Unlike the Warrior, the Rogue is a naturally agile class, who favors finding equipment that helps them evade enemy attacks while eliminating creatures with precise strikes, or deals quick and powerful critical damage to eliminate enemies before they can even consider attacking you. With this Rogue’s guide to Loop Hero, hopefully, your hero will be as beneficial for securing victory for you as it has been for me.
How To Unlock The Rogue
To unlock the Rogue in Loop Hero, you need to build two things in the Camp. First is the Field Kitchen, which will then unlock the Refuge, our Rogue’s building of liberation. You will need to farm a lot of Wood and Stones. To speed things up, use a lot of Grove, Meadow, and Mountain cards. The trickiest material is Stable metal. To get some, you will need to empty the Treasury. You can do so by putting a Treasure and surrounding it with cards. Focus on gathering resources and in no time you will unlock this deadly assassin.
Rogue Class Strengths And Weaknesses
Rogue has 5% Vampirism innate, but their equipment doesn’t have this stat. It also has a 10% bonus for any effect for every equipped item with the same effect, which hints that you should focus on one or two stats rather than becoming a jack-of-all-traders. The class can equip two weapons, which greatly increases its attack power and consequently the Vampirism stat. But focusing on life steal is not a good idea, because Rogue’s equipment isn’t defense-wise worthy. So at every hit we taste large damage, which incentivizes us to not take hits at all. The Rogue’s equipment is as follows:
Rogue Equipment
Two Weapons Armor Boots Bonus equipment slot: Amulet, when the Arsenal is placed.
Attributes that the Rogue can increase are Counter, Evasion, Critical Damage, Critical Damage Chance, Damage To All, Attack Speed, Defense, Magic Damage, and Magic HP with the Amulet. Although you often want to make a prepared build, equipment drop can screw you over and give you unneeded attributes. By the way, Rogue is a class that collects equipment differently. The Rogue collects trophies with every enemy killed, and upon reaching the Camp tile, exchanges these trophies for a handful of items. The more trophies, the higher the quality/quantity of the items. Regardless of the enemy’s strength, every kill will only count as one trophy, so I will give you tips on how to make the most of it. The downside of this trophy system is that you may collect bad items when you reach your Camp, and the adventure around the loop until you find a new round of equipment will be riskier.
Rogue’s Best Stats
By far, the best Rogue stat to level up is Evasion. It is the safest choice and will probably net you the most wins. However, Attack Speed builds are also very strong, as you will see later on. The problem with focusing on several attributes is that we have the character’s stamina feature. Below the life and the attack time bars, we have a gray bar, which is our stamina. With each action, be it attacking, evading an attack, or counterattacking, the stamina bar goes down. If it is reset to zero, your evasion is reduced by 50% and your attack becomes extremely slow, leaving you vulnerable. So it’s a bad idea to be a generalist and raise all stats.
Best Cards For Rogue
We are going to develop the Rogue while boosting Evasion and Attack Speed. To do this, we use and abuse the Sand Dunes/Deserts landscape cards. These cards will reduce the HP of everyone in the loop. With a high attack speed, you will hit enemies with reduced HP and eliminate them before they can attack. If they do get the chance to attack, your evasion should help you survive. Meadow is a must-have in any deck, so that’s granted. If you already have the Arsenal, start the expedition by placing it next to your Cozy Camp. That way, when the boss spawns, it will have one less space for buffs. With the Amulet equipment slot, you get the Magic HP stat, which is not reduced by Sand Dunes. Spider Cocoon, Grove, and Swamps are good for Rogue because they spawn weak enemies, great for accumulating trophies. Blood Grove next to a Grove helps kill enemies that survive 1~2 attacks from you, further enhancing your build. The Battlefield card is also a great choice. Although the chests don’t give you loot, they also count for trophies, as do ghosts. Remember that if you overlap their area of effect, a Blood Clot will spawn in it every 4 days. Other than this, there aren’t many combo tiles to aim for with the Rogue. You can also choose any other card you feel comfortable with. But the cards mentioned are the ones that gave me the best chance of victory with this build.
Situational Cards
Forests and Thickets are delicate cards. While they increase your Attack Speed and seem like an obvious choice, they have a powerful side effect. When you place 10 Forest/Thickets, an “A Village?” will appear on the road and every two days a Wooden Warrior will spawn. This creature has an ability where it has a 100% chance to counter all your attacks and evasion doesn’t work against counters. Can you feel the imminent danger? If you want to use Forests, I recommend placing the tenth only when you have an Oblivion in hand. Rivers are great if you want to turbo-boost your attack speed because the effect of this moist card doubles the adjacent landscape. Nothing like a rainforest to invigorate you. But remember that when you place it next to Sand Dunes/Deserts, it turns into an Oasis, reducing both your and your enemies’ attack speed, although theirs greatly. But their HP reduction effect is canceled. Smith’s Forge and Bookery are great cards for the Rogue, but they are unlocked late in the camp building site. Smith’s Forge removes items from your inventory and gives you a damage reduction buff. However, every six exchanges, a Living Armor will spawn and it has a 30% counter-attack chance. You know, something we are trying to avoid. Bookery replaces all your cards with random ones when you pass by it in the loop, great when you aren’t dropping enough Sand Dunes/Deserts.
Best Traits For Rogue
Picky - Lowers the number of items received on the camp tile in exchange for more trophies. IMHO, Rogue’s best trait. You will still receive an inventory full of items, but the quality will exceed the level of the loop. Skilled Architect - Upon each building hero gets 8x loop experience. This is amazing if you are going heavy on the desertic landscape. You can earn a lot of levels and thus, new traits. Old Scars - Each trophy received will increase the player’s Max HP by one. Since we will be abusing weak enemies, it will be good to increase your HP while bathing in the bodies of the deceased. Child of the Forest - Gives the player a 75% chance of being accompanied by a ratwolf that will aid in battle. Honestly, I don’t know if it is that good, but it has saved my life several times. If the ratwolf is the center of attention of the enemy, you are free to stab them in every imaginable place. Lethal Weakness - Every 10% of health the player is missing will give them a 0.5% chance to deal 1,000% damage. A Hail Mary for when the lights in your eyes are leaving you. Card-Sharp - Grants the player a 10% chance of keeping a card in their deck after playing it. Helps them realize their dream of desertifying the landscape around them. Smoke Screen - The player will have guaranteed evades for two seconds after losing 20% of their total HP. If your attack speed is immense, two seconds will seem like an eternity to your enemies. Remember that this can make all the difference against a boss. Except if you are from Act 2, in which case, ignore this trait.
Just remember you are playing a Roguelike. The game in essence is RNG dependent. So no matter how prepared you are, if the game decides it doesn’t want to help you, you will suffer a miserable defeat no matter your build.
