Clicker Heroes: Tips & Tricks

So you've started playing Clicker Heroes but aren't sure what's going on? That's what this page is for! We have TONS of strategies here to help you beat the game!

Starting Out

Your first focus should be on levelling up your heroes and unlocking new ones.

Look at the cost of each hero level and the DPS (Damage Per Second) increase to figure out which heroes are the best value. If your progress seems like it's slowing down, come back later -- the game keeps going even when you're not playing, so you'll have lots more money to spend on upgrading your heroes.

Don't worry about anything else on this page until you recruit Frostleaf... you'll learn about it soon enough!

Your First Ascension

1. Should I ascend?

Yes, you definitely should! Just wait until you are ready. When you ascend you will earn Hero Souls that will make everything go much faster and you'll be able to buy new things like Ancients and get more Gilded Heroes! Trust us, you're not making it to level 1000 (or beyond!) without ascending a bunch of times.

2. When should I ascend for the first time?

Although you can ascend as soon as you unlock Amenhotep's Ascension ability, WAIT! You should reach at least Zone 100 before you ascend for the first time. Reach Zone 100-140, then level up your lower level heroes that you haven't touched in awhile. For your first ascension, you should aim to get at least 5-7 souls from hero levels, meaning you should aim for 10,000-14,000 hero levels before you ascend.

3. What should I do after I ascend?

Once you ascend, your focus should shift from leveling your heroes and using your abilities to gaining lots of Hero Souls as quickly as possible. You'll also notice that Frostleaf's DPS is not effective after level 100, and Dread Knight may seem impossibly far away. Fortunately, the DPS of your other heroes DPS multiplies by 4x every 25 levels, and by 10x and Hero Level 1,000! Levelling heroes like Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Samurai and Seer will help you farm Hero Souls efficiently until you are ready to transition to some of the later heroes. See the Gilded Heroes section for more info.

Hero Souls

1. What are Hero Souls and how do I get them?

Each Hero Soul increases your DPS by 10%. If you have 10 of them, that will DOUBLE all of the damage you deal! This will make your next ascension much faster.

This Hero Soul damage increase is additive, not multiplicative. What does that mean? It means that if you have 100 Hero Souls, getting one more Hero Soul won't increase your DPS by 10% of your current DPS. It will increase your DPS by 10% of your original DPS, before the any of your other Hero Souls are taken into account. Fortunately, you can spend your Hero Souls on Ancients and other things that will increase your DPS even further! Keep reading.

When you ascend, you receive 1 Hero Soul for every 2,000 combined Hero levels (for example, if you have Cid at level 1,000 and Treebeast at level 1,000, you will get 1 Hero Soul from these two heroes).

You can also obtain Hero Souls by beating Primal Bosses after Zone Level 100 (NOTE: You will not receive these Hero Souls until your next run, after you ascend). Once you find Mercenaries, you can also earn Hero Souls by having them complete quests for you.

2. What are Primal Bosses?

These are special bosses that occur after Zone 100. Each boss has a 25% chance to be a Primal Boss (this can be increased by buying Atman, Ancient of Souls). Primal Bosses will have a magical aura around them, their name will be in purple and begin with "Primal". Defeating them will give you Hero Souls, which will be added to your total souls after you ascend.

Higher level Primal Bosses give more souls. You can also get even more souls per Primal Boss by buying Solomon, the Ancient of Wisdom.

There is a 25% chance of them spawning, but that doesn't mean every 4th boss will be Primal (you can go 100+ levels without a primal); increase your chances by buying Atman, the Ancient of Souls. Once you kill a Primal Boss, it will return to its normal version, which won't give you anymore Hero Souls. You have new chances to see Primal Bosses each time you ascend.

If you can't kill a Primal Boss in time, don't worry! It won't turn back into a normal boss. Just go back to the previous level to earn more gold and hero levels before trying again.

Every 100 levels, you are guaranteed to get a Primal Boss. These special bosses are called Centurion Bosses. Until level 1000, these bosses have special graphics and will give you an achievement the first time that you beat them. Starting with the level 1100 Centurion Boss, they won't have special graphics anymore, but they're still guaranteed to give you Hero Souls when you defeat them.

Ancients

Ancients are one of the first things that you'll want to spend your Hero Souls on. Which ones you want will depend on your playstyle. Don't buy an Ancient that doesn't fit in with your strategy!

1. When should I buy my first Ancient?

After you ascend for the first time, look at the Ancients that you have available. If there is a good Ancient available, buy it. If there's not, you can re-roll once or twice, but not more than that. Remember, you're lowering your DPS to buy these Ancients. Always make sure that you have Hero Souls left over after buying Ancients!

2. How much do Ancients cost?

Your first Ancient will cost 1 Hero Soul. Your second costs 2, your third costs 4, etc. Each Ancient will cost twice what your last one cost to acquire. This makes it much better to reroll than to buy an Ancient that you won't use! If you buy a bunch of bad Ancients, or want to change your playstyle, you can click on the "Respec" button to remove all of your Ancients and get back 75% of the Hero Souls that you have spent on them.

Each Ancient has a different cost to level, and some Ancients have maximum levels.

3. Which Ancients are the best?

If you want to play a more "idle" playstyle, the two best ancients are Libertas, Ancient of Freedom and Siyalatas, Ancient of Abandon. After that, Atman and Solomon are great for increasing your Primal Soul gain in each run. Once you have those, the other great ancients are Mammon, Mimzee, and Dora. Finally, Kumawakamaru will help you as your runs get longer and longer, and Argaiv is worth buying as you get more Gilds for your heroes. Other Ancients worth considering are Dogcog, Fortuna, Bubos, Chronos, Chrysos, Iris, Vaagur, and Morgulis.

Gilded Heroes

You'll receive your first Gilded Hero when you beat level 100 for the first time. After that, you will receive another Gilded Hero every 10 levels (but only the first time that you beat it). Gilded Heroes get a 50% damage bonus for each Gild that they have.  You can see which Gilded heroes you have by clicking the "Gilded" button at the bottom of the Hero List.

1. What is Re-Gilding?

Gilds will initially be given to a random hero. However, you can "give" a Gild from a hero to a random different hero by spending 2 Hero Souls, or you can spend 80 Hero souls to give a particular hero a Gild from another random hero.

2. Should I Re-Gild My Heroes?

Generally speaking, you want your Gilds on the heroes that you use most. At first, you should not re-Gild your heroes at all.

Once you have reached level 200, the ideal Heroes to have gilded are Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Samurai, and Forest Seer. Spend 2 Hero Souls to de-Gild the heroes that you are not using, and hope that one of these "Power Five" heroes gets the gild.

Once you reach level 500, you can start moving all of your Gilds to the Masked Samurai. Use the 80 Hero Soul re-Gild on Masked Samurai. Make sure that your DPS is increasing as you do this, and remember to keep some Hero Souls saved while re-Gilding.

Once you can get Samurai to Hero Level 2500 very quickly, re-Gild from Samurai to Atlas all at once. You can leave a Gild on Samurai to make it a bit quicker to reach Atlas, if you want.

After you can reach 1500 on Atlas without slowing down, move all of your Gilds at the same time from Atlas to Terra. Do this again once you can reach 1500 on Terra without slowing down, and so on through the remaining Heroes.

Transcending

1. What is Transcending?

Transcending is kind of like ascending, but you lose more and in exchange receive Ancient Souls and Transcendant Power. Ancient Souls can be spent on "Outsiders", which power up your Ancients by increasing idle bonuses, reducing Ancient costs, or increasing Transcendant power. Eventually, you will shift your focus from earning Hero Souls as quickly as possible to earning Ancient Souls as quickly as possible.

2. When should I Transcend?

It's not a bad idea to transcend as soon as it becomes available to you. But first, get to the end of your current run, ascend, and then immediately Transcend. However, if you're really close to your "Next AS" on the Transcend tab, you might want to get to that, before ascending and Transcending. You may want to save your game too - now's a good time to do it!

3. Help! I Transcended and now my progress is really slow!

The first time that you transcend it will seem like you went all the way back to square one. Ancient Souls and Transcendant Power won't speed up your progress until after you ascend again. If you have some Rubies saved up for a Quick Ascension, you can buy one from the shop to save yourself quite a bit of time. Another thing to consider is spending your Rubies for the 2x damage boost in the Ruby store. Most benefits that you earn won't help speed up your first ascencion cycle after Transcending. however this one will, and it's permanent.

3. How should I spend my Ancient Souls?

The first Ancients you want to buy are Xyliqil and Ponyboy. You want to have 6 Ancient Souls in Xyliqil and 24 in Ponyboy at 30 AS. Once you reach 31 AS, start investing in Chor'goloth and Phandoryss instead. You won't want to start investing in Borb until you hit your Max Transcendant Primal Reward for the first time after defeating a boss (you'll have 100 AS or so).