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First Hero (Webzen) Beginner’s Guide: 10 Tips, Tricks & Hints You Need to Know

Apart from the popular fantasy RPG MU Origin, Webzen is a developer that’s known for casual, social sports titles such as Pooltime and Shotonline Golf. However, this time the South Korean company has launched another title for you if you’re looking for an iOS and Android MMORPG that’s easy to pick up, not prone to overwhelming you with too many new mechanics to learn, yet deep enough to be engaging even if you’re a dedicated mobile gamer.

First Hero is the name of Webzen’s newest mobile title, and it invites you to join a “group of legendary heroes from history” and take part in tactical, strategic battles, utilizing each hero’s skills and outwitting not just the predictable in-game AI, but also real, human players. You can join alliances, take part in PvP or alliance vs. alliance combat, and who knows, you might even meet some new friends here and there as you collect more heroes, keep building your capital city, and recruit more units. And there are campaign, or “adventure” battles too, which you should also check out for more currency, resources, and other goodies!

This game may not look it at first, but it’s quite rich in features, and it could take us a while to go through all the important and relevant in-game mechanics and break them down for you. What we can do, however, is start out with a First Hero strategy guide for beginners who may be downloading the game for the very first time. You may be new to the game, but we’re here to talk you through the fundamentals, and offer some tips that could help you start off on the right foot.

1. Grasping The Fundamentals Of The Game

Although you are the titular First Hero of the game, the “Savior” expected to free the world from evil, the premise of this title is that you will be recruiting historical and/or literary heroes to help your units in battle, including, but not limited to Joan of Arc, Helen of Troy, Lancelot, and many others. You will be taking part in tactical battles in both Adventure and Domain mode, taking on AI-controlled enemies in the former mode, and human-controlled enemies in the latter. There’s also a lot of city building and base management in this game, so it’s also important that you make sure you’re up to speed in terms of the buildings the game allows you to build, and in terms of upgrading whatever structures you already have. All these have effects on the troops you send out to battle, may it be direct or indirect, so you should pay attention to both main elements of the game — the battle element and the city building/base management element.

Although you won’t notice it at first, there’s a very strong social element in this game; you may be able to notice this by reading the game’s description. So when it comes to setting priorities in this game, Domain is where you want to focus on, with Adventure mode mainly serving as a way for you to grind for resources, a “cherry on top” compared to the actual strategizing you and other human players will be doing.

2. Complete The Achievements And Increase Your Player Level

First Hero has two types of achievements you can complete — Daily and Common. Daily achievements, quite obviously, are the ones that reset every 24 hours, which gives you limited time to work on them. Common achievements, on the other hand, remain open until you complete them, and, as we’ve observed, are the ones that could earn you the most gems, which are the game’s premium currency. While both types of achievements can earn you some gems, it’s the achievements that involve you leveling up that are the most lucrative, as we’ve seen so far. Moving up from level 2 to 3, for instance, is worth 105 gems, which is a lot of currency to earn while in the early stages of the game. Of course, the only way to earn more XP is to keep playing the game, whether if it’s against real opponents or AI ones, so that should give you some incentive to stay active.

3. Collect Your Offline Gold And Lumber

Your Gold Mine and Lumber Mill are among the first two buildings that will be made available to you in First Hero, and the former is one of the main sources of gold, the game’s common currency. The latter allows you to collect the wood that will be used in building new structures or upgrading existing ones, among other tasks. Make sure you pay attention to those buildings whenever you log in to the game after being away for a while — you can earn gold and lumber even if you’re offline, and if you take several hours off, you might end up with a substantial amount of both! There may be other ways out there to earn either one of these resources, but having a Gold Mine and Lumber Mill essentially takes care of the dirty work for you when it comes to collecting the resources that are essential to your city’s operation.

4. Keep Building, Keep Upgrading

Now this is something that we had touched on earlier in this guide, but to delve further into the topic, one thing you should be doing in this game is to keep on building new structures as they become available. You won’t start out with much — all you’ll have would be the bare necessities — but eventually, you’ll unlock more and more buildings, allowing you to train new units (crossbowmen, horsemen, etc.), research new technologies, produce new resources, and do a lot more than you were able to do before. You should also make sure that the buildings you construct are upgraded on a regular basis, with the most important of these being your Royal Palace. Think of this building as your equivalent to a City Hall in other, more modern games of this kind. Without the right Royal Palace upgrades, you won’t be able to do certain things in the game that should otherwise ensure that you’re still up to speed. Of course, you’ll want to upgrade your unit producing buildings as well, as that allows you to produce more powerful troops for battle — once a unit producing building reaches a certain level, you’ll also be able to unlock newer and more powerful units!

5. Keep On Producing Units, For That Matter

As you fight in more battles, may they be Domain battles against real people or Adventure battles against AI, you’ll lose some units from time to time — not the heroes (more on them in a bit), but the groups of troops that get wiped out by enemy soldiers. Unlike in other games, your units are dead once they’ve been wiped out — you won’t be able to revive them, or the game won’t automatically revive them so you can use them once again. That makes it important to focus on building units on a regular basis. It doesn’t cost much and it doesn’t take much time, and it ensures that your army is at full power at all times, ready to take on any enemy-held spots on the map in Domain, ready to complete more Adventure stages, or, because you will eventually reach this point in the game, a chance for you to grind more quickly and efficiently.

6. How To Collect More Heroes

Yes, once again, you may be the First Hero that has been prophesied in the game’s storyline, but you won’t be able to get by unless you assign some heroes to your troops. Heroes provide their own special buffs to certain units, or, in many cases, all of the other units on the battlefield. For example, Lancelot restores 100 percent health and increases Attack by 50 percent for 30 seconds after his troops defeat two enemies. Deploying Joan of Arc, on the other hand, increases friendly Horsemen attacks and defense by 20 percent each. Helen, who’s probably the most common hero in the game, offers a 25 percent attack boost to the next two units on your team. Those are just some examples of the benefits heroes can provide for your team, so what’s next for you, and should you be focusing on hero collection in a game like this?

The answer would be yes, though it’s best to wait for new heroes to arrive if you win them in Adventure mode, where they can often be among the first-time rewards. (And no, you cannot grind for multiple heroes by replaying the level you’ve just completed!) You can also go to the Hall of Heroes and buy new heroes yourself by choosing the Summon Hero option. When summoning random heroes, you can choose a Low-Grade Hero (common to unique heroes on the rarity scale) or High-Grade Heroes (rare to legendary heroes); buying one of the former will cost you 50 gems, and buying one of the latter is worth 300 gems. If you buy in bulk, you can get ten Low-Grade heroes for $75, or ten High-Grade Heroes for 2,850. Yes, that’s a lot of gems you need to be saving up for in order to get these heroes, though you need not worry — the first Low-Grade and High-Grade summons are on the game, as you can do those for free the first time around.

If you’re looking for someone more specific, you can go to the Summon a Featured Hero section, and choose from whomever is featured at any given time. Just a disclaimer before we wrap up this tip — Featured Heroes will generally be ridiculously expensive, with examples such as Leonidas being worth 5,000 gems, and Xerxes I costing a whopping $75,000 coins. At the very least, you can choose from a list of specific heroes instead of getting duplicates most of the time , though you’re likely going to be breaking the in-game bank with your purchase.

7. What’s Adventure Mode For?

Based on what we’ve seen so far in First Hero, Adventure mode doesn’t have much to it — it’s three stages of ten levels each, and while there may be more, the game’s makers appear to have designed Adventure as a way for players to unwind and practice when not battling human players in Domain mode, and also a way to grind for experience, resources, currency, and common heroes that could be used as fodder for enhancing or synthesizing your better heroes (more on that in our next guide). Pretty much, the stakes here are as low as they are in your usual campaign mode in a multiplayer game, so you might as well do as the game suggests — relax, unwind, and grind. You can also pay attention to the cutscenes in between levels, as this allows you to learn more about the game’s backstory, and what your role is as the First Hero and the savior of the in-game world.

8. Go To The Fountain Of Wishes

Located next to the gates of your capital is the Fountain of Wishes, which looks a lot like one of those fountains where you toss coins into before making a wish — pretty self-explanatory indeed! But as far as this game is concerned, you can go here every few hours or so to make a wish, which is actually a random reward that you can use to add to your resource or currency totals. Most of the time, it won’t be anything to write home about, but there are times when you might get lucky! Small rewards, after all, are better than no rewards at all.

9. Avoid Using Your Gems On Speeding Things Up

You may be tempted to use your gems a lot for speeding tasks up in First Hero. The game shows you how to do this in the tutorial stages, and you may have even realized that it doesn’t cost too much — only a handful of gems — to expedite tasks. You may think it’s a good idea to spend a couple gems to rush your infantry, archery, or horseman production, which is well and good on occasion. But if you aren’t careful, those could all add up and leave you with not enough gems available to make a special purchase at the store, or to unlock one of the rarer, featured heroes! Just kick back, relax, and don’t try to bite off more than you can chew.

10. Basic Battle Tips

Last, but not the least for our beginner’s guide, we shall be discussing some basic tips you can follow on the battlefield, regardless of the mode you’re playing in.

First off, it pays to have a balanced lineup in those six slots you have for Adventure or Domain battles. You will start out exclusively with Warriors, who are pretty much your most basic units, and are strong against Archers’ arrows. As you go on, you’ll unlock your Archers, which include Longbowmen, who can take on enemies from ranged distances, and are particularly strong against Horsemen, then the Horsemen, who attack enemies from all sides and make good use of their speed. As you can see, each main type of unit has their strengths and weaknesses, and you need to parade the best lineup possible, especially in Domain mode. You can pay a small amount of gold to scout your opponent in Domain mode, and once you’re done, you can go back to the main character screen, choose units, and correspondingly assign heroes. Ideally, your heroes are best when assigned to your stronger units, but also take into account that it will cost more mana to unleash a character’s attacks, in such a situation. The game recommends automatically assigning heroes to your troops, but if we were you, we’d assign heroes ourselves, as there are some heroes that can positively buff the units they are paired with.

When out there on the battlefield, your goal is to block the path of any enemy soldiers that are trying to move forward and destroy your structure. There’s no need to worry about this too much in Adventure mode, or against human opponents who aren’t actively updating their cities, but when up against real-life players who are active, that’s when you’ll need to outsmart them with your tactics, while also moving as quickly as your mana will allow you to. It helps to deploy your low-cost units before the higher-cost ones, as that allows you to save your most powerful units for last, and, as a worst case scenario, leaves them out there as the proverbial sacrificial lambs, keeping the enemy busy while you prepare your better units for battle. Going back to acting quickly — not only do you have a time limit (which is pretty generous at first), you also have to deal with live opponents in Domain as well! Generally, you want to seal them off before they do the same to you and attack your structure.