Beginner Guide

This is a starting point for newer players.

# Basic Principles

* Sign in every day
* Complete all Daily Missions
* Collect all free Energy
* Make full use of Energy to obtain materials, unit tokens and experience.
* In the beginning, focus on developing one main team that synergizes(1 hero + 8 units)
* Spend your resources(Diamonds, Runestones, Talent Potions, Star Marks, etc.) wisely

# Elements of Combat Power

In the current version, combat power is mainly determined by the following elements:

* Heroes
* Units
* Roster (Unlocks at level 24)
* Artifacts (Unlocks at level 26)
* Magic Guild (Unlocks at level 28)
* War Machines (Unlocks at level 80)

# Account Level

Account level is increased by gathering Experience and is very crucial in the early and middle stages. Levels unlock additional game features, story chapters, heroes and units.

* Main ways to acquire player experience: Daily Mission, Energy consumption

Tip: As you progress in the game you will unlock the Steward function which can help you complete daily tasks more efficiently.

Tip: Level up "daily mission" on privilege first to get more exp in daily mission.

# New Server

If you're on a new server, you have access to certain events that are only available on that server.
* Angel SSR Altar, where you can spend diamonds to pull angel shards.

* An event where you're rewarded based on your leaderboard position, in terms of power. The higher, the more you get. (Top 3 get the SSR unit Giant).

* As you raise your account level, you gain one-time rewards

* A Daily Discount event is available, where you can buy more things, some items are locked behind VIP level.

The quickest way to raise your power when on a new server is to spend diamonds to divine at the Astrologer. This is often recommended until you reach the point where you have the Dragon Father artifact or at least around 500k artifact power.

# Energy

Energy is necessary to carry out battles both in the Main Story as well as Underground. Not only will you gain account experience this way, but this is one of the main sources of obtaining Unit Equipment Materials and specific Unit tokens. Energy can be mainly obtained by:

## Energy Regeneration

Every 6 minutes you regenerate 1. That's 10/hour, or 240/day.

## Events - More Energy

You can claim it 3 times a day in specific server time intervals, free of charge (privilege bonuses added in brackets). If you miss the interval you can later still acquire it by spending 20.

* 11:30 to 15:30: 120 (+30)
* 17:30 to TBA: 60 (+15)
* 20:30 to TBA: 60 (+15)

That's a total of up to 300 Energy acquired this way.

## Daily Purchase

You can exchange diamonds for energy. The number of purchases per day is limited based on your VIP level, and costs 50 to begin with, the cost scaling higher as you buy more.

Making at least two energy purchases every day is recommended, giving you 240 for 100 Diamonds total.

## Friends

Each day you can donate and claim 2/friend, up to a total of 60. Make sure you have an active friends list and daily donate energy to your friends.

# Diamonds

## Where to obtain

While large quantities of  can of course be obtained by purchasing them in the store, as Free to Play you can also get quite a few of them.

### Daily Missions

* 50 activity chest: 20
* 100 activity chest: 30
* 200 activity chest: 50

### Underground Castles

Join an active guild and occupy together underground castles. As long as you are stationary in a castle, you will gain 6/hour. The Dragon Utopia (only open on Saturday and Sunday) in the center of the map grants double that amount (12/hour). On Saturday and Sunday, these amounts are also doubled.

### Story

Completing most story chapters will award you with diamonds. There are also side quests that can reward you with diamonds.

### Underground Chapters

Chapter chests will always contain diamonds among other rewards.

### Leaderboards

By being in the top in various leaderboards you can also obtain diamonds along with other great rewards.

The reward is granted based on your rank when the leaderboard refreshes.

* Daily Leaderboards: Arena (up to 500)
* Weekly Leaderboards: Dwarven Treasury (up to 350), Crypt (up to 350) Duel of Champions (up to 300) and Steadwick Defense (Up to 500)

### Lucky spell

Each day, every server is randomly assigned a random 4-spell combination based on the elements of the spells (Fire, Water, Earth, and Air). Once you cast spells of those 4 elements one after another in any combat you will receive a "lucky spell" reward containing 50 diamonds.

For example, one such lucky combination could be "Fire - Water - Water - Water" (the spells matching the elements must be cast in this particular order).

There are a total of 256 possible spell combinations. You can check the global chat as people sometimes share the correct spell combination.

The best place where you can put this to practice is in the Lord Practice Ground - Challenge Practice as you can setup your opponent and choose the appropriate hero for this task.
Tip from JustFX EU-18:
The game follows a set pattern, you only need to pay attention on few days and figure your server pattern.

The pattern is like this on JustFX's sever:

1st day : Earth X X X

2nd day : Fire   X X X

3rd day : Water X X X

4th day : Air X X X

5th day : Repeat

### Special Offer chests

* Elf's Mysterious Gift
* Daily Special Offer Pack A

## Diamond Spending Tips

There are a lot of things you can spend your hard earned diamonds on, but not all of them are worth it. Here are some recommended diamond usages:

* Buy Energy 2-4 times daily
* For VIP 3 and above, buy 3 extra Duel of Champions challenges
* To increase your power in the early and mid game, Artifacts are a good investment
* Buy Limited-Time Altar SSR units if they are important for your team.
* Spending diamonds on Gold Keys is **not** usually recommended.

# Heroes

There are many Heroes in the game, many of which you can obtain for free.
You can check the specific hero pages for details on where to obtain the heroes. Once you obtain 30 tokens of a hero you can recruit that specific hero. After that you can also use additional hero tokens or  Universal Hero Tokens to increase the rank of your heroes. Universal Hero Tokens are highly valuable and should generally be reserved for heroes you can't obtain tokens for any other way.

## Where to obtain

Here are the main channels of obtaining specific hero tokens:

* Complete Main Story chapters - Once you complete a hero's story, you will recruit the hero of that story.

* Underground chapter chest - Once you complete all levels in a chapter with 3\* you will obtain a one-time only chest that contains specific hero tokens among other rewards.

* Sign in every day - Each month there is a featured hero for which you can obtain hero tokens. Login 10 days to recruit the hero immediately. Use subsequent tokens to star them up.

* Redeem tokens in the various stores - You can find specific heroes in Sign-in Store, Guild Store and Champion Store.

* Buy with  - You may find specific heroes in the store purchasable with either real money or diamonds.
* Join events - Some events grant some of the heroes even for Free to Play members. This depends on the event of course.

## Tips

* All heroes have a global ability (generally at either 2\* or 3\*) that is active even if the hero is not in combat. Therefore it is worth ranking up some heroes even if you don't plan to use them with your main team.

* Every day you can freely refresh the masteries of one hero. Don't forget to take advantage of this.

* Preferably use the Ancient Temple Scrolls only when you've locked masteries (recommend after locked 2 masteries) in place, to avoid paying the higher price that comes with it.
* Global Masteries are useful for heroes you don't intend to use them in combat, as all your heroes will benefit from them.

# Units

Units are essential to carrying out battles in both PvP and PvE.

## Where to obtain

### Altar

Daily missions, main story levels, guild system, etc. can all output  and . Use the Keys at the appropriate Altars to obtain units especially early in the game.

### Limited Time Recruitment Altar

Based on the astrological theme each week, specific unit Limited-time Altar will appear occasionally. You can draw SSR Unit tokens with diamonds. 80 tokens are needed to unlock a SSR Unit. This is one of the main ways to obtain SSR units. Since Diamonds are limited, you may want to focus on certain units and collect tokens accordingly. Check synergy with your hero of choice and plan in advance before investing in an SSR unit this way.

If you don't have enough Diamonds to draw 80 tokens within the time limit it's best to continue saving diamonds instead. But if you have already started the draw and failed to collect 80 unit tokens, you can always wait for the return of the altars. Currently there is no official schedule for the altar so it's primarily a game of patience you need to play.

### Underground Levels

You may choose to sweep specific Underground levels to obtain valuable SR units. This is an important strategy to not only obtaining some of these units but also increasing their ranking.

### Events

Special events can also allow you to trade specific event currency for unit tokens. It is a matter of priorities and options that vary for each event.

### Barracks

Once you have recruited a unit, for most you can unlock the specific building for that unit in the Barracks. This is a very important feature to focus on ranking up specific units, by exchanging ores you can obtain in the Shipyard.

### Stores

Some of the best Free to Play units can be obtained or ranked via the Arena Store and Campaign Store. It's usually a bad idea to invest  in the Mystical Store though tokens purchased with  can be a good deal.

### Archery Master

Play the game at the Archery Master to obtain R and SR unit tokens. Here is the recommended approach to maximize usage of arrows:

* Save sufficient arrows (~50-60) to be able to kill the boss
* Trigger the boss first and kill him (try to lose as few arrows as possible, after a few runs you should get the hang of it)
* Wait for a dragon to appear and fire at him until the bar at the bottom fills to trigger the bonus
* Activate the bonus and kill everything on site until it runs out.
* Stop firing when the bonus ends.
* Collect the chests to obtain unit tokens.

### Guild Map

On the Guild Map there are two ways to obtain unit tokens:

* Approach "Smart" Monsters and they will join you for free (avoid monsters that require diamonds to recruit, they are not a good deal). You can randomly obtain some very valuable unit tokens this way (including the elusive Genie).
* Tip: You can check the type of mosters by clickng on it. You don't need to move to check.
* Occupy specific unit buildings, wait a short while then collect the tokens.

### Guild Commander

Talk to the Guild Commander then venture in enemy land and find the Quartermaster. Talk to him then ask him to "Clear Monsters". Return the next day to the Commander and collect your reward. You can randomly obtain some very valuable unit tokens this way (including the elusive Genie).

## Improving Units

Once you obtain a unit, there are eventually many ways of increasing that unit's power significantly.

### Unit Level

Using  you can increase the level of your units. This is limited to the Player Level so it's important you continue to level-up your units as you yourself as a player level up. Unit Level is the first stepping stone to improving your units.

### Unit Equipment

The next improvement is the Unit Equipment. Each unit has a total of 4 equipments you can individually (but should generally in parallel) improve. There are two dimensions to each equipment piece:

* Level - you can improve the level of the equipment by spending . This is capped to the level of the unit itself.
* Tier - you can improve the tier of an equipment by spending specific materials. Starting with Blue (???) you can only further upgrade equipment that has a specific minimum level (this slightly varies from unit to unit and equipment to equipment).

### Unit Tier

Once you have upgraded all equipments to a specific tier, you can also upgrade the unit tier by spending a fixed amount of .

### Unit Rank

Every unit has a unit rank (number of stars). R units always start with 1 star, SR units with 2 or 3 stars, and SSR units with 3 stars. To further unlock stars you need to invest tokens for that specific unit and activate Rank Up. Each star requires a total of 10 activations, and each activation requires a number of tokens depending on the next rank of the unit. Every unit can be ranked up to 6 stars.

### Unit Potential

After the units become 6-star, you can unlock potential, consume tokens and gold to enhance additional attributes.

### Unit Awakening

After you complete the Awakening Missions, the units awakened will gain additional awakening skills. Some of the awakening units’ soul stones can be obtained through token redemption at various stores. Free players should use their resources strategically and focus on developing awakening units that match their own lineups.

### Skills

Every unit has a total of 4 unit skills and 1 fraction skill. All units can immediately unlock their "Ultimate" skill regardless of their tier. Upgrading them to Blue, Purple and Orange respectively allows unlocking their subsequent skills by paying gold. Fraction skill will be unlock at Red.

Furthermore, every skill can be leveled up by spending Crystals  up to a maximum level. The maximum level depends on the rank of the unit (starts from 6 and can go up to level 15) so you want to check the skills after ranking up a unit.

### Talent

Every unit has a specific Talent depending on its class. You can raise talent by spending Enhancing Potions specific to that unit's class. Not only will this level up that unit's talent, improving its effectiveness, but this will also improve up to four stats varying from unit to unit.

It is always recommended you improve talent only in multiples of 10 (Develop \*10), at the cost of 50 potions, for optimal results.

# Rosters

As your player level grows you will also eventually unlock all unit Rosters. This is a very powerful means of increasing your units' power.
Here is how rosters work:

* Each unit has a class and a Faction. These indicate the rosters to which the unit can be assigned to and benefit from.
* Each roster has a number of spots. It starts at 3 and can be further increased by spending diamonds. It is highly recommended to start with class rosters.
* Each unit has a roster score that is determined based on a complex formula that takes into consideration, among other, that unit's level, ranking, equipment and talent power.
* You can assign each unit to exactly one roster. This will increase that roster's score, that in turn increases the bonus provided by that roster.
* All units you own that have a roster's class or Faction benefit from that particular roster, (regardless whether they are actually assigned to the roster or not).

It is recommended you boost only the rosters from which your team benefits. Prioritize higher score units to rosters that benefit most of the units in your main team.
Finally note that rosters also have tiers that can be improved using Roster runes. Each subsequent tier improves the overall bonus of that roster by a fixed percentage. Participate in Realms on the Guild Map to obtain runes. They also drop from the Silver Altar and can be purchased from Guild Store and Plane store.

# Artifacts

Artifacts are an incredibly powerful feature that can greatly improve the power of your army while also granting special abilities or spells to your heroes.
There area number of major artifacts with special abilities that provide significant power increase. They are further composed of grouped minor artifacts, each providing smaller improvements to your units. As you unlock and level-up the minor artifacts, you will unlock and have the ability to also level-up the major artifacts.

## How to Develop

Artifacts require three specific currencies to develop:

* Heaven-Cast Stone  - this is the primary currency required to upgrade all artifacts.
* Specific Artifact Tokens - required to unlock and then further level up minor artifacts. As you continue to improve your artifacts you will notice that the number of required copies for each level increases.
* Casting Crystal  - required to level up major artifacts starting with a specific level. As you continue to improve your the major artifacts you will notice that the number of crystals required increases.

Notice that to increase the level of a major artifact, all minor artifacts in that group must be greater than or equal to that level.

Furthermore you can also star-up minor artifacts, after a certain level. This improves the stats provided by the specific artifact by using Star Sigils .

## How to Obtain

 are obtained from the Campaign, and can also be purchased for  or various stores (including the Campaign Store).
s can only be purchased from the Mystical Store for 300 each. Rarely they may also be obtained as rewards from specific events.
Artifact Tokens can be obtained in the following ways:

* As Campaign rewards, either by opening chests or digging the treasure.
* From the Artifact Store, by spending Artifact Essences  (another currency that is either obtained from Astrologer pulls, Duel of Champions rewards or other various stores or events)
* By pulling at the Astrologer either with  or Astro Silver . Notice that 5x pulls always grant you a Purple artifact, and every 20 pulls you will be guaranteed an Orange artifact.

## Tips

* It is recommended to save your  and invest it only in the very rare but extremely powerful 6 pieces of the Power of the Dragon Father. There will come a point in the game where this artifact will make a huge difference in PvP between those who own it and those who don't. Start saving  early.
* While lower tier artifacts are less powerful they are also much cheaper to upgrade. Do not neglect them as the power bonus adds up.
* In the campaign when you encounter the Angel Sword, you will be given a choice between the Angel and Demon. Choosing the Demon may end up having you to fight a powerful army but in this case the reward is doubled.
* Play the Dragon Invasion event to obtain . Never buy them from the store as they are not a very good deal.

# Magic Guild

You can increase the power of your spells as well as weaken your enemy's by upgrading the Magic Guild trees.
These are static bonuses that automatically apply to all battles.
As you level up you will unlock more trees.

## Improving trees

To improve a magic guild tree you need Magic Crystals. This special currency is very rare and can't be bought in the regular Shops. The only way to obtain it is either by completing Underground chapters (crystals are available on the map in-between levels and in the chapter Chests), by completing a Trial of Angels chapter or sometimes obtain as a Story Mode reward.

## Tips

* All trees improve your spell damage, and you will get a significant bonus from fully completing a tree, so it is better to focus on one at a time.
* Choose the tree to focus on depending on your main Hero. As the first four are centered on the four Magic Elements, you may want to focus on the primary element of your Hero Spells (especially the ultimate). For example, if your main hero is Catherine your focus should be the Water Tree, while for Rashka it would be the Fire Tree.
* For a significant cost you can either reset one tree (150 Diamonds) or all trees (300 Diamonds). In spite of this, if you are switching your main Hero you may also consider switching Magic Guild trees.

# Formations

Formations are the essence of combat in Era of Chaos. A formation refers to your team composition, namely the Hero and the Units (up to 8) along with their placement on the battlefield.

## Number of Formations Needed

* Early game you will start focusing on one main team, with niche teams being used in Crypt and Dwarven Treasury.
* As you unlock Trial of Angels you will gradually need two teams (of eventually 8 units each) to progress through the chapters. This means that you will no longer be able to rely on one power team to carry you through the entire game.
* Finally, Battle of the Gods is a PvP event that requires player to assemble three teams of 6 units. That's quite a stringent requirement, but keep in mind that your opponents also have to adhere to it.

## Tips

* Always choose your Hero first when creating your team composition. Heroes have powerful abilities that enable when they are on the battlefield. Most often these abilities work either with a hero's unit specialty (Efreet for Rashka, Marksmen and Wood Elf for Gelu etc.) so you want to make sure you include those units in your formation to benefit from the bonus.
* Unit classes are very important to master, as each have advantages and disadvantages. Ranged units deal the most damage if they are the furthest from their targets. Charge units can make short work of enemy backline units if they have a clear path. Caster units unleash their abilities from the back row and support your army, but are generally more vulnerable to melee units. Early on it is common to have 4 Defender units in the frontline to protect your backline. As you progress in the game and familiarize yourself with formations you will start to diverge from this approach. Learn all these classes and how to better place these units on the battlefield for optimal offense and defense.
* Rosters significantly improve the power of your army, but improving their power is also limited to the number and power of your units. A good strategy to improve your army is to focus on fewer rosters. The easiest way to achieve this is to limit the number of Factions that compose your army. Most effective cheap armies are composed of Inferno, Stronghold and/or Castle units. If you are using multiple armies you may want to unlock multiple Roster formations and switch between them, for optimal results.
* Don't forget about the synergy between units and their abilities. For example, Monk grants High Morale to all units in the same line with it, while multiple Castle units get improved stats and triggered abilities when in High Morale. Similarly, Efreet grants a Flaming Shield to all your Inferno units at the beginning of the combat, so you may want to have a couple of those in your formation to take advantage of this skill.

How to check the coupling effect of the current lineup:

# Buying

Should you want to spend money on the game, there's some purchases that are higher value than others. As it is now, the things you can only gain through buying (Outside of special events that aren't predictable) are heroes and SR+ units. So if you want to spend money on the game, it's advised you save up till you can buy a good hero to make your main formation around. Other than buying these 2, the highest value purchases are the growth fund, and sales during special events.