A Free-to-Play Guide to Farming for the Altar Heroes
So there have been a lot of complaints on the process of obtaining the new Altar heroes, Freyr and Skadi. I'm here to put to rest some of the skepticism and hopefully temper the frustrations of some of the playerbase with some suggestions. So here we go.
If all the altar heroes follow the same pattern, the requirements will always be as follows:
- Hero from Titan of same element
- Starter of same element
- New hero of same element
- Hero from Hero Event of same element
In Victory God Freyr's case we have:
- Zere from the Titan
- Eldric as the starter
- Miho as the new hero
- CXR from the Hero Event
In Winter God Skadi's case we have:
- Moon from the Titan
- Henrich as the starter
- Kuha as the new hero
- Frida from the Hero Event
So from just looking at where you can get most of these heroes, one can deduce that these heroes are actually all farmable over a set period of time (seven weeks going by the Titan cycle). Contrary to popular belief, no one is likely (though it's still possible) to really have all of these heroes lying around in multiples for no good reason. We're all going to be farming for them, and the most efficient way to do so will be to farm them from their specific events.
Let's break it down from the easiest parts to farm down to the hardest.
Easiest: Five 3* Heroes from the Hero Event
Since they're only required to be 3*, you can farm them from the easiest difficulty (Novice) and get them to drop with relative ease over the duration of the event. The biggest issue here will be the amount of space they'll occupy in your roster, but a single expansion for 50 gems can accommodate these five heroes.
Timothy will likely be the Hero Event hero required for the future Earth Altar hero, so farming five of him now during his event might be a good idea.
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Still Kind of Easy: Three 5* Starters
Getting a single 5* may seem like a daunting task (let alone three), but let's focus on simply getting the starter first.
Starter heroes are obtainable one of three ways: from Story mode (Henrich in Ch. 9-5, Wilfred in Ch. 10-5), from chests (though quite rare), and from Honor Summons. Honor Summons are going to be your best and possibly only bet for most of the starters since only two of them can be farmed from Story mode.
So how do you farm efficiently using Honor Summons?
Farm Honor by simply setting the leader in your 1st party slot to a popular hero.
I recommend using Asai or Tyron since they're the most popular leaders for the most-used hero teams currently, but work with what you have. You'll have a better chance of being chosen as a friend if the hero's level is maxed.
Once you have your starter, it's time to evolve. If you're at the point where you can farm for the Altar heroes, getting from 2* to 3* is pretty self-explanatory, but it starts to get a little tricky from 4* to 5* since you'll need a Bell Ringer, Spirit King, Sentinel, and four 4* sacrifices.
For the first three, farming the Spirit Event dungeon at 35 Energy (Kings and Sentinels) is your best bet at getting all three as fast as possible.
For the 4* heroes needed for sacrifice, you have two options: farm 4* heroes directly from the story, or farm 3* Rainbow Sprites and evolve them to 4*.
For farming 4* heroes, the three easiest places to farm are Ch. 8 Nightmare (Mai), Ch. 7-1 Hell (Froglicker), and Ch. 17-1 Nightmare (everyone but Azata and Vampire). The power recommendations may be intimidating for Ch. 17-1, but if you can clear the game on Normal without much difficulty, you should be able to get through it with smart play.
For 3* Rainbow Sprites, the easiest places to farm them are in Ch. 1-2,3,4, Ch. 2-2,3,4, and any of the fifth stages in Ch. 13+ Normal.
Do this three times and you're done with the starters.
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Getting Difficult: Two 5* Heroes from Titan
Okay, this one isn't really that bad since you only need to slay the 15th Titan for the first (3* ), but to get the second (4* ), you need to slay the 28th. That's a stretch for some players, especially depending on the Titan. How well you do on this farm depends solely on the team you put together against it, but be ready to have your potions and gems depleted.
I recommend putting together a Titan-slaying team separate from your Story-clearing team. Easiest one to build is Mechanical DEF. But don't just use your Story-clearing team to try to fight the Titan (unless it's Mechanical DEF). Titans are different folk that require a different stroke. Find out what that stroke is and hit them with it.
If and when you manage to get the two Titan heroes, evolving them follows the same suit as evolving the starters except for one thing: Mimics.
From 3* to 4* you'll need a 3* Mimic, and 4* to 5* a Bat Mimic. Best way to farm them?
Take advantage of the Halloween Event we have going on right now.
The Mimics can all spawn several times at all stages, but for normal Mimics, farm the Novice stage at 20 Energy, and for Bat Mimics, farm the Expert stage at 40 Energy.
Do this twice and you have your Titan heroes.
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This Isn't Even Hard, But It Is Anyway: Four 4* New Heroes
This last one is really not that hard...Not at all. But the hard thing about it is the waiting. The waiting is what will be most difficult. Why? Because in one Titan cycle, you're only guaranteed one of these, and that's from the hero pieces purchasable from the Glory Shop.
Every Arena season (two weeks), you have a chance to purchase two 10-piece clusters of hero pieces from the Glory Shop. You need 60 pieces (six clusters) to craft one hero. Each cluster costs 1500 Glory, totaling 3000 per Arena season. 3000 Glory might seem like a lot to some, but there's an easy way to farm Glory, and it starts with you losing.
But wait--you have to win to earn Glory, right?
Right, but if all you do is keep winning, winning eventually gets difficult when you get to higher ranks. Luckily, you don't have to lose your attacks--just your defenses.
To more easily farm Glory in the Arena, simply bait your attackers into taking on your defense by using either a team that will reward the attacker with a lot of easily-earned Glory (e.g. four Ghost Kings/Sentinels/Dragon Mimics), or by using the tournament theme trait. In this season's case, the theme is "Ranged," so set your defense to some weak heroes with the Ranged trait (e.g. Archer Lisa), and you'll even be helping them out with an Arena quest.
Losing your defenses will reduce your trophy count and bring your rank down, but it won't penalize your Glory count. Since Glory can only be obtained by winning and you want to maximize your rewards, you generally want to stay at a lower rank to farm Glory from defenses weaker than your attack team. You just have to keep losing your defenses to retain a low rank while winning your attacks to keep the Glory coming in.
Do bear in mind, however, that just because the team appears weaker than yours, doesn't mean you'll win. I'm not going to provide a complete guide on how to PvP (but here's a link to someone else's). There is, however, a rough guideline you can follow, very much like rock, paper, scissors:
ATK > REC | REC > DEF | DEF > ATK
Determine whether your team is ATK, REC, or DEF-based, then try to target teams that your own team is strong against while avoiding the teams it's weak against.
Do this until you have 3000 Glory, then do it twice more across a total of three Arena seasons (six weeks).
Once you have all 60 pieces, craft the hero (Miho at the time of writing) at Tinker and you'll have 1/4. It's likely that the hero will change with after the first cycle ends (guessing Kuha). Going by how many six-week cycles you'd need to obtain four of each, it would take more than half a year just to get the new heroes this way.
So what else can you do?
Use Rare Summon Cards
It's still very much the same game with Rare Summon Cards: waiting. You simply have to wait for an increased chance to pull the new hero you're looking for, and then when it finally appears...pull.
Now I'm not saying that you should buy a ton of gems just so you can get Rare Summon Cards. No. Use those gems on something more practical: opening 45-minute chests.
Every chest has a chance at giving you a Rare Summon Card, but the 45-minute ones are the most cost-efficient at 8 gems a piece. As you go about your daily life in Battlejack, crack open those 45s, and any Rare Summon Cards you get--whether from the 45s or anywhere else--you hoard. You hoard them for dear life. You hoard, and hoard, and hoard until one of those new heroes shows up in your shop. And then you let loose. One. Card. At a time.
And then you do this until you get four.
... -sigh- ... Painstakingly difficult.
So yeah, the last bit with the new heroes is probably the only aspect where being P2W definitely shines. They are the only valid point of complaint. They are the only true bottleneck of obtaining the Altar heroes.
But it's still doable. Increased hero chances in the shop are actually quite reliable. If you hoard enough Rare Summon Cards, you may get all the ones you need in the same day. You never know.
There's just one last thing I wanna point out:
You will eventually get these heroes. There is no rush.
Just because these new heroes are out there, doesn't mean you should halt progression on the team you're currently working on or getting through the story. Keep the Altar heroes in mind as a side project to your gaming experience. The farming process actually won't take up much of the time you already spend playing or change much about what you're doing in the game. The only real difference is that you'll be saving heroes and materials you wouldn't normally. This isn't something anyone should make a fuss about.
...Except those new heroes, Miho and Kuha. They gotta make them easier to obtain somehow. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
So that's it for this guide. Full disclosure, though, this is all based on speculation and my own theory (and the theory of some others) that this pattern exists in all five of the Altar heroes. Feel free to dispute this guide or give your feedback in the comments below.
Author's Note/Edit: I made quite an error in originally stating that a Titan cycle is only six weeks. It is, in fact, seven weeks, one Titan for each of the seven deadly sins. This change doesn't really affect my theory too much. However, it does misalign the Glory hero cycle (six weeks) with the Titan's seven.
Posted Oct 28, 2017, 9:45 AM UTC · edited