HoloCure – Save the Fans!: New Player Tips

This guide is a selection of tips and advice for new players. It assumes you have already watched or played some Holocure or other similar games in the genre like Vampire Survivors or Halls of Torment and thus doesn’t aim to teach you the basics but instead to provide some direction for your first few hours.

I will try to avoid spoilers as much as possible but you may see some names of items, skills etc throughout to serve as examples. Due to that and in the interest of brevity the guide eschews the usage of in-game screenshots.

These are non-gameplay tips that may make the experience smoother for you.

• You can play with a controller or mouse and keyboard and both options are just as good. Controller can aim weapons with the right stick while m&k aims with the mouse. This is toggled on/off with left click and doing so will lock your cursor inside the game’s window.
• There’s an option to reduce weapon and vfx opacity in the Settings if you’re having trouble seeing things when the game gets too chaotic.
• If your machine is struggling, turn off damage numbers and visual effects for a slight performance boost.
• The Confirm and Cancel buttons on a keyboard have the same functionality as left click and right click respectively. There are tasks such as managing upgrades, stamps and gardening that are done more easily with those rather than moving your mouse to click on 3 different parts of the screen. Save your wrists.

These are tips that will help you perform better in your runs and hopefully clear stages with less difficulty.

• Try to move in circles, not straight away from enemies, so that you collect EXP from mobs that die in the swarm that follows you.
• Each idol has a unique starting Weapon and three passive Skills. They are generally all decent to good with plenty being character-defining and should be prioritised, especially if you’re new to the game. Don’t neglect leveling them, most weapons and a few skills get a new property at max rank.
• Weapons max at level 7, Skills max at level 3 and Items max at varying levels, 1 to 5 (where’s 3 and 4?). You need two applicable weapons at max level to do a “Collab”, which combines those two weapons into a stronger one.
• There’s a list of collab combinations you’ve discovered in the pause menu and on the right of the level up screen.
• Weapons often get multipliers to their performance with levels, such as increasing the number of projectiles they shoot, thus having fewer but upgraded weapons is generally more effective than multiple low rank ones. However…
• Both Holozon boxes and level up options favour weapons and items you already own. If you know you want an item eventually, it might be good to pick it up early even if you want to upgrade something else currently because it can be hard to find it again. Holozon will almost always give you a level up on something you already own but if that’s not possible it’ll be something random you have no control over so avoid opening them in that situation.
• Some weapons/items are rarer than others. You can see these “weight” values in the wiki. Weapons[holocure.fandom.com], items[holocure.fandom.com], largely still a work in progress. The greater the weight, the more common the item is and vice versa.
• Try to use your character’s Special and any Skills that are effectively active abilities with a cooldown, like Ollie’s Zombie Ninjutsu, as frequently as possible. This is generally a good practice for a lot of games, not just Holocure. Very few are worth keeping forever as “oh ♥♥♥♥” buttons and delaying them for too long means over the duration of a run you lose uses of the Special/skill, thus reducing performance.
• Anvils are best used for enchanting weapons once that function is unlocked. It’s the second option under Upgrade when you touch one. Character unique weapons can’t be enchanted. If you enchant both components of a collab before combining them, the collab will inherit both enchantments. Don’t be afraid of the gold cost, it’s minuscule compared to income.
• If you have no preference and don’t know which character to choose, start with Kiara. She has decent damage, high base HP, blocks attacks, a great heal over time, high movement speed (one of the most important things in the game) and a good damage steroid. She’s also great for teaching you the game as she incentivises moving continuously to dodge enemies and needs some aiming with her basic weapon but still covers a wide enough area. I’m not biased. Gura is another similarly balanced choice from the starting options.
• You can manage your Stamps from the pause menu if you ever equip something you decide you don’t want.
• Items with drawbacks like Gorilla’s Paw, Energy Drink and Membership are generally very underrated and more than worth their negatives. Also if your character has low critical chance and no crit synergy in their kit, Paw has basically no downside.

This section aims to provide guidance on how to spend your Holocoins, the game’s main currency, during the early game.

• Obviously you should work towards acquiring your favourite characters from the gacha, but other than that…
• Special Attack, the first level of Growth and Stamps are all very cheap and will make a big difference in your runs. You’re losing on a huge chunk of power without Special and Stamps. Enchantments are IMO secondary and can be delayed a little.
• Fandom is uber powerful but not something you can easily access early game unless you hyperfocus on a single Idol. Recommended to unlock it sooner rather than later but when you first do so it’s 2000 coins down the drain for nothing.
• Movement Speed (SPD Up) is of massive importance. A lot of deaths can be avoided if you just outrun the enemies and are faster to dodge AoEs more easily.
• Even a single point in Regeneration goes a long way for characters without healing built into their kit and alleviates some struggles during the first few minutes of a run. Get a couple early.
• Money Gain Up is an investment that always pays off and honestly, everything you do is about earning coins in the first place. If you don’t feel like stats are holding you back in your current level of play, upgrade it more.
• The first few levels of every upgrade are very cheap and worth picking up no matter what. Except for…
• Enhancement Rate Up affects upgrading weapons in Anvils beyond their maximum level. This increases their base damage, costs coins and has a chance to fail. It’s unlikely to be something you do in normal Stage Mode runs as a new player so you can ignore this node.
• Marketing states it “will increase the difficulty of the game”. This is largely inaccurate as increased enemy spawns generally means more kills, thus more exp and drops for you. The item Halu is similar, although more dangerous. Try them out.
• The Achievements either reward coins or unlock new weapons and items. It’s a good idea to take a look at the list and see what you need to do to acquire everything as some very powerful pieces are hidden there. Requirements may include playing a specific character, clearing stages or various other things.
• If (when) you want to power farm a lot of coins, unlock one of IRyS (Council+Hope banner), Ayunda Risu (Area 15) or Pavolia Reine (Holoro). The ID girls are easier because their banners are only 3 characters as opposed to Council’s 6. There’s a lot of room for optimisation here but at a basic level the idea is using one of those characters with the Greed Stamp and the Super Chatto Time! item to earn a lot of money in Endless Mode runs. It’s also recommended you max out the Weapon Limit upgrade under Others.
• Holo House is an optional sub-mode and you don’t need to interact with it if you don’t want to, but the food buffs you can cook are pretty strong. Having even the most basic Tempura for +30% ATK at the early game will be a reasonable boost. Also you can farm coins by fishing, selling the fish and then exchanging the sand for money. I don’t know numbers but this has a pretty good chance to be faster than early game runs (but you’re not playing the main game or getting unlocks so ya know).

By A hostile owl