The Road to Ruby Heroes

## What do I need to ruby my heroes?

Before you even think about ruby heroes, you need to make sure you are even able to promote to ruby. Follow this checklist and if you have them all then you are ready to start gearing your account for ruby heroes.

1. Do I have at least 1 **Platinum+5 Hero**?
2. Do I have at least 1 **Platinum+6 Core**?
3. Have I reached District 3 in the **Extreme campaign** yet?

If your answer is no to any of these questions then go and start working on that before you continue, point 2 and 3 are especially important as you require a MK6 platinum core to promote any heroes to Platinum+6 and you require specific gear from later extreme campaign missions to promote your heroes to Ruby from Platinum+6.

## What level do I need to be and how do I get there faster?

You need to be level 95 in order to equip a MK6 platinum core on a Platinum +5 hero. 95 may seem a while away if you are only level 90 or 91 so what is the fastest way to reach there? You want to grind extreme levels, if you have a few Platinum +4 or Platinum +5 10\* heroes then you should be able to reach District 3 (3-2) fairly easily if you follow the guide.

As you can see reaching the further districts give more XP so naturally you want to go straight to District 6! But this is a lot easier said than done, without any ruby heroes (under level 95) you can reach a maximum of mission 3-4, you will need ruby Serial to beat 3-5. You may think this is unnecessary and you will just grind out missions in District 1 (D1) or 2 (D2)  but you would also be mistaken, both district have a daily win limit of 3, even on missions without hero fragments. This limit is not lifted until D3 where missions without hero fragments have no limit.  **So your goal should be to reach 3-2 to grind to level 95. Then you want to reach 4-2 once you have some ruby heroes and grind to level 100.**

## What if I need more help and am stuck on a mission?

If you are having trouble completing extreme missions, take a look at the community made guides for each distruct, there you will find teams, videos and advice on how to beat individual missions. If this guide is still not enough to help you, then you can visit our community discord and ask for some help on extreme with a screenshot of your heroes.

## Vital heroes and why you need to use them

**Serial**: Serial is vital as his shield can absorb all damage and it impenetrable to every enemy (except Jarek, more on that later). This Shield also taunts all enemies so he can take all the damage and take the focus away from your other team members who may have less health and armour. At ruby level he does an unprecedented amount of damage as well.

**Kurtz**: Despite being the bane of everyone’s existence in PVP he is also vital for extreme missions as he can execute and provide a massive health and damage boost to all your team members par 1. This will only boost 4/5 members though as it will require you to execute your own team member to get the boost, this is where the next vital hero comes into play. Kurtz’s platinum will also do damage to all enemies on the field as you have executed your own team member it counts as a death, this means he can not only provide a health and damage boost, but also weakens the enemies on the field

**Flatline**: She is the perfect pair with Kurtz, she revives the fallen teammate from execute and she can also stun people with her taser, perfect for boss enemies who are doing too much damage. This is her only use, she is useless for healing really as Kurtz does that.

**Mandrake**: Mandrake is fairly self-explanatory he helps hide your teammates when they are about to die, this means you gain an extra few seconds to get serial’s shield up and taunt enemy attacks. Sometimes, mandrake can be the deciding factor on getting 3\* in a mission!

**Hivemind**: Hivemind is similar to Serial and Kurtz in that he is a vital key to beating extreme. His drones will provide additional targets to shoot at and he can now spawn 2 drones which taunt as well. When these drones die it also counts as a team mate dying which triggers Kurtz platinum, at later levels his drones will die often causing constant damage to your enemies, this is deadly when combined with a passive damage enemy like the 3 below

**Halo/ Kiyoshi/ Krieger**: Most of the early teams here use Halo but Kiyoshi can be swapped in for more lightning damage, Krieger may also work, but the heal Halo and Kiyoshi provide can be vital. These are not used in all the teams but for some it is vital to get additional damage, Kurtz’ platinum skill triggers Halo and Kiyoshi’s Platinum Lightning and Krieger’s Gold skill which does additional damage. This means you can have a hivemind drone die and everyone starts getting effected by lightning dealing massive damage.

**Shank**: In district 4 the missions stop using Kurtz in favour of Shank, this is because level 100 heroes have more damage dealing capability and no longer require the damage buff her provides. Shank makes a lot of missions possible as his stuns can take the main enemies out temporarily giving you breathing room to take them down.

**Oracle**: Similar to Shank, in District 4 onwards Oracle can become vital as she can disorient enemies as the wave begins, this gives breathing room to get Serial's shield going. Her orbital bombardment is also useful as it causes the AI to roll around, when they are rolling they are not shooting at you and killing your heroes, occasionally she may also kill an enemy with it providing a passive heal.

**Heimlock/ Phalanx**: Healers are only useful in D4 onwards as Kurtz is no longer used, Phalanx and Heim in particular provide additional health or a shield which can act as a buffer zone when starting missions. Heim's gold skill provides additional health at the start of a mission and Phalanx can provide a shield.

**Duran/ Françoise**: Similar to Heimlock and Phalanx, healers and shield providers are only useful in D4 onwards, Duran has the most powerful heal in the game and it charges fast, this makes him vital for bringing heroes back from the brink of death, he can also heal himself and provides a reload and fire rate bonus to those who get the heal. Françoise does not have a fast or powerful heal but when she has 4 charges of "Take a Swig" and uses her "Invigorate" on a team member they become virtually invincible for 16 second skill duration.

## Grinding to Level 95

 90 to 91
 91 to 92
 92 to 93
 93 to 94
 94 to 95
 Total

As seen in the table here, to go from level 90 to 95 it takes 522k XP, this may seem a lot at first if you are only doing normal or hard missions but it quickly becomes manageable using Extreme missions. If you choose to ignore Extreme missions and keep upgrading your heroes then you will be doing normal missions, these give 10xp per mission and would need to be completed 52,200 times to reach level 95. This equates to 522,000 energy following the assumption you are doing MK5 and MK6 grinding costing 10 energy a mission.

If you are doing hard missions then these numbers halve as you receive 20xp per mission, this means 26,100 hard missions need to be completed. Assuming you are doing D1 hard missions for XP only then this will cost you 261,000 energy. As you can see, these numbers are very high and would take a long time to do, this is why Extreme is so important if you are XP grinding only.

Extreme 3-2 gives 60xp per 20 energy, this means you only need to complete it 8,700 times costing 174,000 energy, this is 50% more efficient than doing hard missions and as a result it is far cheaper as well. If you are the type of player to hoard gold then you can spend it to buy stamina as well, you can work out how much gold you need from a basic calculation. Remember that how much **Energy** you can buy depends on your **VIP Level.**

Let's assume you just hit Level 94 and want to see how much gold you need to reach 95.

1. XP Needed: 140,000 XP
2. Number of times you need to beat 3-2: (140,000/ 60) = 2,334 runs needed (always round up)
3. Energy cost for beating 3-2 this many times: (2,334\*20) = 46,680 energy
4. 100 energy costs 60 gold (VIP 0): (46,680/100) = 467 gold purchases
5. Gold cost for 467 energy purchases: (467\*60) = 28,020 Gold

Following these easy 5 steps you can work out how much gold it will cost you to reach the next level. Remember if you are going to **Quick Win (QW ticket)** the missions then there is also a ticket cost, each mission requires 2 QW tickets. For the above example, 2,334 runs of mission 3-2 are required so you can double this number to work it out how many tickets you need: (2,334\*2) = 4668 QW Tickets.

If you have no QW tickets to spare then you can run these missions manually on auto, this has the added risk of failing the mission however. Once you have 3-starred mission 3-2 then you can run it again and again without worrying about keeping your team alive, this means you can use Kurtz and execute as soon as his skill charges, this takes about 40 seconds to complete a match so you will be making around 5,400 XP an hour this way. Remember Kurtz won't execute unless you press the skill however, so there is a small amount of attention that it requires. I would not recommend you doing this if you buy energy with gold as it is a massive time waste and the amount of attention it requires to keep pressing replay and execute makes it hard to do anything else while it runs. If you are logging into the game and spending the energy every few hours then it won't take a lot of time, but if you are actively buying gold then this will take a long time. If you find you are constantly running out of QW tickets **then you can try this energy saving trick to save energy for later when you have the QW tickets to spare.**

## Your first Ruby!

When you finally reach level 95, you can ruby your first hero. But first you need to upgrade your hero to Platinum +6, this takes a MK6 platinum core which is the most expensive item in the game pre-ruby as seen below.

MK cores use an additive recipe, this means a MK 6 core requires 1x of every core before it, **the breakdown for platinum cores can be seen here.** Once you have equipped the MK6 core and promoted your hero to Platinum + 6 you will require ruby gear pieces to upgrade to Ruby 0. If you have been playing the game during 2020 when Ruby was announced then you likely have a menagerie of Ruby MK Cores as of 22/02/2021 there is no current way to craft Ruby Cores and they have to be earned through events.

As can be seen on this 4-cep below, 6 gear items are required to upgrade to ruby.

Some ruby gear is additive like the Platinum MK cores and will require the platinum item to craft the ruby item, this can be seen with Ruby Chests, but other items like Ruby Snipers do not require any platinum gear to craft.

For every hero you want to ruby, you will require 14 **Ruby Grenades** and 14 **Ruby Stars** for the first two items, this is the same for every hero in the game. These items all have a daily 3 win limit so I would recommend doing these missions daily even if you don't need them. You will want to complete these missions daily until you have around 100 of each ready to use, this is important as if an event comes along and provides MK5 and MK6 cores then you will be ready to ruby them, this was seen in the Halloween 2020 Scavenger Hunt Store which provided 5x MK6 and MK5 cores.

Daily limits play a major part in ruby gear farming, some gear pieces like Ruby Heavy Helmets can only be found in mission 1-2. Just like Ruby Throwing Stars and Grenades, you will want to make a habit to do these missions daily so you have the gear pieces ready when you need them.

#### Ruby Skills

Unlike platinum skills, ruby skills require more cash to upgrade and start from level 1. Bronze and Silver skills cost 2.833m Bucks to upgrade from 1 to 95, ruby skills cost 8.407m bucks in comparison. If you have no bucks saved up then this can take a few days to upgrade, remember this cost so when you think about rubying your next hero you make sure you have the cash ready. Once you reach level 100 the final 5 levels will cost an additional 529,200 bucks.

### TLDR

1. You require a MK5 core to craft a MK6 core.
2. You want to 3\* all the missions between 1-1 and 3-2 to quick win them for gear.
3. You want to do the missions for Ruby Stars and Grenades daily until you have 100 of each.
4. You want to do mission 1-2 to collect ruby heavy helmet fragments daily until you have enough to craft at least 2.
5. Ruby skills cost 8,407,500 bucks to upgrade from 0 to 95; 8,936,700 bucks from 0 to 100.

## Grinding to Level 100

 95 to 96
 96 to 96
 97 to 98
 98 to 99
 99 to 100
 Total

Looking at the table of XP we can see the huge jump in XP needed when compared to 90-95. Going to level 100 is the largest grind in the game currently, it takes roughly 3x more XP than your last grind from 90 to 95. You will be able to reach Mission 4-2 with ruby heroes if you follow the guide, but you will be unable to beat 5-2 until you have level 100 upgraded heroes, this means the maximum XP per mission you can earn is 70.

Using the same calculations as before, we can figure out how much gold it will cost to go from 95 to 100. Let's assume you just hit Level 95 and want to see how much gold you need to reach 100.

1. XP Needed: 1,512,000 XP
2. Number of times you need to beat 4-2: (1,512,000/ 70) = 21,600 runs needed (always round up)
3. Energy cost for beating 4-2 this many times: (21600\*20) = 432,000 energy
4. 100 energy costs 60 gold (VIP 0): (432,000/100) = 4,320 gold purchases
5. Gold cost for 467 energy purchases: (4,320\*60) = 259,200 Gold

If you are planning on using gold to buy energy, then you will have to QW this mission, there is no option to run the mission on auto as it is too difficult. This means you will need to have a stash of QW tickets available if you are going to grind all your energy here. I would recommend saving your gold until you have enough tickets available, if you have a large stash of tickets and gold then you will see screens like the one below often.

## Your first Ruby Bars!

Once you finally hit level 100, all that holds you back in extreme is your skill and what heroes you have upgraded. Level 100 is the current maximum level and unlocks Ruby+1 and up.

> *"For every hero you want to ruby, you will require **14 Ruby Grenades** and **14 Ruby Stars** for the first two items, this is the same for every hero in the game. These items all have a daily 3 win limit so I would recommend doing these missions daily even if you don't need them, you will want to complete these missions daily until you have around 100 of each ready to use"*
>
>

If you followed my above advise then when you hit level 100 you should most of the gear to upgrade your heroes to Ruby+3. As stated above, there is currently no way of crafting Ruby MK cores and they have to be earned through events, this applies to Ruby MK2 cores and up as well.

Some key things to note when you hit level 100, certain missions like 5-2, 5-5 and 5-8 all have specific gear pieces on just like 1-2 does. This means these missions have to be beat and 3\* in order to QW for gear, by no means are they easy missions and are key indicators of a players progress in the Extreme Campaign. Some heroes you will be able to upgrade to Ruby+4 once you have beat 5-5 but others will require 5-8 to be beat. Ruby bars make the game significantly different, PVP is dangerously fast and you can kill enemies in seconds, extreme missions become easier and events pose no trouble anymore. You may find missions you found extremely difficult are easier with ruby bars as well, this is helpful if you have not 3\* all the extreme missions in the first 3 districts yet.

With Ruby bars, your top 5 also gets a boost and may look something like this