Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate is a stunning new RPG for iOS and Android, developed by Machine Zone. From the same studio that brought us Game of War, Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate is a unique squad-based RPG that has players running missions and joining guilds as they do combat with thousands of players from around the world.
In Crystalborne: Heroes of Hate, someone has imprisoned the souls of the world’s heroes, and it’s up to you, the player, to set them free. Set in a dystopian fantasy future, Crystalborne has players lead a squad of up to six heroes – each with their own unique abilities and characteristics – as they persevere through the game’s extensive PvE campaign, or duke it out in the player-versus-player Arena. The game and its mechanics revolve around gathering resources – experience, salvage, credits, hero shards, and more – to unlock, expand, and empower player’s squad members.
Crystalborne has a lot of depth and fun mechanics, but with everything, there is to do in the game – the sheer number of heroes to collect, gear to equip, and materials and resources to acquire – it can be a little daunting. That’s why we came up with a detailed beginner’s guide, to help you make your way in Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate without a hitch. If you’re just starting out and wouldn’t mind a few handy tips and tricks, then look no further because you’ve come to the right place. With that said, let’s move on to our Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate beginner’s guide, as we are going to share a bunch of tips and strategies on how to assemble a powerful squad and destroy your enemies!
1. Understand How Heroes Work
Everyone knows how heroes work – they wield awesome powers and fantastic weapons to fight off evil and save the world – but in Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate, it’s a little more nuanced than that.
There are dozens of heroes available to players in Crystalborne, each with their own unique stats, skills, and even backstories, but all of these heroes fall into certain categories. In general, heroes can be divided into six different types, according to their role and the source of their power:
Physical Type Heroes
Physical Heroes tend to favor traditional weapons – swords, guns, what have you – to dol damage and cast abilities. Physical type heroes are further divided according to their roles in combat, into attackers, defenders, and supports.
Physical Attackers: These types of heroes are often burst-oriented and are outfitted with powerful weapons to output significant amounts of damage to their enemies.
Physical Defenders: Physical-type Defenders are often tanky individuals who have lots of survivability and provide the squad with direct defensive buffs.
Physical Supports: As the name implies, physical supports provide squads with utility and healing, often using a variety of techniques to improve party effectiveness and efficiency.
Energy Type Heroes
Thematically, Energy type heroes wield futuristic energy weapons and technological marvels into combat. Energy type heroes are further divided according to their combat roles as attackers, defenders, and supports.
Energy Attackers: Typically favoring high damage-over-time and debuffs, Energy attackers charge into the fray with beam weapons and energy blades.
Energy Defenders: Using force fields and advanced technology, Energy Defenders are often equipped with team-wide defensive buffs and are equally adept at reducing the effectiveness of enemy attackers.
Energy Supports: With energy tools and contraptions, Energy Supports typically offer a wide variety of buffs and debuffs, and are particularly effective at disabling enemy heroes.
Rarity
Heroes can also be classified according to their rarity. Just like in most games with a collectible card-based mechanic, the rarity of these heroes is also directly tied to their power and combat effectiveness. However, while rarity makes for a tougher and stronger character in the long run, it’ll also be much harder to level up and upgrade since it’ll be harder to find the shards needed to do so. By rarity (and overall strength) heroes can be classified as:
Common (White)
Uncommon (Green)
Rare (Blue)
Epic (Purple)
Legendary (Gold/Yellow)
Affinity
Apart from their Type, Role, and Rarity, heroes also belong to one of five in-game Affinities. Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate keeps things nice and simple with their affinity mechanic, referring to them simply by the color of the faction they represent. By affinity, heroes can be classified as:
Red
Blue
Green
Light (Yellow)
Dark (Purple)
In combat, affinity plays a crucial role in how your heroes work. Featuring a rock-paper-scissors system for Red, Blue, and Green, heroes belonging to this faction will have either advantages or disadvantages on their attacks. Red has an advantage over Green, and disadvantage over Blue. Green has an advantage over Blue, and disadvantage over Red, And Blue has an advantage over Red, but a disadvantage over Green. When striking enemies with an advantage, players can deal with bonus damage, but when striking enemies with a disadvantage, the damage is reduced.
Light and Dark, on the other hand, are equally effective at combating the other. Light has an advantage over Dark and therefore deals bonus damage to them, and Dark has an advantage over light and therefore deals bonus damage as well.
2. Find Out Which Heroes You Like And How To Get Them
The great thing about Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate is that there are so many heroes to choose from – and that’s also one of the hardest parts about the game. With so many heroes and characters available, there’s just no way to get all of them to max level without significant time investment or shelling out real cash. If you spread yourself too thin, you might find that higher-level content is too difficult, or that you’re constantly getting steamrolled in PvP.
So, especially if you’re just starting out, we recommend figuring out which heroes you like and how to find them. In the Heroes tab available from the Main Menu, players can have a closer look at all 100+ of the currently available Heroes in Crystalborne. Look for the heroes that you think look cool – the ones with abilities that reflect your preferred playstyle, or the ones that you think will synergize well with other heroes you own or want. Once you have a better idea of the heroes you want to aim for, find out how to get them. Simply click on the Hero you like, and select the Find Shards button on their info page.
Related: Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate Tier List: Best Characters in the Game
Pro-tip: If you’re a free-to-play player, i.e. you won’t be using real money to pay for items, heroes, shortcuts, or cosmetics, then you might want to make sure you focus on finding “grindable” heroes. Grindable heroes are available as mission rewards and chance drops from completing levels, and while most heroes can be obtained through grinding, there is a handful of heroes that are locked behind other mechanics and are, therefore, harder to come by. If you want to get strong, fast, without paying any real money, then make sure you aim for grindable heroes like my personal favorite, Cyclone.
3. Make Sure You’re Always Building And Researching
On top of the fast-paced turn-based combat in Crystalborne, the game also offers real-time strategy mechanics through research and construction. Your player’s home, headquarters, and multi-purpose base of operations is the Airship, which you can invest in through modular upgrades. Spend Credits and other resources to upgrade everything from the Armory to the Mess Hall, from the Research Bay to Engineering to unlock new features and empower your Heroes at the same time.
Apart from your Airship construction, players can also delve deep into scientific research. Crystalborne offers players a sophisticated technology tree that lets them accrue minor bonuses for their heroes as they grind towards massive breakthroughs and discoveries that provide major advantages and skill bonuses.
What Research Should I Get First?
There’s plenty of research available, but I would recommend getting research that unlocks certain features as well as provide bonuses. The first one you’ll come across is the Combat Research Tree, which rewards players with their first Artifact Slot upon completing the first tier.
4. Max Out Your Energy
While others may argue that Credits, Hero Shards, and Salvage are the most important resources in the game, we believe that Energy is the most valuable. Energy is the resource that is expended every time you go into battle, and once you’re out, you’ll have to wait for it to recharge. Of course, there are other ways of acquiring energy – leveling up, completing quests, etc. – but the resource itself is so crucial that proper Energy management is essential to playing the game. Make sure you’re never at maximum energy because that’s the point in which you stop generating Energy. Spend as much energy as you can running missions and levels, and make the most out of your energy.
5. Build A Balanced Squad
As mentioned earlier, there are several types of heroes available in Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate. While you can classify them in a number of ways, the most important thing to consider, especially in combat, is their roles. We have attackers, defenders, and supports, but these roles become infinitely more effective when partnered together in a balanced squad.
Think of it this way: a squad full of high-damage attackers might be good at dealing significant damage to enemies, but they’re also squishier and more likely to die on their own. On the other hand, a squad full of defenders might be able to survive a battle long enough to win, but chances are they won’t have the sustain or the damage to get through most encounters. Think of a squad that’s all supports – would that be effective?
A balanced squad should have the right mix of offense, defense, and utility. In Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate, players can have up to six heroes in their squad (including the guest hero you “borrow” from allies and Guild Members) so we recommend doing a 3-2-1 split, typically with three attackers, two defenders, and one support.
6. Join A Guild
Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate has plenty of PvE and PvP content, and it’s so much better to experience these stories and these battles with a Guild at your side. Player Guilds in Crystalborne give players access to a bunch of features and rewards.
If you’re not a fan of joining player communities, don’t worry. Even if you don’t want to participate, there are plenty of player guilds out there that will let you join so you can get access to these features and rewards. What’s in it for them? Well, a lot of them just want to be a part of the guild so they can get those nice, juicy rewards, but the truth is, you grant your guild participation points each and every time you play. If you don’t want to make friends or have someone to talk to about how much you love Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate, then you can treat the Guild as just another reward track that gives you a steady stream of resources every day. If you do want to meet new people, then Guilds are perfect for that, too.
Joining a Guild also unlocks the Guild Arena, and the Guild Conquest game modes which allow players to compete and cooperate in battles for supremacy with thousands of players from all over the world. These game modes are fun, and also offer some of the best rewards in the game.
7. Complete Your Quests And Dailies
There’s a lot of grind in Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate. If you’re a new player who’s seen some of the high-level veterans in action, then you should know that there’s a lot of grind involved there, too. Fortunately, Crystalborne helps out a lot in that regard and makes sure that players are decently rewarded for their time and effort.
For doing a series of tasks and playing regularly, players gain access to some of the most generous reward tracks in the game. Daily Logins and Quests reward players abundantly with experience and in-game currency, making simply logging-in one of the best things you can do if you want to progress in the game. After that, the daily quests should have enough reward to keep you occupied and satisfied, providing plenty of character and hero progression for a very small time investment.
Crystalborne even offers Bonus Daily Rewards on top of everything else, which is a tiered reward system that resets every month. Log in for 28 days to unlock increasingly valuable rewards containing crystals, coins, resources, and even Hero Shards, just for logging on playing for a few minutes every day.
8. Take Advantage Of Auto-Battle
As we said, the grind in Crystalborne is real, but it’s really not that painful or painstaking. Thanks to the refined Auto-Battle feature, players can repeat missions they’ve already undertaken for as long as they have the energy to keep at it.
One of the options available in Auto-Battle is the ability to stop auto-battle (and therefore, stop the consumption of energy) according to a pre-set number of times to repeat the mission, or if certain rules or targets have already been met.
Auto-Battle is especially useful if you’re trying to grind a specific Hero Shard or resource. Just set the number of runs you want to do, sit back, relax, and come back to your phone minutes later to discover that you have what you were looking for.
Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate offers players a variety of game modes to suit what they find fun. Players who enjoy a deep story mode and extensive campaign full of character progression and development will definitely enjoy Crystalborne’s Campaign mode, while players who are competitive and like to rank themselves amongst others will have plenty of fun in the game’s PvP Arena mode where they battle against player-made squads from around the world.
However, each Game Mode has something unique to offer – both in terms of gameplay and rewards. If you’re looking for a chance to improve your heroes through Hero Shards, Hero XP, and powerful gear to equip them with, you’re most likely to find that playing the PvE Campaign mode. If you want to advance your research and construction – and therefore are in need of various materials and currency – the best course of action would be to take a look at the Bounty Board.
The Bounty Board offers rewards that often include Research Data, Silver, Hero XP, and Elixir, too. For the fiery and not-so-feint-of-heart, the PvP Arena rewards players with Gems (premium currency), research data, and a variety of useful materials and items depending on their Ranking. Through Guild-based game modes like Guild Conquest and Guild Arena, players can hope to earn just about anything that the world of Crystalborne has to offer.
Don’t forget about Limited-Time Events, too! More often than not, Limited-Time Events will offer much more lucrative rewards than standard game modes, so make sure to take advantage and get a bunch of Hero Shards (and sometimes, even a free Hero Crystal) when they’re available.
That’s it for our beginner’s guide to Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate! We hope you enjoyed it and that you learned a few new tricks and strategies. If you happen to know other useful tips or just would like to share your thoughts about the game, feel free to drop us a line!