Hero Leveling

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How to Power-Level Heroes

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Summary:

Kill enemies, search ruins, parlay, do quests, use buyouts while governing a city, equip Whispering Bracelets, command large armies, and fill your garrisons.

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Related Guides:

Read this guide to better understand Auriga’s XP system:

[How Leveling and XP works (WIP)]

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Read this guide to learn more about spying and how to level up spies:

[Espionage 101 (WIP)]

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What is “Power-Leveling”?

Power-Leveling is the act of leveling up a hero or unit as quickly as possible by absorbing as much XP as you can in the most efficient manner. For example, you can manually fight risky battles to take advantage of inaccurate battle outcome estimates.

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Why Power-Level Heroes?

Because leveling up heroes improves every aspect of your empire including:

• FIDSI
• Military Strength
• Exploration
• Spying

All victory conditions benefit from you having high level heroes. Learning how to level up your heroes more quickly is essential to your empire’s overall success.

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Advantages:

• +10% base stats on hero per level
• Unlock access to powerful hero skills earlier
• Able to explore map more quickly with movement skills
• Lower chance of failing ruin searches with Indiana Bones
• Faster and cheaper hero recovery with Fast Healer
• Able to equip more trinkets with certain Army skills

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Disadvantages:

• Hero upkeep increases
• Hero revival cost increases if hero faints
• You will look upon ignorant fledgling players with disdain

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ELCP vs EL Vanilla:

• Certain factions had their hero skills buffed with ELCP. Overall, the less popular heroes were buffed and the already good heroes were not changed.

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General Strategy:

In EL, your heroes level up by staying active on the map, governing cities, commanding an army, or spying. All heroes earn a base +1 XP/turn and the required XP to reach the next level increases with each level up. Just like the factions they belong to, heroes are very unique and fill different roles. Some heroes excel at exploring, some at governing, some at commanding your military, some at spying, and some are great in more than 1 role.

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XP rewards for actions:

• Search Ruin: +8 XP
• Search Ruin as part of quest: +? XP
• Search Eclipsed Ruin: +8 XP
• Parlay with village in region without quest: +4 XP
• Parlay as part of quest: +10 XP
• Bribe village: +? XP
• Command an army: +1 XP/turn/unit in army (excluding hero itself)
• Participate in a battle but no kills: +0 XP
• Kill enemy unit: depends on unit killed, tougher enemies = more XP
• Attack Settler and Settler retreats: depends on Settler level but around +50 XP
• Pick up conflux during Dust Eclipse: +8 XP
• Equip Whispering Bracelets level 1 to hero: gain capacity Fast Learner 1 (+25% on all hero XP gains)

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Early Game:

• In general it is a good idea to split your hero from your starting units so that you can explore as much of the map as possible around your spawn point.

• If there are lots of Ruins near the same area, try to leave those unexplored so that your hero can absorb all of the Ruin searching XP.
• Make sure you research Language Square quickly so that your hero can start Parlaying with villages
• Villages that give bad quests or won’t talk to you can be killed for XP
• For some factions, your starting hero may need to become a governor as soon as they reach level 2 or level 3. For example, Cultists, Mezari/Vaulter, Ardent Mage.

• Do not underestimate your enemy

• If hero is not strong enough to solo enemy, either fight while you have your own units in range or try to involve your militia in fights
• You can use Settlers to settle cities near future battlefields in order to take advantage of militia
• To guarantee that your militia can participate, select your hero and then hover right-click on the enemy army to see a white outline of the battlefield border. If one of your city districts is within the white border, then that city’s militia will be able to participate (as long as you haven’t used up any action points with those militia that turn).

• Fight smarter and level up faster

• Kiting enemies can be done by taking advantage of terrain. If your hero is not melee, keep some Forest or Lava tiles between you and the enemies to waste more of their combat movement and prevent them from reaching and hitting you. If you are Ranged, try to use High Ground as much as possible to receive an Attack boost. Use Cliffs and water tiles to funnel the enemy into single lines so that you can only be hit by 1 melee enemy at a time.
• Ranged heroes such as Petrov Judit can use a combination of kiting + high movement to shoot enemies freely without getting hurt. In general this only works when fighting against Infantry units with 2 combat movement points and does not work against flying enemies.
• Support heroes such as Archivist Nachampasessa equipped with Slow staff can solo 2 enemies alone without taking any damage. As Slow lasts 2 turns, you can alternate your attacks each turn to keep both enemies slowed to 1 combat movement point.
• Infantry heroes such as Feeds on Bones should start battles as close to the enemy as possible if the enemy is Ranged or Support. If the enemy has higher initiative than you and is Ranged, count how many tiles they can walk forward and start the battle 1 tile out of their move & shoot range so that they can’t shoot you on their first turn of combat. If the enemy has higher initiative than you and is melee, start the battle on High Ground with Forest if possible and allow the enemy to come to you.

• Govern a city to absorb construction XP and heal at the same time

• If your hero is badly injured from fighting a lot, then Assign them to a city for a few turns
• Each completed construction will reward XP as a % of the Industry cost of the construction.
• Your hero regenerates faster when standing in your own territory

• During Dust Eclipse, you can Assign your governors as solo armies or as army commanders for a few turns to get lots of conflux XP and Ruin search XP

Mid Game:

• Research Uncommon Armor asap and spend Adamantian to equip Whispering Bracelets on your most important heroes

• Whispering Bracelets 1 gives the Capacity Fast Learner 1 which allows your hero to level up 25% faster

• Start some wars and kill lots of enemy units to level up super fast.
• Govern a hero somewhere and then buyout a bunch of stuff with Dust to give them a bunch of XP all at once.
• Necrophage: build up some doomstacks of 40+ units and assign a hero to command it. Enjoy your +40 XP/turn.
• Infinite Industry Glitch - Governor + Industry stockpiles

• Spend Industry stockpiles and absorb the completed constructions XP with a Governor
• Use your boost of Industry to build another Industry stockpile or just buyout another one (Pearl stockpiles cost less Industry but cost 8 Pearls)
• Wild Walkers are very good for this strategy because they can provide +45% Industry to the city they govern

• Try some of these other fun strategies:

• Any hero + Drakken hero pair

• Pair any hero with a Drakken hero to form a symbiotic dynamic duo.
• Reduce the risk of fighting solo and dying to enemies by receiving heals from your Drakken hero.
• Drakken hero can level up faster as well because your other hero likely deals more damage and kills enemies faster.

• Broken Lords with Fast Healer level 2

• Don’t want to pay high healing costs for your BL? Just put 2 skill points into Fast Healer and watch your hero come back to life for free in just 3 turns.
• Or even better, pair him with a Drakken hero and never worry about dying in battle again!

• Eslek Tarosh the Pearl Vacuum

• Eslek Tarosh is the fastest scout hero in the game because he is the only Flying hero and one of his skills can give him +4 movement on the map.
• Equip Eyes of Auriga on him to give him Auriga Affinity 3, thus boosting his Pearl pickups by +30% and allowing him to gain +3 XP per Pearl stack he picks up.
• This strategy works equally well with Allayi heroes and Kapaku heroes.

• Drakken hero healing himself for free

• Start a battle with some slow enemies or against some Eyeless Ones and then retreat to the back corner of your side of the map to heal yourself with no downsides.
• Much faster way to heal than just waiting around for regeneration

• Try your best to do the world quests such as Dust for Rust

• Each Ruin search you perform with Dust for Rust gives +100 XP
• In total your hero can earn +500 XP

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Late Game:

• Research Marvelous Armor and try to obtain Exceptional Armor

• You want to unlock the higher levels of Whispering Bracelets for even faster XP gain on heroes

• Continue the strategies from Mid Game until your heroes are all level 30 chads and stacys
• Make sure all governors learn Cold Operator so that during winter, you suffer 0 economic downsides and all the upsides

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FAQ:

• Hero XP gain

• Q: Is there a way to maximize hero XP gain for commanding an army AND for fighting in the same turn?

A: Yes! As you may know, XP gain is equally distributed amongst all participating units and heroes. Simply have your commander step out of the army for a battle and then merge the army back into your commander before ending your turn. This way, your commander not only gets full solo XP for any kills during the battle but still gets to benefit from very high XP per turn.

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