Adventure Guide For Heroes vs Hordes: Always Save The Hero!

What Is Adventure?

Once a month, you're tasked with saving a hero who has been imprisoned 40 stages away. It's your goal to rescue that hero within a 30-day time period, free them from their prison, and add them to your ranks of heroes.

Each stage in the game mode is a five-minute test of survival that offers rewards. There are no waves; it's just a five-minute countdown. And while you can't double the rewards at the end of a run, you can increase them by watching an ad or through the no-ad pack.

Clear all 40 stages within 30 days, and you get the ultimate reward: a new hero. It only costs 1,300 gems if you run the whole Adventure efficiently.

But how does one run it efficiently?

Here's How To Reach The Trapped Hero

You need to use Adventure tickets to start a stage. Utilizing all the tickets the game gives you is the cheapest way to get the hero.

So, here's how to get all the tickets you need for only 1,300 gems.

1. There are three tickets on the first day, plus one per day for the next 29 days, for a total of 32.

2. You get one free ticket from the merchant cart for 33.

3. You'll have to buy two discounted tickets for 150 gems each from two merchant carts encountered along the way. Those will get you to stage 35.

4. Finally, you have to buy five tickets at the full 200 gem cost to hit stage 40 on day 30.

That puts your total out-of-pocket at 1,300 gems over the course of the month, assuming you don't fail any stage along the way. If you fail, you have to pay an extra 200 gems to make up for that lost ticket. That means it's cheaper to use 2 gem revives in a run instead of buying a new ticket.

Free-to-play players get over 3,000 gems during the course of a month via all sources, so you should be able to reach this within your gem allotment.

And this is why you always do your adventures! Past adventure heroes include Warlord, Shield Warden, and my long-lost Necromancer, among many others.

And while that's the basic math for how to get the hero, here are some hard-won tips to make it easier.

Important Tips For Making Sure You Reach The Hero As Efficiently As Possible

Tip #1.The first important part to know is that to get to the adventure hero, you will have to spend the three tickets they give you on day one before midnight. You're limited to three tickets in your adventure inventory, so if you don't spend at least one ticket by midnight, you lose the daily refresh.

However, the early merchant cart also gives you a free ticket, so, in my experience, it's best to try to go ham on the first three to make sure your inventory has room.

The other option would be to do one and only one adventure ticket on day one and spend the rest on day two.

Tip #2. Always do your adventures each day! That way, you can clear any gates along the way or have some margin if you miss a day for whatever reason.

Tip #3. You can track your progress on the main adventure screen. The "Ends in" time plus your current stage is the easiest way to confirm your pace to reach the hero.

You will be rescuing the hero on the very last day, so make sure that you don't get sick on the last day and don't lose your phone because that would be very, very sad.

Adventure Stage Mechanics

Adventure scales off your progress in normal and hard mode up to and including 200 chapters into the game. It gets harder as you move up chapters.

For that reason, many people recommend that you only clear hard mode and normal in all noble gear. Your Noble gear, or what people often call your farming gear, focuses on maximizing end-of-chapter rewards, not damage or survivability, so it's weaker than your max damage gear.

Therefore, as you progress through normal and hard mode in noble gear, you can ALWAYS clear adventure by switching to your max damage gear. With this strategy, every stage will be relatively easy mode.

But that strategy is for pussies.

You should be like me and progress as fast as you can in normal and hard mode using your progress gear, and you just use pure skill to beat Adventure.

But with this more aggressive, fun strategy, you shouldn't be playing it at midnight, which I have done in the past. Adventure will be hard, so wait until mid-day, not when you're half asleep in bed at midnight.

And what exactly is standard progression gear? Let's go through Gear, Jewels, and Pets real quick.

Odds and Ends

There are some additional odds and ends to cover.

Each stage offers two sets of magnets and healing. You receive the first one at three minutes on the timer and the second one at 50 seconds on the timer. These magnets and healing will heal all your health back up and attract any experience orbs back to you.

Potions are another small perk of adventure I've never really used. The merchant cart, found at certain points along the path, will offer you potions, which give you things like rage or shields for short intervals. You can use these if you get caught at a hard part of a stage you can't clear otherwise, although I've never used them.

In addition to the Merchant cart, there are two other unique tiles that appear on the adventure map.

The first is a gate. The gate is an artificial stall on your progress that you must open. Every hour you can click on it to reduce the cooldown by two hours. Each gate usually takes 24 hours; however, the last gate takes 48. So make sure that you get to it with time left to spare.

The second is a shrine tile. Shrines offer you a weak free-to-play blessing or a stronger 200-gem blessing. I have always chosen the free-to-play blessing, as I am cheap. But you could invest in the stronger blessing if you're having trouble clearing content or if you're a madman like me and progressing as fast as you can through hard and normal modes.

While my whole guide is focused on getting to the hero, there are stages past their cage.

If you have gems to spare or decide to get the Hero Pass, you can get all the way to stage 60. At stage 60, you'll be offered three different chests:

1. one that has neutral stones
2. one that has hero shards for the event hero
3. And a third that has super tokens.

I recommend always selecting the hero shards. That guarantees that you'll get to the two-star adventure hero. However, I don't think it's worth the extra 4,000 gems, but to each his own.

Lastly, some tiles along the path offer a choice in which stage to progress through next. One usually has a blue border up top, and the other has a red border, which I didn't notice until reading the FAQs.

The blue border is generally easier, and the red border is harder, although the red border will give you better resources. You should always read the curses of both options and make an informed decision on which one you think you can clear.

Every stage has two blessings and two curses. They are the exact same blessings and curses you'll find in the Arena.

Some curses are much worse than others. Understanding the curses before you go into a run is important because they might impact how you change your gear or the hero you choose.

However, for the most part, you'll just want to play your strongest hero with your best gear along the way.

According to Bunni and Spirit Shaman, all heroes are the same.

But despite the fact they've spent $1000s of dollars in this game, they're wrong.

The best heroes in Adventure line up with the highest-damage heroes in the game. I've done a full guide on my overall favorite heroes and those largely apply here.

You're looking for heroes that do a ton of damage, ideally in an AoE, and that have some kind of disruption built into their kit. That makes Clockwork Mage, Artificer, Oracle, Monk, Assassin, and Barbarian some of the best heroes for this mode.

Early in the game, Knight is very good as he offers a lot of versatility. Or you can run something like Pirate Queen if you like her and her large amount of instant kill ability.

Later in the game, Warlord would be an excellent choice, although this mode will be on farm by the time he's viable. And then you're running Santa or Leprechaun.

So, the rule of thumb? Run your strongest hero in Adventure mode to save the imprisoned hero!

But what other rewards will you get along the way?

In terms of gear, you're going to want to build your max DPS gear for this event. So you're looking at Rogue Helm, Rogue Chest, Ranger Boots, Rogue Gloves, Rogue Necklace, and Rogue Ring.

Instant kill is not disabled in adventure mode, so that's why we go Rogue Ring over Wizard Ring.

Early in the game, you should favor higher-tier gear even if it doesn't align with this build. For example, an epic Wizard Helm is better than a rare rogue helm.

Additionally, early in the game, consider a full knight build built around Armor Tome and Vampire Aura. You can check out my Knight guide for a more detailed consideration of the Flag Pole build.

On the weapon side, you're looking for a maximum damage build.

Early in the game, that would be: Main Weapon > Dragon's Breath > Bomb > Fire Orbs > Ice Wand. I always like Ice Wand for extra survivability over more damage like chain lightning.

Later in the game, you're going Main Weapon > Bomb > Fire Orbs > Chain Lightning > +1. Again, I'm an Ice Wand guy, but Crossbow or a special weapon like Borer or Latternb also works well for that last spot.

Tomes to compliment the builds are Cooldown > Duplicator > Area > Damage > + 1. The +1 could be crit, XP, duration, or projectile speed based on the rest of your build and hero.

But who will be wearing all the gear and jewels while herding their pet? Your hero, of course! And here are some of the best for Adventure.

Jewels are very straightforward.

Max DPS jewels are standard for 95% of the game. So you're looking to equip Vulnerability, Ultimate Duration, Ultimate Charge, and then stack Cooldown until you hit 60% in the detail screen before adding Projectile P, Projectile M, or Area Effect.

For pets, you're running your max DPS pets.

That's typically your highest rarity main pet with your second- and third-highest rarity passive pets.

In my case, I run Hydro Basilisk for my main pet because he's level 400. I have a level 300 Dino and a level 300 Pyrokraken as passives. As I level up my Dino, he'll move over to my main pet, and Hydro Basilisk will move over into my passive pets.

Early in the game, you're looking at Pyrokraken as being your main pet, and then supplementing it with Emberpaw and something like a Striker or Cyclowl as passives.

However, you just generally want to use your strongest pets when trying to clear Adventure.

While the hero at the end is the big reward of adventure, you do get a bunch of quality resources as you clear stages. You'll get the standard set of hero orbs, dust, scrolls, and coins as you progress.

As a welcome perk, certain stages offer you hero shards for the Adventure hero. That way, when you reach the hero, you can complete star level one, gaining access to their ultimate.

You can see all the loot you've gathered via the Adventure Pass screen. You get a significant amount of dust, scrolls, orbs, and coins for all your troubles freeing this hero-although it does make you wonder how this hero got caught in a cage in the first place.

For those of us who are further into the game, we treat adventure more like a farming event. And while there's no coin rush at the end, you can maximize your coins in the run.

Saving up all the exp orbs for the 2nd magnet at 50s lets you fill up your screen with Coins and reminds me there are some other loose ends I need to tie up about this event.

If you have the cash for $20, the gold pass is actually not an awful buy, in my opinion. It does double all the loot you already gathered as you clear stages in adventure, and it'll let you get to the adventure hero sooner and get to the end so that you can get their hero shards. So, all in all, it's not an awful value for $20. The diamond pass is if you're rich and you can trade time for money.

And that's it! That's my guide to Adventure.

Adventure is still the best way to guarantee you can get a hero as a free-to-play player. You just have to remember to do it every day for the whole month and go ham on the first day.

Interestingly enough, "ham" doesn't translate into a bunch of foreign languages, so that means just go crazy on day one and clear out all your tickets.

I'm Kolz, a high-level HvH player. I am happy to answer questions here, on Reddit, or on Discord. And remember, ALWAYS DO YOUR ADVENTURES!