Conquistador’s Early Game Tier List (+ Tips for New Players) v1.1

Changelog

Important Notes (Must Read!)

Terms and Guide Information

• Using a hero as “food” or “fodder” means using copies of that hero as a resource to fuse/awaken/enable a different hero.
• Nat4 heroes can be summoned at 4 or 5. The ones which can be evolved to 6 cap out at 9 and cannot be evolved to 10 or beyond.
• Nat5 heroes do not have a 4 variant, and can only be summoned at 5. Long term, these heroes are the only heroes even worth considering.
• When talking about getting hero copies from 5 Hero Shards, this means the “normal” shards, not the “elite” shards. Elite shards are very hard to come by and wont be a primary source for fodder or hero copies.
• This guide will only cover the 4 colored factions. Light/Dark heroes are rare and difficult to build and are more for later gameplay.
• Most tiers will be broken down by two sections, the Core list and the Supporter list:
  • The Core list will have heroes who are worth building your account around at that tier. A Core 9 hero will later be used as fodder to make your Core 10 or your first Enabled hero and so on. They usually have some form of self-sustain so they’re able to perform entirely on their own.
  • The Supporter list will have heroes who who are worth building at that tier, but should not be the first hero you build at that tier. The heroes in the Core list can generally work in this list as well, but not vice-versa.
• For an excellent breakdown on evolution requirements, see this infographic for overall costs or this post for more specific requirements for each hero.
• There are 3 key evolution levels for heroes which will be used as fodder. You’d never want to leave a hero at 7 or 8, so once a hero is at 7, be prepared to invest further to get them to at least 9 so they can be used for further evolution.
  • 6 – Requires two 5 copies of the hero, used to evolve 8, 9 and 10 heroes of the same faction
  • 9 – Requires thee 5 copies of the hero, used to evolve 10, E1 and E2 heroes of any faction
  • 10 – Requires five 5 copies of the hero, used to evolve E3 heroes of any faction

General Early Game Advice

• Get a Heart Watcher. At 5 or 6 she will considerably increase your boss damage. Same goes for Sigmund and Kroos, but to a much lesser extent.
• Never disassemble any 4/5 Heroes. Never use any Nat5 Light/Dark as fodder unless you know what you are doing.
• Don’t worry so much about Auras in the very beginning. Auras have percentage based scaling and heroes don’t have high enough stats to benefit from this below 9.
  • That being said, as you begin making your first 10 Core hero, you’ll likely want to include an aura in your team to support that hero as it will be the sole hero carrying you to the mid game.
• Gear is very strong early game as it provides a good chunk of flat stats. Completing events which give out 4 orange gear as a reward will make a 6 hero better than a 7 hero with no gear. Using the blacksmith event to level that gear up further will similarly boost your power.
• Arguably the best faction to use Prophet Orbs on (only use Prophet Orbs during events) in the beginning is Abyss. Forest is likely the strongest overall and is close to Abyss for early game viability, but Abyss has arguably the strongest 9 (Norma) and 10 (Dantalian) Core heroes in the entire game.
  • In general for early game, I’d say Abyss >= Forest > Shadow >>> Fortress
• 5 heroes are the primary resource used when evolving, you’ll need tons of them so don’t use them frivolously.
• Guild Coins should only ever be spent on Guild Tech. You get one freebie to reset all your guild coins in one tree to be able to spend them in another one. A good time to consider doing this would be when making your first E3 if it’s a different class than your Core 10.

Quick Note about Hero Regression

In my opinion, there are only two heroes ( Vesa & Cthugha) which might be worthy of regressing at 10 to help make your first E3. Those are the only Heroes I think are good enough and rare enough to want to save the hero copies, but not so strong that you’d want to make them into your first E3.

The down sides of regressing are:

• Maybe most importantly, you have to get a rare resource (Soul Symbols) which is ONLY available when completing the 300 scroll tier during a Heroic Summoning event. The 300 scroll tier is generally a bad tier to stop on, so you’ll likely want to use at least 400 Heroic Scrolls during the event.
• You lose out on roughly 3x 5. It’s exchanging 1x 6 fodder for 3x 5 copies of the hero you’re reverting. So you’ll lose 6x 5 fodder and gain 3x 5 hero copies you don’t plan to use for fodder.
• You do not get any gold back which was spent to level the hero
• You only get back 60% of the other costs
  • Promotion Stones & Spirit for leveling the Hero themselves
  • Magic Dust & Gold for the leveling the Hero’s Stone

Examples and Justification for this Guide

As a new player your main problem will not be getting god tier hero copies, it will be having enough fodder to MAKE that god tier hero into your first E3 unit.

While you wait to acquire those godly hero copies, your main short term goal for each tier is to have ONE hero who is easier to build, but will still anchor your team. The rest of your team is filled with heroes who do really well at that tier but not so well that you’d be sad to use them as fodder to make heroes in the next tier.

Some of this may not make a lot of sense until you look at the lists of heroes below, so if if this part is confusing consult the tier list provided and come back to this explanation.

Let me try and highlight what I’m talking about with some examples.

Lets consider two players transitioning to the mid game. They have the exact same hero copies and are apparently close to making their first E1 unit, but the manner in which they built their early game teams differ:

Player A – 10 Valkyrie, 10 Skerei, 9 Horus, 9 Vesa, 9 Sigmund, 6 Heart Watcher
In the bag: 5x Dantalian, 3x Lutz, 3x Starlight, 1x Ormus, and 6 Ormus

Player B – 10 Valkyrie, 10 Dantalian, 9 Lutz, 9 Starlight, 9 Ormus, 6 Heart Watcher
In the bag: 5x Skerei, 3x Horus, 3x Vesa, 1x Sigmund, and 6 Sigmund to swap in for boss battles

Player A followed the E3 tier list and has the better team, no doubt. They will be doing more damage and further progressed in every aspect of the game aside from Aspen dungeon. But they aren’t THAT much better because they’re still in the early game. This game is not about early game teams, it’s about long term team planning.

Let’s say both players get another Valkyrie copy. Player B is in a substantially better position to advance. Player A isn’t going to want to use ANY of his current team as fodder and has to create a new 9 food from scratch to make an E1 Valkyrie while Player B has a 9 Starlight just BEGGING to be used as food.

And if both players get two Valkyrie copies? Boom, instant E3 Valkyrie for Player B using Starlight, Lutz, and Dantalian as food.

Let’s look at the two players now.

Player A – 10 Valkyrie, 10 Skerei, 9 Horus, 9 Vesa, 9 Sigmund, 6 Heart Watcher
In the bag: 2x Valkyrie, 5x Dantalian, 3x Lutz, 3x Starlight, 1x Ormus, and 6 Ormus

Player B – E3 Valkyrie, 6 Sigmund, 5 Sigmund, 9 Ormus, 6 Heart Watcher, 5 Vesa
In the bag: 5x Skerei, 3x Horus, 2x Vesa

Player B is now miles ahead of Player A. An E3 Valkyrie supported by a Justice Aura will CRUSH Player A in every single aspect of the game.

On the other hand, if Player B instead had started off with this team:

10 Valkyrie, 10 Lord Balrog, 9 Baade, 9 Thale, 9 Emily, 6 Faceless

They’d be in a similarly good position to advance their Valkyrie, but their team would be substantially worse until then and it would have taken them longer to get there.

Finding that sweet spot of heroes which are good enough to use early game while being bad enough to use as food going to the mid game is what this guide is hoping to accomplish for new players!

TL;DR; How Do I Build My Team From Day 1?

• Sign in/Create account account and get a 5 Norma.
• Make a team with 5 Norma and whatever random heroes you have. Replace 3 and 4‘s with 4 and 5‘s when you get them. Anything will do.
• Make a 6 Norma using copies of Abyss heroes in the Basement Tier.
• Evaluate your hero copies and fodder, pick a Core hero from the 6-9 Fodder Tier and work towards making that hero a 9.
• While building that Core 9, pick some other heroes from the 6-9 Fodder Tier and make them 6.
  • Remember you’ll need 28 same faction 5 fodder to build your 9 Core hero, so try to diversify your other heroes’ factions.
• If you have the fodder and hero copies to make some of those Support 9 eventually you can take some of them to 7 or 8, but don’t sacrifice the progress of your Core hero to do so and don’t do it for more than 1-2 of them.
• Once your 9 is completed, evaluate your hero copies and fodder, pick a new Core hero from the 9-10 Fodder Tier and work towards making that hero a 9.
• While building that 10 Core hero, take 1-2 of those Supports from the 6-9 Fodder Tier and take 1-2 heroes from the 9-10 Fodder Tier and work them towards 9.
  • Take the rest of your Supports from the 6-9 Fodder Tier and use them as food. Their usefulness has passed.
  • Remember you’ll need 36 same faction 5 fodder and 28 any faction fodder (in the form of a 9) to build your 10 Core hero.
• Once your 10 Core hero reaches 9, use either your Core 9 hero or one of the remaining 6-9 Supports as the 9 food for your new Core 10 hero
• Now that your 10 Core hero is complete you are much closer to an E3 unit than you think! You’ll need 186 total 5 heroes to make your E3, but the good news is that your current team already provides 148 of those!
• You’ll overall need 3 additional 9 fodder to make your first E3, so your team should be 10 Core, 3-4x 9 Support, 1-2 whatever units to complete an aura
• Evaluate your hero copies and fodder, pick a new Core hero from the E3 Tier and work towards making that hero a 9.
• If you do not yet have 3 9 Support heroes, work towards building those as well.
• Once your E3 Core hero is 9, use all your 9 Support heroes and 10 Core hero and you can essentially make them into an instant E3 if you have the hero copies.
• Welcome to the mid-game!

Practicing what you Preach: How has My Team Progressed?

Days Played: 74
VIP Level: 4 (3x Monthly Card, 1x Black Friday Card)

Timeframe	Core Hero	Support Heroes	Aspen Smash	Tower Level	Boss Damage	Notable Hero Copies	Goals
End of Week 2	5 Norma	Random 4 and 5s	N/A	~75	~100k	None	Get Norma to 6
End of Week 4	7 Norma		Easy 50	~150	~500k		Got lucky with 3 Vesa copies in the first month. Orb Forest to build her up.
End of Month 2	8 Vesa		Normal 1	~275	~10m	x2	Orb Abyss to get Norma built up, eventually use her to 10 Vesa.
Current	9 Vesa		Normal 50	360	~30m	x2	Get Norma to 9 and use branches in forest to try and get 2 more Vesa copies. Not a lot of options for E3 yet. If no Valkyrie copies drop while branching for Vesa might try for Horus just because I think he’s awesome. Will make decision on using Vesa as Fodder vs Hero Regression once I have enough hero copies of my goal E3.