If you’re new to the game then let me show you around. Let’s start with a pleasant walk through town. We’ll start on the left side of Grayhaven and move to the right.

     Guild

You can join a guild when you reach power level 17. Tap the guard and search for a guild that’s right for your power level. If a guild is closed just submit a request to join then wait for a response. The guild shop is inside and sells gear for coins earned from successful boss raids. The raid portal is above the octagon towards the back. You’ll see a swirling vortex if the raid is active, a cloud of mist if it’s not.

     Jeweler

The next stop is the jeweler. Tap the guy at the top of the stairs and you’ll see the word “Jewelry” over his head. He extracts manna from manna stones. You’ll need manna to upgrade your ability gems. His services will be locked until you fight your way through a few campaign locations. He can be upgraded to level 25, possibly higher. He can hold more manna for you as his level increases.

     Runecraft

To the right of the jeweler is a guy sitting cross-legged a foot or two off the ground. He will insert runes in your gear, remove them when you get better ones, and upgrade runes using lesser runes or rune fragments. Improving your runes is very important!

     Tavern

Invite heroes passing through town to your tavern. Try to invite heroes that have power levels similar to your own. If they accept the invitation and join your tavern you’ll be able to hire them for difficult campaign locations or enlist them to fight with you in the arena. And they will be able to hire or enlist you! As long as they remain in your tavern you’ll be able to collect payments when they hire or enlist you. If you remove them they may still hire you but you will not be paid.

     Events

Tap this shimmering green structure to claim your daily sign-in reward if you haven’t already. You can also use it to follow Guild of Heroes on something called Twitter…whatever that is.

     White Mage

The White Mage will take manna from the jeweler, cash from you, and upgrade your ability gems. Also very important. When you tap him your ability panel will open showing five slots for each character class: Warrior, Archer, and Mage. You will develop abilities for your own class but can use these spaces to store abilities from each.

Storage tip:

Unless you are playing more than one character class you will have ten empty slots. You can use these slots to store off-class abilities until you are ready to offer them in the Star Arena to extract their dust. The dust is used to evolve your abilities.

     Arena

Just to the right of the wizard is the arena. You’ll be able to enter the arena once you reach level 10. Enter and enlist a partner to fight by your side. There you can review three potential opponents and their partners, the number of trophies you’ll win if you defeat them, and the number that you’ll lose if you don’t. Refresh to see three more teams. If you don’t care to fight any of them just come back in two minutes and you’ll get six more.

     Tower

When you reach level 14 you can enter the Tower of Trials. The tower is 100 floors high and divided into 25 tiers. The value of the runes and strength of the monsters increases as you go. You must clear all seven rooms on a floor before advancing to the next. Fail three times and you’ll have to restart the floor or replay a lower one. The rewards are always best the first time you clear a room but you should still run the Tower as often as you can to improve your runes.

     Star Altar

Evolving equipment and ability gems requires evolution materials. Offer scrap equipment and gems on the Star Altar to get them. Choose the material you want, offer two items of that type, choose a Star Arena difficulty, win the fight (!), and the evolution materials will be deposited in the Altar. The Blacksmith will draw these materials from the Altar to evolve your equipment and the Jeweler will do the same to evolve your gems. You can sell surplus scrap and dust for monstrous amounts of cash. Level up your altar to maximize your rewards. Want to be the first billionaire on your block? Max it out at level 29.

       Shop

When you come back from a campaign location lugging a sack full of gear the first thing you’ll do is head to the shop. The shopkeeper will buy it all. Good thing because you need the cash! He also has lots of things that you might want to buy. He has chests of gear, boosters, and runes. You’ll level up quick buying this stuff but he’ll only accept diamonds as payment, thank you very much. There is one exception to this rule. He has one chest of random boosters set aside. He’ll take manna for those. This is a very good deal that renews every ten hours. He’ll pay you in gold for whatever boosters you don’t want or can’t use.

     Chest

You’ll find your storage chest just to the right of the Grayhaven shop. You can start using it when you reach level 9. It’s fairly small when you’re just starting out but you can use diamonds to increase its capacity. This is where you’ll store your gear, manna stones, runes, dust, and ability gems.

     Mailbox

If someone wandering through town decides that you would be a good fit for your tavern this is where you’ll find the invitation. If there is a message for you the base of the mailbox will be lit up.

     Healer

There is lots of fighting in this game. You are going to get hurt. Getting hurt is okay. Dying is not. You’ll need healing potions to make sure getting hurt doesn’t lead to anything more serious. The healer will brew five, ten, or twenty potions at a time. Buying in bulk is cheaper but takes longer. Make sure that you upgrade the quality of potions she’ll make as soon as you can. Stronger potions equal greater success. Level up your healer every chance you get. Go five times your health if you want immortality in a bottle. It’s a blast! Maximum level is 40.

    Events Board

Every so often you’ll have the opportunity to fight in “Survival Mode” combat to win chest keys. Open event chests to find “skins”. These are costume pieces, really. You can activate them to change the appearance of your hero. They do not affect your power level, your power score, or any other statistic. You will also earn gear, boosters, and other valuable items during these events.

    Campaign

The scout stands at the doorway to the world of campaign locations and their dungeons. I was going to call it the “doorway to adventure” but that sounded pretty lame. Tap her or the doorway and you’re out. Then just pick a place to go. Conquer all locations in an area at level three difficulty to move on to the next.

All areas have one dungeon. Dungeons are where you’ll find gear chests. The gear chests are better in the lower levels. Each level has between five and seven rooms. Every room has an upper and lower level. A server-controlled hero guards the lower levels of all dungeon rooms. Check the Campaign Location tab for more details.

     Blacksmith

Again, this guy isn’t actually called “the Blacksmith” but that’s what he looks like. And that’s what he does. He upgrades your gear. Whether it’s weapons, armor, a necklace, a ring, he can make it better. Every gear item has a craft value indicated by an anvil icon. To upgrade an item you must sacrifice up to six gear items to meet the craft value requirement. Pay the man and wait. So many parallels between this game and the real world. It’s pretty incredible when you think about it.