There are a number of player guides floating around the forum, but they are all either:
- antiquated,
- generic
- de-centralised
- all of the above
This is probably why I see a lot of posts from new(ish) players asking for various pieces of advice. I thought I would try to consolidate all of the knowledge I have gained in the last 8 or so months playing my FTP account in the hopes that it will help some players steer themselves in the right direction
There are two main avanues of progression in the game for a FTP/CTP - maximising the number of pulls from the many portals in order to maximise the chances of obtaining good 3*, 4* and 5* heroes, and maximising the progression loot such as 3* and 4* mats, 1Lb and 2LB mats, emblems and to a lesser extent crafting materials. Both of the above come through progression of PVE world stages and events, and therefore the strategies below are geared towards optimising your progress through this aspect of the game (possibily at the risk of delaying your progress in other aspects of the game).
Broadly speaking there are four types of game mode in the game - those with item use and those without, and those that require roster depth and those that require you to field your best team for the situation.
No item use
Best team (caveat - even though you will be fielding your best team having a deeper roster does help you pick the best team for the occasion)
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Covenant quest. Completing this difficult quest gives you 3 pulls at the covenant portal, which is one of the better portals in terms of good heroes available (although not great odds).
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Raids. You will do a lot of raids daily. The rewards are not awesome but get yourself to diamond (which can be done in 3-6 months from starting, depending) and you will get a good stream of 3* mats and occasional 4* mats. Plus food and recruits.
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Raid tournies. Once a week, well worth entering and getting to the top 1% or 5%. This is possible to do even very early on in your journey as to a large extent you will be matched up against other teams of a similar progression to yours, although the points you get for winning will be weighted less heavily. Top placements in raid tournies are a good source of troop and epic hero tokens, emblemes and LB1 mats and are therfore worth trying to achieve - the 75 gem buyback investment is totally worth it if for example it can move you from top 5% to top 1%.
Raid depth
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Wars. You need to field 30 heroes. You won’t be able to field 30 good heroes for a very, very long time and the rewards come rarely, so it is not worth focusing on this early on. Just do your best to field teams that can get cleans.
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W3K you need to field 60 heroes. There is some value in focusing on roster here because even though you won’t be able to field anywhere near 60 good or even levelled heroes you will be able to get the top individual spots if you play smartly.
Item use
Best team
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Seasonal events. These are absoultely worth sacrificing battle items in order to try to complete because they provide guaranteed tokens, 3* and 4* mats.
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Challenge events. These are absolutely worth sacrificing battle items in order to try to complete because they are a great emblem source. You won’t be able to compete in these for a while but it is worth chasing the top 5k/top 10K spots in the various tiers as you get good token and flask rewards for these. Note that 3* heroes can be used for epic stages and 3* and 4* heroes can be used for legendary stages - something that you will have to rely on early on (and may work for you moving forward too, depending on your roster)
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Monster island. This is still pretty new so is hard to gauge. Worth having a play around with but not investing too much time or resources into, at least as this stage.
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World stages. These are a primary source of coins for pulling from the S2, S3, S4 and S5 portals. You will get to a stage where you can auto farm most of these stages, but worth investing some resources to progress through these early on.
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Rare quests. These weekly quests are absolutely worth sacrificing battle items in order to try to complete as there are guaranteed 3* and 4* mats.
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Omega quests… These monthly quests are absolutly worth sacrificing battle items in order to try to complete as these give you an invaluable source of LB1 and LB2 mats.
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costume quest. Absolutely worth sacrificing battle items in order to try and complete and get the 2 pulls and trainers. The costume chamber portal is probably the best portal to pull from in the first year as msny 3* and 4* costumes will be very useful
Raid depth
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Tournament of Legends (TOL). Will need a pretty decent depth as each hero can only be used once. Gives you 2 pulls when you complete. Not an event to focus on early.
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Towers. Will need a pretty decent depth as curses will start eliminating heroes after a few floors. Worth reaching level 25 for a shot at a 4* mat plus the tower coins and emblems, although not a priority to try to get through that many impossible levels early on
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Class quests. These are a decent use of battle items if you cannot complete as you get some emblems and a trainer hero. Depending on your roster some may be much more difficult than others. Don’t stress too much if you can’t finish some of thees.
In regards to maximising your pulls and various mat loot the best bang for buck comes from the item/best team category. This will drive a number of the tips below.
So here are my tips, not in any particularly organised order:
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Your base: Focus on upgrading your stronghold as fast as possible. This opens up more real estate and lets you upgrade to higher levels of buildings. In order to support higher lvels of the stronghold you also need to update your iron storages accordingly. Don’t focus on farms or mines too much (you will get contradictory opinions on this point). My stronghold is at level 21 and all of my farms/mines are around the 10-13 mark and I almost always have enough food and iron to meet my demands. Similarly for the watchtower - a nice to upgrade but not mandatory. There are certain tiers where the production from the watchtower gets a big boost, such as level 11 - it is worth hitting these breakpoints. The most important building early on is the forge. To help you progress through PVE content (and get the loot I have mentioned a number of times above) prior to you fielding a good set of strong heroes you will need to boost your arsenal with battle items, particularly arrows, axes, bombs, dragons. Unlocking all of theses lets you finish most PVE content even with a relatively weak team. Of coure you will also need to craft many healing potions, mana pots etc but the damage dealing items are worth their weight in gold. Note you will need to upgrade food storages in order to support the research costs for the higher level items.
To what extent you upgrade training camps is somewhat of a personal choice. It is worth having 4 as early as possible but then you have many different options. I have a TC11 running 24/7 (a good store for recruits and always able to churn out feeders regardless of resources) and a TC2 running as often as I can. The other 2 I have upgraded to TC20s so that I can build up an army of 5*s for soul exchange.
Barracks are worth focusing on and upgrading as and when you start to get good troops. I tend to upgrade mine every time I have a good number of troop feeders and could level up my best troops.
Advanced buildings to be covered at a later date -
World energy: Go through each season as fast as you can to hit the point in that season when the next seasion opens up. You will want to do this so you can take advantage of the world season events where WE costs drop - I tend to (for the most part) only play world stages when the matching event/portal is on
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Portals: With so many different portals open you will be doing 1-3 pulls in all those portals. This gets you somewhere in the region of 200 pulls every 6 months, allowing you 2 selections from the fated summons. Make those selections wisely! For me the best picks of the current crop are Lord Loki and Grimble. You can save up gems to some extent for the best/favourite portals - the challenge festivals are a good pick as they do not have any classic heroes. Costume portals are also great because most 3* and 4* heroes are useful and you get double or triple value in terms of your fated summon counter because of the costumes
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Who to level up. That is kind of the eternal question in this game and there is not exactly a right or wrong answer - it is based on a combination of your roster as well as your individual playstayle. I would not recommend feeding on color (most people do say you should, but I think the requirement to have so much free roster space and the fact that you are levelling your heroes so much slower is a bigger factor than getting the extra 20% experience). Most people suggest levelling 3s first, followed by 4s and 5s even if you happen to pull good ones early. That is decent advice, BUT NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Because remember - your primary focus should be on item use/best team events. And having the best heroes for those will yield tangible benefits and rewards. So I would absolutely encourage good 3s to be levelled first, but if you are sitting on really good 4s and 5s and you have the mats for them then I would say those are worth levelling ahead of other 3*s that you would be doing essentially to deepen your roster.
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Best categories of heroes to focus on early on: Overhealers and good minion makers will be worth their weight in gold because they let you punch above your weight in those important high-level PVE modes. Share damage heroes will also greatly help you. So if you get any of thse types of heroes level them up, emblem them, LB1 and LB2 them if you can… you will get a lot of mileage out of these heroes and will not regret your investment in them. Another category is dispellers - these will ALWAYS be useful considering how prevalent powerful buffers are in the game. In my opinion dispellers are much more useful than cleansers and it is often possible to run teams without a cleanser even when facing ailment givers.
I think I will take a rest now, that was quite a bit of work. I will organise my thoughts and update this topic later as I think there is still quite a lot more ground to cover. If anyone has any specific questions about how to progress through the earlish stages of an FTP or CTP account by all means shoot them my way - but just not hero-specific questions. I think those are much more of a case-by-case basis and deserve their own topics.