Welcome to the guide for Heroes of Gaia. If you're here, you probably need a bit of help in figuring out how to play the game. The guide is comprehensive, so hopefully you find what you're looking for!
The resource bar is located at the top of the castle interface screen, and shows how much of each resource you have (the number in white), how much you can hold (the number in yellow), and how much you gain per hour (the number in green). You will notice the white numbers, the numbers that you 'own', raising every so often. This just means that your natural production is working, and you don't have to do anything to do earn it. Keep in mind that the amount of resources you own cannot exceed the amount of resources that you can hold (the yellow number). You can increase the amount you hold by upgrading your warehouse building. The last number in green (the amount you gain per hour) can be increased in a few ways. First, you can research various things in your magic tower, you can capture mines on the main map, and you can attack various monsters, items, and resource piles on the main map. We'll get to all of that later, though.
You will also notice a small symbol on the far right of the resource bar, with a few increasingly large bars next to it. This is there to tell you how the server is doing, if the game is possibly going to run slowly for you or if it's running fine.
The next thing we'll cover is the chat interface. It's actually rather simple, The main part of the chat is self explanatory, you can type what you want to say in at the bottom and push enter or click 'Send' to send the message. The tabs at the top of the chat interface allow you to switch between seeing the types of chats that there are. 'All' allows you to see everything in global chat, guild chat, and everything in private. The 'Guild' tab filters out the Global channel and only allows you to see what is in guild and private chat. The 'Private' tab filters everything out but the private messages you've sent and received. Lastly, the 'Help' tab allows you to chat in the help channel.
The dropdown menu below the main chat interface allows you to choose which chat you talk in. So, you can view everything at the same time by clicking the 'All' tab, and type in your guild chat.
You'll also notice two small buttons near the top right corner. The one on the left allows you to choose a few options for your interface, and the right one allows you to increase or decrease the size of the chat box.
In the center of the bottom of the screen, you'll see an image of your caste surrounded by a few buttons, and showing a bit of useful information. The name of your castle is at the very bottom, useful if you have more than one castle and might not know which one you're currently viewing. Above that you're shown the amount of gold your castle is normally generating without any other factors. This is decided by your level of townhall, and other various factors will increase that amount to show the amount that is seen on your resource bar.
Now, let's look at the few buttons surrounding the image of your castle, starting with the 'Guild' button.
The Guild button allows you to view the information about the guild you're in, if you're currently in a guild. You'll see a few buttons across the top of the guild interface, as well as a lot of information below that.
Member List: This simply shows a list of members in your guild, their positions in the guild, and their fame.
Guild Management: This button allows the leaders of the guild to do various things for and in the guild, such as recruiting new members, changing the guild information, booting members, and accepting applications.
Guild Affairs: This button allows guild leaders to make diplomatic relations with other guilds in the game.
Guild Tasks: Currently unavailable.
Guild Skills: Currently unavailable.
Construct Stronghold: Currently unavailable.
Guild Name: The name of your guild.
Guild Leader: This shows the person in charge of your guild.
Members: This shows how many members you currently have, and how many you can have at maximum. Each level of your guild leader's embassy allows 10 more people to join the guild, up to a maximum amount of 100.
Rankings: This shows the current rank of your guild, in total fame of all members.
Fame: This is the total fame of everyone in your guild added together. Guilds are ranked by fame as well as individuals, showing in the ranking screen.
My contrubutions: Currently unavailable.
Below that information you will see the guild message, written by the guild leaders. It's a good idea to check it often, it might have useful information.
The bulk of the guild interface shows a list of allies to your guild, and if you click the 'Enemy Guild' tab, you can see the list of guilds that you are at war with.
Task - The task interface is very simple. There are two types of tasks you can complete: Main tasks, and daily tasks. You can get a task by clicking on it in the 'task name' menu and then clicking the 'Get Task' button
Main tasks help you progress normally through the game and give you rewards for doing things early on. It is recommended that you check these out after doing the in game tutorial, the rewards will help you out and you will be completing these tasks anyways! Daily tasks are a bit different, giving you a daily set of tasks to complete, the same ones every day. Increasing your title (which we will cover later) allows you access to more of these types of tasks, and some of them give some very nice rewards. It's recommended you check these out daily, as they'll be helpful to you.
Kingdom - The kingdom interface allows you to see nearly everything that is going on in your kingdom. Here you can view your different castles, heroes, and mines, as well as plenty of useful information on each of those things. Check them out by clicking each tab.
Info - You will notice five tabs when you check out the information menu: Incident Report, Unit Status, Declaration of War, Real Battle, and Capitol Battle Report. We will cover three of them, two of them you will not use until much later stages in the game.
First, the Incident report tab shows you what you've done in the game, so that if you want to remember what you attacked and where, you can view it here. The reports will remain there until you delete them, so you can generally see everything you've done pertaining to attacks here. You can also view if you have been scouted or attacked here when you log in after being gone.
The Unit Status tab shows your current actions, such as your hero going out to attack someone or something or your hero going out to scout. You can view the hero by clicking on the view button, how much time is left until the action is completed, and where it's going to and from as well as some other useful information.
The Declaration of War tab shows how long you have to wait until you can attack someone you have declared war on, or who has declared war on you. There is an 8 hour waiting period between declaring war and actually fighting, so both parties have time to prepare for the fight ahead.
The player interface is possibly the most important section on this screen, holding buttons and information that you will find yourself using constantly as you're playing. It contains the Player, Hero, and Units tabs.
Player Tab:
The player tab holds your personal stats, as well as some useful buttons.
Name: This is your character name, and will show up in the rankings, guild members list, and chat, wherever your information will show up for other players.
Camp: This is your 'faction' in game. The two factions in game are Unionist and Separatist. Which side you are on decides who you can fight in the Arena.
Race: This shows what race you are. The available ones are Human, Orc, Elf, and Undead.
AP: This shows how many 'Points of Action' you have remaining. Doing certain things on the world map take up these AP, such as attacking resources, attacking monsters, occupying mines, occupying castles, and reinforcing allies. Hovering over it with your mouse will allow you to see how much you will regenerate per hour, and how much more fame you require to increase your maximum amount of AP.
Title: This shows your current title. Your title decides a few things that you can do, and increases as your Fame increases. Your Title decides how many heroes you can have, how many castles you can occupy, how many daily quests you can have, as well as other things.
Fame: Fame is your main stat in the game, deciding your rank among other players. You can increase it by building new buildings, upgrading building, researching magics, building units, and attacking the various NPC spots as well as player spots on the world map.
Below that information you'll notice a few buttons.
Friend: This shows your friend list in game, and allows you to add friends in game.
Mail: You can view and send in game mail here, important announcements from the System will also show up here.
Rank: The rank page has a few options to sort players by how much of something they have, such as fame, units, hero stats, and more.
Website: This button takes you to the Heroes of Gaia website.
Help: Unavailable
Hero Tab:
This tab lists your heroes in the castle you're currently in. You can view their stats here, as well as assign units to them.
Units Tab:
This tab shows you how many units your castellan has equipped, as well as showing you how many units are in your castle waiting to be assigned. You can view their stats by mousing over them.
There are a few other things to note on the castle screen that really don't fit in any group, but are still important.
Leave Castle:
This button is located on the far right, near the bottom. It takes you directly to the world map screen, you will be using it a lot.
Progress Screen:
This readout, located in the upper right hand corner of the screen below the resource bar, is a handy tool that allows you to see how long it'll take to build the various things that you've ordered built. Buildings, Magic, and Troops will all show up here, as well as the buffs that you can get from visiting various places on the main map. To view it, you need to click the small red arrow button to expand the menu, and click the type of build you want to view. To hide the menu again, just click the red arrow button once more.
Server Time and Special Notifications:
The Server time, in the upper left hand corner of your screen, is fairly self explanatory. It shows the server time, otherwise known as the game time. Each hour that goes by from it gives you your Action Points, and the day resets at 00:00:00 every day.
Above that are the special notification icons. They are small boxes with an image inside and they can be moused over for information. These show you some information that is important to you, so be sure to check out what they mean.
At the top of the main interface is the map HUD. This is a useful tool that allows you to see what's around your current location, and clicking on it will take you to that position on the map. You'll notice many different colors and shapes, but they're easy to understand after knowing what they mean. First off, green squares on the map are your castles. Green circles show you where your heroes are. Green triangles show you mines that you control. Blue squares show you where your guild members castles are. Red squares are castles belonging to other players not in your guild. Yellow squares are NPC castles.
Red circles are heroes belonging to anyone else. The blue stars are special places on the map that can only be visited once per day. Red triangles are mines that are controlled by people that are not in your guild. Blue triangles show you mines that your guild members control. Yellow triangles are unclaimed mines. Finally, the gold diamonds are Capitol buildings.
You will also notice two small buttons on the bottom right and left hand corners of the circular map HUD. The one on the left allows you to see the places that you've saved in your coordinates list. You might want to use this if you find something important that's far away, and want an easy way to get to it. The button on the right is the world map, which shows your position on the 'entire' map, as well as the various capitol buildings.
Underneath the Map HUD you will notice a series of buttons and boxes. The center buttons (Kingdom, Tasks, Guild, Info, and Shop) have all been covered already, in the Kingdom Interface section, so we'll look at the boxes on the left and right sides of these buttons.
The boxes on the right side show your castles. Clicking on them will take you directly to the castle on the map. You only have one to start off, but increasing your fame will allow you to claim more castles.
The boxes on the left side show your heroes that are on the map currently. Clicking on them will take you directly to the hero on the map. You normally will see no heroes in this list, you have to send heroes out on attacks or send them to reinforce guild members to see their picture in this section.
Below the Hero/Castle section you'll see a list of information. By default, it will show your player information. (Race, Name, Repuatation, Camp, AP, and Title) Reputation is another word for Fame, you'll notice that the numbers are identical when you check the values. If you click on a castle in the Hero/Castle section, the information about that castle will show up in this section. The castle's name, defending hero, gold output, and coordinates are all viewable here. If you click a hero on the Hero/Castle section, information about that hero will show up in the Information section. The hero's level, race, name, and units will show up here.
To go back to your player information, just click the box and it will return to the default state.
The search function, located at the top of the screen to the left of the Map HUD, is an extremely useful tool that you should acquaint yourself with immediately.
After clicking on the button, you will notice the screen has four tabs that pop up: NPC, Items, Resources, and Worldmap Building. In the tabs, you will notice a column labelled 'Operation', with three buttons for each NPC, treasure, resource, or location. The 'Move' button moves your map HUD directly to what you click on. The 'View' button shows you various stats and information about the NPC/treasure/resource/location that you want to check out. The 'Save COO' saves the location in your coordinate list, which we covered in the Map HUD section. You can search in each tab for specific types of each thing and specific levels in the dropdown menu labeled 'Select type', and view more of them by clicking the Next or Prev buttons.
The NPC tab shows you the locations of the nearest monster NPCs that you can attack.
The Items tab shows you the locations of the nearest treasures on the map that you can attack.
The Resources tab shows you the locations of the nearest resources on the map that you can attack.
The Worldmap Building tab shows you the locations of the nearest special buildings, such as the Windmill and Waterwheel. You can check what these things do by clicking on them, they generally offer a boost to your stats temporarily or give you a nice amount of gold/resources.
Map Scroller:
In the lower right hand corner of the main screen you will notice a very faint circle with eight arrows surrounding it, inside of a larger circle. The circle will take you directly to the the castle that you have selected on the map. The arrows allow you to easily scroll in eight directions, pressing an arrow will scroll the map in the direction of that arrow. Note that you can also scroll using the arrow keys, if you click on the main screen first.
Coordinate Scroller:
At the top of the screen below the resource bar, you'll notice an X and Y coordinate, and a 'move' button. You can manually type in coordinates here and press 'move' to move directly to a point on the map.
