Upgrading

Heroes may be upgraded using Soulstones. Upgrading a hero consumes your Soulstones.

When you have collected sufficient Soulstones, you will be notified that one or more of your heroes can be upgraded. You can then select a hero and use the flashing Upgrade button. This will increment the level of your hero by one, increasing the Might of your hero (and consequently, your own Might).

## Benefits of Upgrading

The benefits of upgrading a hero include the following:

* increase your might;
* increase the might of the hero;
* increase the base stats (ATK, DEF, HP) of the hero;
* unlock Troop Skills;
* unlock Hero Skills;
* improve the primary Hero Skill.

### Increase Your Might

In many ways, the primary aim of the game is to increase your Might as a Lord. Therefore, this benefit is self-explanatory.

### Increase the Might of the Hero

The more might a Hero has, the higher ranking you can achieve in the Hero Championship, and the more likely you are to be rewarded there.

This also holds true for the Campaign battles. You will need to be building the might of your heroes to continue to win Campaign battles.

### Increase Base Stats of Hero

The Base Stats are:

* **ATK** - The effectiveness of the hero when attacking (eg. a monster). The higher the ATK stat of the hero, the more damage the hero inflicts during battle.
* **DEF** - The effectiveness of the hero's defences when being attacked (eg. by a monster). The higher the DEF stat of the hero, the less damage will be inflicted on the hero during battle.
* **HP** - How many health points can be lost by the hero when being attacked (eg. by a monster) before being defeated. The higher the HP stat of the hero, the more damage the hero can sustain, and the longer your hero will last in a battle.

These increase by a small amount for each level, usually about 10-20%.

### Unlock Troop Skills

Each hero begins with two Troop Skills, and a further two which have to be unlocked by upgrading to a higher level. The unlocking level is dependent on the star rating (or Rarity) of the hero.

### Unlock Hero Skills

Each hero begins with two Hero Skills, and a further two, three or four which have to be unlocked by upgrading to a higher level. The unlocking level is dependent on the star rating (or Rarity) of the hero.

### Improve Primary Hero Skill

The first (primary) Hero Skill on the list is subject to improvement when the appropriate level has been reached. This level is dependent on the star rating (or Rarity) of the hero, and usually comprises a percentage increase.

## Relationship between Upgrading and Evolving

Levels are capped during upgrading, and therefore upgrades must be interspersed with evolving. That is, you may only upgrade a hero to a certain level, after which this message will appear briefly on screen:

**"Maxed out! Evolve the hero to raise the level cap!"**

When you see this message, it means that you will need to evolve your hero before you will be permitted to upgrade it to any higher level.

There comes a point where you can neither upgrade nor evolve your hero. The hero is then listed as **Maxed**. This is dependent on the rarity (or star rating) of the hero. When the hero is **Maxed**, the "Upgrade" and "Evolve" buttons no longer appear on the Hero View for that hero.

\* To obtain a hero with rarity of 6 Star, you need to promote a 5 Star hero.

## Recycling Heroes

At any time, you may choose to "recycle" your hero. This costs 150 Diamonds, and is recommended for the situation where you have upgraded the wrong hero.

There is no need to be nervous about recycling a Hero. Initially, you will lose quite a bit of might which is naturally disconcerting. However, you get back all their fragments, and this allows you to unlock (or "obtain") the hero again. You also get back all the Soulstones and the other items you used. You can then use them to upgrade/evolve your hero afresh. (In fact, you get back slightly more Soulstones than you put in. However, this is not enough to cover your outlay in Diamonds that you used for the recycle.) So, there is no intrinsic loss of might in reality. The only cost you incur is the 150 Diamonds, which is considered a modest outlay indeed. (Game Update: Diamonds no longer spent/required.)

## Tips

In the long term, there is very little point in upgrading your Heroes to the point where they are completely maxed out. In the early game, you will undoubtedly need the strength of the maxed 2-stars to compete. However as you get more 3-star heroes, you can recycle the 2-star heroes with 150 Diamonds. Then, you can reuse the Soulstones for upgrading higher rated heroes.

The cost of maxing out a hero is considerable, for patently insufficient benefit. For a marginal increase in might, ATK, DEF and HP, you will be forking out a whopping sum of Soulstones which could be otherwise put to far better use. The cost is disproportionate to the benefits.

To give you an idea, the Soulstone cost of maxing out a 2-Star hero to Lv. 70 is **376610**, whereas the Soulstone cost of levelling up a 2-Star hero to Lv. 31 is only **49460** (a difference of **327150** Soulstones). For this enormous sum you get around 20K more might, and the basic stats (ATK, DEF and HP) rise by about 25-30% (depending on the hero). This is clearly not worth it!

This table shows the "ideal" final upgrade/evolution level for heroes:

 3 Star
 4 Star
 5 Star
 6 Star \*