Leveling

**Leveling** or **Leveling up** increases the Attack, Defense, and Health of a Hero, also providing a chance to level up their Special Skills. Although leveling does make a hero more powerful, this has limits based on their rarity (number of stars); the lower-rarity ones can't be made much stronger than they start, while leveling is essential for the rarer and powerful heroes.

Player leveling up is a different matter entirely and is a result of winning in World battles or Quest stages.

## How to Level Up a Hero

At the bottom of the hero card are buttons for two different training actions: "**Level Up**" and "Ascend" (see Ascension for more on that, after the necessary number of levels is gained).

1. Choose a hero and click "Level Up". You will be presented with a new screen that zooms in on the XP bar and your hero roster, graying out those that can not be used (are in one of your battle Teams, or have Talents], or have been locked as favorites, see below).
2. Select a hero from the list to be used up in training, marking them with a light border. You'll see the experience that the selected hero gives added to the one you're leveling up. It will also show how much food is required for the training, and the % chance of the hero's special skill leveling up. Repeat this with further heroes you wish to use. (For most of Empires & Puzzles history, it was possible to level only with up to 10 heroes at once, which had significant consequences for the gameplay, until Version 50 removed the cap in August 2022.)
3. Click on the now green "Level Up" button. (You will get a warning if you are about to use up a "high-rarity", i. e. 3\* or more, or ascended hero.) After a skippable animation, the experience will be added, and the selected heroes removed from the roster ("eaten up" or "fed" in slang). The chance of upgrading the hero's special skill will be also applied – see Special Skills#Leveling Up Special Skills for detailed percentages.

## Best Practices

* If you intend to keep and level up a hero, the *very first* thing you should do is find the little white lock icon in the upper left hand corner, just above the hero card, and click it to the 'locked' position. This makes the hero a "favorite", meaning unavailable when selecting heroes to train with. Too many people have lost their brand new 5\* hero for this step to be overlooked.
* Leveling up a hero using a hero of the same name will give an astounding 25% chance to level up the original's special skill for each other hero of the same name chosen.
* Training heroes with other same-element heroes provides 20% more experience than off-element heroes, as well as double chance of the original's special skill upgrading.
* Leveling up a hero's special skill has a 5x greater chance if the hero is at max level.
* Because trainer heroes come "fully ascended and leveled", the amount of experience they provide is substantial. It is best to sacrifice them only when none of their experience is being wasted, ideally on the higher ascension tiers and levels, so as to save more food.
* Leveling by using 10 (or more) heroes at once vs. 1 hero at a time provides no difference in XP gained, but it *does* serve as the most efficient food expenditure per level, as well as improving the probability of leveling up the special skill.  Because of this efficiency, it is highly recommended to level using as many heroes at a time as possible.

## 5-at-a-Time vs 1

While on-element leveling is generally recommended for its 20 % bonus, sometimes it is beneficial to just push all of your material into one more powerful hero, despite the off-color loss in efficiency.  This is because there comes a point in progression where leveling more efficiently means leveling more slowly, as several of those heroes are likely lower tier than the others and thus much less powerful (as well as because you don't have enough heroes of the same element).  Since they won't have anywhere near the impact of the more powerful new heroes to your team, on occasion it may be best to forego efficiency in favor of having that new, more powerful hero ready to go.

Here are some questions to consider as you ponder the comparative values of efficiency vs a new, fully leveled hero:

1. Are you comfortable with your current roster depth?
2. Do you have at least 1 hero in 3 or more separate elements that are each a priority to level?
3. Will *this one hero* make it into the majority of your teams?
4. Will *this one hero* massively impact an important aspect of your gameplay (such as Wu Kong on titans)?

## Level Caps

Max Level as dependent on Ascension Tier
 2\* Uncommon
 3\* Rare
 4\* Epic
 5\* Legendary

The Heroes' rarity, i. e. number of stars (1\* to 5\*) determines both their maximum level and the number of times they may ascend, as well as the level at which it happens. Each Ascension increases the Hero's maximum level attainable by 10. All heroes begin at the 1st tier of ascension.

A full breakdown of experience required by hero tier and level was made at DEAD LINK thanks to some deep investigation by Muaadip. The primary fact is that experience required scales exponentially with each new level for both heroes and troops, as he showed in several graphs on the original forum post.

## Experience gained and Food cost

The first table on the right (credit to Mariamné for the graphic) shows how much experience each used-up hero brings to the leveled one, if only "fresh", unleveled "feeders" are used. It is worth noting here again that using heroes of the same element as the leveled one gives 20 % bonus.

Using up leveled heroes (after they are no longer of use, surpassed by newer and better ones) brings 5 % more XP (of the base rate) per each level they gained, which is still much less than went into their own leveling. For example, using a same-element 4\* hero at Level 5 gives 1296 XP = 1080\*[1+(5-1)\*5%]; off-element fully ascended 2\* hero gives 2081 (5 % of 390 is rounded down to 19, as all XP gains have to be integer; the number of additional levels is 19 + 30 + 40 = 89, as the ascension difference like from Lvl 20 to Asc 2 Lvl 1 counts like an extra level; 390 + 89\*19 = 2081).

Food cost (at Lvl 1)
 2\* Uncommon
 3\* Rare
 4\* Epic
 5\* Legendary

The Food cost is the same for each "feeder" used, dependent only on the leveled hero's rarity and current level: it grows by 2 % with each further level (linearly, not exponentially). For example, leveling a 4\* hero at level 15 (no matter the Ascension) will require 5000\*[1+(15-1)\*2%] = 6400 Food per each used-up feeder, whatever they be.

When fed to Costume versions of heroes, feeders give twice/thrice as much XP than the basic rate (i. e. 300 from off-element and 450 from same-element 1\* hero, etc.) though they don't have an extra ability to increase the costume's Special Skill. Feeding duplicates to the costume sides of heroes may provide an efficient way to mitigate the disparity.

## Further improvements

Hero Classes and Talents were released in January 2019 (Version 18) as a way to enhance heroes that had been fully levelled and that had their special skills maxed.

In June 2021 (Version 39), Limit Break and Aethers were introduced, allowing high-rarity Heroes (3\* and above) to reach further 5 levels beyond the standard limit in the table above.