Turn Your Hero Into Hercules!

Hero Level is crucial to the overall strength of your Troops and Stronghold. Every Hero Level increase brings with it skill points that can greatly boost your stats for battle, production, researching, and building.

1. The Best Method Is Using 25% Hero Experience Boosts

Under Special Store items there is a 25% Hero Boost for 2,000 Gold. Recently, my Alliance leader Gemmy pointed out that it would be wise to save up Quest rewards for a few days, a week, or even more, and then use that Hero Boost. Every time you level up your Gymnos you gain a Bonus of Hero XP equal to +5% per level, so this Boost essentially makes your Gymnos 5 levels higher. If you look at the numbers it surprising how much the XP Boost adds up. Recently I Researched level 5 Infantry Attack (I think it was this one) and the reward was 180k Hero XP. With the +25% Boost you would get 45k more XP, or 225k XP total.

Pro Tip: "The 25% boost DOES NOT work on hero experience special items." - Kyle V.

Editors Note: This post was originally published in January 2015 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. 

Before using this boost I save up a bunch of Daily and Alliance Chances to use when I reach VIP level 7 and 8. You can easily save up 10 or more of each chance type and just auto complete them like a mad man when you reach VIP 8. I even save up Alliance points and buy additional Chances because of how much Hero XP I gain from doing this.

There's A Fine Line

There is somewhat of a line you should balance on when using this method. On one hand, you need to remember that leveling up your Hero will give you Research, Training, Construction, and Resource Boosts; so you don’t want to wait too long to use your Boost. On the other hand, you want to use your 2,000 Gold and receive the “maximum” return of Hero XP. This decision will come down to personal preference and patience.

Leveling Out Decision

A lot of my Alliance members have recently been waiting until they reach the level they want to "level out" there Stronghold on. "Leveling out" your Stronghold means to stop increasing your Stronghold level and start bringing up the levels of all your Buildings. Often people chose 9 or 14, the levels right before the consequences of losing your Hero goes up. Or, they chose level 15 so they can build T3 Troops. But, that's only if they are big spenders and ready to build tons of Troops and Traps to protect their Hero.

2. Power Leveling Via Packs

Packs will by far give you more Hero Experience than every other method. There are specific Hero Experience packs that are available every so often with hundreds of millions of Hero Experience in them. In addition to experience there will be a fair amount of Speed Ups to use for power leveling.

Once again, if you are going to be power leveling your account ie. upgrading everything as fast as possible after buying some packs, then you should be turning on your 25% Hero Experience item on to get increased experience for every upgrade. It may seem you like you are progressing through the Hero levels quickly at first, but the experience requirements grow exponentially as you go up.

If You Plan On Kingdom Jumping

I’m starting a new Stronghold right now and preparing it to Teleport into a new Kingdom soon. Since I have a lot of time before the new Kingdom pops up—about 1-2weeks—I am not going to collect any quest rewards until I have Built and Researched as much as I can. Once I have maxed out my Stronghold at lvl 5 I will use the Hero Boost and collect all my rewards. This will ensure my Hero is  higher than any other Hero in the new Kingdom from the very start.

Kingdom Jumping is an art, it requires preparation and patience, but can payoff tremendously in the long run. There are few rules you need to keep in mind though. Forgetting them can really ruin your week.

3. Explorer Dungeon Upgrades

Each time you upgrade the Explorer Dungeon you will get a permanent Hero XP Bonus just like the Gymnos gives. The Explorer Dungeon is far more expensive to upgrade than the Gymnos, but upgrading the Wonder Dungeon early can mean huge amount of Bonus XP over time.

The XP Bonus for each upgrade is below:

4. Killing A LOT of Troops

Every battle rewards Hero Experience, but certain battles reward more than others. Hero Experience from a battle is determine by two factors:

• Amount of Troops
• Tier Level of Troops

So to earn the most experience, participate in as many T4 Rallies as possible.

5. Killing Troops In Farm Accounts 

This method was invented by some true Game of War entrepreneurs. The strategy is to use farm accounts to train Troops and kill them off in mass quantities to earn Hero XP. Farm accounts are used only for farming Resources, but you need to log in to them to empty Resources at least a couple of times a day to keep them below Storehouse level. While you are in there, queue up Troops and Rally the ones you have to protect them. Once you have tons of Troops trained, send your farm's Hero to an encampment and attack your farm to get easy kills!

Once again the higher the level of Troops the more Experience you will receive, but remember that T1 Troops can be retrained instantly after being Hospitalized. So you can kill your T1 farm Troops over and over again as long as you have the Resources to retrain them!

Enjoy!

Navi