Hero Wars Ascension Guide 2026

This Hero Wars Ascension Guide breaks down the Ascension Spire and the Great Tree of Wisdom, and how the two systems feed each other. Every strong account eventually hits the same wall: levels are maxed, skins climb slowly, artifacts get expensive, and the power number barely moves. That’s exactly where Ascension takes over. However, most players open it, see a spire full of glowing nodes next to a giant tree, and close it right back up. So let’s walk through how both parts actually work, step by step.

Where Ascension Lives in Hero Wars

Ascension sits inside Asgard, up in Celestial City, and Asgard opens at team level 65. It’s tied directly to the Guild Raid, because almost every resource it uses comes from fighting the raid’s minions and bosses alongside your guild. As a result, if you’re not in an active guild, Ascension barely moves. That’s the first thing to understand before spending anything.

Inside Asgard, Ascension is split into two parts:

• The Ascension Spire – where each hero is upgraded individually.
• The Great Tree of Wisdom – where whole groups of heroes are upgraded at once, sorted by role.

They are two different systems, but they’re connected, and that connection is the key to using Ascension well.

The Ascension Spire: Upgrading One Hero at a Time

The first half of this Hero Wars Ascension guide covers the Spire. Every hero has five Ascension ranks, numbered one to five. Each rank holds ten nodes, and every node you unlock gives that hero bonus stats. The rule is simple: to open the next rank, every node in the current one has to be finished first, so there’s no skipping ahead.

Here’s the part a lot of players miss, though. Ascension is permanent. Its stats work in every game mode, and once a node is unlocked, it can’t be reversed. In other words, there’s no reset and no refund, so whatever we spend on a hero stays on that hero. Keep that in mind, because it shapes every decision that follows.

What Does a Spire Node Cost?

Each node costs a mix of four resources: gold, Star Mana, Crystals and, from rank three onwards, Insignias.

Star Mana is the easy one. It comes from the Guild Raid (from beating the boss’s minions and from boss victories), plus some quests and events. It also acts like a gate that ties your Ascension to Asgard progress. Still, most players have more Star Mana than they actually need, so it’s rarely the thing holding them back.

Crystals Follow the Main Stat

Crystals are where it gets interesting, because they follow a hero’s main stat. Strength heroes use Strength Crystals, Agility heroes use Agility Crystals, and Intelligence heroes use Intelligence Crystals. On top of that, each Crystal comes in three tiers:

Crystal Tier	Used For
Regular Crystals	The early ranks, around ranks 1 and 2
Vibrant Crystals	The middle stretch, from rank 2 up to rank 4
Radiant Crystals	The top tier, from rank 4 into rank 5

Insignias Follow the Role

Starting at rank three, Insignias join the cost. Unlike Crystals, Insignias don’t follow the main stat; instead, they follow the hero’s role. Each one also has a Greater version, and Greater Insignias come in for the final stretch, from rank four through rank five.

Hero Role	Insignia Used
Tank	Resilience
Warrior	Valor
Mage	Wisdom
Healer	Love
Support	Kindness
Control	Willpower
Marksman	Composure

Now think about what that means. Two heroes can share the same main stat and still compete for completely different Insignias. Likewise, two heroes with the same role can need completely different Crystals. Since every hero pulls from its own combination, ascending lots of heroes at once spreads resources very thin, and that’s why the costs feel brutal once you’re past rank three.

Where Crystals and Insignias Come From

Crystals and Insignias come from the same places as Star Mana: the raid’s minions, plus the boss’s damage and victory rewards. On top of that, there are one-time quests, special events and Season rewards. There’s also the Astral Seer, which we’ll cover in the Tree section below.

In addition, some heroes have one more thing hiding at rank two and rank five: Ascension skills. They deserve their own spot, so we’ll get to them shortly.

The Great Tree of Wisdom: Upgrading a Whole Role

The Great Tree of Wisdom has seven branches, one for every role: mage, tank, marksman, healer, support, warrior and control. Each branch has fifty levels, and every level you put into a branch gives bonus stats to every hero of that role. That means not just one hero, but all of them.

There’s one important detail, though. Plenty of heroes have two roles, but every hero belongs to only one branch, and that branch is decided by their main role. So before counting on a branch to boost a hero, it’s worth checking which role the game treats as their main one.

The bonus also changes from level to level. If you tap a branch, the next bonus is highlighted in yellow, so you always know exactly what the next level buys before paying for it.

Ancient Wisdom Crystals: How the Spire Feeds the Tree

Tree levels cost two resources. The first is Ancient Wisdom Crystals, and this is where the Spire and the Tree connect: you earn Ancient Wisdom Crystals every time you upgrade a hero in the Ascension Spire. In other words, every node unlocked on one hero quietly feeds the Tree, and the Tree then strengthens a whole role at once.

Eternal Seeds: The Real Bottleneck

The second resource is the rare one: Eternal Seeds. Seeds are needed every fifth level of a branch, so levels five, ten, fifteen and so on are checkpoints where a branch stalls until you have Seeds.

If there’s one resource to plan around in this Hero Wars Ascension guide, it’s Eternal Seeds. They’re one of the hardest resources in the whole game to get, and there’s no farming them. Here’s how they come in:

Source	Eternal Seeds
Guild defeats the boss	1 each time
Dealing 10 million damage to a boss	1
Top 5 players on the Hall of Fame leaderboard	1–5
Top 3 guilds on the Hall of Fame leaderboard	1–3
One-time quests, special events, Season rewards	Varies
Astral Seer grand prize	10

The Astral Seer

The first time you open the Astral Seer, you get seven free attempts. After that, you get one free attempt every day after the 2 AM UTC reset, and you can save up to seven. Best of all, the grand prize is always ten Eternal Seeds.

There’s also a Daily Double, which doubles the drop chance for one type of Crystal and Insignia, and that type changes every day. So if you’re short on one specific Insignia, it’s worth glancing at the Daily Double before using your free attempts.

Ascension Skills: How a Hero Changes in a Fight

The Spire and the Tree are one thing, but there’s a part of Ascension that makes all of it even more worthwhile: Ascension skills. Some heroes (not all of them) have an extra node at rank two and another at rank five. Unlock it, and that hero gets an Ascension skill. More importantly, this isn’t just more stats; it changes how the hero actually fights.

Amplifying a Skill the Hero Already Has

Sometimes an Ascension skill amplifies an existing skill. Take Thea, for example. Her rank two Ascension skill upgrades Healing Beam, so the ally she heals also takes 50% less damage for 5 seconds. As a result, a simple heal becomes a heal plus a damage cut.

Galahad is another good example. His rank two upgrade makes Unstoppable Charge fire the moment the nearest enemy uses their first skill, no more than once every 7 seconds, and the enemy he hits loses 30% of their energy. Suddenly, your tank is interrupting the enemy’s plan.

Adding Something Completely New

Other times, an Ascension skill adds something the hero simply couldn’t do before. Keira’s rank two Ascension skill lets her revive once per battle with 15% of her health, as an Undead, until the fight ends. That’s a whole second life that didn’t exist before.

This is exactly why Ascension skills matter so much: the right one can take a hero who was sitting on the bench and push them straight into the meta. Same hero, completely different value.

For a long time, the community (us included) kept asking the developers for more Ascension skills. Honestly, that wish backfired. What we got instead was Ascension Seasons, and they’re no good for free-to-play players. That’s a topic for another day, though; this guide is for beginners, so let’s stick to what matters right now.

And what matters is this: Ascension skill nodes are unlocked by working through the rank they sit on, then paying Star Mana and gold. So when choosing which hero to ascend, it’s worth checking whether that hero has an Ascension skill waiting at rank two or five, and what it does. After all, that one node can end up mattering more than all the stats around it.

Hero Wars Ascension Guide: Putting It All Together

The Spire makes one hero stronger, permanently, in every mode, and for some heroes it unlocks skills that change their whole role in a fight. The Tree, meanwhile, makes every hero of a role stronger, and it’s paid for by the Spire.

That means a branch matching the roles in your main team gives the widest return, because every level lifts several heroes you actually use, including heroes you haven’t ascended yet. On the other hand, Spire resources are split by main stat and by role, and nothing can be undone. Therefore, putting them into heroes you’ll be fielding for a long time, rather than spreading them across everyone, is how they go the furthest.

The engine behind all of it is the Guild Raid. Every minion beaten and every hit on the boss feeds Star Mana, Crystals, Insignias and Seeds. Simply put, a guild that shows up for Asgard every week ascends faster than one that doesn’t.

So that’s this Hero Wars Ascension guide from start to finish: five ranks of ten nodes in the Spire, Crystals by main stat, Insignias by role, a Tree of seven branches that turns every Spire upgrade into power for a whole role, and Ascension skills that can turn a forgotten hero into a meta pick.

Which branch of the Tree did you start with, and would you pick the same one again? Let us know on our Discord!

More Hero Wars Guides

• Hero Wars November Season Explained
• Hero Wars Beginner Heroes
• Hero Wars Beginner Pets
• Robin Pet Synergy Explained