Farming Guide For Heroes vs Hordes: How To Optimize Your Farming

At a certain point in the game, you're going to get stuck on a chapter. Even wearing your best gear, you won't be able to do enough damage to outlast the horde.

At this point, you need to go back to a previous chapter and continuously beat it to level up your roster.

You can beat any chapter in Heroes vs. Hordes as many times as you want, as long as you have the energy to clear it. As I progressed, it wasn't uncommon to spend three to seven days farming the chapter over and over again to become strong enough to continue progressing.

Every time you beat the chapter, you're rewarded with resources. The goal of farming is to collect those resources in order to hit better damage breakpoints, like higher-tier gear, hero level, or talent level. That increased power will then let you start clearing new chapters again.

There are five different resources you can farm:

1. Coins
2. Keys (to increase your gear level)
3. Hero Orbs to level up your heroes
4. dust to get better Jewels
5. And scrolls to help improve gear after you hit a new tier

Early in the game, all of these resources are valuable. You want to try and level up your Talents with Coins, gear with Keys, and Heroes with Orbs. Dust will collect over time and give you more access to Jewels (although your Jewels are limited early on). Scrolls collect in the background to level up your gear after you hit higher tiers.

If you need Orbs or Dust via farming, you can clear the highest possible HM stage you can using DPS gear.

For the remainder of this guide, I'll focus on the two main aspects of farming: Keys and Coins.

The more important of which is keys because they are slightly harder to get and help you scale up your gear. Which is why you farm hard mode.

Hard Mode vs. Normal Mode

Hard mode has a built-in chance at both Silver Keys and Gold Keys.

Normal mode does not provide any key chance by default, while Hard mode gives you a 25% Silver Key chance and a 5% Gold Key chance on top of whatever your gear or talents provide.

You turn those keys into better gear in the Shop.

That's why people usually recommend clearing the highest Hard mode level you can—because you get an additional, incredibly valuable, key chance.

And while keys are great, you also want to collect as many coins as you can. You do that early in the game through Coin Rush.

Coin Rush

Coin Rush comes at the end of a run. It lets you gain additional Coins for surviving the horde onslaught. It lasts five minutes and gives you an increasing number of coins the longer you live.

Later in the game, you will easily be able to clear coin rush. However, early in the game, it's a different story. Finding heroes and chapters to stay alive longer can significantly increase your coin totals.

As it turns out, certain chapters have ways to make surviving longer into coin rush, making them better to farm. In fact, there are actually specific chapters you should try to farm.

Best Chapters to Farm

Chapters early in the game have spots that make it easier to clear Coin Rush.

Hard Mode 1 is a great place to farm early in the game, mid-game, and late-game. It's only 3 minutes long but has the extra key chance. So throw any unused energy at the end of the day into HM1 if you have the time.

Some early good levels include:

• Hard mode 21 & 25 in Frosty Hills
• Hard mode 31 & 33 in The Secret Cemetery
• Hard mode 41 & 45 in Fire Fields

Hard Mode 45 is famous for Coin Rush because you can nestle yourself into a crescent-shaped stone that prevents hordes from attacking one side, making it easier to survive longer and earn more coins.

After Hard Mode 45, other notable chapters include:

• Hard mode 61 & 65 in Forgotten Citadel
• Hard mode 66 & 69 in The Jungle
• Hard mode 71 & 73 in Elemental Towers
• Hard mode 76 & 80 in Ancient Lands
• Hard mode 81 & 85 in The Library (very famous farming chapter)

The Library is famous because horde only attack from the north and south, and you can find a small pile of books near a pentagram that forces enemies to come from just one direction. This positioning makes survival (especially during Coin Rush) much easier and is why most everyone spent a long time farming here. To make things even better, The Library is when Coin Rush plateaus, meaning there's no benefit to coin rush at higher stages.

However, later chapters have higher horde and elite density during waves. That means more enemies appear for you to kill, which grants more experience, which ultimately leads to more coins at the end of a run.

As you continue to progress, Viking Ship is a later-stage setup similar to The Library with north and south horde spawns. Orc Outpost at 125 is also a solid farming chapter.

But the big jump is Toxic Jungle at Hard mode 140. Late-game players often farm Toxic Jungle for its density and high elite spawn rate. It's one of the highest mob densities in the game, translating into tons of experience and more chests from elites (which means more coins when you exceed your experience cap). This chapter also happens to be where heroes in all Legendary Noble gear can still clear content on Auto Mode. Past that, and even here, you might need Ascended Gear to totally AFK.

For late, late, late gamers, the last great Hard mode AFK spot for farming is Candyland at Hard mode 275, but it's very difficult. You'll likely need at least full Heroic gear to do it comfortably on Auto Mode. I cannot clear it with Santa in full mythic while actively playing.

Special Farming Strategies

Farming Keys

If you just want to maximize your Keys, farm Hard mode 1. It's super short—one minute per run if you actively play and pick weapons quickly, or still pretty quick on Auto Mode. You skip Coin Rush entirely. You won't get many Coins, Dust, or Orbs, but you'll rack up Keys. Sometimes, if I have leftover Energy at the end of the day, I'll just burn it all on Hard mode 1 to convert Energy into Keys, running full Noble gear with high-level Key Jewels.

Farming Coins

The single best way to farm Coins is technically clearing the hardest Nightmare mode chapter you can because Nightmare mode offers the same key chance as Hard mode but a ton more Coins.

The downside is that Nightmare mode is much harder, so you'll have to actively play instead of relying on AFK Auto Mode. You can earn millions more Coins per run if you can manage it, but it's time-consuming.

The second best way is Leprechaun, with a coin-focused build in the highest Hard mode you can comfortably clear with full Noble gear. You'll net more Coins per run, especially if you can survive and do a decent Coin Rush at the end.

Or otherwise, swap out all of your key jewels for coin jewels to make sure to max your coins.

Using Auto Mode

You unlock Auto Mode at certain VIP levels. At VIP level 4, you can Auto Mode Normal, and at VIP level 5, you can Auto Mode Hard. Auto Mode is a huge game-changer for farming because you can step away and let the game grind for you. However, if you only have Auto for Normal mode, I suggest you still try to do Hard mode manually because of that 25% Silver Key and 5% Gold Key chance.

Advanced Farming Mechanics and Philosophy

This section has been adapted from a message I received from ᴴᴴSquirrel from HeadHunters. He's one of the top 60 players in the game as of this writing.

HM1 Farming

HM1 farming should be reserved for only when a player is short on time and needs to dump energy. Kolz Note: I recommend doing it at the end of the night before going to sleep with any excess energy.

Any other time, you're giving up dust, orbs, and coins just purely to get keys a little faster, and that's worse for the long game. Rushing to heroic gear in lieu of everything else won't get one very far. You need to farm coins for talents and hero orbs to level heroes, particularly after patch 3.4.0.

Don't Overfarm Coins

Leppy is the best coin farmer. Much like the above, I think farming for only coins has its place, but in the end, it stifles the long game. There's almost no use for coins once you cap your talents, after which point that coin balance will just continue to rise... at least until they add the next tier of talents someday.

Kolz Note: Coins are also a big part of getting pets from level 300 to 500. You can always use more coins (to a point), but it's more efficient to farm pure coins in NMM after you've hit other damage breakpoints.

Squirrell's Philosophy - The Game is a Grind

I followed the philosophy I mentioned above, predominantly farming with Santa in key gear on the highest efficient level I could afk (HM 140). I completed my heroic gear just about one month before I capped my talents.

I also used Santa in as many runs and events as possible to maximize my key chance.

Detailed Santa Farming

Arena. Put your key gear on and go as far as you can with Santa.

You won't get double keys like farming HM, but I could consistently clear arena 17 with Santa in this setup, which adds up to a significant amount of keys over time.

You'll kinda know how far you can go when you make it through, but barely and had to use your free revive. After that, switch to your big guns to finish out the arena. I averaged about 14 silver and five gold keys per week doing this.

Adventure. We all generally know that Adventure scales in difficulty with a player's progress up to 200NM/200HM. Purposely keeping your scaling low so adventure is easier, or once your power outpaces the cap on the progression, scaling really makes adventure another great source for Santa to grab easy keys.

We're doing them anyway ("Always do your adventure!!!"), so why not grab free keys? At some point, the scaling will let you AFK most of Adventure with him as well.

Dungeon. Before the changes to the Dungeon, I'd spend my tickets grabbing some keys with Santa. This is different now with the rework, but players should use Santa with as much key gear and dust gear as possible for each run.

Mid Level Farming Considerations

Other things to consider for mid-level player-level farming (by which I mean still striving toward heroic gear and talent cap):

Maximize gold in all modes. If content is easily passed, then you do not have to evo your weapons. 140 stays the best spot for a long time because of mob density. At some point, you can kill everything, including elites, the moment they enter the screen with just basic weapons.

Especially if you pick all ranged weapons, you won't kill things any faster with evolved versions.

In these cases, you can pick tomes that don't match your weapons, and the exp you'd spend evolving the weapon now becomes more gold. My favorite combo for this is Santa, crossbow, bomb, dagger of light, borer, xp, coin, crit, duplicator, and cooldown.

Not running ranger chest in this, obviously, so you won't always get it, but very few things will actually hurt your coin intake. If I didn't get crossbow, I'd aim at projectile speed instead of cooldown. If I didn't get borer, grabbing damage tome is great.

Very easy to pivot.

Maximizing gold in Adventure requires planning. Because the game stops generating experience after you reach all of your levels at max, it generally doesn't let you generate gold from the time left in the node after that point.

However, if you wait until the last possible moment before you hit that point, you can harvest all the exp at once, and the excess xp will still be converted to coins. So, get your weapon skills up until you are 5-8 short of maxing them, then use a magnet at the last moment.

When there's 50 seconds left in the stage, the magnet buff will show up. Then click it when it's down to 1s on the timer.

None of this will result in a lot of coins, but it's also not hard to do, and everything adds up, especially given the time scale of this game. 2-4 million each time with the key gear I had on using Santa.

Faction Wars. Faction Wars is less effective at generating coins, but any time a hero is clearing it easily, skipping the use of evolved weapons. That will give you a chance at more coins via the same method described above.

Bavarian / Pumpkin Shade Farming

I put those two together because of the synergy.

Bavarian by himself at Level 140 will add 20% to the orbs harvested from any given source (5% faction @ 90, 15% at 140). We expect his forge to increase that further someday when that is released.

Then, if you get pumpkin shade to 90, this adds another 50% (!!) Orbs. The meta will always need orbs unless someone maximized by whaling, so this is actually pretty huge. My current stats page lists me at 88% extra orbs with Bavarianin lvl 125 in key gear (and PS 140), so once I bump him to 140 I'll be doubling the orbs from any source I use him in

Pumpkin Shade also gives that 50% bonus to the entire faction, so getting that asap can only help the long game for farming, even if using others besides Bavarian like Santa.

I worded that as 'any source', because, unlike Santa, who adds a chance for a drop at the end of the node, Bavarian enhances what you get at the end reward by the percentage. Anything rewarding orbs between normal and HM, AND Adventure.

These will all add up considerably over time.

I hope these things helped to broaden some of your advanced farming concepts.

I still farm in key gear... eventually, we're going to need three sets of heroic gear imo.

Cheers to efficient farming!

ᴴᴴSquirrel in game with Headhunters.

Two heroes stand out as top-tier farmers, in my opinion:

1. Santa

Santa's bonus to Gold Key chance is unrivaled. A 5% additional gold key chance at higher Star levels with a 1% faction bonus and another 1% from weapon forging may sound small, but it can be a 38% to literally doubling or tripling your overall increase to get a Gold Key.

Since Gold Keys are six times as valuable as Silver Keys, this bonus can save you literally hundreds of runs in the long term, speeding up gear progression from Mythic to Heroic.

Additionally, Santa's coin bonus in star levels is nothing to sneeze at.

2. Leprechaun

And at number 2 is Leprechaun. Leppy has a unique kit that converts hordes into coins with his cauldrons and skills. This can significantly boost your Coin gains for a single run.

His forge and global bonuses also benefit coin collection, making him the best if you're only farming for coins. You can do this in Hard mode (or even Nightmare mode if you can manage), using full Noble gear and focusing on building out Leprechaun's coin-oriented skills.

At this point, let me say, that Leprechaun is a unique hero with a unique farming build. It deserves its own video, so I won't go into the details here, but I'll add a link in the description to his build.

Eveyone Else

The other "best heroes" for farming are simply whichever heroes can get to the end of coin rush and/or clear the highest hard mode chapter while you use Experience Tome & Coin Tome. Early in the game, Knight is great for surviving Coin Rush in Fire Fields HM45 or The Library (HM85) because of his tankiness.

Over time, the better heroes include Clockwork Mage, Artificer, Oracle, Werebeast, Monk, or any generally strong hero. With some small expectations, there's no real difference in resource gathering outside of the top two, so it's just about easily clearing the content.

Farming gear is incredibly straightforward: it's all about extra resource rewards at the end of a run.

The best gear for farming is all Noble: Noble Helm, Noble Chest, Noble Boots, Noble Gloves, Noble Necklace, and Noble Ring. Noble gear benefits include additional chances for Keys, extra Coins, extra experience, plus bonuses to Scrolls, Dust, and Orbs.

Because Noble Gear is focused on farming bonuses, it won't improve your damage at all. You won't be able to clear your highest current levels with it, so you'll have to go back and redo older chapters.

But remember, the most important part of farming is not dying. So keep that in mind as you select your gear and jewels.

Weapons are interesting for farming because there are three main ways to farm:

1. You can actively do the first wave and pick optimal weapons for maximum gains, then just AFK as best you can.
2. If you have VIP level 4/5 or higher, you can simply click Auto Mode and forget about it, letting the game figure out how to beat the stage for you.
3. Or mix the two - you can actively do the first wave and pick optimal weapons for maximum gains, then click Auto Mode.

The optimal weapons for farming typically are Coin Tome and Experience Tome, followed by Bomb, Fire Orb, Chain Lightning, then Cooldown Tome, Area Tome, and Duplicator Tome. You can fill out your last weapon with Crossbow or Ice Wand.

This setup gives you maximum damage while also combining the increased coin rewards from Coin Tome and Experience Tome.

Remember, once you hit the level cap in a run (usually around level 35 to 40), any additional levels give you Coins. Experience Tome helps boost you to extra levels, so you can think of any general XP boost as a coin boost.

Coin Tome increases the amount of Coins you get at the end of your run. The rest of your weapon and tome choices maximize evolutions and damage so you can survive the horde.

If you find that you're dying when afking, consider dropping Experience Tome for another damage tome (like Damage Tome) to ensure you can clear the waves. The big rule with farming is don't die. Dying wastes time and energy. It's usually better to complete a run with fewer total coins gained than to die halfway and get nothing.

Early in the game, you also want to survive coin rush. So it might be better to drop the experience tome and just go damage tome so you can survive longer without worry.