Heroes

## Heroes Guide

   *Written by Mia and Bam, Edited by Kulov & Xyz*

Heroes are a particular type of unit. Unlike the standard units in the tower defense mode, players can’t easily get the heroes that they want because these units can only be acquired by randomly pulling them at the Tavern. To get new heroes, players need to spend tickets on either the Normal Recruitment or the Advanced Recruitment or with Free Pick Hero cards which are not so easy to get enough to max your hero to 5 stars. Advanced Recruitment contains a larger pool of heroes, with the strongest ones available here at a higher rarity compared to the heroes from the Normal Recruitment.

In a fight, players can assign a certain number of heroes according to the level of their upgrades. At first, players can use two heroes that belong to two separate troops. Like standard units, they will attack the enemies whenever they spawn, but they can’t be upgraded the same way. Heroes have a higher base attack compared to standard units, and they come with special abilities that players can activate in the middle of the stage. This helps when fighting against certain waves or bosses.

### Upgrading Heroes

Upgrading heroes isn’t the same as upgrading standard units, but the way to upgrade heroes is to sacrifice other heroes (N,S,R,SR,SSR cards) and feed them as experience . The maximum limit for your hero’s level depends on the current level of your castle. A hero can only be as strong as the castle level so make sure that you always try to upgrade your castle at all times to help your troops reach the highest level that they can attain. Leveling up is only one way to upgrade your hero. The other method is by promoting them to the next rank, unlocking a new star, and allowing them to learn additional abilities, which can either be passive bonuses or an additional activated ability. The hero’s base stats also increase when they become promoted, making them a lot stronger and allowing them to take down enemies a lot faster compared to being lower ranked.

#### Option 1: Rainbow

Include 1 of every element plus 1 extra of 1 element

Example: fire, fire, ice, poison, archer Advantages:

* You will be able to use countering against any element
* Use any skin, frame, or scenery
* Changing alliances may only minorly affect your power
* There is greater overall flexibility in countering and fighting to give you a significant advantage in most events and battles

#### Option 2 : 2 or 3 Elements

Heavy in just 2-3 elements

Examples: fire, fire, ice, ice, ice OR fire, fire, poison, ice, ice Advantages:

* You still can counter 2 or 3 elements
* Countering can be much stronger when defending your castles which also leads to more points for less heals
* With 2 elements you can use your dominant elements skin, frame, and scenery for an added boost to wear 24/7
* With 3 elements you can still use any skin, but can still choose to boost one of your dominant elements
* Ability to skip academy and war tech for elements you do not have

*Tip: change to elemental skins to wear 24/7 when you have 3 or more of the same element for a greater boost in power.*

#### Option 3: Full Element

You have 1 element

Example: ice,ice, ice, ice, ice
Advantages:

* This generally gives the best overall boost of power (not necessarily countering power unless it is the countered element)
* You can skip academy and war tech for elements you do not have resulting in being able to move faster with with resources saved
* You can wear the castle skin, frame, and scenery for the element 24/7 for a greater boost
* Nests of all one type will bring the greatest benefit to your account. If your alliance as a whole specializes in one element, it will theoretically increase your alliance's overall power.

### Choosing Which Hero to User

Choosing your heroes is very important. It is difficult to change heroes after several months in the game. When you feed a core card (the card with all the hero levels) into another hero, you only receive 50% of the levels which you fed. This leads to your potential power declining as opposed to regularly leveling it. You need to have the endgame in mind when choosing heroes.

SR Heroes - SR heroes are very good to use in your troops for the beginning of the game. You will be able to star them easily and receive a lot of power. However, once you have an SSR hero at 3 stars and 1 bar, it is then more powerful than a 5 star SR hero and will need to be traded out. Adding stars to your troops benefits both you and your alliance. A recommended leveling strategy for SSR cards is:

Focus on only 1 troop at a time to create power troops by starring and leveling as high as possible. This is highly beneficial for fighting, mithril, garrison, achieving higher frosty levels, etc.

#### How to Upgrade

Below you will find the steps which you can follow what kind of Heroes you need to upgrade first and develop your teams properly:
Explanation:

* Bench heroes - heroes you will not use in teams or unused/useless. They need to be upgraded only because of bond power buff.

1. Upgrade to 4 star each of your active troop leaders.
2. Upgrade to 3 star each of your active troop assistants.
3. Upgrade to 5 star your power troop.
4. Upgrade to 1 star your bench heroes to increase your hero bond quickly.
5. Upgrade to 2 star your bench heroes to increase your hero bond quickly.
6. Upgrade to 3 star your bench heroes to increase your hero bond quickly.
7. Upgrade to 5 star your active troop leaders.
8. Upgrade to 5 star your active troop assistants.
9. Upgrade 4 star your bench heroes.
10. Upgrade to 5 star your bench heroes.

#### Using Hero Rankings

The hero rankings that "The Embassy" community has worked on and made available, displays recommendations for players to consider when building heroes. Note that these recommendations are based on player experience and generally accepted standards of a hero's skill value for either PvP or PvE.

##### PvP Heroes

PvP Heroes are heroes that possess favorable skills for battling against other players. These skills are: Movement Speed, First Aid, Regeneration, and Guerilla Master. See Team Building Practices section. The PvP Heroes section of “The Embassy” guide is divided into leaders and assistants. Leaders may be used for assistants, but assistants should not be used as leaders unless there is no other viable choice.

The auction heroes (Tracy, Clarence, Tumnus, and Padme) are not recommended to be used in active troops. Their accessibility is currently limited to the Auction House and Daily Specials. Since their release in cross server bidding, they consistently cost more than one million gems per auction. If you only acquired one of these heroes in Daily Specials, it would take 500 consecutive days (assuming you already owned the hero) to obtain the 2000 cards to 5 star the hero. During these 500 days, you can instead get all 4 auction heroes to 3 stars each and still have 50 days of Daily Specials to play with. The bond power obtained from those extra 7 stars is significantly more impactful for the growth of an account.

##### AP Heroes

AP Heroes are heroes that have the Monster Counter skill, a skill that reduces the total AP consumption when attacking monsters. It also restores 90% of health when attacking monsters. AP reduction is important, as it maximizes the amount of resources a player can obtain for their available AP. It is a highly recommended practice within the community to build an AP hero into every march. They are generally considered assistants, swapped into lead positions only when farming.

##### Gold Heroes

Gold Hero Leads increase gold gathering speed and/or provide an increase to offline gold outputs. While these heroes should not necessarily be leveled and placed in your active troops, they can be considered early in the game to provide extra gold when the player is offline for long periods of time. With the introduction of crystals to the Broken Land gold mines, it is not uncommon for players to consider using these heroes to reduce a bit of time. Note, however, that the amount of time saved is not very large. Using a hero with 20% increase to gold gathering will shave off around 1 minute off a Level 4 mine. Unless you are very actively watching the mines, then you will likely not feel any benefit from using them.

##### Tower Defense Heroes

These heroes can help increase your ability to complete stages. Some of these heroes, such as Gro, can double up as assistants due to providing a troop % increase and being generally accessible to obtain. However, the tower defense portion of this game can be progressed through with ease with just traditional heroes, so it is not recommended to build this type of heroes just for clearing stages.

##### Best Practices

The only skill that a hero who is positioned as an assistant can use is troop bonus power. This is usually a skill called Guerilla Master, but can also be an elemental skill. An example of this is Gro's Blaze Expert. Therefore, it is favored for assistants to have these skills.
AP reduction provides an incredible quality of life improvement if built early on into one of your assistants. While you can always temporarily swap a troop with AP reduction into the lead position while farming, having a leveled troop with AP reduction in your lineup provides other immediate benefits.

Keeping your maximum power at all times implies being able to stay longer in mithril, better assist your teammates in frost behemoths, fight without warning, etc.

The favored skills for a PvP leader to have are movement speed, first aid, and regeneration. Guerilla Master is also desired, but mostly for lack of a better alternative. As of the writing of this guide, the power gained from the Guerilla Master, or other combat power buff skills, is remarkably low. Every 5% being between 100-300M even in very developed accounts. The one resource that is truly scarce is movement speed.

The importance of movement speed is paramount during war, and as such it is the strongest skill for a PvP lead. Generally , the higher spending players begin to notice that healing becomes less important. But for the average player, heal preservation plays a big part in the ability to fight effectively and constantly. That said, you can always get more healing scrolls, and you can always get more power. However, you cannot easily get more movement speed.

Finally, your spending habits should be taken into account when choosing heroes. Taking into account what we've learned Anko stands out as the best PvP lead for fire. She has 30% movement speed, double recovery skills, and 20% Guerilla Master to boot. Erika, on the other hand, has 25% movement speed, same recovery %, and 25% Guerilla. As we stated, the 5% power is not going to give you much power, so surely the movement speed is much better. Right?

While this is objectively true, Erika is a lot more accessible than Anko. Erika appears in Advanced Recruitment and in most, if not all events. She is also available in the "normal" rolls of Holiday Events, which give out twice as many hero cards as "crazy" rolls. For this reason, Erika is organically much easier to 5 star than Anko. In the end, a medium to high spender is much better off investing in Anko; while a F2P player should favor Erika.

There are plenty of heroes that share these small nuances, so understanding the reasoning behind what makes a hero good and their general accessibility will help your account growth remain stable and healthy.

### Hero Bond

Hero Bonding is one of most important and valuable thing in a long-term gameplay and strategy. To active Hero Bond you will need to have 3 heroes in 1 team and they must be from the same affinity (Archer, Fire, Ice or Goblin) Your hero bond level and boost will be increased when you upgrade the stars of any SSR hero no matter if they are on a team or not.

Bond Level Percentages:

1-120 - 5%

121-150 - 7%

151-180 - 10%

181-210 - 15%

211-240 - 20%

241 - 300 - 40%

301 - above - 80%

### Hero List & Ranking

#### Hero Tier List

Please see KG Embassy Discord for the latest information