Faction Wars Guide For Heroes vs Hordes: How To Clear Stage 40

Faction Wars is a rotating event that switches through hero factions roughly every 2 days. A Faction is simply a group of similar heroes that buff each other up.

For each Faction War, you choose up to three heroes for that specific faction. Each hero gets two flags, which are used as currency to do a run. In addition to one flag, you'll also spend 10 energy to complete a run.

1. Conquest Stage: This is unique to Faction Wars. Your task is completing five different objectives within a five-minute time period, with each objective also timed at about 40 seconds to one minute. You must complete all of them to claim rewards (hero shards, run stones, skill book cores, skill book ultimates, and possible gold or silver keys).
2. Standard Survival Stage: Survive for five minutes like in Adventure or Guild events. In this variant, you'll have both blessings and curses (similar to Arena). Some curses can be really damaging (reduced damage or reduced area of effect), while the blessings give slight advantages.

Faction Wars has its own progression system. As you clear levels, they get harder, but that difficulty isn't impacted by anything outside of Faction Wars. The stages repeat on a five-stage cycle: conquest mode, then four standard survival stages, then another conquest stage.

I personally really enjoy the conquest stages because they offer different gameplay, requiring you to pay attention and move around your hero.

Faction Wars can get difficult relatively quickly, so you'll need to continue gearing up to progress. Eventually, clearing all the stages will require full Ascended gear and gets significantly easier with Mythic gear.

It's not uncommon to be unable to clear a stage if you've progressed too far. The nice thing is you can go back and clear easier stages to get the rewards.

For example, if you're stuck at stage 25, you could always go back to stage 20, which offers similar rewards but is potentially easier. You might even need to go five or six stages back for certain heroes that aren't as strong.

Ok, now on the unique gameplay of Faction Wars.

Gameplay for Survival & Conquest Modes

Survival mode is basic—like Guild events or Adventure Mode—so it doesn't need much explanation. You need to stay alive for 5 minutes as the horde comes at you.

Conquest mode, however, is different, so I'll explain how to optimize your runs. These can get particularly tricky at stages 35 and 40.

You will also really start to see which heroes are better than others in these conquest stages. Since the difficulty spikes are significant at each conquest stage, you can easily compare heroes' overall power relative to each. The easier the run, the stronger the hero.

Conquest Mode Tips

The first 40 seconds are crucial for killing as many horde as possible to level up. Use pet ultimates, work as a team, and clear horde.

After that, you get 40 seconds to find the base. A big arrow will point you in the direction you need to run. As you run towards the base, you'll see big flocks of enemies ("flocks of seagulls") crossing the screen that drop a ton of XP. Try to balance killing as many as possible while still reaching the base before time runs out. If you don't get there with time left, it's equivalent to dying, and you'll need to use a revive.

Once you reach the base, you'll have to stay in four particular areas for a set amount of time to take down the base defenses. Disruption is critical because you'll be standing still. About halfway through, an elite mob spawns. You'll have to kite it while still standing in those areas until the cannons rotate and destroy the base defenses.

Next, you'll have 40 seconds to take down the base. The best way is to stand as close as possible so all your weapons can hit it. If you have enough evasion, defense, and health, you can even stand in the literal center of the base to maximize damage. The base will do damage to you, but that damage reflects back onto the base, speeding up the process.

After that, you build your own base in the same spot (30-35 seconds). Several more elites spawn, which can make kiting tough. Disruption is crucial here to survive while you stand in that circle and build. Placing a high-level pet in the center helps significantly.

Finally, you have to survive the final 40 seconds once your base is up. Another elite spawns along with big waves of horde. Having solid AoE, like evolved Fire Orbs, can really help.

You'll be confined to a fenced area, so try to corner your pet to draft off its damage while avoiding the horde. Or stand between the base and a cannon to limit horde access to you.

Ok, so, let's prep for a Conquest stage run.

The fun part of Faction Wars is getting to play off-meta heroes, those second-tier guys you don't play elsewhere.

But, generally, the best heroes for this event have built-in disruption and high damage. This combo means the best heroes are the usual suspects:

• Clockwork Mage
• Artificer
• Werebeast
• Warlord
• Knight
• Monk
• Assassin
• Barbarian
• Blademaster
• Energy Mage
• Astral Mage
• Shield Warden
• Necromancer

The weaker heroes really show their weaknesses here:

Spirit Shaman, Tiner, Arcane Mage, Dark Ranger, Frost Mage, Fire Mage, Moon Master, Glacial Sentinel, etc. They have a hard time dealing enough damage in these high-level stages.

A lot of my hero strength recommendations come from seeing how they perform in high-level Faction Wars. I might fail the stage a couple of times with Frost Mage at stage 40, but Clockworkage will clear it with no failures.

For gear, you'll want max DPS:

Instant kill is disabled in Faction Wars, so Rogue Ring gets replaced with Wizard Ring. However, if you're freezing a lot with Ice Wand, Wizard Ring also provides maximum value, so it's a win-win.

Early in the game, use whatever strong gear you have available, even if it breaks the set bonus.

Which brings us to mid-run weapon priority.

When running Faction Wars, your weapon priority favors disruption over damage. That's why high innate damage heroes perform better. Their main weapon does the damage, and the others support it. With that in mind, you're looking at this priority:

• Main weapon
• Ice Wand (leave it unevolved)
• Boomerang (evolve this)
• Then other options like Bomb and Fire Orbs

If you have special weapons that offer slows or stuns, you can substitute those for Boomerang. Or if you have better damage ones like Mighty Borer or Pike, use those over Bomb.

Conquest stages are essentially a stat check on the hero's innate damage plus the amount of disruption they can generate to survive.

Tome Priority

On the tome front, priority is:

• Cooldown Tome
• Movement Tome
• Damage Tome
• Duplicator Tome
• Area Tome

Movement helps with kiting and is needed to evolve Boomerang and survive. Conquest stages involve a lot of movement, so it's handy.

Now that we're all prepped and ready for battle, let's walk through how to clear one of these conquest stages.

I go standard max DPS jewels. That means vulnerability, ultimate charge, ultimate duration, and then cooldown to 60%. The cooldown cap is 90%, so you want to run cooldown jewels to 60% and get another 30% from cooldown tome during the run. Cooldown is the biggest amp to damage in the game.

Ultimate Charge

|

Ultimate Duration

→

Vulnerability

→

Cooldown til 60%

→

Projectile (P)

→

Area

→

Explosion

These jewels setups are supposed to be boring unless you're end game, so don't merge your cooldown jewels!

Run cooldown jewels until it hits 60% in the detail window. You cap cooldown at 60% because you get 30% from cooldown tome. 90% is the max cooldown cap in Normal, Hard, Arena, Boss, and Guild modes.

Area has a soft cap on Area Of Effect when the inner ring of 4* Fire Orbs hits the side of the screen. But that's not really a worry until you have Heroic gear.

Late game players and in Projectile P, Projectile M, Area of Effect, and/or Explosion.

You have some leeway here to use much higher-level jewels instead of lower-level cooldown jewels. For example, I'd consider a level 7 Projectile (P) over a level 1 cooldown. You can always test which does more damage in your game by doing the same run with the same gear and weapons but changing the jewels.

Pets are particularly important in Faction Wars when you run weaker heroes. With that in mind, you'll want your highest damage pets.

Main Pet. Consider something like Crystalaurs, Hydro Basilisk, or the newly buffed Strom Gryphon. Pets are super important for the conquest stages, as weaker heroes like Frost Mage or Dark Ranger provide support for the pet. For these heroes, I draft off my pet like in racing.

There are two main reasons to run Faction Wars:

• To get hero shards and runestones to increase hero star levels. It's good to think of runestones as like a very small fraction of hero shards.
• And skill book cores and ultimates to increase the skill level of your heroes.

Increasing the star levels of your heroes not only directly makes them stronger but also unlocks global buffs at level 100, which makes all your other heroes stronger.

So every faction war is really a team effort to make all of your heroes stronger over time.

For your main hero, you'll be grinding this event for about a year to get them to star level 3. You can speed that up if you decide to buy a permanent boost.

Permanent Boosts

Very rarely do I talk about real money options for heroes vs hordes, but this boost and the pet expedition are the exceptions because they are permanent.

In fact, I didn't realize these boosts were permanent until I had already been playing for 8 months. Getting them early can significantly increase your event output.

For around $20, if you can identify your favorite hero, it can be a really good deal to get it very early on. Heroes like Clockworkage, Warlord, Shield Warden, Werebeast, Artificer, or any other top ten hero might be worth it.

A permanent boost allows you an extra run for each of your chosen heroes, plus additional hero shards, run stones, skill book cores, and skill book ultimates. The permanent boost only helps heroes within the same faction, which is where expenses can add up if you purchase boosts for multiple factions.

Strong factions include Mechanist League and Warriors Guild, which will have many strong heroes available in them. Getting it for one of these factions and focusing on them can be definitely worth it early in your adventure.

And to be fair, many people who are around VIP 4-5 (Who have spent about $100) recommend this as a good value, especially as it's permanent. Even the diamond boost at $50 can be worth it over the course of a year for your favorite hero.

That's my guide to Faction Wars. You'll want to grind it over time, and it might feel bad initially. But once you hit those star-level progressions, your heroes' damage and strength jump noticeably—especially at three stars.

Since each faction rotates every 10 days, you can expect around 36 runs a year, which is roughly 300 shards for one hero at max level. That means you can guarantee your 3* warlord after a year of faction wars.

And I'm Kolz. I'm a high-level HVH player. Feel free to ask questions here on Reddit or on Discord. I also have a Patreon where you can ask questions and get expedited responses, as well as early access to new content.

And remember—always do your adventure!