Hero Skills Selection Guide

One of the most tricky tasks in Merge Quest is Hero Skill selection.

First of all, we need to understand that we have 3 groups of heroes, and skill selection for each group is different. Those groups are:

1. **Your Main Hero** that you use in Stage battle.
2. **Your Dungeon heroes** - those that you deploy in Dungeon Raids
3. **All other** heroes.

Always level up your Main Hero as much as you can for the amount of coins you have.

All other heroes you level up only as long as they learn skills. When they don't receive skills for level up any more, stop and wait until this Hero will be Evolved. Then level up further, until either you are out of coins or Hero hit the limit of Skills again.

We are still researching Skill Limits, but few things are already discovered:

* Sum of learned Class Skills is limited to:
	1. For Legendary heroes: [Evolution Level] • 6
	2. For Epic and Lone heroes: [Evolution Level] • 5
	3. For Rare (Famous and Leader) heroes: [Evolution Level] • 4
	4. For Common heroes: [Evolution Level] • 3

* Sum of all skill levels learned can not exceed 5 times of Class Skills limit above.
* Limit of total skill levels for each Class Pool is tied to the corresponding Class Skill level. E.g. after you learn  Merchant Skill, you will be offered to learn more skills from Merchant Pool:  Billionaire,  Millionaire and  Golden Hand.
* Skills obtained via **Blacksmith Events** and **Powerful Boss Encounters** are not included into Hero skill limit counts. If you try to relearn them, they will be converted to regular ones - that's why it's not recommended to do so.

> Below is explanation for best skill selection in each Hero group.
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## **MAIN HERO**

From all your heroes, chose the one with strongest Attack and Defense skills and deploy into the battle.

On the earlier stages it probably will be Newbie, but you need to check time to time if any other hero become stronger than him.

It is proven that it will be Berserker or Shapeshifter - depending on which one you will get first.

On the long run, finally, Berserker will be better: he has very powerful Attack (  Battle Axe) and Critical Damage (  Thump) skills as well as  Warrior and  Hunter Classes that are strongest two in Attack and Defense growth. Also, when we go with Berserker, we 1) don't have to raise all Halo skills for all other heroes - only Warrior and Hunter ones, and 2) Free the Shapeshifter to grow her  Merchant,  Alchemist and  Farmer skills that help with coin and resource collection for all heroes evolution.

On the other hand, if you decide to go with Shapeshifter (which has all Classes in hand) and make Halo skills top priority for all other heroes, it may take long time for Berserker to become stronger than this one. But according to people I've talk to, somewhere around Stage 5k - 7k Berserker usually takes over, so it is better to make him your Main Hero as soon as you get him.

There can be another case: if you collect or buy too much Gems and spend them on opening Normal Chests in the **Shop**, you may get all 10 Common Heroes way before you obtain all 34 others, and a lot of Common Hero Shards remaining, and one of your Common Heroes will happen to be a strongest one.

These screenshots show a Main Common Hero with 101eq Attack when Shapeshifter at the same time has only 4en and Berserker - 231em. And 187 Common Shards remaining...

Eventually, Berserker will take over, but before that, check your heroes' stats time to time - you never know which one will get more luck in Evolution and Skill learning.

Another tip: we cannot send our Main Hero to Dungeons, but we can use that Hero in Powerful Boss Event and give him/her additional skills from it.

## **Hero Skill Selection Priorities**

### **Main Hero**

1. Attack and Defense. Please refer to Attack and Defense Skills Breakdown on Hero Skills page for details.
2. Sidekick Active Skills
3. Passive Merchant, Alchemy and Farmer skills (Shapeshifter)
4. Passive Blacksmith and Wizard skills (Shapeshifter)
5. All Class (Job) skills - chose them only if you have no other choice: as soon as the Hero get to the Class Skill Limit, no more skills can be learned.
6. All other skills are useless.

### **Dungeon Heroes**

Dungeon Heroes usually are:

1. Legendary (  Archangel,  Nian Cub,  Valkyrie) and Epic (  Dark Elf) heroes that work well in all Dungeon Raids:
	* Ancient Ruins
	* Dark Cave
	* Dune
	* Lava Rift
	* Lost City
	* Thief Pier
2. All Farmer heroes (  Shapeshifter,  Princess,  Armor Blacksmith,  Bartender,  Farmer,  Elder,  Weapon Blacksmith) that you deploy to Collection Raids:
	* Forest
	* Gem Mine
	* Mine

For those, the priority sequence will be different:

1. Passive Sidekick Attack and Halo Skills: Warrior and Hunter Halo if Main is Berserker, all Halo skills if Main is Shapeshifter. Please refer to Attack and Defense Skills Breakdown on Hero Skills page for Halo Skills details.
2. All Dungeon Skills. Most of Dungeon skills belong to Adventurer () and Bandit () Classes.
3. Passive Merchant, Alchemy and Farmer skills
4. Passive Blacksmith and Wizard skills
5. All Class (Job) skills - chose them only if you have no other choice: as soon as the Hero get to the Class Skill Limit, no more skills can be learned.
6. Attack and Defense skills for Dungeon heroes are useless.

### **Other Heroes**

For all other Heroes, upgrade priorities are the same as for Dungeon Heroes, except Active Dungeon Skills are useless for them as well.

## **Passive Skills**

*by DZK312, leader of Server-2 Guild #1 Galactic, Discord: https://discord.gg/7h2ZUHnKqZ*

### **Passive Skills to Choose**

There are two types of passive skills that are more important than all the rest: Passive Attack/Defense buffs and Passive Income buffs.

* Heroes that have Passive Attack/Defense buffs are:
	1. All heroes of same Class(es) as your Main Hero. E.g. if your main is Berserker, all Warrior and all Hunter heroes with their Halo skills.
	2. Heroes with personal Halo Skills:

* ***Merchant*** class heroes have Passive skills that boost your income, these are very important (not every merchant has access to every merchant skill):

> Since SUM of learned Class Skills is limited, for all Merchant heroes that have another Class Skill(s) you should to avoid, whenever possible, to choose other Class Skill to free the space for Merchant Skill and it's Skill Pool members.
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* ***Alchemist*** passives are also very useful, and only learned by Alchemist class heroes:

* ***Farmer*** passive skills increase Dungeon outcome (Diligence is an Active skill):

**Other useful Passive skills by Hero Class:**

* ***Ranger*** Heroes - Sidekick Halo Skills:  **King of Beasts** (all Ranger Heroes),  **Lord of Split Realm** (Battle Mage),  **Holy Light** (Paladin)
* ***Bandit*** Heroes -  **Unlock**
* ***Blacksmith*** Heroes:

* ***Wizard*** Heroes:

### **Passive Skills to Avoid**

**Maxed Alchemy skills**

If you see that every Alchemy fuse in addition to higher level item you are getting:

* a Material of same level - stop selecting  Material Return skill
* a Key of same level - stop selecting  Create Key skill
* a Material and a Key of same level - stop selecting  Alchemy Experiment skill
* an Emblem - stop selecting  Create Emblem skill

	+ Hunter Heroes -  **Summon Sidekick**
	+ Farmer Hero -  **Good Partner**
* Discover Scroll Chance booster: Wizard Heroes -  **Discover Scroll**

> Choosing these skills makes it more likely to get those from your missions, effectively making Dungeons and Blacksmith events (which are far more important) less likely to occur, thus not helpful.
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* Class damage buff skills (Halo Skills) for classes that aren't in your Main Hero skillset. They literally do nothing.