You need a minimum of 2 teams… one that uses Set of Light (Alliance or Forest), and a second that used Set of Darkness (Chaos or Undead)… for doing Adventures daily (i.e., Dark Menace and Highway Robbery). You can use a combo of these teams to do Dwarve’s Treasure. Each member of team will need 7 stars to do Level 80. Doing Level 80 of Adventures gives 1,500 Pearls daily… 4,500 on Sunday. This helps a ton in getting the runes you need.
Few more tips... #1) 1 tank + 2 support + 2 damage (1 bow or melee, and 1 magic) works good for campaign... but there are really good PVP teams that use 3 or more support heroes to "control" your team with stun, silence, etc. #2) Runes that increase or decrease damage dealt/received by a % are better in end game than runes that increase damage or HP by a fixed number. #3) After the 1st month, login rewards give you 80 shards of 1 of these heroes per month: Angel, Bone Dragon, Devil, Efreet, Fairy and Golden Dragons, Titan, Unicorn. #4) Dryad and Staff of Necro are very useful for Campaign. #5) Crusader or Minotaur are good for control. Centaur is good for speed. Vampire is good for dealing with the guys that explode in campaign.
Tip #1: Understand the hero's skill descriptions (effect, preparation time, first-use, target) and the effects of each rune. This is important when choosing your team, duh. Tip #2: There are 2 Sets of Orange Lord's Armor - "Of Light" and "Of Darkness". Using all 6 gear from the Set Of Light gives a bonus to Alliance and Forest heroes. Using all 6 gear from the Set Of Darkness gives a bonus to Chaos and Undead heroes. So, pick 1 main team of either 5 Alliance, or 5 Forest, or 5 Alliance/Forest, or 5 Chaos, or 5 Undead, or 5 Chaos/Undead. Focus on levelling up, skills, and gear this main team. If your main team is made to use Set Of Light, then make a secondary team to use Set Of Darkness for daily "Adventures".
Agreed with @Yamensabry, it's not necessary to pay. Build up your team according to your own pace and wallet. I must say tho, it would be nice if the developers allowed Wooden Chests to be opened without needing an open slot... this would give free players more incentive to play more often. Allowing players 20 free Heroic Raids at Level 0 VIP would be another nice move. Not allowing any free Heroic Raids at Level 0 can handicap free players because of time taken to do the raids.
As Kongregate chatrooms aren't available... sign up on the game's Discord channel to get updates, chat, get help, etc. Link is below. Cheers!
https://discordapp.com/invite/QabpXkC
Rise Of Champions is a much better long-term game on Kongregate IMO. There are no energy limits... PVP+Arena+Brawls+GuildWar+Story battles to improve your characters and level up... lots of gear and stats to play with. You don't need to spend money to compete... F2P even receive decent VIP levels just from playing… and there's no meaningless clicking to do tedious daily tasks that give tiny rewards... and no lagg. The developer is a nice, friendly guy who runs a Discord channel for chat and feedback... not greedy like Shinezone.
@magua1 - Speed isn't the only relevant stat. It's important in PVP... but almost every stat is relevant, which is why we have different builds. Damage builds, resist builds, hybrids.
WilliamVengeance: join an active guild and take part in brawls, guild warfare... as well as do new story levels. That is how you earn resources. There's also other ways to improve... such as taking certain Gear Runes, Combat Mastery and Lore skills. Just doing PVP/Arena for hours won't improve your team. Do these and you'll beat those AI teams easy. :)
@ArcherBob - If I'm not mistaken, battle 3 of the tutorial is trying to show you how to view your opponent's battle stats by mousing over their status bar (the green, blue and yellow bars). If that's where you're stuck, just mouse over the bars and you can continue.
@wuppumatte - the load screen b4 battle only shows the total of the player's major/minor gear runes. Their actual stats are shown when the battle starts by clicking the profile icon for each of their champs (and yours too). If you want to see your gear's major/minor runes, just check them in your inventory window and add them up. Or grudge match a friend and ask them to sceenshot and share with you.
This is one of two long-term games I'd recommend playing on Kongregate, along with Bloons Monkey City. Play as much as you want since you are not limited by energy. Single battles, arena battles, story-line battles, solo brawls and guild wars... take your pick. The game has a lot of gear (equips, gems, trinkets, mutations) and other ways (Mastery/Lore points) to improve your team, all of which are obtainable to every player. The devs are active and host a Discord channel where you can chat with them and other players... they are also not money-grabbers like many others (example: Shinezone). The events give out actual prizes and are worth taking part in to strengthen your team. F2P players need not spend to compete and have multiple ways to earn diamonds (in-game currency) and even get VIP levels just through playing. The graphics/images are a little old school at this time (2019) since it's been out for 5+ years but it's a great game overall... wish I'd found it sooner!
If you're looking for a long-term flash game to play, avoid this and play Rise Of Champions instead. I played TKOT for two years and it's a waste of time... you need years of mindless clicking to get to end-game (which I'm embarrassed to admit I did in order to pass-time)... and the game-play at highest levels is incredibly frustrating with lag. Add to that, repetitive events that don't give you actual rewards/prizes but are simply excuses to pull more $$ out of you (is being so tight-fisted a Chinese thing? :P)... and the HUGE power gap between spenders and F2P... totally pointless. I've recently started playing another game, Rise Of Champions, it's way better than this, especially for F2P. No energy limitations, spenders are not overpowered compared to free players, lots of stuff to do by yourself or with a guild, events give out actual prizes and are not excuses to bleed you dry. I'm changing my rating for TKOT from 4 to 1 star based on how much better Rise of Champions is.
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Thanks RGP