Beginner guide to the first weeks, feature unlocks and early spending

Almost every feature in AFK Arena opens when you clear a campaign stage, so your first weeks are about pushing the campaign with five heroes and putting every level into those five. Hero resets at the Rickety Cart cost nothing until you clear stage 4-36, which makes early mistakes free to undo, and 4-36 is also where the Resonating Crystal opens and starts copying your five heroes' level onto everyone else.

What unlocks when

The stage listed is the one you have to clear.

Chapter 1 has 12 stages, chapter 2 has 28, chapters 3 and 4 have 36, chapters 5 to 19 have 40 and every chapter from 20 on has 60.

Accounts that start on one of the newer story openings get a different early order, and on those a few of these move: the Resonating Crystal opens at 2-12 and the Temple of Ascension at 2-4, for example. If something isn't open at the stage above, the lock message on the feature tells you what your account needs.

Collect AFK Rewards and the free Fast Rewards

AFK Rewards pay gold, Hero EXP and Hero's Essence based on your campaign progress, and they stop filling after 12 hours. Collecting at least twice a day means you never sit at the cap. Clearing new stages raises the rate, which is the other reason the campaign comes first.

Fast Rewards hand over two hours of AFK Rewards on the spot. The first one each day is free and a second costs 50 diamonds. From VIP 3 you can buy a third for 80 diamonds; that's the daily limit at every VIP level.

Level five heroes, then let the crystal do the rest

Pick five heroes and put all your gold, Hero EXP and Hero's Essence into them. Hero's Essence is paid only at certain levels, and the early ones are cheap: 10 at level 10, 40 at 20, 100 at 40, 250 at 60 and 500 at 80. Level 100 is the first wall at 1,200 Essence, and it's also where an Elite hero has to be ascended to Elite+ before it can go further. Getting one hero from 1 to 100 costs 1,953,229 gold, 1,088,586 Hero EXP and 900 Essence.

Once you clear 4-36, the Resonating Crystal puts your five highest-level heroes on its pentagram, and every hero you put in a crystal slot is raised to the level of the lowest of those five. Slotted heroes can even go past the cap of their current ascension tier, up to the highest tier they could ever reach (160 for a Rare hero, 100 for a Common one), so a new Elite hero is usable the moment it lands in a slot.

You start with two slots. AFK Rewards begin dropping Invigorating Essence once you reach chapter 5, and the first slots cost 200, 250 and 300 of it. Taking a hero out of a slot puts the slot on a 24-hour cooldown, so don't shuffle slots casually.

Use the free resets before 4-36

The Rickety Cart can reset a hero, which drops it to level 1 and returns every bit of gold, Hero EXP and Essence spent on its levels, plus its gear. Resets are free until you clear stage 4-36 and cost 20 diamonds per hero after that.

That makes the first four chapters a free trial. If a hero you leveled stops pulling its weight, or a better one shows up from the Tavern, reset the old one and move everything over. Clearing 4-36 opens the crystal at the same moment resets start costing, so try to have your five settled by then: those are the heroes the crystal will copy, and the ones you'll be ascending.

Ascending your first heroes

The Temple of Ascension opens at 1-12. Elite heroes from Lightbearers, Maulers, Wilders and Graveborn need copies of themselves plus fodder heroes from the same faction:

Because the fodder has to match the faction, your duplicates are worth more when your main heroes share factions. A spare Elite Wilder can only feed a Wilder. Celestials and Hypogeans use only copies of themselves, so they never compete with your main heroes for fodder.

Every Elite hero except Dimensionals also pays Flawless Droplets, the Elder Tree currency, the first time that hero reaches each tier: 1 at Elite, 1 at Elite+, 4 at Legendary, 2 at Legendary+, 8 at Mythic and 8 at Mythic+. A duplicate of a hero that already reached a tier doesn't pay for it again.

Common heroes can't be ascended. Retire them at the Rickety Cart for 160 Hero Coins and 5 Hero's Essence each; Hero Coins buy heroes at the Barracks.

Spending diamonds

The Noble Tavern charges 300 diamonds or one Common Hero Scroll per pull, and 2,700 diamonds or ten scrolls for a ten-pull, so ten-pulls with diamonds are 10% cheaper. Each pull has a 4.61% chance of an Elite hero, 43.6% of a Rare and 51.69% of a Common, which works out to just under half an Elite hero per ten-pull on average.

The early diamond sinks side by side:

Crystal slots also come from Invigorating Essence, which AFK Rewards hand out for free from chapter 5, so diamonds there only buy time. Fast Rewards turn 50 or 80 diamonds into two hours of AFK Rewards, and the Tavern is the only item on the list that adds heroes.