Hero’s Hour: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide – Basics, Features and Tips

by Lordtoto01 / Game Guides, General Guides, Tips & Tricks / 01 Mar 2022

Hero’s Hour is a fast-paced RTS (in Combat), TBS, fantasy, sandbox, auto-battler that immerses you in a chaotic battle frenzy. You start with a single hero, who gets stronger with each battle. The goal is to recruit more heroes and minions into your army and become strong enough to crush all of your enemies.

The adventure gaming subset remained silent for quite some years, and disappointing titles such as King’s Bounty 2 and the seventh installment of Might and Magic did little to redeem the genre. Hero’s Hour offers a fresh take on the RTS genre with its unique tactical nuances. However, the game’s overly complex nature can easily intimidate newcomers, which is why we’ve put together this handy guide to help you get started.

The objective of Hero’s Hour

The goal of the game is to defeat all other players on the map. There is a local co-op mode where you can play with up to four friends or with the AI if no one else is available.

During the early game, you defeat random enemy camps (creeps) to level up your hero & army and prepare yourself for the final clash.

The game is divided into two sections. The first is the turn-based element, in which you travel around the map using the move points available. When you approach an enemy, the auto-battler mode activates.

Plan ahead because the cost of unlocking new nodes and upgrading existing troops rises dramatically with each upgrade.

Understanding your Heroes

Each hero has six stats: Attack, Defense, Knowledge, Spellpower, Luck, and Morale.

Attack – Attack increases the damage dealt by creatures by 3% per level.

Defense – Increases creature health by 3% per level.

Knowledge – Increases max mana by 10 and mana regeneration by 1 per level.

Spellpower – Increase the effectiveness of all hero spells by 5% and reduce spell cooldown by 4% per level.

Luck – Grants a 4% chance per level to each creature to inflict luck strikes (deals 3x damage in a 4x larger area with knock-back).

Morale – Grants your creatures a 1.5% chance per level every second to enter high morale, which grants them 2x movement speed and 2x attack speed for 10 seconds.

There are two groups of heroes in each faction, each containing three heroes.

All three heroes of the same group share a common skill. For instance, the two groups of the Order faction are Priest and General, and all priests have the Blessing skill while all generals have the Rallying skill.

A brief overview of all Hero’s Hour Factions

Faction	Race	Exclusive Perks	Difficulty (Easy, Moderate, Difficult)
Order	Human	Conscription Centre, Hostler, Counting House	Easy
Wild	Elves	Elemental Gate, Grizzly Den, Symbiotic Grove	Difficult
Arcane	Human	Arcane Spire, Aether Forge, Ziggurat	Moderate
Decay	Undead	Throne of the Dead, Soul Transmuter, Tomb of Silence	Easy
Pyre	Human	Infernal Gate, Chamber of Rituals, Everburning Flame	Difficult
Horde	Goblin	Nomad Hall, Sky Pillar, Banner of Champions	Easy
Enclave	Lizardfolk	Slithering Temple, Incubation Chamber, Deep Tunnels	Moderate
Lament	Troglodytes	Idol of Shadows, Monolith, Slave Pens	Difficult
Tide	Lotlians	Temple of Tides, Pearl Market, Pearl Shrine	Easy
Earthen	Dwarves	Rune Forge, Monument of War, Temple of War	Difficult
Pillar	Human	Tea House, Pillars of Essence, Pagoda of Heavens	Difficult

What are resources, and how to get them?

There are six in-game resources: Ore, Wood, Mercury, Crystal, and Sulphur.

The most common resources are ore and wood, which you can get two of each day once you’ve taken control of the main building.

The Saw Mill and the Ore Quarry supply you with two woods and two ores each day.

Mercury, crystal, and sulfur are harder to get since you get one each day.

Alchemy Lab and Sulphur Mine give you one mercury and one sulfur per day.

While you are traveling, you can also find resources in random spots on the map.

Understanding the building planner

The building planner is a complex pathway connecting every unlockable unit and in-game building.

Each pathway leads to a node (can be an unlockable building/unit), and in order to reach the final building/unit, you must first unlock all of the others.

Every time you start a new game, the Building Planner is reshuffled. Even if you choose the same hero each time, the paths to specific buildings and the requirements for unlocking them change.

The only things that remain constant are the Gold gain (first column), Fort (third column), the Infirmary (any column other than the first and third), nodes, and the guild of mages.

The Gold gain node provides a daily gold income boost. Fort improves your weekly unit ratio, and the infirmary node saves half of your main faction’s dead units (the one you started the game with).

You can build only one structure every day, and you can do it either by using the Building Planner or by manually placing the structures on the map.

Each structure grants you bonuses or special abilities. For instance, the Ziggurat restores two mana to each hero per turn and restores all mana to a hero who stops in town.

Other structures such as the Guild of Mages unlock four spells that heroes can use in battles.

Each faction has its own set of buildings that are inaccessible to others. All factions, however, have an Infirmary, Tavern, Mages Guild, and a Marketplace.

How to buy units in Hero’s Hour?

Not all units are unlocked in the beginning. To get to higher-tier units, you’ll need to unlock nodes in the building planner.

Once the specific building has been unlocked, head over to the Tavern to purchase/upgrade that unit.

You cannot buy unlimited units. Once you’ve reached the limit, you’ll have to wait a week for the shop to replenish units.

Some nodes unlock Dual Units, which means that each week only one of the two units is available. When you unlock the Hall of Shaping, for example, you gain access to both the Golem and the Ice Sculptor, but you can only choose one of them.

If you’ve selected the Golem, the Sculptor becomes unavailable for that week, and you’ll have to wait until the Tavern refreshes.

So, always buy all the units you’ve selected before switching to another because selecting Ice Sculptor when you have more than one Golem left will reset your Golem count to zero.

The upgrade button below each unit icon in the Tavern ONLY upgrades the units you already have. It won’t automatically upgrade any future bought units.

Miscellaneous Tips for Hero’s Hour

After combat, the Infirmary saves half of your dead units belonging to this faction (building faction) and adds them to the town’s garrison. Only one Infirmary can be active per faction. However, additional infirmaries (for the same faction) raise the percentage of saved units by 10% up to a total of 80%.

Get a second hero as soon as possible. You’ll mainly need them to scout the region, searching for loot and easily killable monster hordes.

You get a free passive for your hometown after every five upgrades.

Maphacking is a nifty trick that allows your hero to automatically find their way around the map. Simply choose a hero and right-click where you want to go, and the hero will magically map out a path on how to get there.

A red arrow in your path means there is a fight on the way.

You can convert the enemy castle to your faction, but it’s never a good idea, as you can benefit from the exclusive building perks their factions have access to.

Use the Skirmish mode to examine the interactions between different units.

Parting thoughts

Hero’s Hour is not easy to learn, and it will get more complicated as new content is added to the game. However, it is gratifying once you sneak past the initial learning curve and dive into the in-depth mechanics. If you’ve found this guide useful, please consider leaving a comment to let us know what you liked and what other games you’d like us to cover in the future.

Lordtoto01

I’ve loved games ever since I was a child. I like playing them and sharing my feelings with other like-minded individuals. I started off writing as a hobby, and a few years later, my love for games is still as lively as ever and I intend to spread it throughout the gaming community.
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