You are correct. However, you run out of clothes before recruits on a daily basis because it only costs 40 recruits to use the 20 rugged clothes you farmed.
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I think this is fairly close to where I am currently, though I am not running TC19 yet. Basically, I farm as much as I can throughout the day, and most days I end up running out of backpacks, so I push the rest of my âsurplusâ recruits into TC1 (swords).
For now, I have almost 3K sets of Rugged Clothes âBankedâ - Iâm sure that will eat up any recruit surplus I may have for quite some time. 
Tima
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When to speed level? All things being equal, it seems that the best time to level is during the AW prep phase after pairings.
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This is indeed a good time for levelling up in general, as the matchmaking for the war has already occurred, so youâre recently levelled hero wonât have affected the match.
Apart from that, I would say that the âbest timeâ to speed level is again going to depend on ones priorities.
Do you need to âhurry upâ and field that new 4 or 5* hero you just pulled? If itâs youâre best chance at contributing to AW in terms of offense, or it will allow you to progress in the map past a province on which youâve been stuck, then I would suggest levelling right away.
For me, personally, I finally have a strong set of 4 and 5* heroes to work with, and am beginning to add depth and variety to my hero selection, so the need for âspeed levellingâ is less prominent.
Now, I am leaning more toward youâre style of âbankingâ and âpower-levellingâ a new 4 or 5* pull that would offer a substantial improvement for my Raid Defense or Titan teams.
That said, one or two months ago, when I pulled my first 5* hero, I wouldnât have had the patience to wait and level only during the AW prep phase - while the end result is the same, knowing that I had Azlar on the bench while Nashgar was pounding his head against a Green Titan was sufficient motivation for me to begin âspeed-levellingâ Azlar right away.
To be fair, I honestly hadnât given much consideration to the best time to level up a hero until you asked - and itâs a terrific question by the way! 
Tima
Tima now we get to find out how it works in practice. Yesterday a very nice rare Titan gave me my 6th poison darts. Today TC20 gave me Joon. I donât have a 4 or 5* Yellow. So Iâm going to take him all the way to 80. My preliminary estimate is 68 hours. I will report back actual results.
(It would be faster but Iâm finishing TC19 ATM)
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Congrats!
I look forward to seeing how this works out for you! Thank you again for your efforts and contributions here, my friend!
Tima
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As it turns out my estimate for feeding was vastly under stated and your food notes earlier in the thread were well founded. I had originally estimated 5.5 million. As it turns out, Iâm currently 4.47 (final ascension level 47 of 80. So far feeding costs are close to 11 million. I probably have about 7 million to go so another week to level 80. The experience side of my estimates seem to be accurate.
One thing that I didnât acount for was the necessity to keep TC11 running to withdraw food from TC20. At the beginning of my speed leveling, I had 248 backpacks and 2,000 clothes which would convert to about 391,000 experience. Which was more than enough to fully level Joon (354,000 exp) and would consume about 12M of my 14M stored food. Since I didnât have to convert all of the clothes I figured it would increase my food surplus from 2M to 3M and take 2-3 days to make up for the food deficit.
Now that I have reliable food cost estimates, I can complete my spreadsheet and post it here.
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I got my first TC19 this week end and I found out itâs really food consuming so I made some calcul:
tc13 70 recruit for 265k food
tc19 70 recruit (35 run) for 192.5k food (extra 72.5k food for leveling and Ascending)
tc20 100 recruit for 297k food
tc19 100 recruit (50 run) for 275k food (extra 22k food for leveling and Ascending)
TC19 consume lot of food and I been force to unstack my recruit from tc13 and put them in TC11 to get more food as I was feeding my heroes.
Only way to reduce my TC11 stack will be to produce more food and run TC2 with backpack which is less food sensitive as it take way more time to produce the output.
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I was running my farms at level 14. In hindsight I should have focused more heavily on farms after SH20. I really think you should hold off on running TC19 until SH20 is complete and you have 4 TCs to juggle recruits and food.
Most of my calculations assume that TC20 is running (the food bank). One TC19 and 2 TC11 (recruit bank). Once Iâve refined those calculations, I plan to redo them for earlier game with TC13 as the food bank and TC3 as the recruit bank.
If I had my numbers right I may have deferred some troop training which is very Food intensive.
You can easily recover banked food from TC20/TC13 by transferring to TC11. However, you end up with a lot of food in TC11 that is inaccessible. After depleting TC20, I have 1,410 training in TC11 but need food to get them to TC19 or back to TC20.
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Between levelling heroes, crafting, raids and troops, I rarely have âenoughâ food - but knowing that youâre original estimate (only 5.5 million?) was too low makes my head hurt. 
So, just to be clear, youâre talking approximately 18 million food to max a new 5* hero - is this correct? If so, thatâs an incredible amount of food, certainly much higher than it feels.
I never counted, so it didnât seem that high, but I do have all of my farms at L20, so perhaps I am producing more food than I originally thought.
In any case, before I posted the âSpeed Levellingâ guide, I created a rough-draft thread for feedback and discussion in which @kerridoc brought up a few of the finer points that 7DD uses in the late game for âpower-levellingâ a new HoTM or Event Hero:
As you might have noticed, his points tie in quite nicely with the approach you are taking with Joon.
In the later stages of the game, efficiency will be more important than speed, and it seems that we are outlining the âfastestâ way to efficiently level a new hero here, so I would love to see the spreadsheet when itâs ready!
Overall, while I believe there is a degree of overlap with the âspeed levellingâ approach, it is probably worth having a second guide that is more appropriate for someone in the later stages of their development, as the âspeed levellingâ is really targeted at players who have no 4* or 5* heroes, are in a later âearly-gameâ phase and want to quickly field a new 4 or 5* hero.
I am looking forward to your continued contributions and the possibility of working together on a new âpower levellingâ guide.
Thanks again,
Tima
As Iâve been discussing with @WinkWink here, in general there is really never âenoughâ food. As it pertains specifically to levelling heroes, I frequently have to wait for food when in the higher ascenscion tiers of 4 and 5* heroes - unless I pull banked food from TC20, I just canât produce it fast enough!
Hence:
lol, but of course, I have the maximum number of farms and all at L20, so for me, banking is becoming more and more of a necessity.
Unless you need more food for immediate use, why reduce the TC11 stack at all? At this point, my TC11 has something like 700+ heroes in training, and whenever I have an oddball â2 recruitsâ leftover, I just park 'em in TC11 and let it churn out feeders.
Tima
Empire Banking
How much do I have in the bank? The simplest calculation is determining how many recruits and how much food is in the training queues. Simply multiply the number training by the cost.
TC4 training x 4 recruits , 1.5K food
TC11 training x 2 recruits , 1K food
TC13 training x 70 recruits , 256K food
TC20 training x 100 recruits , 297K food
How much experience do I have in the bank? This has three components, finished but uncollected heroes, unconverted backpacks and clothes. These are moderately more complex to calculate because you have to account for matching and non matching elements as well as a 1*/2* mix from TC4, TC11 and backpacks (TC3). Based on the following assumptions 50/50 mix on 1*/2* and 20% matching color the conversion factors are:
TC3, TC4 and TC11 - 1 training = 281 experience
TC19 - 1 training = 156 experience
The current âpotentialâ experience calculation might look something like this:
TC11 - 60 finished x 281 = 16,860
TC11 - 60 finished x 281 = 16,860
TC11 - 60 finished x 281 = 16,860
Backpacks 124 x 281 = 34,844
Clothes 900 x 156 = 140,000
Total = 225,824
You probably want to know how much leveling that will buy you (I found a reliable source in this thread ).
The following are the amount of cumulative experience required to fully ascend a 5* hero:
1st ascension 26,810
2nd 75,255
3rd 180,105
max level 80 353,589 experience
This can give you a VERY rough estimate of how close you are to ascending a hero. However, first you have to account for conversion costs (recruits and food to convert backpack and clothes to heroes). Your bank balance less the conversion cost will result in either a surplus or deficit in food and recruits. Typically recruits will balance out (unless youâve been running them through TC1 - swords). The food surplus is what is leftover after you convert to heroes. You will need this food surplus to feed the heroes. These are my actual food costs to level a brand spanking new 5* to level 80 (1st three ascensions are actual but max level 80 is an estimate :
1st 937,800
2nd 3,395,800
3rd 8,735,600
Max 15,000,000 (estimate will revise with actual)
So just to cover feeding you need about 60 trainees queued in TC20 (moving 100 recruits from TC20 to TC11 withdraws 247K from the bank (+297K - 50K)) just to cover feeding costs.
I am refining the spreadsheet I use to track this. I maintain a ledger balance that I update daily. It provides some insight on the rate of increase and provides some sense of accomplishment while I am banking experience instead of leveling heroes.
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So, using this calculation, I currently have 6.5 million food and 2200 recruits banked in TC20(22 heroes in Queue), 780k food with 1560 recruits banked in TC11(780 heroes queued).
So, it follows that in TC11 I have 219,180 xp banked?
As a matter of fact I was wondering exactly that!
So, if I am doing this correctly, I have roughly (considering the estimation involved in TC11 1* vs 2*) enough experience banked there to ascend one 5* hero to third tier, level 30 - 33.
Or, fully ascend a 4* hero (4.70) with room to spare.
Are these figures also cumulative? If so, then regardless of my banked XP, I have a huge defecit of food.
I suppose the next step would be to calculate out the time involved in both completing the training of my banked XP in TC11, as well as to calculate daily food production/generation; the latter will obviously vary from player to player depending on how many farms they have built and what level they are developed to, and itâs hard to factor in food generation from raiding/map levels/chests.
Still looking forward to the spreadsheet. Once all of the data has been compiled and the details worked out, you could possibly build in a calculator that would allow someone to punch in a certain tier, and then provide for them the amount of recruits, food, and time needed to fully ascend a given hero.
Also, shout out to @MuaaDip for creating that wonderful hero XP spreadsheet that you linked too!
Tima
Yeah food cost was a very unsuspected surprise. I wonât link the spreadsheet I got 5.5 million from. I thought that my food and iron troubles were over once I got to SH20/TC20. Now Iâm back to dropping cups for better raid matches and switching between TC3, TC11 and TC19 every few hours. Joon is level 60 and taking 20 heroes and more than 200K food per level. TC20 is all but empty.
Also upgrading every farm to 20 so I can move all those recruits out of TC11 back to TC20.
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I have to pause on leveling briefly. Rather short sighted but I have no food to craft items for the challenge event
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Joon now at max level. The total feeding cost from 1.1 to 4.80 was 15,840,000 that included several trainers and a decent mix of 2* heroes so for planning purposes I think that 16 million estimate.
My next step is to extend the experience table to include feeding costs. Then I should be able to calculate the experience and food costs between a current and target level. Then incorporate a food production estimate for an estimated time to completion.
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Touch base with you guy.
Before I got TC19 I had 120d of tc13.
My tactic contrary to wink was to upgrade lot of my 3*
Reason: Having more teams in wars, more color focus on titan, better choice for event.
Leveling a 5* is 353,599 xp (I donât have any yet)
Leveling a 4* is 167,592 xp
Leveling a 3* is 49,918 xp
You get 7 maxed 3* for a single 5* for way less food requirement.
I have a few 4* I ascended to last tier lately and I fed the extra feeders after I was done with my 3*.
All my feeding was with paired color for the xp bonus of 15%.
My 4* are still not maxed.
I stoped when I had 30d left in tc13, my tc11 grew up to 150d
My stack of rugged cloth is down to 600 also.
I dicided to go for tc13/11/11 while I gather more food and at the same time I get the best xp / recruit.
With the current event I do way less 8-7, so itâs a low recruit period.
I will run tc2 once in a while also, most probably when I will lack rugged cloth.
After getting SH20, tc20 I will have to focus on food storage and farm.
As a F2P player I will hope for my first 5* from tc20, while there is still some small chance I get one from epic token at some point.
I used my gem mostly on more heroes rooster and to get the unfamrable ascending material offer.
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You seriously have me reevaluating my strategy. Thank you for sharing this outside of your alliance. You are real people! Again thank you.
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I think that the point of the whole exercise is to understand what you have, how fast you can accumulate it and what will it buy you. It is additional information and may help avoid decisions that you might later regret.
Unlike the the iron, food and recruit bars there is no equivalent for experience. I bank my experience until I think it will make a difference. That all depends on your situation. (Levelling 3 stars for wars was definitely an early priority for me and an easy decision too because I only had 1 4* at the time).
It is really tempting to get into what those decisions might be but there are tons of threads about who to choose for leveling. Knowing what I know now from this exercise that answer may be âneitherâ or it may be exactly the same as it would have been.
The few very basic things that I have learned were:
- Leveling costs more food that I thought and farm upgrades should be prioritized once SH20 is complete.
- TC1 (swords) burns recruits too quickly and can leave you in a position where you canât easily move food and recruits around.
- You may want to be a bit frugal crafting food based items in the forge and consider the cost benefit of upgrading troops
In my quest to develop spreadsheet to calculate food requirements to level heroes, I have been able to develop a formula. However, I have found that it can be quite sensitive to what you are feeding your heroes. I have calculated the following:
1* heroes fed 1 at a time requires 21,000,000 hams to fully level a 5*
2* heroes fed 1 at a time requires 12,000,000 hams to fully level a 5*
My actual results, not surprisingly, landed somewhere in the middle at 18,000,000 hams. My feeders included a mix of 1* and 2*, as well as a handful of 3* and trainer heroes. I also fed 10 at a time and tried to leave the hero just shy of the next level to reduce the cost of the next 10 heroes.
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Hey Tima, I now have a working predictive spreadsheet. It needs some refinement and vetting. Would you like to work on it with me?