AFK Arena Twisted Realm Guide: Best Team Comps [UPDATED]

This is an updated guide for the?AFK Arena?Twisted Realm event with new optimal setups for all five bosses. I will update the AFK Arena Twisted Realm guide in the upcoming days, but for now, here is the image with all the information you need about setups.

Defeat Kane, Nemora, Ice Shemira, Burning Brute & Arden in the Guild Twisted Realm to get Twisted Essences, strengthening your heroes further in the Elder Tree.

For the Guild Hunting bosses, check my post best Wrizz and Soren team comps.

The rewards will be sent to the player's mailbox based on the leaderboard ranking. Players in the Legend division receive extra rewards by maintaining their ranking when the final rewards are calculated.

My best advice is to check each boss's leaderboards, as whatever recommendations I make here may not work well at your floor level.

Check also the best campaign PvE team comps in AFK Arena.

Note: The arrival of Raku makes the above infographic quite outdated, as Raku can replace Saurus in some Twisted Realm fights, especially against Dark Arden (The Unhinged).

The Twisted Realm Bosses

There are currently five bosses in the Twisted Realm, so let's look at the boss appearance order first.

Boss Appearance Order:

1. Kane
2. Nemora
3. Dark Arden (The Unhinged)
4. Ice Shemira
5. Grotesque Mage
6. Burning Brute

Players will face Kane first, Nemora after a couple of days, then Dark Arden, Ice Shemira, Grotesque Mage, and the last one is Burning Brute. This cycle keeps rotating, and every boss is available for two days.

Kane

Here are Kane's skills. The most important one for the mechanics of this fight is Hell's Judgement.

Best Twisted Realm Kane Team

Note: You can replace Mortas with Daimon, but for that, you will need 3/9 Mythic furniture on Daimon.

Kane Battle Guide

Kane one-shot kills your highest damage dealing hero at 15, 40, and 65 seconds into battle, using Hell's Judgement.

If you think you should use Talene in this fight, you are exactly right. The fight's concept is that you need to make sure that Talene is your top DPS throughout the fight so that Kane's Hell Judgement keeps targeting her.

Pro tip: Try to get a Talene mercenary every week. She is instrumental

If you have a strong enough Talene, you will not need to suppress your second DPS's damage.

If you don't, you need to suppress Belinda's or Warek's damage (turn off auto and don't use their ultimate) to let Talene deal the most and die each time Kane uses Hell's Judgement, losing no heroes throughout the fight. I have noticed that a strong enough Talene will be the highest damage dealer anyway. That's why I recommend taking Talene as a mercenary. Talene will always be my choice until I build my own for the end game.

If you don't have Talene, the point of this fight is to deal as much damage as possible before Kane kills all of your team. Twins are excellent here since they provide haste. The best thing to do is make sure your second damage dealer (Belinda) dies first. Then your primary damage dealer (Saurus) will have more time to deal damage. But really, you need to get Talene, as any other formation won't be as significant.

Also, Wukong's clones count as individual targets, and his main form disappears, so you have more bodies to sacrifice if you don't have Talene. The problem here is that you need a very strong Wukong to out DPS the rest of your team. Mine cannot do it.

Demonic Entity (Evil Nemora)

Best Twisted Realm Demonic Entity Team

• If you don't have the former, you can replace Chaos Bringer with Dura's Blade.

Main Strategy

This is one of the very few fights where Shemira still thrives.

The player deals damage to Demonic Entity through damaging the 5 Dreafs she summons. As such, AoE heroes like Shemira are essential for this fight. Other heroes mostly play a supportive role in helping Shemira get as much out of her ultimates as possible. 

Shemira is a must, so ensure Rosaline follows her (easy to do since patch 1.64 as you can select who Rosaline follows). Newer players can take a stronger Shemira as a mercenary from friends or guildmates to maximize damage. This is a straightforward fight overall. Just follow the exact positioning recommended above and go on auto, no trouble. I'll post a video of the fight soon. I have also found Estrilda's AoE damage extremely useful in this fight.

Dark Arden ? The Unhinged

Best Twisted Realm Arden, The Unhinged Team

Raku has taken Saurus' throne in this fight, as long as you don't need the heals from Saurus' SI +30. You need Raku at SI +30, and you shouldn't use his ultimate. Ideally, you want to create a macro in your emulator to simultaneously cast the other four ultimates.

Arden's Nether Shield reduces his damage taken by 50% while unaffected by enemy crowd control. Mortas can take down the shield with his passive skill, “Greed,” with his normal attacks, so he is an excellent choice for this fight.

The rest of the choices are what you would expect.

You should go with Warek for his Bonebreaker skill, Grezhul to steal attack rating, the Twins to provide haste, and link Grezhul and Raku/Saurus to increase each other's Attack Ratings.

Grezhul is great in this fight due to his “Deathly Protection” skill that reduced damage from intelligence-based enemies.

He also has a shield ability, and his minions can be the targets of Arden's Lightning Fury to mitigate its damage.

If you don't have Warek and Mortas, you can go full support with the Twins, Rowan and Rosaline in the backline, and Saurus and Grezhul at the front.

Replacements:

• Belinda remains a reasonable replacement for Warek.
• Raine is great with 3/9 Furniture.
• You can replace Grezhul with Baden because Baden's minions can be the target of some of Dark Ardern's five lightning bolts, thus absorbing some damage. But Grezhul's shields are a better option, his Attack Rating steal and his passive against Intelligence-based heroes.

Ice Shemira

Ice Shemira is Shemira herself after being gifted Ice elemental powers by the spirits of winter. Pretty cool trivia. So here are Ice Shemira's skills, and they are callous ones:

Best Twisted Realm Ice Shemira Team

You need Ezizh to do this fight. His ultimate “FIssure” reduces Ice Shemira's Attack Rating by 40%, which is necessary to survive “Blizzard” as it gets stronger. Ezizh's Horrify ability prevents her from casting her Ultimate (Frozen Barrier) for 3 seconds. At level 2, it prevents Ice Shemira from casting her Ultimate for 2 seconds every time one of your heroes uses their Ultimate.

That's how you counter Frozen Barrier by not allowing it to happen. There is no other hero in the game that can do this as of March 2021.

At the same time, you need to have the Twins and Rowan in the fight for haste and Ultimate fast casts with Rowan's SI +30. If your Twins have enough haste to spam their Ultimate, you can replace Rowan with Warek for maximum damage.

Finally, Grezhul is great here because he will steal Attack Rating from Ice Shemira, further reducing the damage you take. This means that Cecilia would probably work really well to mitigate damage in this fight too.

But Grezhul also reduces the damage you receive from Intelligence-based heroes, making him a great choice. Eventually, all your heroes will be able to survive the fight, and the challenge will be not to allow Shemira to become Immune with Frozen Barrier.

Grotesque Mage

Best Grotesque Mage team

This first formation seems to be the best for Grotesque Mage right now as it tops the leaderboards at Twisted Realm Floor 332 and lower (probably higher too). I can't figure out why it works well.

I don't know why Tasi works here other than the heals her summoned fairy provides and the haste bonus. Generally speaking, buffers don't work well here as Grotesque mage removes your heroes buffs, and he also reduces attack ratings.

Your pretty much try to deliver consistent damage without ultimates and mitigate the damage you take.

The Izold formation makes a lot of sense for me as you take a lot of damage, although I'm not sure how well the Twins work here and how long Silas' buff will last before the phantom removes it. I will keep studying this fight until I figure out what's going on.

The Grotesque Mage's main challenge is that if your heroes use 6 Ultimates, he leaves the fight in a few seconds. So you should turn off “Auto” and only use Mortas' Ultimate to buff Saurus.

Finally, at 10 seconds left, turn “Auto” back on and shoot fireworks (Ultimates) before the fight ends.

Replacements:

• You can replace Cecilia with Saurus in the second formation and use his ultimate to heal, or Mortas' to buff Saurus, or alternate the two to survive the fight. Using Saurus has been terrible for me in this fight, to be honest.
• As usual, Chaos Bringer can be replaced with Dura's Blade if you don't have it.

Burning Brute

Best Twisted Realm Burning Brute Team

While this fight is more usual, you need Mehira or Cecilia to reduce the Burning Brute's damage and survive the whole fight.

The Twisted Realm Rules

1. The floor that players are placed on is based on their Resonance Crystal level. Until level 240 it's the average of the 5 heroes placed in the pentagram. After level 240 the floor level is the Resonating crystals level. For instance, for me at the moment is 306 as my Resonating Crystal level is 306.
2. Heroes within the Twisted Realm will all be set to the same level; however, heroes' gear and ascension levels will remain as they originally were.
3. Players may use only mercenaries, dimensional heroes, and heroes who are within the Resonating Crystal.
4. Bosses will stack buffs and grow stronger every time a certain amount of their health is lost.
5. Within each new Twisted Realm session, players can challenge bosses five times for free, after which the expenditure of diamonds will be required to continue challenging bosses. Players may challenge bosses a maximum of 99 times per session. One battle challenge attempt will be deducted each time a player enters a battle.
6. Only one mercenary may be used per formation within the Twisted Realm. However, the number of times that a mercenary can be used is unlimited.
7. Only the highest recorded damage dealt throughout all boss challenges will count towards your final ranking. Your final ranking will be determined at the end of each session.
8. At the end of each Twisted Realm session, players will receive two (guild and individual rewards) in-game mails that include their rewards.