Runelords Arena features a wide variety of heroes you can use in your team. Now that you’re familiar with Building Your Team, it’s time for you to learn to upgrade your heroes to give them a better combat power rating. Each battle is determined by how much your heroes can fight against their targets, so unlocking your heroes’ full potential is essential. That is if you want to continue to defeat stronger enemies. Time to squash those pesky high-level opponents that keep giving you a hard time.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Combat Power (CP) refers to the heroes’ overall strength after calculating the character’s offensive and defensive stats. These stats increase whenever your hero levels up, gets promoted, gets their skills upgraded, or is equipped with runes. Keep in mind; there are times that combat power masks the hero’s actual effectiveness in battle. It is typical for champions with supportive stats to have bloated CP compared to offensive and defensive units on the field.

Hero Level

Hero level is the easiest way to increase your heroes’ base stats. Every time you upgrade your character, their main stats increase by a certain percentage. You’ll need to use Elixirs to upgrade your characters. You can get such Elixirs by completing campaigns, opening chests, collecting idle rewards, or completing the daily EXP Dungeon. Heroes don’t gain experience by completing campaigns or competing in the arena, though. There are only a few ways you can get Elixirs, so stock up on them.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Even though there are a handful of ways to acquire Elixirs, the biggest problem is that each of these sources is limited in their own ways: chests aren’t unlimited, the daily EXP Dungeons are only limited to three entries, and you’ll eventually reach Campaign stages that are too hard to beat. This means that you’ll need to farm as much as possible and not waste Elixirs on just any old unit you want to level up. Hero level is also limited depending on their star rating, which you can also increase – by promotion.

Promoting Heroes

Hero promotion is available when your character reaches the max level that they can achieve. You’ll need to sacrifice other heroes as requirements for your hero promotion. This can range anywhere from lowly B-Grade heroes to prized S-Grade heroes. It might feel like too steep of a cost, but sacrificing an S-Grade hero to upgrade your other S-Grade hero isn’t as bad as it sounds. You just need to know which heroes are worth sacrificing and those that are worth keeping.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Promoting heroes already adds stats to the character right off the bat, but you can unlock their full potential by levelling them up even further. The more you promote your hero, the higher you can level up your hero’s skills as well. Promotion is achieved not only by sacrificing heroes but also by using Gems, which you can get from Campaigns, Dragon Dungeon, and the Mirage Tower. Like Elixirs, however, they are limited, so make sure to do your daily missions to get as much as possible before the day ends.

Hero Skills

Hero Skills are the abilities that your heroes use in battle. While they don’t necessarily add bonus stats to your team, they do contribute to your character’s combat power value. Upgrading Hero Skills improves those skills’ effects by increasing the values like damage, healing, or chances of bonus effects triggering in battle. You’ll need to get Skill Books to upgrade hero skills. Hero Books are separated depending on the Grade of your hero.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

The only way to get Hero Books is either by getting them as rewards or randomly from the Ziggurat. However, you’ll need tickets to compete in the Ziggurat, which you can get from the Mall, completing daily quests or rewards from the Tavern Quests. The chance to get additional skill books isn’t easy, since they are all received by chance or by completing a long line of quests. They are worth it, though, so don’t give up trying to collect tickets to gamble.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Runes

Runes are unlocked once you get to Level 27. Runes provide the user additional stats once equipped, but they are more valuable when you put same-type multiple runes on your character to activate the set bonus. The set bonus adds even more stats, depending on how many same-type runes you have equipped to your hero. Runes are also classified using the Star Rating. When you have higher rune ratings, you can provide more overall stats than the 1-star ones you can farm.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Runes are relatively easy to collect, but the tricky part about collecting them is trying to get those that are higher in rarity. There’s also the factor of needing the same runes to activate the set bonus. It will take a bit of patience to collect the proper runes to place on your character. Also, you need to keep in mind what stats the rune gives. Match the rune on the right character class as well to maximize the provided bonus and avoid bloated combat power.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

Combat Power Bloating

Combat Power bloating refers to simply increasing your heroes’ CP rating for the sake of making it look strong even though it’s not. This happens when the hero has a high reflected combat power from equipping strong runes, but those runes don’t have the matching hero stat necessary to make the character strong. For example, adding magic damage to a warrior or archer is usually a waste, since they don’t deal magic damage. Instead, such classes should rely on runes that provide bonuses to stats like physical attack.

Runelords Arena - Upgrading Your Hero’s Combat Power

A great way to counter CP Bloating is to simply be patient. Adding the wrong runes is the same as not having the rune in the first place. Once you have the right runes equipped on your hero, it’s time to go for Rune Enhancements, which will increase the stats of the rune you selected. This only works on the base stat and not on the Set Bonus. Be careful when enhancing your runes; there’s a chance the rune might break or drop a few levels when you reach a certain level.