Astral Lords Pro Tips: 15 Tricks Only Veterans Know

These are the things you figure out after way too many runs. Some of them feel like exploits. Some are just undocumented features. All of them will make your runs go better.

1. Sell buildings before they die. A building at 1 HP sells for the same resources as a building at full HP. If a boss is destroying your turrets, sell them before the killing blow lands. You get resources back instead of nothing.

2. Diagonal adjacency works. The tutorial shows buildings touching on flat sides but corner-to-corner connections also trigger combo bonuses. A checkerboard layout doubles your possible adjacency pairs.

3. Dash through projectiles, not away from them. Commander dashes have invulnerability frames. Dodging into a bullet pattern is safer than dodging away because you spend less time inside the hitbox.

4. Resource extractors feed all adjacent turrets simultaneously. One extractor touching three turrets gives all three the damage bonus. This is the single most efficient building in the game.

5. Scrap your base before dying. When a run is obviously lost, sell every building. The resources get converted to Headquarters currency at the end of the run. A failed run with scrapped buildings gives more permanent progress than a successful run where you left everything standing.

6. Fire chips stack multiplicatively with each other, not additively. Two fire chips are about 50% better than one. Three fire chips are about 125% better than one. Go all-in on one element instead of mixing.

7. The pause button exists. You can pause the game at any time to place buildings, read chip descriptions, or plan your next move. I played my first ten runs without realizing this and it was needlessly stressful.

8. Build turrets on elevated terrain. Hills, ridges, and platforms give turrets extra range and let projectiles clear terrain obstacles. Check the terrain before placing anything.

9. Clone barracks produce faster when placed near the enemy spawn point. Not a documented feature but empirically true. The closer your barracks is to the front line, the shorter the unit travel time and the faster new units start producing.

10. The wave counter shows enemy composition if you hover over it. I did not notice this until run 30 or so. It tells you what enemy types are coming next wave so you can prepare.

11. You can queue research in the tech tree by shift-clicking. It is not mentioned anywhere but holding shift while clicking a tech node queues it to start after the current research finishes.

12. Killing a spawn point permanently removes it from the map. On aggro route, prioritize destroying spawn points over fighting wandering enemies. Every destroyed spawn point is one less source of enemies for the rest of the run.

13. Commanders gain XP faster when near combat. Being close to your turrets or army gives bonus XP. Sitting at base watching from afar costs you levels.

14. The daily challenge gives bonus recycled resources. It resets every day and is usually a modified map with special rules. Always do it, it is the most efficient source of Headquarters currency.

15. Some chips are mutually exclusive and the game does not tell you. If you have a chip that converts all turret damage to fire and another that converts to ice, only one applies. The game picks whichever was equipped first. Check for conflicts before committing to a build.

I am at about 70 hours now and I still feel like I am finding new interactions. The game has layers. Which is what you want from a roguelite, honestly.

Bonus Tips from the Community

A few more tricks I picked up from the Discord that are worth sharing.

16. The in-game clock matters. Some enemy types are more aggressive during the night cycle. If you are struggling with a particular wave, try playing it during the day cycle instead. The difference is noticeable.

17. Building sounds are diagnostic. Each building type has a distinct audio cue when it finishes construction or takes damage. Learning these cues means you can manage your base without looking at it constantly. Helpful during boss fights when your eyes are on the bullet patterns.

18. The minimap shows enemy threat levels with color coding. Red dots are high-threat enemies that will target your buildings. Orange dots are medium-threat that attack your commander. Yellow dots are low-threat that follow predictable paths. Prioritize red dots.

19. You can drag-select multiple buildings to sell them at once. This is not mentioned anywhere but it saves time when you are scrapping your base at the end of a failed run. Click and drag a box around whatever you want to sell, then hit the sell key once.

20. The chip pool for each map has a theme. Map 1 chips lean toward structure and resource effects. Map 2 chips lean toward fire and ice elements. Map 3 chips seem to lean toward commander-focused effects. If you want to build a specific synergy, choose the map that matches.

I keep finding new things. At 70 hours I thought I understood the game. At 80 hours I realized I did not. That is the mark of a good roguelite.

One More Thing About Dailies

I mentioned the daily challenge earlier but I want to emphasize how important it is. Over the past week, I have tracked my resource income and the daily challenge consistently provides about 40% of my total recycled resources despite taking up maybe 15% of my playtime.

If you are short on time and can only do one thing in Astral Lords each day, make it the daily challenge. It is the most efficient progress-to-time ratio in the game by a wide margin. Even a partial clear (say, dying at wave 6) gives more HQ currency than a full regular run. The modifier rules usually make the challenge interesting too, sometimes they ban certain building types or double enemy speed, which forces you to adapt your strategy.

I have discovered several chip interactions I never would have tried because the daily challenge forced me into an unfamiliar build. That alone is worth the time investment.