This is my first time writting a guide, so any form of criticism or suggestion is welcomed.
Changelogs:
- 27/12/16-> Started the guide, took me a long time to get used to the forum tool, (notice that this post was edited multiple times, had problems with the source code).
- 28/12/16-> Added in advice on buying gold with gems in the "Early game Hero" section. Added in Suggested 4 star warrior heroes to have and use.
First of all, let us discuss on the types of heroes available in the game.
Hero Types:
1) Valiants
Valiants are the strongest (supposedly) heroes available in the game. They come with great stats and powerful abilities , and are all 5 star potential. You would draw into a random Valiant at the start of the game. If you so desire, you could try to re-roll your account for the Valiant that you desire, along with its optimal faith.
In the game however, note that Valiants are very very very hard to be acquired in normal summons. So thank RNG-sus if you somehow drew them with your 3-5 Stars normal summons. Valiant force however is a very generous game, and there are a few ways you could easily get them.
a) Through daily login bonus- Arguably the easiest way of them all. You get them on the 28th day as a login bonus! Its as simple as that!
b) Through Arena Points- Arena points-aka blood points are earned when you win an arena battle, and you can purchase a Valiant ticket once you hit 6000 blood points! Not too bad but definitely take some time to acquire (and it is arguably the best prize in the Arena Merchant). As a new player however , you wont be getting your valiant ticket anytime soon as the arena is ruthless and filled with powerful players. So be patient, you will get that ticket once you have assembled a good team
Note that if you have acquired a valiant by normal means, they are a good addition to your team regardless of their faith. For a guide on which class/job that you might want to go for your valiants, i highly recommend the detailed analysis done by Nightingale (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=655) . It is really good and should help you choose which and what job to go for.
2) Normal Heroes
Normal heroes of the game and though they might be a bit weaker than valiants (stats-wise anwyay) they have great potential and skills, in which they might even out-perform the valiants of the same job. Note however, unlike valiants, most of the normal heroes comes with a cap on their potential (the amount of stars you see on them, we'll get to this later) and wont be able to be upgraded to their 5 star forms. This really limits their potential, so you would want to be on the look out for heroes that have 5 star potential. Note that arena heroes are pretty much normal heroes that you can buy with blood points.
3) Event Heroes
Event heroes are normal heroes, but with an exception. These heroes gets powerful boosts to their stats during the duration of their event, and are a must-have if you would like to progress further into the event that they starred in (unless of course, you have a very powerful team). Out of the event however, these guys are pretty much your normal heroes.
Hero Information Breakdown
Here is a short briefing on how to read information regarding your hero. I shall use my Faye as an example in this section.
1) Max Potential and Current job level:These are indicated by the number of stars that can be found directly under the portrait of the character which as you proceed down your job level, the stars get filled up. Faye is a 5 star potential character and is currently at her 5th job level and as such you see 5 stars which are fully filled to the brim. You would notice that some characters only has 3 or 4 stars. This means that the character only has a max job level up to that number of stars and as such cannot progress beyond that. Characters with only 3 stars are termed as "fodders" and are used to be fed to your higher potential heroes( you could use them at the start of your game if you lack a good hero, but it is not recommended to upgrade/train them as that would waste valuable fodder and gold. Note that even though 4 star heroes will not have the potential of a 5 star hero, they are nonetheless very useful early game, and arguably as good as 5 star heroes when limit break and have low skill cool-down time. So dont go feeding them off just yet!
2) Class:Notice the blue shield icon indicates the class of the hero. In this case, Faye is a defender and her class is indicated in terms of the blue shield.
Class types available are :
a) Defender- Indicated by a blue shield icon. Heroes from this class have high defensive capabilities and also high HP. They are the tankers of this game and can soak up a lot of damage. They also possess useful auras that could buff and support their ally's survivability.
b) Archer- Indicated by the green arrow icon. Heroes from this class have low defensive capabilites but have decent attack. They provide ranged fire and support to your team, and carry useful skills and aura for support.
c) Warrior- Indicated by the red sword icon. Heroes from this class are melee type heroes with low defense, average HP but has a powerful attack. They are your damage dealers and glass cannons in this game. , but beware for they die very fast when unsupported.
d) Healer- Indicated by a pink cross icon. Heroes from this class has low damage and defensive capabilities but they are capable to healing your units. You could live without them, but they are essential at later stages of the game.
e) Mystic- Indicated by an orange ying-yang icon. Heroes from this class are your typical RPG mages.They have decent attack and are capable to provide an array of support aura or deliver powerful attacks] with their spells, with added utilities to boot but are so-very squishy. Keep them at the back where they are safe from enemies.
f) Shadow- indicated by the purple mask icon. They are basically your rogue and thief class in this game. Heroes from this class are battlefield disruptors, with skills and abilities that stun, silences, lower defences,swap places and so on towards their enemies.Their attack stats are decent but they come with high crit stat which means their normal attackscan deliver critical hits easily.
3)Faith: Indicated by the right side of the bracket which indicates Faye's name and class . Mine is an explosion like sign. Basically faith affects a little on your character stat growth. I wont go into much details here as they usually only matter at later stages but i would reccomend the excellent guide from Hayzen (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1677#p10807). Do read up on it.
4) Level: Indicates the current level of your hero. The level cap for heroes based on their stars are as follows:
Level 3: 20
Level 4: 25
Level 5: 30
Once you have reached the max level, you can go click on the "train" tab and sacrifice heroes till your training bar is full. After that, click on the upgrade button and your hero will be upgraded and its level shall be reset back to 1. You then have to repeat the process again if you were to further upgrade your hero
5)Statistics : Those are the bunch of numbers at the lower portion of the profile. These stats will determine everything about your hero's potential. Though we dont have much info on how those stats are reflected in-game, a simple breakdown are as follows:
a) Atk: The attack stats, it determine how much damage your normal attack gives out. Every hero and class (even mages) normal attack is governed by this stat.
b) Def: The defense stats, it determines how much damage resistance your character has. The lesser your defense, the more damage you would take from a foe. Note that this only apply to damage that you receive from normal attacks and not skill based damage!
c) Hp: Your hit points, the amount of damage your hero can take before being knocked out.
d) Crit: Crit points, this determines the percentage of your normal attacks that would inflict a critical hit.
e) Mag: Determines your spell/skill damage resistance, though skills from your mystic and healers rely on this stat as well.
Skills and Aura
In valiant force, there are only 2 other abilities that a hero possess, one of it is "Skill" and the other being "Aura".
a) Skills
Skills are the activated abilities of your heroes. Each hero comes with a different skill and have various effects like stunning enemies, boosting damage, or just dealing a lot of damage to the enemy and so on. Faye's skill is "Righteous Rebuke" which generates a shield to your party and reflects damage back at the enemy. Notice that skills have levels, which means they can be upgraded. Upgrading a skill increases the skill's effect slightly but costs some amount of gold. So i dont really recommend new players to upgrade their skills if possible, as when you hero advances his job level, the skill counter will reset back to Level 1, meaning your gold investment would go up in smoke, and gold is a very important resource in the game.
A thing to note about skills is that they have a countdown (a number of turns) before you can use them. Using them resets the countdown and you have to wait for a certain amount of turns again before they can be used once more. The stronger the skill or the higher job level are the characters, the longer the skill cooldown.
Notice a countdown timer on top of the hero portrait in the picture. Those numbers indicate the number of turns before i could use them. When your skill is ready to be used, it would change to a green tick, and your character can use them. Skills are very important and can easily change the tide of battle, so use them well.
b) Aura
Aura are passive abilities of your hero. The in game tutorial stresses a lot on Aura, and they should too! As Auras is one of the more important mechanics in this game. Aura affects the square adjacent area of the hero. Referring to the picture above, Faye has aura in 3 directions which are highlighted in green. As such if a friendly unit moves away the aura no longer applies, the reverse is also true, so if your hero moves into the area of the aura then the aura effect is immediately applied! (Job level 3 heroes have only 1 square for their aura, while job level 4 have 2 squares and Job level 5 have 3 squares)
To activate the aura, simply move your hero or the other heroes to the square where the red arrow points towards. In my case, referring to the picture. Vincent (the old man) has 3 Auras, one pointing to the top, left and right. Any friendly unit that the arrow points towards are affected by the aura, but note that aura doesnt affected enemy units, so dont worry about aura benefiting your enemy instead. Furthermore, the direction of the aura are random from hero to hero, and it changes randomly as you promote your hero to another job level too. You can attempt to re-roll them early on but i wouldnt recommend it early on in the game. Rerolling costs some amount of gold and the sacrifice of a hero or monster one job level higher than the current job level of your hero.
Early game Hero Guide
Early game, you will receive 3 heroes:
1) Leon
2) Theia
3) Your Valiant
Focus on improving your valiant and if needed (and if you lack a tanker) Leon too as he is a pretty powerful hero on his own right and can be useful until Heroic levels. To train your heroes, use only 2 stars monsters and sell off the 1 star monsters as early on you lack gold and using 1 star monsters to upgrade you heroes is very costly and not very worth it. Note: Ditch Theia once you have a better healer and dont even bother to upgrade her- She just isnt worth it!
During the early periods, try to not spend your gem on solo summons. Summoning 10X will help you save gems and also ensure a 4 star hero in the draw. What you want from those hero summons are heroes that are capable of 5 star job level potential (indicated by the number of stars) However, At this stage. a hero potential isnt as important just yet, so dont worry if you had a bad draw and have only 4 star potential heroes, or if they have the wrong faith, you leave those concerns once you establish a foothold on the game. For now, any 4 star or 5 star potential units are good and strong enough to finish up the beginner level quests on their own ( once upgraded of course!).
Also, do not bother of upgrading heroes with only 3 star potential as that would be a waste of resources. Feed them to your other higher potential heroes. I would not suggest drawing equipments just yet, as it is much better to invest those gems in heroes so early on in the game. Also, try not to waste your gold needlessly and dont forget to invest in your town as well with upgrades. Do remember to complete trials to earn additional gems! They are not too hard and most can easily be achieved early on,
For hero events, while other might ask you to stay away from them for now, i would say that you should try them out! Events in VF have great rewards and you should try out and attempt to get those extra rewards if you can! However, if you find yourself failing to complete a mission, do not bother to revive and instead go back and further level up your heroes (you probably hit the most you could go for that event for now). You need to save up those gems for hero summons!
Once your hero is fully trained and level up, its time to upgrade them. Remember, always focus on your valiant if possible, she/he would help carry you a long way. For leon, i would suggest the Zealot path as it has a good aura and his ability of pulling others away from their position is useful in PVP.
Edit : 28/12/16
Oh and I forgot to add this in, if you find yourself stuck for a long time due to lacking gold and have good heroes, I would like to suggest buying the 200 gem gold package in the item shop. Just once , of course.
Why? Well the first purchase grants you additional 1 million gold on top of the 1 million that you have purchased , so it is really worth it! Of course, at higher levels, you gold mine run could go up to 100K-200K per run, so you dont have to worry about gold so much later on. However, in the early stages, gold is hard to come by so investing your gems just this once in gold is quite worth it! With that 2 million you can summon fodders, upgrade your heroes and equipments and so on to really give you a super boost in your progress in this game.
Hero Suggestions and Paths
A question that most new player asks are on what should they upgrade their hero into. In truth there arent really any correct answers as different job complements the different unit available in your team so it is really hard to tell which suit you the best. However in this section, i shall assume that you are a new player and make suggestion on what you might want to consider for your team.
5 star potential heroes
Note that i would not cover valiants as there are better guides out there that has already covered that.
Warrior
Vincent
One of the better heroes that you have available as a warrior, this guy ever surpass the Valiant equivalent (freya) in certain jobs. For him i would recommend to go down the Slayer path and choose between Beserker or Warlord. Beserker is a glass cannon with super high damage output once he unleashes his skill and is both viable in both PVP and PVE. If you happen to draw the current event hero, Miu, then I would definitely suggest going for berserker as Miu's Ninja aura grants great lifesteal and synergize well with Vincent.
Warlord is a support hero with a very useful aura that can trigger other heroes to attack.Also, his active skill can pull out pesky backliners and deliver them swift death. I would suggest going for this if you have already a good line up of heroes.
Otherwise go zerk! As the beserker vincent will greatly pay off in PVP- try to use his skill last or second last, and then immediately attack as soon as you can to see a pile of dead heroes. As usual, dont bother with faith just yet, those wont matter until later on in the game, and by then you can attempt to re-roll your hero's faith.
Ranger
Cybella
She is a very nice hero to have and you cant really go wrong with whatever path you take. At time of writting, RNGsus has been cruel to me and i havent received her even after 1200 gems pulls in this tower event.
Grand Ranger version of her works very well in both PVP and PVE and should serve you well with the ability to knock back a target and cast sleep on it.
Royal huntsman is only good in PVE, so i would say skip this for now unless you would like to concentrate on PVE.
The gunslinger is a powerful unit for PVP and arguably decent for PVE as well. Her skill has a low cooldown time of only 4 turns and will put the enemy to sleep, while her aura has a very very high rate of triggering other to attack when she crits.
The sharpshooter is a bit lacking in comparison to the others with a skill that is capable of dealing very very high amount of damage but takes very very long to use (7 turns!). Her aura is quite neat though, increasing the crit stats of everyone in its range, but for now i would suggest you skip this.
Shadow
Kai
kai is a great hero. You cant really go wrong for whatever job you choose to change him up to. Magebane kai is good for PVP and PVE with a skill that silences an enemy and an aura that ahs a small chance to stun an enemy. Meanwhile , the Samurai is better at PVE rather than PVP with the various debuffs that it hands out (reduces attacks and defense by 30 and 35% respectively!).
Ninja Kai is useful (very useful) in PVP as he can swap position with the enemy and lowers his defense (its the current meta on the arena now, swap and hold). His refresh aura however is a bit risky and dont expect to rely on it. Assasain Kai seems lacklustre in both PVP and PVE but his refresh Aura though is quite tempting, and could be useful later on, so skip the assasain version of Kai early on.
Defender
Victoria
Victoria is a great hero to have, her Holy Defender and Paladin versions are very good in PVE but that was until recently when Faye was released and the Holy Defender and Paladin version of Faye outshines Victoria in almost every single way. So that leaves the Blood Knight and CHaos Knight versions.
Chaos Knight is wonderful in PVP, due to her swapping abilites and her boosting aura that helps to boost a hero's atk and def. It is excellent as both a support unit and a unit to hold down the centre tile.
Blood knight is a a knight that keeps on giving.....and taking. Its a powerful tank with a skill that can not only taunt, but can shield the hero and deal damage and leech life from said damge as well. Her darn aura also heals allies when they get hit!! This version is very good in PVP and PVE. I highly recommend you to get the blood knight if you do not have a decent tank, though if you find yourself struggling in PVE content and have no alternatives, you could try the Holy Defender and Paladin versions as those have a full battlefield taunt. But otherwise, go for blood knight!
Healer
Luthor
As a new player, there are only 2 real suggestion for Luthor. Which is either the Inquisitor or the Arch Bishop.
Inquisitor heal the whole part and increases the MAG of the part (provide better skill damge resistance! And boost to mages) and removes negative effect from parties.He also has an aura that helps boosts the atk and defense of his ally. This makes him excellent for PVP and PVE.
The Archbishop has only a single target but very powerful heal but also increases the target's defense by 50% of his MAG, which is very valuable when coupled with Taunt from your defender. The skill also has a decent cooldown time of 5 turns and could remove negative buffs from the hero. Also, his aura heals everyone in it every turn by 30% of his MAG, so it really is decent.
Mystic
Zedd
For a new player, i would reccomend going for Mind Warder or Elementalist.
Mind warder is very useful in PVP as it has an AOE skill delay skill that can easily change the tide of battle. While its aura has a chance to help boost your team even more when he attacks.
Elementalist has a powerful large AOE damage skill that even burns the ground after the initial damage was done. Furthermore his aura syncs very well with his skill and has a good potential to further boosts his MAG with every ally within the range of this aura (boosting his MAG by up to 24% max!)
4 star potential Heroes
Although not as ideal as 5 star heroes , heroes with 4 star potential are quite good and is very useful early-mid game. I am currently at level 60++ and i still have some of them in my team. Listed here are suggested heroes that you might want to keep/advance into.
Warrior
Dante
Dante is a decent unit to have , though by all means not great. His slayer form is decent and comes with cleaving attack. While his skill is an AOE that can deal some damage and reduce enemy's defense(again, not too shabby). His aura has a chance to increase ally's attack when he attack.
Dante's Lancer is my personal favourite. I've been using him early on during the game so i might be biases, but he does so well in PVP and PVE. Unlike the cleaving attack of the slayer, he has a pierce attack instead, which hits the enemy in front and behind him. His skill deals damage in a straight line (3 squares), and burns the area in which your enemy stand, ensuring that you do even more damage to the enemy. His aura is wonderful too with 70% to trigger others in the aura to attack! Quite useful even in PVE and also gold mine.
I would recommend the lancer path as he feels a lot more useful and could help you a lot early on. I pair him up with another warrior hero in my team- Fiona which we will get to below.
Fiona
Fiona is absolutely a wonderful hero to have early on, However there is only 1 path that i would recommend you to upgrade into and that is the Slayer path.
The slayer has a skill similiar to Dante, in which she deals AOE damage in a horizontal 3 square area and weakens the enemy defense by 20% for 2 turns as well. But what makes this much better than Dante is the fact that she has an ability called "Staggering Drive" which basically has a 25% to stun your enemy ! I know that 25% is very small chance but it triggers whenever others in aura attack, so you have 2 chances to get this off and this even works with ranged heroes as well (if they are in her aura effect of course). She is quite useful in PVP and PVE though yes, the stun and weakening abilities of hers is much better in PVE. Also her stats are quite good, and should survive quite well on her own.
The reason why i would emphasize on the Slayer version is due to how advantageous it is to have a free stun on an enemy early on in the game if you, like me, had bad luck in summoning heroes (i drew like 1000 gems before i met my first 5 star potential hero). Having a stunned enemy in PVE, means that you can ignore that enemy and focus to try and finish another enemy before they get a chance to react and damage your team. This is also useful on bosses when a lucky stun stops them from murdering your team with their skill. Its not reliable though, but has saved me a lot of times thus far, so i highly reccomend it!
Her lancer while is quite good as well, is too PVE oriented, and the slayer version should be much helpful in your early game.
And that is all for now. I will be sure to keep on updating this guide with more heroes and further improve it as needed. So do let me know your thoughts and I'll add in or make changes as needed to the guide. Last but not least. hope you have fun and good luck with this wonderful game!
