Companions beginner guide: free heroes, team-ups and what unlocks when

AFK Arena: Companions is a separate version of AFK Arena with its own servers, its own roster and its own Campaign. It opened on 13 September 2024 with 72 heroes and has 139 today, with new heroes arriving about every two weeks. The Campaign runs 61 chapters (Classic has 85), and Companions adds systems Classic doesn't have: Duo Co-op, where you borrow another player's heroes to push stages; Forked Fate, a second Campaign with its own AFK income; beasts you capture and train; and Get All Heroes, which hands you Elite heroes for clearing Campaign stages.

The heroes you get for free

Get All Heroes is open from stage 1-2, and it fills out a new roster quickly. Clearing the listed stages gives these heroes and items, and the Elite heroes it hands out are never duplicates:

After that the pattern settles into a random Elite from each faction in turn, and a Celestial or Hypogean hero every few chapters, starting with Talene (The Rising Phoenix) at 10-10:

From 27-40 on, the random Elite can come from any of the four factions. By 7-13, Get All Heroes has also paid 4,800 diamonds and 40 Common Hero Scrolls on top of the heroes.

Duo Co-op

Duo Co-op opens almost immediately and lets you borrow a teammate's heroes for the Campaign. You start with up to 5 borrowed heroes, and the limit rises by 5 at stages 13-4, 22-4, 28-4, 33-4, 37-4 and 40-4. Borrowed heroes keep their tier up to Ascended (higher tiers are cut to Ascended), take your Resonating Crystal level (at least 20), and use the average level of your own gear and signature items. Teaming up with a guild member raises your Gold, Hero EXP and Hero's Essence AFK rewards by 3%.

New accounts start with a computer-controlled partner who leaves when you reach about stage 2-21. Find a real teammate before then. The suggested partner list weighs players who are online right now most heavily, then shared language and Campaign progress.

What unlocks when

Unlocks follow your Campaign progress. These are the stages for the systems that matter:

Some systems run on the server's age instead: Dream Odyssey, the seasonal pass, opens 7 days after a server launches, and the first Vault of Time season starts on day 20.

Some new accounts start with a different opening, a shooter prologue with Hunter ranks. On that path, King's Tower, Arena of Heroes and the Beast Grounds unlock by Hunter rank (Vanguard Breaker, Ironblood Elite and Elite Veteran) instead of by Campaign stage.

How heroes grow

Hero rarity is the tier a hero starts at. Common heroes stay Common, Rare heroes top out at Legendary+, and only Elite heroes (112 of the 139) can climb all the way: through Legendary, Mythic and Ascended, then five Ascended stars, and from 5-star Ascended into the Temple of Transcendent. The six Awakened heroes (Solise, Maetria, Baden, and the Awakened versions of Talene, Brutus and Thane) start at Legendary and stop at 5-star Ascended.

Levels come from the Resonating Crystal, which opens at 2-4. Your five highest-level heroes sit on the Crystal Pentagram, and every hero you put in a Crystal slot is raised to the lowest level among those five, capped by what its tier allows. Once five heroes reach level 360, the Crystal itself can be levelled, and from then on it raises every hero in its slots together; only heroes that can reach Ascended can go past 360. In practice you level five heroes and everyone else follows, so a new Elite pulled in week two joins at your Crystal level straight away, limited only by the cap of its current tier.

Your first week

Fast Rewards open at 1-12, and you can claim them 2 times a day without VIP, each worth 2 hours of AFK income (player EXP excluded). AFK income itself comes from two places once Forked Fate opens at 4-20, the Campaign and Forked Fate, and the game adds them together; Forked Fate pays far more Hero's Essence, while the Campaign pays far more gold and, later on, more Hero EXP.

The daily routine that matters once everything is open: collect AFK rewards and both Fast Rewards, run the Bounty Board, spend your 5 free Arena challenges and 3 Guild Hunting attacks, push King's Tower and Forked Fate as far as your team holds, and use your Dream Realms challenges each session. Pick a guild early, both for Guild Hunting and because guild teammates give the 3% Duo Co-op AFK bonus.

If you also play Classic, open Hero Returns at 2-16. Logging into your Classic account once activates Targeted Summons in Companions based on your highest hero tiers there, and the event's Chronos Summon Tickets also come from daily quests (100 activity points), Noble Tavern summons and Arena of Heroes ranks. Each account can activate the Classic perks only once.