Tips

## Tips to Effective Play

### Managing Resources

* You can have up to three of a particular type of resource bin, tripling the resource production from one bin.
* Make a variety of equipment types so as to effectively use all your resources. Use the suggestion feature when selling to customers to sell things that required resources you have in abundance.
* You can buy resources by investing in the town building that produces them.
* When a customer requests an item requiring a higher-end rare resources, and you have mastered the recipe in question, consider making something else for him.

### Managing Adventurers

* Keep your customers equipped with gear near their levels. It will break less often.
* Higher quality gear breaks far less often, but if the gear is not level-appropriate, the chance of breaking goes up.
* Pay attention to Affinity!
* Do not over-gear. Do not under-gear with high quality equipment. When an adventurer levels up, review his gear and replace any that is no longer appropriate, especially if it's high quality.
* When assigning an adventurer to a quest, it is more efficient to assign one that is not max level. Why give up that XP?
* Keeping your adventurers in level-appropriate equipment in all slots will give you a 25% power improvement, which is fabulous. You can buy equipment from other players if you can't craft a particular slot. Lower level equipment can be very inexpensive.
* Focus on getting Energetic and Support abilities as quickly as possible followed by speed runner as these will help with questing and preventing item breaks. If all your items on a team have 5% or less break chance and the team has 7 or more support, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than of an item breaking.

### Satisfying Customers

* You do not have to make what a customer asks for. The customer will also accept recommendations from things in your inventory.
* If a customer is not accepting anything from your inventory, go to your list of adventurers, find that particular customer, and see what sort of gear he takes. Then make something that is level-appropriate for him. Once it is completed, he'll accept it as a recommendation.
* If you don't like the first alternate suggestion, click and hold that suggestion to see other choices.
* Use racks to keep hearts high. Making alternate recommendations costs hearts, and you get one back for a sale. You can get more back if you discount. But if you sell something for which you have a rack, you get extra hearts. Upgrade the racks to get more hearts.
* Recommending items closer to the customer's level will cost fewer hearts.
* Selling flawless items at the limit of what you can see in the trade house will net your shopkeeper much experience. Items from chest blueprints and Excusive Packages tend to give higher sale experience than common rarity items of the same level and quality. (Heroes need to be high enough level to see the items.)

In the April 2019 Patch a change was made to what heroes will be willing to buy based on their level and item quality.

Excerpt from Shop Heroes Forum:

**Changes to Item Sales to Heroes**
The maximum quality of items a Hero will purchase is now dependent on that Hero’s Level. We have adjusted Good and Great Quality requirements to be Hero Level 1.

**Hero Level Quality**

* 1 Good
* 1 Great
* 9 Flawless
* 12 Epic
* 15 Legendary
* 18 Mythical

### The Town

* Join a town that is active but appropriate for your level. Do not join a top-rated town as a new player. First, you won't be able to effectively contribute, and no one wants to be a leech. But you also won't be able to buy resources when you need them (see managing resources), and your adventurers will level outside your ability to equip them. Similarly, a higher level player in a young town will have to carry everyone else, and no one wants to feel used.
* Be smart when upgrading buildings.
* Don't upgrade buildings that increase maximum adventurer level faster than you can equip them, unless you're trying to speedrun leveling up player shopkeeper level.
* Before doing an expensive upgrade of your shop equipment, make sure the Town Hall is active -- it will give you a discount.
* You can invest in the Town Hall to reduce the time on your in progress shop upgrades. Before investing heavily in the Town Hall, start an equipment upgrade, then invest in chunks so you don't waste a portion of the bonus.
* Investing in the resource buildings like the sawmill gives you a bonus of the type of material that building produces. Don't over-invest all at once or you'll waste some of the bonus when your resource inventory hits max capacity.
* If your crafters hit max level, try to level their building. Why waste the XP if you don't have to?

### Looking Ahead

* When opportunity presents itself, complete mastery in lower level recipes as you go. Future recipes often require Good/Great/Flawless quality subcomponents.
* Avoid crafting mastered items when you could satisfy the customer with an item you have not yet mastered. You can suggest other items to your customers, after all.

* Avoid getting your hopes up about community events (example: Relic Crafting/Trade Wars/or Q&A sessions) held by Cloudcade. They don't tend to be well thought out.
* Avoid investing heavily in Trade Wars.
* Avoid buying Packages in the store unless you have looked up all the details about those packages and the items in them and decided they are worth the cost. Details can usually be found in the Shop Heroes Spreadsheet or on this wiki once someone has published screenshots of the package blueprints on Shop Heroes Unofficial Discord. Shop heroes forum posts about new Packages tend to leave out many important details that could affect your decision to buy a package like whether a blueprint needs Raid only or PVP only materials to make and what it's precrafts are. Cloudcade also has been known to post the wrong details about packages once in a while so don't buy new packages until they have been vetted by high level players.
* Packages in the store tend to be way overpriced, especially the Starter Packages.
* Try to avoid buying Starter Packages that unlock slots; you don't need them. It is better to save up gold to unlock a slot than to use Gems or real world money.
* If you have a question, look through all the tabs of the Shop Heroes Spreadsheet first before asking in chat or on Discord. Most FAQs can be answered that way.
* After first purchase from Micro-Transaction store when playing the game from Steam, there is a 48 hour lockout from the trade house.

## See also

* Crafting Guide
* Quest Guide
* Affinity
* Item Break Chance
* Trade House
* Calculators
* Player Level