In its current form, the Hunting Fields event in AFK Arena is a set of mini Abyssal Expeditions, where your goal is to defeat the final boss (Adrax in the first Hunting Fields event, Oleus in the second) event, eventually. You will team up with 4 other players to form a hunting squad in multiple co-op instances.
- Note: After two Hunting Fields events I feel that it's best to either go solo or participate as a support member. I have had a hard time in the first Hunting Fields event with guildmates and in the second one we never even got 5 members ready until I joined another team as a support member. :-/
Each instance will last 7 days and the last day will count as Quiet Time; resources and stamina recovery will be suspended.
There are 5 factions in Hunting Fields, the 4 core factions and Celestial/Hypogean/Dimensional which count as 1 faction.
The Hunting Fields event uses the Martial Rating system, with levels starting from level 240 and increasing based on your Resonating Crystal level.
Martial Rating System: Hero Level = 240 + Resonating Crystal Level / 10.
Playing the event solo will allow you to use all 5 factions. Meanwhile, if you join a squad, each member plays a single of the 5 factions (I chose Celestials/Hypogeans/Dimensionals as the other option I was left with was the Maulers, and my Maulers suck). You cannot use heroes of the other 4 factions in the event.
- If you play with a squad, you will need to have 5 squad members to join an instance.
- Contrary to Abyssal Expedition, wilderness tiles don't count against your total occupied tiles cap.
- You still need to connect your tiles to your teammates'.
- You can also occupy Hunting Camps and complete Hunting Challenges that reward you with Hunter Marks, loot, and Hero Awakening Runes. You will use these rewards to power up your heroes within each instance.
- Squad members will also be able to exchange resources and loot using the shared bags.
- Occupying Hunting Camps, challenging Gate Bosses and the Final Boss consume stamina. Your heroes replenish 3 stamina points per hour during the non-Quiet time.
- Hunting Challenges (or Field Bosses) consume Challenge Seals. Challenge Seals are acquired by increased the Hunting Squad level and can be exchanged between players. You don't have many of them, so use them wisely (give them to the strongest player to kill field bosses).
- Occupied Hunting Camps generate Hunter Marks (the equivalent of Blessed essence in ABEX).
- You can power up heroes with Hero Runes.
- You can upgrade a hero to the next tier by fully equipping them with their designated non-exclusive gear. That's 3/4 pieces as the fourth is an exclusive one.
- You can acquire gear loot from Field Boss treasure chests and Hunting Camps. Boss chests contain Hero Awakening Runes, Hunter Marks, and gear loot. Once you defeat a boss, all squad members will receive a treasure chest.
Hunting Squad level and max Challenge Seals per member:
- Level 1: 1
- Level 2: 1
- Level 3: 1
- Level 4: 2
- Level 5: 2
The Difference Between Gate Bosses and Field Bosses (Unidentified Threats)
There is an important distinction between Gate bosses (Khazard, Zaphrael) and Field Bosses. The former requires you to consume 12 stamina and you need to take them down to move to the next area. They are pretty much the same as ABEX Gate bosses and the rewards are probably just Hunter Marks.
The Field Bosses are the ones requiring Challenge Seals to fight, and since they consume the seal used, your strongest players should fight them as they drop Hero Awakening/Ascension gear. I made the mistake of attacking a Belinda Field Boss far too early, and it was quite pointless, as you can pretty much take her down by spending a single Challenge Seal as your squad gets stronger. Lesson learned.
The Hunting Fields Guide and Tips
- Make sure to start occupying Hunting Camps as soon as the event starts to start acquiring resources while you are AFK.
- Place your relics in the shared bag so that the entire squad can use them to get stronger.
- Transfer your Challenge Seals to the strongest boss nuker as they will need to get stronger and carry the squad in boss fights.
- Combine relics after you have all the lower-tier relics to avoid wasting Hunter Marks resources.
- Don't waste resources for T5 camps, ask for help instead.
- Contrary to Abyssal Expedition you do not need to build a path towards the bosses. By increasing your rank you will be able to use the “Sweep” function and acquire all wilderness tiles, allowing you to access the boss fights.
- As with Abyssal Expedition, playing on Auto and 2x or 4x speed may end up costing you stamina.
- Choose the heroes you are going to upgrade wisely as multiple heroes require the same gear pieces.
Relics
Players must equip all designated slot loot on the hero to upgrade them to a higher tier. Each hero has its own exclusive Relic and 3 other non-exclusive pieces.
How to acquire Relics in Hunting Fields:
- Camps: Camps produce AFK Rewards
- Shared Bag: Items in the Shared Bag can be freely used.
- Request help from your squadmates.
- Combination: Get Legendary quality or lower loot from combinations.
- Exchange: Exchange Hunter Marks for loot that is Legendary or lower.
General Strategy
There are two primary goals in the Hunting Fields events. First of all, capture hunting camps as soon as possible to maximize resource production and increase your squad level. The second goal is to strengthen the squad member carrying the squad through bosses by sharing these resources and the Challenge Seals acquired by leveling up the squad.
Boss Fights Strategy
Just like in Abyssal Expedition, it is important to attack bosses when you are strong enough to do plenty of damage, to preserve stamina. You should prioritize your main carries and these are good examples of idea gear they should have before you start attacking. From what I observed our teams go down really fast, so for me it was a matter of making as much damage with Saurus in the first 20-30 seconds before a boss would slaughter me, with the exception of the first one.
- Alna: You can attack her at Tier 3.0 relics.
- Khazard: You can attack her at Tier 4.0 relics.
- Adrax: You can attack him at Tier 4 with 2 pieces of mythic gear (4-2 relics).
The above suggestions are pretty similar to the first hunting fields event.
Reinforcements
- Once a player has confirmed the faction they wish to use in the instance, players can then choose an additional reinforcement team of the corresponding faction.
- Each faction have different reinforcement heroes, tap the button to view the specific heroes.
- Reinforcement heroes must reach Elite+ or higher before they can be placed in the “Troops” recovery pool. Mercenaries and trial heroes may not be used as reinforcements.
- Up to two teams of reinforcements heroes may be placed in the recover pool.
Hunting Challenge
1. Hunting challenges will consume Challenge Seals; these can be obtained by increasing the hunting squad's level, or through gifts between hunting squad members.
2. Damage will accumulate progress for the corresponding treasure chest. When the specified progress is completed, all members of the hunting squad will obtain 1 treasure chest.
3. Chest rewards include Hero Awakening Runes, Loot, and Hunter Marks; the higher the difficulty, the better the rewards.
4. After a beast is killed, wait a while, and a more challenging beast will spawn in another area of the map.
5. The beasts on the hunting grounds are very powerful, and each beast is unique. The members of the hunting squad will need to cooperate with each other and carefully select their opponents in order to gain advantages in battle.
Boss Skills
Alna – The Frozen Mother (First Gate)
Khazard – The Frozen Terror (Second Gate)
Final Boss: Oleus
There are 6 beacons connecting to the final boss, each one allows Oleus to deal more damage to Lightbearer/Mauler/Wilder/Graveborn/Celestian+Hypogean+Dimensional and all Factions!
Under normal conditions, Oleus is able to mitigate damage. Suffering from multiple critical strikes causes his damage mitigation effect to lose its effectiveness for short periods of time.
Final Boss – Oleus Best Team Comps
Currently, the recommended teams for Adrax are either Ainz Compositions with the Twins and Mortas or Full Graveborn teams with Izold and Daimon. I would expect Wilders team with Raku and Saurus, along with Lyca, to do decent damage, complemented with a Respen at SI +30 and Lorsan.
Personally, I will go with the first team below as my Albedo is at SI +30.
The Hunting Fields – Starting heroes recommendations
What is the support role in Hunting Fields?
The supports in Hunting Fields are just spectators. The rewards that supports get is equal to 80% of squad members. This role is best for new players that want to learn more about the Hunting Fields without worrying about their accounts are not strong enough or those who have a hard time finding friends to team up with.
1. Each hunting squad will have 10 support spots, and only friends or guild members can join as support roles.
2. Members of the hunting squad will have 2 spots for support roles within 48 hours of the start of the instance, and will no longer have this restriction after 48 hours.
3. Members of the hunting squad can change settings to allow supporters to join without verification, but this will only affect their own supporter spots.
4. Supports can still claim rewards without needing to fight.