How To Free Your Hero

During some point in your Game of War career you almost certainly lose your Hero. All of the stress you have built up trying to protect your Hero will be released and replaced with a new stress of how to get him / her back.

Don't worry, if you have lost your hero, it's really not that bad. You'll only be set back a few days and lose a bit of Hero Experience.

Editors Note: This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. 

What happens to your hero will depend on what level you are at. The safest place to be is below level 14.

For the record, these recommendations are based on my own personal experience and experiences of others I've spoken. They may not work for you, but they are certainly worth a try!

Retrieving your Hero before it is Executed will require you to be extremely resourceful. There are a lot of creative tactics and wording you could use to persuade you capture. I'll be mentioning the most popular ones below.

Levels 1-9

Your hero cannot be taken yet Stay happy while you can.

Levels 10-14

Diplomacy is usually the best answer! Here are some options:

• Have one of your leaders message the enemy who has captured your Hero and request it to be returned politely. Requests including pity usually aren't accepted unless you claim you are a woman or child. It's true though.
• Tell you capture a funny joke or story and then ask them to release the hero. In my experience this is the most effective method by far. Even a hilarious threat can release your Hero.
• Take advantage of the fact that this game is virtual and make up fake stories or lie in order to get your Hero back. Remember that this a game "of War" and anything goes. If you haven't already been surprised by what people will do to win, soon you will be.

If you cannot manage to free your hero then here are some things you need to think about:

You Can't Collect Hero Experience

When your Hero is Captured you can no longer collect Hero XP. All the XP just gets wasted.

Everything you build, research, or craft gives you an automatic amount of hero XP, and building and researching gives you an extra collectible amount of Hero XP in the form of a quest reward. Therefore, if you want to be super conservative and not lose any Hero XP whatsoever, you need to stop all those things.

I didn’t mention Daily and Alliance quests because those replenish all the time and I think you should keep doing them. But, if you receive a Legendary or Epic quest I would recommend saving the rewards until you get your hero back because they give a lot of Experience.

Basically you want to try and refrain as much as possible from gathering any large amount of Hero XP that will be wasted.

Utilize Your Downtime

The first thing I bet you are all thinking right now is, “wow so basically I have to stop playing the game for 3 days.” More or less this is true, but I want to help you use this time wisely. For example, with some of this downtime you now have, here are some things you can do:

• Read the rest of my blog and learn how to not lose your hero 😉
• Do all the research you have been wanting to do on the game, but haven’t had time for.
  • Most people at this point in the game have played for a while but still have a lot questions. Go ask your teammates, search the internet, or make your own calculations to find the answers
  • Go look back at your hero skill tree and see if there is any optimizing you can do when you get him back.
  • Check if you have combined all your gems recently and look if you should make any new armor when your hero is back.
  • Maybe you should move Alliances because yours cannot help protect you, now you have time to use your diplomacy skills and knowledge to get into a bigger one.
  • Go read what the advantage of each Building you have is, maybe you didn’t realized its full potential (or lack of potential) when you first started the game.
  • Use this time to gather resources you need for your next upgrades

The greatest thing about being level 14 is your Hero doesn't actually get killed. Use your first Hero Capture as a lesson, and be extremely careful if you do decide to go to 15. Remember you need to always be protecting yourself.

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but always have your Gymnos maxed out ASAP for hero XP, and after level 15 for maximum Hero XP retention in the case of an execution.

In case you didn’t know, you can click the jail cell where your Hero picture was to see when he is set to be released. I would make sure you are online at this time, so your enemy does not recapture your Hero. Also, remember to plan ahead and start Researching, Building, and Crafting so that they will finish right when your Hero returns.

Lastly, do not attack anyone at this point, without your hero bonuses and gear, you will get massacred.

Levels 15-12

Before moving on with other strategies I want to address a common misunderstanding:

Your Hero will only lose experience if you do not resurrect it during the 7 day period after it is killed. The game gives you 7 days to resurrect your hero after being at only a few thousand gold. So if you are an active player, there's hardly any consequence to it get killed. However, if you stop playing Game of War and come back weeks later you will have to "Hire A New Hero" and at that point you will lose the percentage of Hero Experience corresponding to the level your Gymnos is. For Example, getting your hero executed at level 15 will take 25% of his XP away. You can never get that XP back

If you cannot politely or tactically reason with your capture or their leader for your hero back, and you cannot overpower that player with your alliance, here are my suggestions:

My Background

As mentioned before I was recently in a fight with the top Alliance in my Kingdom. Our top players were only at 3-6 mil Power and their weakest players were at 3-6 mil Power. Most of their players attacking us were 10-24 mil Power. We had no options but to use extreme defense and move a lot. Even with doing that it was hard not to lose Power and our Heroes due to their consistent Teleporting directly next to our Strongholds when our Shields dropped. Our Heroes were getting taken and executed left and right. Even though one of our members was dropping thousands of dollars on the game per week to protect us and help free our heroes, he could not protect us all the time.

Be Crafty When Trying To Free Your Hero

So, I want to discuss how one of my members got his hero back with only 20k T2 troops from someone with 24 mil power.

What my teammate did was have one of our Members who was absolutely zeroed scout the enemy when he though the enemy had sent out all his troops. What I mean when I say “zeroed” is that the scouter had no Hero, no Troops left, and no Resources left, so he had nothing to lose if the enemy attacked him.

You could also scout with a farm account.

When the enemy sent out all the Troops from his Stronghold to Gather, the one zeroed teammate who Scouted the enemy recognized minimal Wall Defenses and no Troop Defenses. At that point my teammate ported in and attacked the enemy to free his Hero. My teammate freed 3 Heroes this way and lost nothing. After the attack, my teammate Random Teleported away so he wouldn't get his Hero taken again.

Get The Enemy To Send His Hero Out

Basically try to think of creative ways to get the enemy to send out his Troops and then Scout, teleport in, and attack. Just don’t teleport in while he is attacking you, or his troops will immediately attack you when you try to port away. Try to get some of your other Members to taunt him or fake attack him, get him to start retaliating, and then Scout and attack. Usually, these big jerks often like to send all their Troops at you to show you how big their junk is. Make them pay!

The average power level and troop count of all players eight months or so ago when this article was written was about 20x lower, so these numbers don't make sense anymore. Now it will be harder to get a power player to send out all their Troops because they probably have millions. Although, now decent gear can beat a power player if their Hero is out on a March. So the strategy of tempting a medium sized players to send their Troops out and then attacking them without a Hero stays the same.

Something To Keep In Mind

Usually these guys will hop around attacking people eating all the good Resources near the forest or in the 4-5 level Resource areas. Scan around every so often and try to find one attacking 3 people with all his Troops out. Then Scout, port in, and attack. The most active these big guys will be is during the Kill Events, use this to your advantage in attacking them. Often, these guys will scour the map just before the event and plan their attacks.

Pro Tip: Remember you will get MUCH better responses from kind words than from threatening ones

How have you been able to free your hero? Post any screenshots and / or stories in the comments below!

Enjoy!

Navi