AFK Journey: King Croaker best teams and guide

King Croaker is a tough boss in the Dream Realm who can instantly take out one of your characters. When choosing heroes from AFK Journey to create your team, some are better equipped to handle this challenge than others.

The team suggestions below come from my own experiences fighting the boss. Ideally, you should bring a mix of close-up and long-range fighters to handle King Croaker’s area attacks and characters who can resist its one-hit kill abilities. While some healing is important, you don’t need as much as you would against Skyclops. Here are the best teams for taking down King Croaker.

Best team compositions against King Croaker in AFK Journey

The best AFK Journey team to use against King Croaker is Thoran, Smokey & Meerky, Vala, Korin, and Marilee with the Starshard Spell Artifact.

• Vala, Korin, and Marilee make up your Lightbearer damage trio, which grants you a Faction Bonus for extra damage. If Marilee and Korin are at Mythic+ tier, they will destroy King Croaker since all three heroes will deal true damage, making the fight considerably easier.
• Thoran serves as your essential tank and frontliner. A major challenge in defeating King Croaker is its instakill bubble. And Thoran is the only hero with a guaranteed resurrection per match, making him the best tank for this encounter.
• Smokey & Meerky are your top support in this fight, providing constant healing to quickly restore the health of allies hit by King Croaker’s area skills. They also offer an attack buff, enhancing the effectiveness of your backline trio.

If you’re missing most of the heroes from this team, you can try the alternatives below.

King Croaker tanky team

Thoran, Brutus, Vala, Odie, Smokey & Meerky. Awakening Artifact.

The combination of Thoran, Vala, and Odie was essential and irreplaceable for me, so I included them in every alternative team. Thoran’s ability to return to life once per battle effectively counters King Croaker’s one-hit kill ability. Vala and Odie deliver incredibly high single-target damage, which increases the longer they are in combat. Despite testing other strong attackers like Cecia, Lyca, Mirael, and Silvina, none matched the damage output of Vala and Odie.

The choice for the remaining two slots depends on your play style and the heroes you have available. Smokey & Meerky are the best choice for support because they can heal, buff your attack, and provide Haste to allies. This makes the team highly resistant to King Croaker’s area attacks and allows them to survive long enough to deal more total damage. Antandra is great for reducing King Croaker’s attack to ensure your backline doesn’t get wiped out too early.

King Croaker no support team

Thoran, Vala, Odie, Antandra, Walker. Awakening Artifact.

We maintain Thoran, Vala, and Odie at the core of our frontline and as our main damage dealers. Walker joins the team to provide extra damage, opting out of using a healer or buffer. Meanwhile, Brutus is there to tank the boss’s normal attacks for an extended period due to his invincibility while reducing its defense.

King Croaker life drain team

Thoran, Vala, Odie, Kruger, Koko. Awakening Artifact

Koko proved invaluable as she was against Skyclops with her Life Drain and Attack boost, fitting well in a team focused on physical damage. Kruger is there to double down on the offensive support role, dealing more damage than Brutus while reducing King Croker’s defense.

Just be careful with this composition because sometimes Kruger may die too early in the fight, which will severely cripple the effectiveness of this team. If you can’t keep Kruger alive for most of the fight, you might have more success with my best team suggestion or with one of the other two mentioned above. Kruger is a damage dealer who ideally should only die to the instakill bubble.

For positioning, ensure your backline heroes are more than two tiles apart. King Croaker’s water bomb affects a two-tile radius, so spacing them out prevents two heroes from getting hit by the same attack. It’s important to remember that in AFK Journey’s Dream Realm battles, your heroes’ tier, level, and equipment are exactly as you have them, so upgrade them as fully as you can before entering the fight.

Using the best team composition, I removed 68 percent of Epic King Croaker’s health bar, dealing a little over seven million damage to place 141st.

King Croaker’s attacks

King Croaker has a good defensive and disruptive move set, dealing the most damage with its one-shot bubble. Here’s all its abilities.