Complete Hero Upgrade Beginner Guide: Hero Wars

Most Hero Wars Web players pour resources into their heroes in the wrong order — and it quietly caps their power. This Complete Hero Upgrade Beginner Guide fixes that by walking you through every upgrade layer in the game, in the right order, so every hero you touch becomes a real threat on the battlefield.

There are eight layers to work through: Color Rank, Evolution, Skills, Skins, Glyphs, Artifacts, the Gift of the Elements, and Ascension. So we’ll take them one at a time, and by the end you’ll know exactly where your resources should go first.

Layer 1: Color Rank

Color Rank is the very first upgrade you’ll ever make on an account, so this is where every Complete Hero Upgrade Beginner Guide has to start. The deal is simple: you collect equipment fragments, and then you use those fragments to build items for your hero. Some slots only need one item, but a lot of them need several different items before that slot is complete.

So where do those fragments come from? Mainly the Campaign. You spend Energy, grind campaign fights, and run as many as you can to farm the specific item fragments you’re chasing. That’s your bread and butter.

However, there’s also a second way to rank heroes up: the Gifts of the Dominion. These are promotion items, and each tier can only promote heroes up to a certain rank.

Pro tip — squeeze full value from every gift. Don’t dump gifts into a hero at random ranks. Instead, use each gift on a hero sitting at the highest rank that gift can promote. So the Legendary Gift? Only use it on a hero already at orange +4, to push them into red. And save the Gift of the Dominion itself for when a hero is at its final stage, like red +2. That way you get the full jump out of every single gift instead of wasting it.

Watch the shops. You can buy hero items in a lot of events, but be careful what you buy, because there are plenty of trap shops sitting there waiting to eat your event currency. That’s why you should pick your purchases deliberately.

Layer 2: Evolution (Stars)

The next layer is Evolution — that’s your hero’s stars. To evolve a hero, you need Hero Soul Stones. You’ll pull these from campaign fights, same as your fragments. Additionally, you can grab them from Hero Soul Stone chests, which show up in season rewards, daily bonuses, and a bunch of events.

But the main source? The Soul Atrium. That’s where you’ll do most of your evolving over time.

Beginner trap: never spend emeralds to summon heroes in the Soul Atrium. Instead, save your soul crystals and use those to summon. Emeralds are way too precious to burn on summons, so protect them.

Layer 3: Skills

Every hero has four skills — white, green, blue, and violet — and each one has its own level cap.

You upgrade skills with gold, but you can’t blindly level everything at once. Skill upgrades cost skill points, and those refill up to 20. However, if you want more, you can buy extra skill points with emeralds.

Smart-player move: buy skill points a little at a time, every single day, because they stack up. So instead of one big splurge, you’re quietly banking points day after day and always have some ready when you need them.

Layer 4: Skins

A hero can have multiple skins at once, and here’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize: each skin gives the hero different stats, and the hero gets the stats from all of them. In fact, it does not matter which skin you’ve actually got equipped visually — equip whichever one looks coolest, because you’re still pulling the stat bonuses from every skin you’ve upgraded. It all stacks.

To level skins, you need three types of skin stone:

Layer 5: Glyphs

There’s a bit more going on with glyphs, so stay with me. There are about a dozen different glyph types, and they boost all kinds of hero stats — health, physical attack, magic attack, crit hit chance, dodge, magic penetration, and more. Meanwhile, the one thing glyphs don’t touch is Vampirism.

Each hero can slot five glyphs, and which five you get depends on the hero’s role. However, you don’t get all five right away — they’re locked behind your hero’s color rank and unlock periodically as you rank up, going clockwise.

When glyphs unlock

Glyph level caps are tied to hero level

Here’s the catch that trips people up. Glyphs can be upgraded to a max of level 50, but you can only reach that max if your hero’s level is high enough too.

So glyph power and hero level go hand in hand — don’t expect maxed glyphs on an under-leveled hero.

Runes for upgrading glyphs

To upgrade glyphs, you need runes. There are four ranks, and each adds a different amount of enchanting energy per glyph.

You can also spend emeralds to upgrade glyphs if you want to speed things up, but again, spend those carefully.

Layer 6: Artifacts

Every hero has three artifacts: a weapon, a book, and a ring. Each does something different, and each levels up with its own material.

Each material comes in six tiers, low to high: Normal (grey), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Superior (violet), Flawless (orange), and Absolute (red).

Normal
→
Uncommon
→
Rare
→
Superior
→
Flawless
→
Absolute

To evolve an artifact all the way to Absolute — that’s six-star — you need a chaos core, plus specific fragments for that artifact: weapon fragments, book fragments, or ring fragments depending on which one you’re maxing.

Layer 7: Gift of the Elements

Don’t confuse this with the Gifts of the Dominion from earlier, because this is a completely different system.

The Gift of the Elements gives each hero 30 levels of upgrades, and it hands out three stats: Strength, Intelligence, and Agility. Moreover, it’s the only hero upgrade you can actually reset, so if you ever want your resources back out of it, you can.

To level it, you need gold and spark of power. Because you get spark of power by upgrading your titans and totems, your hero progression and your titan progression are quietly connected here.

Layer 8: Ascension

The last major layer is Ascension. Every hero can be ascended, and the resources you need change depending on which rank of node you’re pushing.

Important nuance: every hero can ascend, but not every hero has an ascension skill worth chasing. Some heroes get a genuinely game-changing skill out of it, while others don’t. That’s why this isn’t a “do it on everyone” system — pick the heroes where ascension actually makes a real difference.

Your Complete Hero Upgrade Beginner Guide Cheat Sheet

So there it is — the full upgrade chain laid bare: Color Rank, Evolution, Skills, Skins, Glyphs, Artifacts, the Gift of the Elements, and Ascension. None of these layers is complicated on its own; instead, the mistake almost everyone makes is feeding resources into the wrong one at the wrong time. Follow this Complete Hero Upgrade Beginner Guide in order, spend deliberately, and every hero you touch becomes a real threat in the arena.

So which of these layers has quietly been holding your account back — and which one are you fixing first?

Keep leveling up — related Hero Wars Web guides

• Alecto Event Optimizer (Fall of the Veil) — spot the trap shops before they eat your currency.
• Distortion Totem Breakdown — where your spark of power comes from.
• Alecto Damage Explained — how your titans actually deal their damage.
• Hero Wars New Pet Teaser — a first look at what’s coming next.