IF YOU JUST STARTED

#1 this is not an exhaustive manual, there are a million subtle things you can do in this game and it’s impossible to cover them all. You probably will have some questions about the things which are covered. Try asking your clan mates for help.

#2 check your artifacts. If you have bought either Mimic or Key of Deamons reset them. The later you do it the more you’ll regret it.

#3 read the Altar page in the wiki. If you don’t have all the secret/hidden heroes follow the instructions. Make sure you have Nushkilan! If you have either Sicri or Kalethah instead sacrifice them until you get Nushkilan. It doesn’t matter how much you invested in them, the later you do it the more you’ll regret it.

#4 don’t sacrifice anyone that isn’t necessary to get one of the previously mentioned secret/hidden heroes until you get to the Altar at level 1500. In fact spend as few emeralds as possible (quests excepted of course) until you get to level 1500. The shard packs you get from the altar/store improve dramatically after level 1500.

#5 don’t waste bottles on anything unless you must. Acceptable ways to spend bottles are: completing quests, obviously; buying extra Daily Bosses (one or two extra per day); buying extra Daily Quests (two or three per day, you’re less likely to make back the cost after that); in some events, discussed in more detail below; opening arena chests if you’re at a high enough level (some Big chests give out bottles but the number of bottles depends on the highest level you’ve reached, not profitable until you’re past at least level 4000).

#6 always keep 125 emeralds and 150 bottles in reserve for completing certain quests (one of the quests requires you kill two Daily Bosses, hence the 150 bottles to be safe).

#7 before doing anything that may reward you with a rarity upgrade - like killing Daily Bosses, opening Mythic chests or Big arena chests - make sure you only have three heroes hired, that way you can choose exactly who you want to upgrade. The process is this: first Dark Ritual; then hire no more than three people (including the one you want to upgrade); then kill the Daily Boss or open the Mythic or Big arena chests; then choose who you want to upgrade; and finally hire the rest of the heroes. Your “personal hero” as well as any hero that is already Galactic X don’t count for this “three hero rule”.

#8 pick Zeliek or Nushkilan and upgrade him until he’s at Galactic X rarity. This is the fastest way to get above level 2500. It doesn’t really matter who you chose provided don’t deviate from upgrading him until you have maxed him. Hero upgrading order is discussed in detail further down.

#9 sieges are discussed in detail further down but keep this in mind: you should drop by the clan chat during Big Boss hour. If you are the first to track a Big Boss (shows on your list as 1/10000) always press the “Call to Arms” red flag icon on the upper corner so an alert shows up in the clan chat. This way we can all score from the bosses each other tracks. Unless it’s the beginning of the week and you’re fine tuning the changes to your team there is no reason to watch the siege battles, it’s a waste of time. You should immediately close the siege battle window with the red cross on the upper right corner so you can attack again as soon as possible.

#10 when crafting always use catalysts, never craft anything under 99%. NEVER! Always do the math of how many ingredients it would take before you start any crafting. Equipment barely makes a difference for level progression and doesn’t make that much of a difference in league/sieges so don’t worry too much about it. The effect of rarity upgrades is orders of magnitude more noticeable. By the time equipment will make a difference you will have most of it just from normal drops or otherwise you will know if you should craft whatever you’re missing. As for crafting shards it might be worth it for certain heroes like Elga, Kerth, Space Trooper, if it’s no more than, say, a couple dozen shards.

#11 regarding the Clan Mine that’s an issue better suited for discussion on Discord.

HERO UPGRADING ORDER

Start with Zeliek or Nushkilan and upgrade both to Gal X, the order doesn’t matter but once you start on one you should not deviate for any reason. Those two heroes are very useful for farming horns at a low level. By the time you’re done upgrading them you should have either Kerth or some 4Ms to work on.

I’ll divide the rest of the heroes in two sections: 4Ms and Kerth+.

As you gain 4Ms the most efficient way to upgrade them and enjoy the most benefits, faster, is to upgrade the 4M that will be elite the next week. If you do not have next week’s 4M upgrade the lowest upgraded 4M you have during that week.

You should not deviate from upgrading 4Ms unless you get the first hero (marked in red) in a new map progress class, of which there are 5 of interest for now: Kerth, Space, Star, Soul, and Necro. When you get Kerth or the first hero in any of the other classes you should pause your upgrade of the 4Ms and focus on the new hero until he is Galactic X. If you are an active player it will take something like 4 months to Gal X all the 4Ms, in the meanwhile you can profit from the loot, souls, and emeralds that a new jump on the map will provide. Take note that you can convert the shards within each class at a ratio of 1 to 1, for example Space Trooper into Space Scout.

In short if you get any of the following heroes in bold below, you should focus all rarities on him until he’s Gal X, then return to normal 4M upgrade routine. I ordered each class by the order you should get them. Consult the wiki recipes page. Conversions within each class are at a ratio of 1 to 1, between classes it’s a ratio of 5 to 2 and it costs holos. Do not make conversions that cost holos unless it’s Soul Eater to Necro Trooper. Soul shards are the highest you get at the altar so you should save all holos for Soul to Necro conversion when the time comes.

Kerth

Space Scout, Space Warrior, Space Trooper (can convert at any time)

Star Ranger, Star Hunter, Star Wanderer (can convert at any time)

Soul Mauler, Soul Eater, Soul Reaper (wait to have the full set before converting)

Necro Mage, Necro Trooper, Necro Warrior (wait to have the full set before converting)

EVENTS (BASICS)

There are two types of weekly events: “Science and Influence” and “Levels and Bosses”. During S&I event weeks you score by winning arena fights and investing in science. The optimal way to maximize your score in these weeks is to always chose the biggest science option you can buy with gold. Never use bottles, only use souls if you’re trying to get the Event reward hero (more on that later).

During L&B event weeks you score by progressing in levels and killing special event bosses. You should never spend bottles on the bigger bosses unless you’re trying to get the Event reward hero (more on that later), in which case always chose the biggest boss and kill him by dropping five bombs on him as soon as he shows up.

EVENTS (ADVANCED)

Events reward the top #200 players with a special hero. There are three of them you can/should get, by order of usefulness: Lgneath; Brabog; Queen of Pain. Technically there are a few other on special occasions like Christmas and Halloween but I’m not gonna address them here, these three are the ones in normal rotation and you should try to get them when it becomes affordable to do so. The question of if you can afford them is trickier. You should never spend bottles or souls in an event unless you’re sure you can afford to be on the top #200 by the end of the event. That means just play normally during the week, then by Saturday ask someone what the score is at that moment around #200 and do the math to see if you can afford the bottles it would take to make up the difference. The score you get from Science/Event bosses depends on what heroes you have and what level you are at so how much it would cost you can vary a lot. I’d say that 500/600 bottles is a reasonable price to pay for any of these heroes so plan accordingly before you make any expenses.

You might also want to consider spending some bottles/souls in weeks that give out Elga shards as reward. Elga shards are very hard to get and she’s a very useful hero, always check the rewards page at the start of each week and do the math to see if it’s worth spending some souls/bottles to get more of her shards.

LEAGUE (BASICS)

League is the easiest way to get shards at low levels. You goal is to stay near the bottom of the league so all your adversaries are easy to kill and you get easy shards. As such your defensive deck should be complete trash so that everybody can beat you easily and you don’t climb in rank. On your offensive deck you need to win four out of six matches, as such create two teams of complete trash which you pair against the adversary’s best two teams (don’t underestimate teams with Nushkilan) and the remaining four teams you pair against his weaker ones. Build your teams around one strong hero and the other three to buff or defend him. This means that as you normally progress and get several Galactic heroes you should split them instead of bunching them in the same team.

LEAGUE (ADVANCED)

League rewards aren’t that great. There’s no real hope of getting to the higher leagues until you have several maxed heroes and tons of gilds and by the time you have those then you are just doing it to get a few hundred shards to sacrifice at the altar for better ones. Still, we’re talking about hundreds of shards each week so if you have a somewhat decent deck and can climb to the upper leagues (and get somewhat better shards for less work) you should. For attacking teams just keep doing as before, split your best heroes between four teams and back them with buffers and defenders. As for your defensive teams two should be trash, three you put your best heroes and buffers, and the last one with whatever is left that is of some use. Your goal is to make a draw more likely, thus making you less appetizing. But the main tactic is simply to save up your attacks until you’re four and a half hours before the end of the day. Then do a couple of attacks in the following half hour, trigger the shield when there’s less than four hours until the end of the day and then attack as many people as you can. Whatever score you have when the day ends is what counts. Don’t bother doing adaptations to your team unless you have to, it’s easier to find a more compatible target, sometimes even someone with a higher score.

SIEGES

Sieges give out the best rewards, they’re the best way to get tons of gilds, emeralds, bottles, etc for surprisingly little effort once you get the hang of it. You can also get some amazing heroes as reward for 4 million points (henceforth referred to as 4Ms) so it really pays off to learn how to siege. Having said this sieges are a bit tricky to explain because the best way to go about it depends heavily on what heroes you have so you should try to get the general idea and then come back for reference. This section is going to be big, don’t try to take everything in at once especially if you’re a relative newbie, it will be easier to understand what I’m talking about as you gain more experience.

The rewards you get in sieges depend on your score. You score by hitting bosses of which there are three kinds: Small Bosses (SBs); Medium Bosses (MBs); and Big Bosses (BBs). You should have a different team to attack the different types of bosses.

If you have less than 12k gilds you’ll get mostly SBs, if you have more than 12k gilds you’ll get mostly MBs. This is important because unless you have an upgraded 4M hero you can’t farm MBs so you often end up stuck with a list of bosses that you can’t kill and have to wait someone else kills them for you. Avoid crossing the 12k gild threshold until you have all the 4Ms or your life will get significantly harder, sacrifice gilds if you must.

BBs only show up at certain hours 0GMT, 5GMT, 10GMT, 15GMT and 20GMT but since they are the best source of score you want to farm SBs in the normal hours in order to store horns to attack the BBs in the special hours. You don’t need to kill BBs in order to score, you goal is to get a single hit no matter how weak so you should fill your team with heroes that attacks as many targets as possible.

You can get horns in three ways: hitting a boss you tracked yourself (when they show as 1/xx); being the person who did the most damage to a boss (MVP); or being the person that gave the final blow to the boss. This means you can get maximum of three horns from an SB (1+1+1) or five from an MB (1+3+1) which in turn means you should never do power attacks on an SB because at best you will recover the horns you spent. You should use power attacks on MBs, it’s profitable because the reward for MVP is three horns instead of one.

If you do not have Dendi/Draador you won’t be able to be the MVP so you can’t really farm horns, at best you can convert your attacks into horns by hitting bosses you tracked yourself (when they show as 1/xx).

If you do have Dendi/Draador then you can easily do more than 50% damage and get two horns if you are attacking a boss you tracked (1+1). Do not try to kill a boss if you left it at 80% for example, it might look like it’s not much but remember that Dendi takes 70% of whatever is left so in reality it might take you three or four attacks just to kill an SB and instead of profiting one horn you end up losing two or three. You should not try to kill SBs until you have a team with at least a maxed Sir Zeliek or Nushkilan and someone like Kerth maxed to clear the defenders protecting the boss so that Dendi/Draador can do their job on the boss. Elga is a hard to get hero but she pairs great with Sir Zeliek and they can help your Dendi/Draador survive long enough to kill the boss.

Finally, when you get the 4M hero for the week at least to Divine if becomes profitable to farm MBs of increasingly more strength.

To summarize, keep in mind that this is a probability game, your goal is to maximize the odds of profiting horns from farming SBs so you can attack the BBs more times. Don’t take chances trying to kill SBs unless you have an adequate team and that becomes evident by the amount of damage you do with your first attack. You’ll get a feel for it. And remember to drop by clan chat during BB hours and use “Call to Arms” on the BBs you track (1/10000).