Empires and Puzzles Guide, Tips for Beginners and Leveling of Hero Guide

Tips for Beginners

• Alliance Wars is an aspect of the game that will have you using up to 30 heroes if you have them. So don’t be in a rush to use levelled heroes to advance others.  There will come a time for that, but not for a while.
• Do not level up 1* heroes! These are just used to grow better heroes
• You’ll collect blue and white emblems that will someday be used to advance fully levelled heroes even higher. Just keep saving these emblems for now.  They’re really new to the game, and there’s not much info on best use of them as of yet.  But general consensus is to wait and use them on 4 or 5* heroes.
• You will have the hero Bane early in the game. Do not use Bane to level someone else. He’s actually one of the better 3* heroes.
• Use the lock feature on hero cards and troops you want to save so you don’t use them to level up something else! (More details in Levelling Heroes and in Troops.)
• There is almost nothing in this game that you cannot get for free with time and effort. Spending money will speed up the process, but it isn’t necessary.  Things like Emblems and Ascension materials are mostly be gained through game play anyways.
• Much in this game is based on RNG, or Random Number Generation. What heroes are summoned, what loot you win, even which items you get when you purchase certain deals.  There’s more on this in the rest of this guide.  But I’d like new players to know at the outset that you can see the appearance rates for things that you can purchase with gems where RNG will be a factor determining what you actually get.  Look for a small blue button with a white i in the centre.
• Summons. You never get to pick the hero that you get from the summons. And the hero cards that you see scrolling by show the hero when they are fully trained up (though without their talent enhancements from emblems).  The card you receive will be a basic level 1 hero and needs to be levelled.

About your Base in Empires and Puzzles

Keep building those buildings!  Resources are key for advancing in this game.  Here’s some info on some of the buildings:

Houses

These hold the recruits that you collect from map levels and completing quests.  Recruits are used up by the training camps to create new heroes

Farms and Mines

These produce food (aka hams) and iron.  The more you level these the more they produce each hour, and the more they can store.  The higher storage is especially helpful if you aren’t able to collect often. The food and iron in these buildings can’t be used for anything until after it is collected.  You can collect any time by clicking on the building, not just when it tells you to!

Food and Iron Storage Facilities

That’s all these buildings do.  Levelling these increases the maximum amount of iron or food you can store/use at any given time.  (Food and iron that are still in your farms and mines aren’t able to be used until they are collected.)  Your maximum storage for each resource can be found by tapping the food and iron bars at the top of your screen on your Base or Map screens.

As you want to build higher level buildings, and research higher level training camps and forges, you will need higher and higher amounts of food or iron available.  If your max storage isn’t high enough to accommodate the requirements of the building you want, then you will have to upgrade your storage buildings accordingly, and add new ones as they become available.

Stronghold

Any building in your base can only be built up to a level equal to that of your stronghold.  New areas open up in your base when the stronghold gains levels 3, 5, 8, 11, 15, and 20. As a point of interest, the Devs have said that the first 30 troops that you start with in the game are housed in the stronghold.

• After the tutorial you have 5 slots available to build a farm, iron storage, and food storage.
• At level   3 you can add: farm, mine, food storage, forge.
• At level   5 you can add: house, farm, training camp, iron storage.
• At level   8 you can add: forge, iron storage, farm, mine.
• At level 11 you can add: farm, training camp, house, food storage.
• At level 15 you can add: farm, mine, iron storage, forge.
• At level 20 you can add: house, training camp, farm, food storage.

** At level 10 you get access to the barracks.  It is an advanced building that you build over top of an existing lvl 5 building. Building over a forge is recommended.  If you don’t have the right number of buildings at any given step, then there’s an excellent chance that you built a barracks over the missing building and forgot about it. More details on the barracks below!

Training Camp

Training camps (TC) use recruits, food, and items to train heroes. When upgrading your training camps don’t waste resources on research you don’t need.  Key levels are 1, 2, 4 (until 11 is available), 11, 12, 13, 19, 20. Training camps will only produce the standard heroes, never event heroes or Heroes of the Month.

Notes:

• Researching – once you research a level you will be able to use it in all your training camps, not just the one you did the research in.
• TC 13 (guaranteed 3* with chance of 4* hero) is probably preferable over TC 12 (guaranteed 3* hero), but the much higher cost for resources may make it harder to keep running for more casual players.  The community feels that the chance of getting a 4* hero from TC 13 is around 3%, maybe 5%.
• TC 19 is a great way to get quick heroes, but is very food heavy.  You will want to have your farms well developed to take full advantage of this level!
• TC 20 is definitely a push goal for free to play and low spending players.  This is your best chance of getting 5* heroes without paying. There’s a thread on the forum where players did the research and came up with the following drop rates for heroes from TC 20.  5% chance of a 5* hero, 20% chance of a 4* hero, 75% chance of a 3* hero. For folks willing to pay to get great heroes you’ll probably just want to research up to TC 11 initially, then focus on your forge for battle items.

Forges & Research

Forges allow you to create battle items by  combining resources with ingredients obtained while playing the game.  As with your Training Camps, you can pick and choose which levels of the forge you wish to research.

**** a note on research- as with the training camp, once you research a level you will be able to use it in all your forges, not just the one you did the research in

Forges Broken Down By Levels:

**If a description isn’t provided, then you can find the information in the game shop under battle items.

• Lv 2 – minor mana
• Lv 3 – antidotes ** remember, 1 vial will cure your whole team of negative status effects!  Not just poison!
• Lv 4 – arrow attack
• Lv 5 – healing potion
• Lv 6 – bear banner
• Lv 7 – turtle banner
• Lv 8 – axe attack
• Lv 9 – potent healing potion
• Lv 10 – mana potion
• Lv 11 – super antidote
• Lv 12 – bomb attack
• Lv 13 – revive scroll
• Lv 14 – dragon banner
• Lv 15 – super healing potion
• Lv 16 – dragon attack
• Lv 17 – super mana potion
• Lv 18 – time stop (all enemies lose 100% mana and have their attack delayed by 3 turns- delays are cumulative!)
• Lv 19 – tornado (all heroes gain 50% mana and board is shuffled)
• Lv 20 – miracle scroll

Uncertain where to find a crafting material?

Click on the image of an item when in your forge or inventory to find out where you can find it!

Don’t forget to equip battle items depending on your needs!  This is done the same place where you edit your teams. (More info further down the guide.)

Also, you are able to equip a different battle item setup for each team.

Watchtower

Building a watchtower allows you to participate in raids.  This allows you to attack other players teams (controlled by AI while they are offline); it also allows them to attack YOU.  Killing opponent’s heroes will fill the heroes chest for the wanted missions. Only the food and iron stored in your watchtower is vulnerable to being stolen when you are raided.  While this building can be a source of income, it is quite expensive to build when compared to farms and mines. If you aren’t using it to it’s full storage capabilities it may not be a good deal.

The watchtower’s food and iron revenue comes from the outposts that you conquer at the end of certain provinces.  Levelling your outpost will give a % production increase of these resources, and increases how much your watchtower can hold at once.

Barracks

This the advanced building that allows you to level up your troops!

The requirements for building a barracks are a lvl 10 Stronghold, 250k iron, and any level 5 building to build your barracks over the top of (you can’t put it on an empty lot).  You are only able to have one of these buildings at a time.

If you meet the above criteria, then select the building that you wish to build your barracks over top of.  Once built, you will be able to change back and forth between your new barracks and your old building (it’s free!).  Each building will retain its levels when you do this. It is worth noting that you lose the storage or revenue of resources from buildings that you write over top of.  Many people are choosing to overwrite their extra forges. It is possible to convert back to the original building and select a new building to build over. All buildings will maintain their level. The game doesn’t allow you to build over iron storage, because it creates issues with having enough storage available to continue to progress through the game.

When you tap on the building you will see an icon with two arrows that says convert.  This is what you need to tap to get your build started. It’s also the button you will use to change it back to the original building.  Be aware that you will be unable to convert a building if your builder is busy with another building!

10 is the max level of the barracks.  The stronghold requirement increases as you level up your barracks.  At each level of barracks there is a maximum that you can level a troop to, and the max level is variable depending on the rarity of the troop.

Example, using a Lvl 2 Barracks, maximum you can level a hero to is:

1* – lvl 10    2* – lvl 7 3* – lvl 5    4* – lvl 3

Mystic Vision

Clicking on the purple and white play button sends you to watch a 30-second advertisement.  Afterwards you get a small amount of loot. There is a slim chance of getting ascension items too!

Heroes — Leveling Guide

Heroes can be summoned from the Summon gate, trained in your training camps, and occasionally purchased from the special shop. For a complete list of 2*-5* heroes, their stats and abilities, please follow the link to Pois’s spreadsheet!

Levelling Heroes

• Do take the time to mark heroes as favourites!  A hero marked in this way can’t be accidentally used to level up another hero.  To do this access your heroes roster (the page you go to to level heroes). Tap on the hero you want to mark as a favourite.  Just above the hero’s card is a faded out lock, with the word favourite beside it. When you tap the lock it changes to white.  Done!
• Don’t waste resources on 1* heroes.  You’ll want to replace these as soon as possible, because they die easily.
• It isn’t possible to train a hero up in stars.  A 1* hero will always be a 1* hero.

To level up a hero

• click on the heroes button at the bottom of the base or map screens, and then select the hero that you wish to level up.  You then select up to 10 heroes you want to ‘feed’ to your chosen hero.
• Using all the same colour characters (gives 20% more xp than using other colour).  Eg. using red heroes to level another red hero gives 20% more experience than using green heroes to level up a red hero.

Increasing the Special Skill of a hero

• When you feed heroes to another hero you also gain a chance to increase the hero’s special skill.  There are 8 levels to each special skill.
• The % chance of a special skill increasing when you level up a hero depends on the colour and * ranking of the feeder heroes.

A single 1* hero gives a 1% chance of skill increase, 2* is 2%, 3* is 3%, 4* is 4%, 5* is 5%.  Using the same colour feeder heroes doubles the % chance increase the special skill.

• Feeding a hero identical to the hero you are levelling gives you a 25% chance increase to the special skill.  Feeding 4 heroes identical to the hero you are levelling will guarantee your special skill increasing when you level up your hero.
• Feeding 10 at a time raises the % chance of your hero’s special skill going up, but a lot of people get lucky when feeding fewer heroes at a time (eg. enough heroes of any colour that together would give a % chance to increase around 18-24%).
• Honestly, there’s little risk with 4 or 5* heroes that you won’t get the heroes to max skill, even if you aren’t optimizing the chance to increase your skill each time you level a hero.   For 3* heroes you need to be a bit more careful. For those it’s probably worth sticking to feeding 10 heroes at a time, preferably of the same colour to max out your chances. Also, skip using trainer heroes or 3* heroes as feeders until the special is maxed.
• Please see the next section regarding heroes that are fully levelled without their specials being at max.

Ascending Heroes

• Each hero has a maximum number of tiers it can achieve.  1* heroes can achieve 2 tiers, 2 and 3* heroes can achieve 3 tiers, 4 and 5* heroes can achieve 4 tiers.
• When you ascend a hero it automatically gains a level to its special skill.
• When you max out a hero’s growth in a certain tier, you will be able to ‘feed’ it food and items to get it to ascend to the next level.
• With 4 and 5* heroes there are rare (3*) and epic (4*) ascension mats that you will have to get before being able to ascend your heroes to the higher tiers.
• There’s a chart here that shows the max stats of each 4 and 5* heroes at the points where they need the rare and epic ascension items.  It also shows what ascension materials are required for each colour hero. The image with the ascension materials sometimes takes a moment to load.

Where do you get Ascension Materials?

Some Ascension Mats are farmable on the map, for example chain shirts, tall boots, backpacks, and wooden swords.  You can also get them from doing the things listed for the Rare and Epic Ascension Mats. If you are looking for high boots most people will send you somewhere in province 12, and to province 13 for chain shirts.

Rare and epic Ascension Mats are not found by playing levels on the map.

It is possible to get these Mats through gameplay by opening wanted mission chests, mystic vision (video ads), completing quests, killing titans, participating in war, and from monthly or seasonal challenge events.  It is also possible to purchase them in deals for money, or occasionally, for gems. I really do consider this game play to win. The more aspects of the game you play, the more chances you have to collect these Ascension Materials.

These rare and epic Ascension Mats do take time to collect.  In fact it will take quite some time before you have what you need to take a 5* to its maximum potential.  It’s recommended that you work on getting some 4*s maxed as you get the Mats for them. This will best help you to collect the ascension materials more regularly.

The non-farmable Ascension Mats

Trainer Heroes

Trainer Heroes can be won as rare loot, or from a special bundle in the shop.  Trainer Heroes give a big XP boost when used to level up your heroes, and do give an extra 20% xp when used to level up same colour hero.  There are 1, 2, 3, & 4* trainer heroes. Trainer Heroes can be equipped to be used in battle, though usually not recommended, and are already maxed out for levels.

Summoning Heroes Guide

List of Summons

About the limited time hero of the month!  This hero can be gained as a bonus summon from any elemental, event, or epic summon.  The first hero of the month was Hel, Princess of the Underworld! Bonus summon means that for every elemental, challenge, or epic summon you do, you will receive not only a regular hero, but you have a chance of getting the monthly hero as well!  So a 10x summon from either of these categories will give you 10 regular heroes, and 10 chances to get the hero of the month! If you use a

• Elemental Summons (300 gems): 3* and higher heroes of the colour that is on special at the moment, with a higher chance of Legendary (5*) heroes.  [The colours will cycle through the following order: red, blue, green, yellow, purple.]  This summons is probably the best use of gems, as you can wait for the colour you most need to come up and then try your luck.  Increase your chances for getting the colour you need by doing your summons when the Hero of the Month is the colour you need also!
• Event Summons (300 gems): includes all 3* and higher regular heroes, and the heroes associated with the current monthly challenge event.  Not all heroes possible to be pulled show when you flip through the selection you see on the summon screen. Monthly challenges currently include Pirates of Corellia, Guardians of Teltoc, Knights of the Round.  This type of summons replaces the Elemental Summons while a challenge event is running. This is the only way to get Event Heroes, some of which will give you great advantages in raids, wars, or against titans, whereas the regular heroes you will eventually build up to the point that you have chances of training even the 5* regular heroes.
• Epic Summons (300 gems): 3* and higher heroes, randomized for colour.  Keeps you from having to wait for the colour you want to come up in an Elemental Summons, but only really helpful if any colour would help you get ahead.
• Epic Troop Summon (200 gems): 3 & 4* troops.  This seems to be the only way to get 4* troops.
• Daily Summons (150 gems): Don’t waste any money on these!  You will get lots of them through gameplay, and of course one daily as well.  If you’re really, really lucky it might toss out a 3* hero or troop to you (a 3* is the max!).  Otherwise, just consider them a fodder donation for levelling heroes.

*** All summons draws are completely random! ***  Also, if you do a 10x summon they all roll at once.  So if you do a 10x elemental summons you will get 10 heroes of the same colour! ***

*** Summoned heroes are at Level 1/ Tier 1 *** Even though the hero’s card in the summon gate is fully levelled, the one you receive will not be.

Gems and tokens for Epic Hero, Epic Troop, and Daily summons can be won from titan battles, opening the chests from the wanted missions (chests) in your town screen, Mystic Vision, Quests, and facebook contests put on by Empires & Puzzles.

Bonus: the Summon Gate can be used like a catalogue to flip through the heroes.  You can get a look at the fully ascended and levelled stats of any hero. Click the little mark if you want more details on their special abilities.  Or use Artemis’s lovely spreadsheet for hero stats!  (Didn’t do anything with 1*s because you are just using them to feed to bigger heroes.)

Setting Up Your Hero Teams

You can build 5 teams.  (Menu, Heroes, Edit Team – swipe left/right to view different teams)  Some players build different teams for different purposes. Common teams are based on map/raid attacks,  titan attacks, raid defence, map farming.

** You can use the same hero in more than one team!

When editing your team you can also equip battle items and troops! Do this by tapping on the picture of the troop or item you wish to change.  Items and

troops won’t automatically appear in these slots.

Defense

One team must be marked defence. The team marked defence is what gets attacked when you are raided. The positioning of your heroes matters in your defense team. When first starting out put your strongest dead centre & weakest at the edges.  (New players – put your Bane front and center on your defense team! He’s the best you have for taking the hits!)  When you are being raided, the centre gets hit most in attacks, the far sides are hardest to hit. When you get a stronger team you’ll probably put strongest dead centre & heavy hitters far sides with healers or weaker heroes in the other 2 spots. On your defense team choose your strongest heroes/best combination of special skills.  Your defense team does not depend on gem matches to hurt opponents, so you do not have to worry about having one of each colour.

With the teams you use when you are raiding, battling titans, or doing map fights you will most often want to have one of each colour hero on your team.  If any colour is missing, the gems of the absent hero will only do 1 damage. There are times you might make a strategic choice to eliminate a colour.

You can play around with the combination of heroes and their special abilities.  By raiding you will get a feel for what the other heroes can do.

Troops

How do I get troops?

You gain troops from Daily Summons (up to a 3*), from Epic Troop Summons (up to 4*), as loot from battles, & from wanted mission chests.

How Do I Assign Troops To A Hero?

Tap the Heroes button on the main menu. Next click Edit team – then click on the picture of fighters below a hero. Your troop options will come up for that colour. Click on them to see what they add to your hero. Click on “done” at top of page when you’ve assigned the one you want. Do that for each troop below each hero.  Any time you change a hero remember to add your troop back on!

What do troops do for me?

Troops positively affect the statistics of your heroes.  The chart below shows what each of the icons mean. You can also tap the icons in the game to get a description of what they mean.

One special thing about troops is that they are they only thing that will boost a damage over time (DoT) special skill. Example of a DoT is each turn the afflicted hero will receive fire damage.  The higher the attack stat of the troop, the more fire damage will be done each turn.

The previous compendium version recommended watching your team power as you switched troops to help gauge which one would benefit you most.  Now, with the ability to level troops, and the new boosts for them, this feature might not give you the full picture. I’d recommend trying global chat, or the forums to get ideas from other players. Rare and Epic troops have special effects including healing effect increase, mana gain increase, and health increase!

Training Troops Using the Barracks

Training troops is very similar to training heroes.  Select the troop you wish to level up. Once selected you can see the maximum level that troop can attain from your current level of stronghold.  At the bottom of the screen will see the troops that you can use to level up. For troops, you are only able to train with same coloured troops. You can use up to 10 troops to level with at a time, but there is no advantage to doing this.

Maximum Level By Troop Rarity

1* – 10    2* – 15 3* – 20    4* – 30!

Until the wiki is updated, you can use the summon gate to see stats at max level.

Titans

What is a Titan?

It’s a really big, strong enemy that you and your alliance battle together.  You will get a little extra loot from battling them even if they get away. More if you defeat it! Killing titans also gives you a kill point towards opening the chest for the titan wanted mission.  As a note, you will gain no loot or kill point if you don’t hit the titan, or you are not within your alliance when the titan dies.

Attacking a Titan costs alliance energy, which are represented by the purple flags at the top of your screen.  These regenerate at a rate of 1 flag every 4 hours. The number of alliance energy points does not increase with player levels. These alliance points do refresh when you gain a player level, and occasionally you can buy alliance flasks to refill alliance energy at the special shop in game.  The alliance flask can also be obtained from opening chests of wanted missions, mystic vision, and as titan loot.

Your alliance has 22 hours in which to kill a titan.  If you kill it early you still have to wait the full length of time for the next one.  The new titan will spawn 23 hours after the previous one, so there’s always a minimum of an hour between titans.  Titans scale up as you successfully defeat each titan. The time it takes to defeat the titan does not impact on how the titans scale up.

Talk within your alliance and with other players to see what titan strategies they’ve got.  Here’s a few to get you started!

• If you send 3 or more gems up into the weak spot that is marked on the titan then you will stun it for a turn.
• take a moment to tap the ? on the titan’s screen beside the label Special Skill.  This will let you know if you need to bring antidotes for the fight. Remember, any antidote will remove any negative stat modifier for all of your heroes!
• In a titan fight gems in the outside columns won’t hit the titan.  Only gems that go up from the 5 central columns will actually hit
• arrows are awesome!  Cheap, and easy to make.  Any time a titan misses your heroes is a real bonus!

Rare Titans

Rare titans have stronger special skills (always check them out by using the ? mark on the titan preview screen!), and an element that they are immune to.  ** This immunity means that tiles of that colour won’t count towards stunning the titan when you hit the weak spot.

Also, rare titans give an extra chance at a 4* ascension item being given by the titan. The community hasn’t started gathering data on the drop rate for this yet.

Farming Guide

Which levels to farm

Skipping to the list and I’ll explain why these lvls and not any other below:

Best Level to Farm

• Blue monsters: 8-7
• Green monsters: 7-5
• Yellow monsters: 10-6 or 12-9
• Purple monsters: 7-4 or 8-4
• Red monsters: 6-8, 11-6 or 20-4

Best levels to farm XP, Iron and Food

• 3 Energy: 1-1 to 7-4, 7-7 to 8-1, 8-4, 8-6 to 9-1
• 4 Energy: 11-1, 11-2, 11-5 to 12-9
• 5 Energy: 16-8 to 17-1
• 6 Energy: 19-9 to 20-4
• 7 Energy: 22-1 to 22-9, 23-8 to 23-11

Best Priority Farm

1. Farm Goal
2. Energy Ratio
3. XP

Blue one should be 8-7 because:

1. It can spawn anywhere between 9-15 blue monsters. 9 being the higher minimum and 15 the higher maximum in all other levels.
2. Has a 3-5 monster chance per energy, also higher ratio available.
3. The highest XP, about 40+ than other possible options.

Same goes for the Green one, but with different amounts.

Yellow and purple have 2 options for two different approaches:

1. Levels 8-4 and 10-6 have both a solid 11 monsters per lvl*. Levels 7-4 and 12-9 have a range of 9-15 monsters per lvl. In theory, the first 2 are a safer bet, but the last 2, with luck, can be more efficient. [*Still trying to figure out if these levels can spawn waves of 4 mini-bosses, if yes, the numbers would change to 11-14, but even so they are absurdly rare.]
2. Both options have equal costs, both purple costs 3 energy each, both yellows 4 energies each.
3. If you accept that both approaches are equal, you may chose between them based on XP. 8-4 and 12-9 are the ones with higher XP.

The red case is a difficult one. There is no low level with a guarantee number of red enemies. The best levels to efficiently farm it is the 20-4, it has the best energy/monster ratio and best XP between the possible options. Even though it costs 6 energies, it guaranties almost 2 enemies per energy.

The low level alternative is the 6-8 (a red-blue level), that has a chance to spawn between 0-15 red enemies. In theory, the results of farming this 3 energy level can be far superior of the 6 energy one, but in reality you can just as easily end up with waves filled with blue enemies.

Another low alternative is 11-6, one energy more expensive (uses 4 energies), but gives you a 2 guarantee boss with the same 9-15 yellow-red waves that can spawn anywhere from 0 to 15 enemies.
If you cannot easily farm 20-4 (or other similar levels, such as 19-4 and 19-6, that have same monster/energy, but gives less XP), your best bet is 6-8. Or if you are lucky, you got quests full of fire enemies.

XP, food and Iron farming

In the above, monsters and items (including recruits) have the same average on all levels, so the harder the levels get, more energy they cost and the monsters/energy ratio start to drop considerable. So while 8-7 is 3,6-5,6 monsters per energy, 16-9 is 2,2-3,4. That’s why there’s only one or two specific levels for you to farm, no matter what is you power and progression in the campaign.

XP, food and Iron is a different matter, they steadily increase as you progress and what level you should farm is directly related to your campaign progression and currently capabilities. That’s why there’s not a single level, but a lot of them.

Anyway, because of the abrupt change in energy cost, the XP/energy (same for iron and food) abruptly change as well, dropping a lot. For example, 9-1 will grant you 285,6 XP per energy; the next one, 9-2, only rewards 214,25. If we were to make a graph it would look like a steady increase all the way to a peak, followed by an abrupt decline (caused by the change of energy cost), that would then increase again steadily, surpassing the first peak until it reaches a second one, and so on. In total there are 5 peaks, and 4 abrupt declines. Below a graph I made in my mobile, so give it a break (haha), to represent how it would look like. (I might actually do one for real, after I complete the sheet.)