Ascension Season Early Guide | Hero Wars

Welcome to your complete Ascension Season Early Guide for Hero Wars: Dominion Era. Ascension Seasons are the biggest shake-up to hero progression in a long time, yet the system hides a trap that can cost you an entire season of grinding if you walk in blind. Below, we cover exactly what the feature is, how to lock in the powerful skills it hands you for free, and the resource mistakes that quietly punish unprepared players.

Think of this as the full rundown in one place: first the what, then the how. By the end, you will know precisely where to spend your time and resources — and, more importantly, what never to do.

What Are Ascension Seasons?

First, the good news: Ascension Seasons expand the existing Ascension system rather than replace it. Your Ascension Spire, your hero trees, the branches, and every progression rule you already know all stay exactly the same. Furthermore, none of your hard-earned resources — Star Mana, Eternal Seeds, Ascension Crystals, or Insignias — get removed, converted, or touched in any way. Every regular Ascension node still costs what it always did.

In short, this is a new layer stacked on top of a system you already understand, not a whole new game. Even the skills you have already unlocked on ascended heroes, including collab heroes, remain completely untouched by this update.

Two New Skills Per Featured Hero

Each season spotlights a single hero, and that hero receives two brand-new Ascension Skills. The first skill sits on Branch II, while the second lands on Branch V. Better still, if you qualify, both skills arrive at Grade 0 for free the moment the season begins — no grinding up to them required.

Do not dismiss Grade 0 as a throwaway tier, though. Even at that starting level, each skill already delivers a genuinely strong effect, and it only scales upward as you push the grades higher.

Who Can Join a Season?

To take part, you need to meet three requirements at once:

• Own the featured hero for that season.
• Reach Team Level 65 or higher.
• Have Asgard unlocked.

Notably, you do not have to field the featured hero to receive the skills. That said, using them in battle earns extra Season Points, so owners who can slot the hero in will climb the pass noticeably faster.

How Often Do Seasons Run?

According to the developers, Ascension Seasons arrive roughly once a month, and each one lasts 25 days. Consequently, this is not a one-off event but a recurring cycle: every month brings a new featured hero, a fresh pair of skills, and another pass to work through. For now, the rotation starts with heroes that do not already have Ascension skills, and no public roadmap of upcoming featured heroes has been confirmed yet.

The Biggest Trap: Don’t Lose Your Free Skills

Here is the single most important lesson in this entire Ascension Season Early Guide, and it is the one that catches the most players: those free skills are temporary. When the 25 days end, you do not automatically keep them. Instead, you must actively secure each skill while the season is still live.

Fortunately, there are three ways to do exactly that, and you only need one of them per skill:

• Develop the skill’s Ascension branch (free-to-play route). Push Branch II through the normal Ascension system until it connects with the Grade 0 node, and skill one becomes permanently yours. Repeat the process on Branch V to lock in skill two. No spending required.
• Buy the paid Season Pass. This grants permanent access to both skills at whatever grade you reached, even if you never develop those branches.
• Purchase an Ascension seasonal offer, if one happens to be available that season.

Crucially, the two skills progress independently of each other. If a free-to-play player develops only Branch II, they keep skill one but lose skill two the instant the season closes. Therefore, anyone chasing both skills without spending must develop both branches — half the work earns only half the reward.

What Happens If You Don’t Secure a Skill

Miss all three options and the skill simply locks. However, your progress is not deleted. Every grade you climbed stays saved and visible; you just can no longer use that skill in battle. In practice, that means grinding a powerful skill all season and then losing access over a single overlooked step — precisely the mistake this guide exists to prevent.

Ascension Skill Grades and Costs

Once your skills are safe, grades are where your resources actually go. Each skill runs across four grades, from Grade 0 to Grade 3, and the cost curve ramps hard at the top end.

Notice how the jump from Grade 2 to Grade 3 alone outweighs everything it took to reach Grade 2 in the first place. As a result, maxing a skill is a serious commitment rather than a casual weekend goal, so plan your spending accordingly.

One more detail trips people up: the two skills consume different resources. Skill one runs on Ascension Dust, whereas skill two runs on Ascension Shards, and the pair are never interchangeable. Effectively, you are juggling two separate currency pools at the same time.

Don’t Hoard Dust and Shards

This is the second-biggest trap after losing your skills, so commit it to memory: never stockpile Dust and Shards. Both are seasonal resources tied to one specific season only. You cannot carry them into next month, you cannot spend them on a different hero, and the moment the season ends, any leftovers are automatically converted into something else.

Because of that, the usual instinct to save resources “for later” actively costs you here — there is no later. The exact conversion rate appears in the Help Center once the season starts, but the rule of thumb never changes: spend it this season, on this hero, or lose it entirely.

How to Earn Season Points

Progress up the pass comes from Season Points. The main Battle Pass holds 50 levels, and you have 25 days to climb it by playing modes you already touch daily: Arena, Grand Arena, Dungeon, Guild War, Clash of Worlds, and Campaign.

Best of all, points come from both wins and losses, so you simply have to show up and play. No single mode is mandatory either, which lets you lean into whatever you enjoy. To speed things along, remember that fielding the featured hero grants extra points. Even so, finishing all 50 levels assumes consistent daily play — spending is never required for the free track, yet sporadic logins may fall short before the clock runs out.

Season Pass: Free vs Paid

Like the seasons you already know, the pass splits into a free track and a paid track. Helpfully, buying the paid pass partway through costs you nothing in progress, since you still collect the paid rewards for every level you had already cleared. One caveat applies to this very first season, however: you cannot gift paid-track tickets to other players just yet.

After the Season Ends

Everything you built carries over, so your grades and partial progress stay saved even after the pass closes. Looking ahead, these seasonal skills are eventually set to receive their own upgrade path using regular Ascension resources — preliminarily Eternal Seeds — which means there should be a way to keep improving them long after the Dust and Shards are gone. That said, the costs and timing are not finalized, and the unlock window sits at least a few months out, so treat it as a future bonus rather than a plan for right now.

Your Ascension Season Early Guide Game Plan

To bring this Ascension Season Early Guide together, here is the priority order that keeps every season profitable:

1. Secure your skills first. As a free-to-play player, develop Branch II and Branch V to their Grade 0 connection so both skills are permanently yours. Nothing else matters if you skip this step.
2. Grind Season Points daily across the six eligible modes, ideally with the featured hero in your lineup, to climb the pass and collect Dust and Shards.
3. Spend those Dust and Shards before the season ends, pushing whatever grades you can afford — because leftovers simply convert away into nothing you chose.

Follow those three steps in order, and you will finish every season with permanent new skills and zero wasted resources. Fumble the first one, however, and even the hardest grind leaves you empty-handed. Play it smart, and the meta will bend around you.

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