the demon world and rescues the kidnapped queen. But in games like this, the story isn’t the main focus—conquering the stages of the demon world is the key point.

The demon world’s setting can be a bit perverse, and the synergy between companions, parasites, and skills can be a real brain-twister, so the deeper you dive in, the more fun it gets. That said, it’s also incredibly difficult.

☆☆☆Must-visit site before starting the game☆☆☆

http://typicalherosstory.wikia.kr/wiki/Typical_Heros_story_wiki

A wiki with detailed information on parasites, skills, and companion traits. Since synergy between companion traits, parasites, and skills is crucial, it’s best to check this while playing. Once you get a parasite, search its name on the wiki to figure out who to give it to.

1. Basic Overview

This game progresses by clearing stages one by one. The stages are Tutorial, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and the Demon King’s Castle, though the castle is treated more like a final boss room than a proper stage. So, there are really four stages to clear: Tutorial through Stage 3. Each stage is so vast that I can’t cover everything at once, so I’ll explain starting with the tutorial.

Before starting the tutorial, there’s an opening sequence set in the human world, where you prepare before entering the demon world. You create your character’s name, appearance, and traits, and then King Tristan, an NPC, gives you a quest about rescuing his kidnapped wife, Isolde. It’s not particularly interesting, and the lack of a skip function means you have to read it every time, which is annoying.

Once you get past that, you can roam the palace. This is the time to pick companions and gather items. Early on, you follow the steward around to collect items. You can get basic equipment from the armory and holy water from the temple. I recommend grinding through dialogue to get at least 10 holy waters. Without parasites, health recovery is tough, and holy water provides a small amount of healing, which is very useful early on.

After parting with the steward, you can recruit companions, and this is where things get important. According to the wiki, there are over 100 companions in the game, but only 10–20 appear per playthrough. You can only take three with you, and choosing poorly can ruin your party, so read the companion descriptions on the wiki carefully.

Typical party compositions are either Mage + Knight + Hunter or Mage + Thief + Hunter. A hunter with the ‘Survival Knowledge’ skill reduces the risk of starvation, making them consistently useful from early to late game. Hunters without this skill are more divisive. Thieves have a passive skill that lowers the chance of being detected by monsters, which can sometimes be better for survival. Some players prefer the Mage + Knight + Thief combo based on preference.

Mages are generally considered essential, not for any grand reason, but because Damian, the easiest companion to recruit, is one of the most reliable. His abilities are average—basically a fire-shooter—but he has the highest stress resistance among companions, which is a big advantage. Considering mages typically have lower stress resistance, he’s an exceptional case.

Other mages aren’t recommended, but if you must take one, go for Damian + another mage + another class. Some players pick a mage with mental skills thinking they’re better, only to end up with companions going insane because of them.

The biggest dangers in the late game are companions fighting, committing suicide, or going insane. Damian’s high affinity and mental fortitude make him immune to these issues more often than not. He also saves on firewood, which is a nice bonus, so treat him well. But don’t get attached just because you think he’s a female character—he’s actually a guy despite the long hair. A lot of people get fooled by that.

For knights, most have similar skills, so it doesn’t matter much who you pick. Choose one with good affinity and mental resilience. Some players pick knights based on stats, but since knights are essentially meat shields, high stats don’t matter much. With good equipment, most knights’ stats even out, so early stat differences are negligible.

In that sense, Rikiel is a trash character. A lot of people get lured in thinking he’s a rare character, only to get burned. His stats are great, he doesn’t go insane no matter how much you push him, and he boosts the mental state of other companions, so he seems good at first. But one wrong dialogue choice can nuke your party’s affinity like it’s been hit by a bomb. In the late game, he’ll defy orders every turn. Unless you’re playing a dating sim instead of a roguelike, don’t pick him.

Ultimately, there are companions that suit you and ones that don’t, so choose wisely. Keep checking the wiki and learn through trial and error to get a feel for it.

1. Tutorial

Once you’ve gathered your companions, an event triggers, and the gate to the demon world opens. If you go into the tutorial without thinking, you’ll get crushed in 10 minutes and want to throw your keyboard, so approach it with the caution of a cockroach crawling before the Demon King’s Castle.

There are two key things to know about the tutorial:

1. It’s not time to fight monsters yet.

Your early-game party is pathetically weak, like four planarians dropped into the human world. Would a planarian try to hunt a human? Obviously, it’d die. Without proper equipment (beyond the basic gear from the palace), charging at monsters will make you a tasty meal for bugs, so move carefully. Focus on item farming first.

1. Items over levels.

As mentioned, item farming is critical. Like most roguelikes, luck is a big factor, so getting good items is the key to clearing. Parasites are the alpha, omega, and everything in the tutorial. Items in later stages mostly enhance parasites or add new abilities to them. Farm parasites diligently in the tutorial, and seize every chance to get more in later stages.

Stockpiling parasites is helpful, and one good parasite can carry you through the game. But don’t overdo it—stuffing dozens of parasites into your body can lead to companions committing suicide or being consumed by parasites in the late game. About five parasites per companion is ideal: one for each limb plus one for the torso or back.

Don’t use parasites as soon as you get them—save them for when companions are injured. This game has no healing potions. Holy water restores 10 health, but that’s barely useful. Using a parasite when a companion’s limb is severed grants a buff that reduces calorie consumption and speeds up physical recovery, giving you an edge.

That covers the general game guide. For the tutorial stage specifically, start by exploring the map in all directions—north, south, east, and west.

One of the first things to do is find the safe zone called ‘Sky’s Scar.’ There’s usually one in the center, one in the direction without a giant nest, and one near the spider nest. Stay in the central safe zone first. I recommend avoiding other safe zones until the first one’s duration expires, as their timers don’t start until you enter.

Once you find the central safe zone, it’s time to farm in earnest, and this is where it gets tricky.

This game is insane—there are so many elements you’d never know without a guide. Each direction—north, south, east, west—has a giant nest. One direction is empty (where the safe zone is), while the other three have an ant nest, a bee nest, and a spider nest. Only the spider nest is a proper boss room; the other two are fake and have nothing.

If you fall into the wrong nest, you’re screwed. (A wasp attacks you! You are paralyzed for 2 turns! A wasp attacks you! You are paralyzed for 2 turns! Your companion has died!) You’ll get beaten to death with nothing to show for it—not even a parasite. Avoid these trap zones as much as possible.

Play in a way that avoids giant nests, and save the spider nest for last. First, farm items in the safe zone’s direction (randomly north, south, east, or west). After getting basic items there, head to the bee nest and scavenge as many corpses as possible.

Avoid the ant nest if you can. If you brought a thief instead of a hunter, sneaking around for reconnaissance isn’t a bad idea, but getting caught by baby ants will show you what a true ant hell is. Bees move individually, but if one ant spots you, every ant within 300 meters swarms you, dragging you to their nest to die.

Once you’ve farmed enough gear to equip all companions, head to the spider nest for leveling. Don’t rush in recklessly—even with gear, a planarian is just a geared-up planarian, so be cautious. Sneakily attack groups of three or fewer spiders from behind.

Some players enter small spider nests to hunt, but getting caught on horizontal webbing immobilizes you, so be careful.

In the spider nest, companions sometimes get caught in a ‘horizontal web’ paralysis status (it triggers randomly on any webbing—some say only vertical webs are safe, but you can’t tell until you step on them). It doesn’t wear off after a few turns; someone has to cut you free. Avoiding spider nests altogether is the best strategy.

Level up to about 8 (you can’t gain experience past that anyway), then head to the giant spider nest. As soon as you enter, the queen spider climbs to the ceiling and shoots venomous projectiles at the hero every turn, so the hero must choose ‘Counter’ or ‘Flee’ while moving. It only targets the hero, not other companions, so be cautious.

While the queen is absent, 30 subordinate spiders are summoned. The funny thing is, the boss room entry event text says 300 spiders, but there’s debate over whether it’s a typo. The developer says one spider feels like 10 from the characters’ perspective, so it’s just game logic.

Whether it’s 30 or 300, it’s a ton, and you can’t kill them all. You use tools instead.

If you look closely at the nest walls, there are cracks. Hunters or thieves can use bows or darts to collapse these cracks. While the knight and mage draw aggro and circle the nest, the spiders follow along the edges. Time it right, collapse the cracks, and 10 spiders get stunned at once. Do this three times, and all the spiders are stunned.

If you have an evasion parasite, you can ignore the queen’s attacks and choose to ‘cut the webbing with a sword,’ causing the spiders to fall. This saves a ton of time, as all 30 spiders drop at once. But without evasion, trying this gets you bombarded by the queen, potentially losing limbs, so be careful.

Once all the spiders are stunned, the queen comes down from the ceiling. Attack her then. If the mage, hunter, or thief uses ranged attacks, the queen counters with a venomous projectile that can instantly kill, so avoid ranged attacks.

When the queen’s health drops by 15%, she climbs back to the ceiling the next turn, and subordinate spiders come down. Repeat the process from the start. Do this about six times, and the queen dies, opening the door to the next stage. There’s an event after she dies—watch it if you want. It’s not mandatory but oddly touching.

The queen spider isn’t that tough for a tutorial boss. If you handle the subordinate spider rush, the queen herself is manageable. The tutorial stage is long, but clearing it gives you a sense of the game’s direction, so reaching this point means you’re no longer a beginner.

I didn’t write much, but I’m exhausted.

I’ll write the next part later.

Comments (84)

┖OO: Thanks, upvoting and moving on.

┖Can’tResistTasty: I totally get thinking Damian was a girl lol. I didn’t realize until way later lmao. The graphics are so bad you can’t even tell if characters are male or female.

┖ThanksForGuide: This10/10 guide… But why write Rikiel like he’s a total trash character? If you memorize the dialogue choices, he’s fine, right? If you’re playing with the wiki open, just open another tab for Rikiel’s choices.

┖┖Ginger man: ThanksForGuide/You can pick him if you want, but as you can see on the wiki, his dialogue choices span over 10 pages. They change depending on party composition, so is it worth going that far for him? Like I said, knights are all about the same, so I’m not sure it’s worth picking Rikiel just for his choices.

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┖MNOR: By the way, isn’t there an achievement for clearing with both Tristan and Rikiel as companions?

┖┖Ginger man: MNOR/What nonsense? Tristan’s an NPC, you can’t recruit him.

┖┖┖MNOR: Isn’t he recruitable in the second playthrough? I saw it in some guide, not sure.

┖Ginger man: Second playthrough? The wiki doesn’t say anything about recruiting Tristan. Maybe it’s a rumor because Rikiel’s his brother?

┖MNOR: Oh, my bad then, sorry.

┖┖Ginger man: MNOR/No worries, it’s an understandable mistake.

┖roron: But isn’t the second playthrough something you can’t access normally? I heard it opens if you trigger a bug and see the opening with the same character again. If that’s true, there could be an achievement.

┖┖Ginger man: roron/Oh, you mean that? Like New Game Plus (NG+)? As far as I know, that second playthrough is just an urban legend. You can’t replay with the same character after clearing, so how would you start a second playthrough? If there was such an Easter egg, the foreign community would’ve found it by now.

┖roron: Oh, really? A second playthrough would be cool though. If you could recruit Tristan, what’d his class be? Mage?

┖MNOR: I’d love if he was a priest so he could heal.

┖siekd: Seriously, a healer would be greatㅠㅠ A game with no healing? Watching companions become parasite food before reaching the Demon King’s Castle is gut-wrenching.

┖SeeZer: Maybe a new hero? :3

Behind-the-Scenes Story 2

The royal palace at midnight was silent, devoid of light.

There was no moon in the demon world. If there was no light in the sky, there was no need for it on the ground. The creatures that set foot on this land believed this as if it were a religion, unafraid of even a single candle flame in their stronghold.

There were practical reasons, too. Demons could distinguish objects with or without light, so they saw no point in wasting fuel or replacing melted candles.

Thus, even structures that shone beautifully in the daylight fell asleep at night. Unlike human palaces, where orange lanterns bloomed like flowers as soon as the sun set, this was a stark contrast.

The grand hall, built solely to honor the demon king, was also cloaked in darkness at night. The pillars supporting the hall adorned themselves with vibrant colors and elegant decorations, but in the absence of light, all their efforts lost value equally.

A tall man, the master of the hall, stepped into the center of the darkened hall. His bare white feet softly sank into the carpet.

Stepping on the darkness, laid as calmly as fine velvet, the man stood alone, white. This didn’t mean a radiant white glow emanated from him; rather, he lacked any discernible color. His steady footsteps, his unyielding straight shoulders, and even the hair gently resting on those shoulders were flawlessly white.

Even the ornamental garments draped over his body couldn’t tarnish his purity. Thus, he was free from the darkness, which could steal no color from him.

The only proof that he wasn’t entirely bleached was his eyes. His irises held a vivid, dense blood-red hue, which, amidst all his whiteness, seemed less eerie and more like evidence of life.

The man raised his red eyes to look ahead, but his gaze held no discernible emotion. At the end of his line of sight was a massive crystal orb in the center of the hall.

Inside the orb, specks of light swirled like snowflakes. But they were insufficient to illuminate the vast hall, barely lighting the carpet a few feet from the orb.

The man didn’t care. The light wasn’t meant for him. According to his knowledge, humans needed light, and he had placed it there for the human woman preserved inside the orb—a light bright enough to quell her fear of darkness but not so dazzling as to disturb her sleep.

‘Do humans call this a snow globe?’

He tilted his head, observing the woman. The unfamiliar term had been taught to him by a hero who once visited the Demon King’s Castle. Upon seeing the orb for the first time, the hero had unhesitatingly called it “bad taste.”

The orb was meant to protect the woman from the demon world’s atmosphere, and the man had no intention of admiring her, but he didn’t bother correcting the hero’s misunderstanding. The reason was simple: the demon king had no motive to do so.

—Why didn’t you refuse their pleas, Herus?

The demon king spoke in a calm voice. The boy prostrated at his feet flinched but received no glance from him. Even without the boy speaking, the demon king knew what had happened.

Though one of that magnificent being’s legs was larger than this boy, the spider queen had lowered herself as much as her massive frame allowed to show him respect. The queens of ground bees, honeybees, wasps, fire ants, and termites had done the same.

The boy was the father and mother of all vermin. He hadn’t birthed them all, but he was akin to their ancestor, and no creature in this world could live without revering him. The boy looked up at the demon king. His insect-like compound eyes were hard to read, but his voice trembled with unbearable sorrow.

—I couldn’t refuse, my king.

—Do not confuse impossibility with refusal, child. You have enough discernment for that.

—B-but… how could I refuse? Her bloodline is being corrupted. The others’ bloodlines, too. Half the eggs she laid were born deformed.

—And all you did was that? Put more of your spawned parasites into those pitiful creatures?

—Then what should I do? They… they wanted it…

The human woman’s health was fine, and her mental state was stable. With nothing more to see, the demon king turned his gaze from the orb and bent down. The boy reached out with all four arms, clinging to him, and the demon king, holding the sobbing boy, slowly walked. The boy’s green hair looked like a stain on the demon king’s garments.

As he left the hall, the demon king thought of the genetic disease plaguing the vermin colonies. Naturally, genetic diseases aren’t contagious. Being etched into the bloodline, they’re hard to cure but don’t spread rapidly or increase in incidence like other diseases.

Yet the vermin colonies were now utterly devastated. Most wasps, honeybees, and ground bees born this year couldn’t move their wings; fire ants and termites were born with paralyzed senses, lacking mouths or anuses; spiders were blind with reversed joints—phenomena unseen in the “previous world.”

Many demons, including the boy, believed it was divine interference. The gods had decided to sacrifice demons for humans. The human world grew more prosperous daily, while the demon world grew ever more barren, denied even a sliver of abundance.

Demons had endured thus far, but no demon could withstand seven years of day-and-night natural disasters. They didn’t take the vermin’s anomalies lightly. The vermin, being weak, were merely the first to suffer, and if ignored, the demons knew they’d be next.

Thus, the demons pleaded with their king, and the demon king led his forces to invade the human world—to right the tilted scales and reclaim what was theirs from the arrogant humans.

…At least, that’s what the demons believed.

—Herus, Arachne has been killed.

The boy’s trembling stopped instantly. The demon king silently stroked his back, and the boy gripped his collar tightly, creasing it. It was a quicker death than expected. The boy had released parasites into the vermin colonies, believing it would delay her death, but she didn’t last a month, as always. It was likely a painful end.

The demon king pondered. What was the state of her mind after enduring near-infinite deaths? If memories were erased, would the pain of death soften? If her body was reconstructed, should the scars etched upon it be considered nonexistent? And…

Could the mind of a hero, rising again after 28,000 deaths, still function properly?

—Who dared to do this?

—A hero blessed by the gods entered the demon world with the human king. The hero killed her.

—Divine blessing?! How… how could this happen? What crime did she commit?!

—She committed no crime. You know that better than anyone.

—…!

—The hero crossed her nest and is heading to the next colony. Likely aiming for this castle.

The boy’s black eyes glinted fiercely. The demon king released him, and though unsteady, the boy stood on his own. Originally, the demon king hadn’t planned to mention the spider queen’s death. For tens of thousands of times, he’d kept silent, and the boy had wept without knowing why she died. It should have been the same this time. But…

‘This is a rare chance for “change.” I can’t miss it.’

This had never happened before: a chance to manipulate the “passage” for the human king to enter the demon world, a genetic disease striking the vermin colonies as if on cue, and… the strange existence of a hero who, despite killing the demon king once, chose a new beginning.

The demon king couldn’t guess why the hero didn’t return to the original world, but such trivial reasons didn’t matter. What mattered was one thing:

This youth brought change to an endlessly repeating world.

‘But this time, we may not meet easily… Park Nowon.’

Watching the boy vanish into the darkness, the demon king thought. The lesser demons in the vermin colonies were weak, but the pureblood demons the boy spawned were so strong even high-ranking demons feared them.

Yet the demon king didn’t care. If the hero died in “this world,” they would surely meet again in the distant “next world.”

He could wait as long as it took.