Class Overview: Part 1 – Leveling

This article has been edited to fit the game update of January 27th.

At the moment there are five different classes to choose from when creating a new hero in the app. Each class comes with a 10-card Starting Deck, a unique starting health and class-specific skills and abilities.

At creation, the hero is at level 1. By battling other heroes – or by teaming up with them – the hero earns experience points (XP), which is used to level up. At the moment the maximum level is 12, but WWG has announced that they expect this to increase to 24 eventually. A win earns the hero 200 XP, while a loss only earns 80 XP. A hero never loses XP. The hero is awarded double XP if battling a hero of higher level – regardless of the outcome of the battle. Currently double XP is also rewarded for playing realtime games on weekends. It is therefore actually possible to earn 800 XP for winning a single game in realtime on weekends against a higher level opponent.

When enough XP has been earned, the hero levels up. The amount of XP needed to level up increases with each level. At the moment a hero can be leveled to 12 with as little as 36 consecutive wins against an even opponent on weekdays (7150 XP). The same can be achieved with 90 consecutive losses or 18 consecutive wins in realtime on weekends.

Each time the hero levels up, there is also a reward in form of an upgrade.

The first two upgrades are mandatory and the player has no choices to make. At every other level though, the player has multiple upgrades to choose from. This allows the player to choose the upgrade that fits their personal play style best and provides a wide range of different adversaries within the city of Thandar. Choose carefully though. Once chosen, the upgrade is permanent and cannot be changed.

In the following is an overview of the different types of upgrades that are available.

Instead of upgrading skill or ability, the player can choose a health upgrade. The amount of health gained by this upgrade is class specific and mirrors the difference in starting health between the classes. There is no upgrade tree for gaining health. Health can be upgraded once at any time and once when both skill and ability have been fully upgraded.

In the physical copies of the character packs, there are no treasure cards or level-up mechanics. These were introduced with the Ruin of Thandar Campaign Deck and then even more stuff was added, when The Lost Village Campaign Deck was released.

Treasure comes in two versions. Treasure that are cards either added to or replacing something in the starting deck. And armor, which is a new hero ability that can be used every turn.

The level-up rewards at level 5 and 7 are treasures from the Ruin of Thandar (RoT) Campaign Deck. There are 4 different treasures per class.

At level 5 and 7 the player is presented with two class-specific treasures. At level 5 the choice is between the two treasures that replaces something in the deck and at level 7 the player gets to choose between the two treasures that adds something to the deck. As of now, only two of the four treasures will eventually make it into the deck.

Side note:

In the kickstarter, with the Ruin of Thandar Campaign, there was also a stretch goal that added more treasures as promo cards. One magic treasure per class was added. These are not yet included in the app. But while leveling up, it might be useful to keep in mind what could be possible at higher levels once these are implemented. Hopefully we will see them one day.

The Lost Village (LV) Campaign Deck (the sequel to RoT) provided two new class specific treasures to add to the starting deck as well as adding the new mechanic of magic armor. 

At level 9 the player can choose between the two class specific armors. This armor is part of the hero’s personal equipment and therefore stays in play. The armor is magical, so instead of adding health or defense, it grants an effect as long as the armor isn’t too damaged (read: as long as the health of the hero doesn’t drop too low).

At level 11 the player can choose between the two treasures. As with the Ruin of Thandar treasures, these treasures either enter or replace a card in the starting deck. These treasures are all powerful magical items that only a seasoned hero could have managed to acquire.

In the following parts of this series, I will attempt to make some comparisons between classes. But with 3 different skills and 3 different abilities that the hero can end up having at level 12, plus a possible 2nd ability, 4 RoT treasures, 2 LV treasures and 2 LV armors, this adds up to a total of 288 possible builds per class. 

This means that it is almost impossible to state anything conclusive about the classes and their relationship with each other without going into a particular build. I will however try to highlight the general strengths and weaknesses of each class.

Each hero has two different leveling systems. The XP system that gains levels and upgrades and the ranking system that shows how well that hero is doing against other heroes in the matchmaking queue. The ranking system is not connected to leveling up a hero in any way and will not be discussed further as it only affects the matchmaking mechanic.

The Ranking path is as follows: