Stop Stalling Your Hero
Everyone tells you to keep your hero low. Almost everyone is repeating it wrong, and the players who take it most seriously end up parked a few levels short of the thing they were saving for.
Hero level does two jobs at once. It pays you in talent points, which are always worth having, and it sets the difficulty of some content, which is not. The rule that falls out is narrower than the one you have been told: never stall below a threshold you could reach, and coast between them.
The stopped clock
Ask five players what to do about your hero level and four of them will give you the same three words. Keep it low.
They are not wrong, exactly. They are right the way a stopped clock is right: twice a day, for reasons nobody in the room can explain, and badly if you plan your afternoon around it.
So let us open the thing up and look at the gears. Hero level does two jobs at once, and the two jobs are at war with each other.
Job one: it pays you in talent points
This is the good half. Every hero level hands you three talent points, which you spend on bonuses — troop strength, faster training, more carrying capacity, and so on down the list.
These are the best bonuses in the game, and the reason is simple. They are always on. They apply to your hero, your army and your city, all the time, no matter where the hero is or what it is up to.
Captains do not work like that at all. A captain's bonus only fires on the march that captain is personally leading. Every other captain is at home being a very well-dressed houseguest. Talents never sit at home.
Spending them without wasting them
There are four talent trees, and each one is a chain of nodes. Most nodes can be upgraded twenty times. Picture a corridor with doors along it. One point opens a door. You do not have to redecorate the room to walk through it.
That matters, because the rooms are not worth the same. A node at the far end of the corridor might pay you eighty-five percent. The one by the front door pays ten. Same price per point.
- Spend one single point on each node along the way, just to open the next door.
- When you reach the deep node you actually came for, put everything into that one.
Sprinkle your points evenly down the corridor instead and you will have spent a hundred points beautifully furnishing a hallway.
The tar building stops producing at five thousand tar. The bonus has nothing left to act on. You are upgrading the tap on a tank that is already full.
Job two: it decides how hard some things are
Now the half people mangle. There is no single difficulty dial with your hero's name on it. The game does not work that way. Different content looks at different things about you, and if you only remember one sentence from this article, make it that one.
| Content | What sets the difficulty |
|---|---|
| Tournament divisions | Hero level or troop level — it varies by event |
| The Great Hunt | Hero level, specifically |
| Armageddon | Hero level, and only your hero may fight it |
| Daily quests, Rare squads | Hero level |
| Daily quests, Common squads | Your highest captain's level |
| What your Dragon may attack | The same rule as the daily quests above |
Two things fall out of that table, and the second one is the good bit.
First, "keep your hero low" is sound advice for some content and completely beside the point for others. When an event sorts you into a division, open that event's own rules and see which input it uses. There is no shortcut, and anyone who offers you one is guessing.
Second — and almost nobody mentions this — look at the Common squad row. That bar is set by your highest captain, not your hero and not your average. Which means every captain below your best one is free. Levelling your second, third and fourth captains up toward your top one costs you nothing in difficulty, anywhere. Only pushing your best captain higher moves that bar.
That is a genuinely free lunch, and they are rare.
The five thresholds
So when should you actually level? Here:
| Level | What happens |
|---|---|
| 20 | If you intend to spend money, spend it first. The Fast Construction and Absolute Domination packs are only offered below hero 20 |
| 25 | The second tier of talents opens |
| 65 | The third tier opens, the Expert battle tactics section opens, and tile bonuses reach level two |
| 105 | The fourth tier opens |
| 145 | The fifth tier opens |
| 300 | The cap |
Never stall below a threshold you could reach. Stalling between thresholds is where the go-slow advice actually belongs.
Hero 57 is the saddest number on that list. You have paid full price for fifty-seven levels of difficulty, and the thing you were saving up for is sitting eight levels away with the lights on. Same story at 18, at 62, at 100. If a threshold is close, go and get it.
What the advice was always supposed to mean
It never meant stay small. It meant do not let the number outrun the army standing behind it.
Your hero's actual strength is not the level. It is your gear across those six equipment slots, your talents, your Leadership pool, and the troops you send. The level number is closer to a sign on your door telling the game what to send at you.
Raise the sign without raising the army, and you have simply ordered off a more expensive menu with the same wallet.
The folk version — keep your hero at roughly half your top captain's level — is a decent instinct rather than a law. Nothing in the game enforces it. Use it as a starting posture, and let it bend every time a threshold comes into view.
The short version
- Talent points are always worth having. More levels, more points.
- One point to open each door, everything into the room at the end.
- Difficulty scaling is event by event. Read the event's own rules.
- Cross thresholds. Coast between them.
- Keep the number in step with your gear and your troops, not artificially small.
Does event difficulty follow hero level, or the player's top guardsmen tier? The Atlas has an official statement that tournament divisions can key off either depending on the event, which is enough to write the specific cases above. It is not enough to settle the general question, and the widely repeated hero-level rule may partly survive because the two move together — players who rush hero level usually rush troop tiers too.
Do the talent tiers really sit at 25, 65, 105 and 145? One source says so. A screenshot of the tree at each level would settle it.
Is the hero 20 pack gate real, and is it the actual origin of the go-slow advice? If the packs are the reason, the folk rule has been passed down attached to the wrong mechanism for years.
Does the per-level talent grant stay at three all the way to the cap? One community guide claims it scales at higher levels. The Atlas has not seen that confirmed and has not written it here.
Talents8 claims
Each hero level grants three talent points. Every talent level costs one point, uniformly.
Talents are divided into four sections, each with its own tree. Most nodes upgrade to level twenty; some have only a single level.
Talent bonuses always affect the hero, army and city regardless of where the hero is or what it is doing. Captain bonuses apply only on marches led by that captain.
Talent points can be reset with the Reset Talent Points item, costing eighteen thousand gold from the Miscellaneous items section.
Talent points spent on tar production are wasted, because the tar building stops producing at a five thousand tar cap.
Talent tiers unlock at hero levels twenty-five, sixty-five, one hundred five and one hundred forty-five.
The optimal allocation pattern is one-point bridges to unlock depth, then maximum investment in the deepest available node. One maxed deep node beats several shallow ones.
Expert battle tactics talents and tile-bonus talent level two both unlock at hero level sixty-five.
Difficulty and scaling4 claims
Tournament divisions can be determined by hero level or by troop level, and which one applies varies by event. Personal goals within events depend on army level unless the event rules say otherwise.
In The Great Hunt clan tournament, contract difficulty depends specifically on hero level.
Daily quest minimums are set by hero level for Rare squads and by highest captain level for Common squads, because only heroes can fight Rare squads and only captains can fight Common ones. The same rule sets which squad levels the Dragon may be sent against.
A separate, purely commercial reason exists to hold hero level below twenty: the Fast Construction and Absolute Domination packs are gated below hero 20.
The hero itself2 claims
Hero level is a property of the player, not the hero. Switching heroes preserves level, equipped items and invested talent points.
The hero level cap is three hundred.