Whiteout Survival Hero Guide: Make Your Heroes OP

From your success in PvE events, such as Crazy Joe and Bear Hunt, to dominating your enemy in PvP events, such as during SvS and Brothers in Arms, your Heroes are central to determining how well you perform. Indeed, with the right Heroes under your command, and developed in the best way, you will be well on your way to finishing in the top positions in some of the game’s most important events. Unfortunately, however, Heroes can be a little complex to understand. Therefore, in this Whiteout Survival Hero Guide, we aim to show you everything you need to know, from the basics, such as upgrading their level, to the more intricate, such as determining skill upgrade order. Keep reading to learn all this and more.

Hero Overview

As touched on in the introduction, a lot is going on with Heroes that can be difficult to get to grips with. In the next sections of this Whiteout Survival Hero Guide, we take a look at each of the different components that make up a Hero, showing you what each one means and how it could affect your gameplay.

Rarity

Rarity determines how easy it is to get a certain Hero and how good they are likely to be once you upgrade them. Generally, the higher the rarity a Hero is, the better they will be. The rarities are as follows:

• Blue (R) – Rare
• Purple (SR) – Epic
• Gold (SSR) – Mythic

Class

Each Hero in Whiteout Survival will also have a class that determines the Troops that escort them during Explorations and those that they buff during Expeditions. You can see the class of your Hero by clicking on the symbol highlighted in the picture above. There are a total of 3 in the game which are as follows:

• Infantry – Shield
• Lancer – Spear
• Marksman – Crossbow

Sub Class

Following on from the main class of a Hero in Whiteout Survival, they also have a Sub Class which is represented by the icon next to their Class icon as highlighted in the picture above. This determines what they are best used for, Combat or Growth, and also indicates the types of skills they have. Combat Heroes have skills focused on attacking and Growth Heroes have skills focused on helping you develop your account such as through improved Gathering or construction.

Generation

On first starting Whiteout Survival, you will notice that you only have a limited number of Heroes available to you to be unlocked. This is because Heroes are released in what is known as Generations. When you first start a new state, you are in Generation 1 and over time you will progress through the next Generations. With each new Generation, new Heroes will become available to be unlocked via the usual methods such as Hero Recruitment and the Lucky Wheel. On average, Generation 2 will start after a State is about 40 days old with future Generations then commencing about every 80 days after this. Check out our List of Whiteout Survival Heroes for links to specific Hero Guides and details on which Generation each Hero is in.

Skills

The Skills a Hero has are by far the most important part of their kit in determining how good they are in different aspects of the game. Each Hero has 2 different types of Skills: Exploration and Expedition and the number they have each depends on their rarity as follows:

• Rare – 2 Exploration and 2 Expedition Skills
• Epic – 3 Exploration and 2 Expedition Skills
• Mythic – 3 Exploration and 3 Expedition Skills

As part of this Whiteout Survival Hero Guide, it is also important to understand the difference between these 2 different types of Skills. Exploration Skills are active during activities where you send only Heroes and select no troops, for example in Exploration and Arena. In contrast, Expedition Skills are only active when you send both Troops and Heroes, for example when engaging in PvP or when hunting Beasts and Polar Terrors.

Expedition Skill 1

The importance of Expedition Skill 1 in team gameplay cannot be overstated, especially for rally joiners. If you primarily join rallies, Expedition Skill 1 may be the only skill you need to focus on for most of your Heroes. This is because, as a rally joiner, only your lead Hero’s 1st Expedition Skill contributes to the rally’s overall buff. This differs from the rally leader, who benefits from the skill buffs of all three of their Heroes.

Only the 1st Expedition Skills from the first four lead Heroes to join a rally are included in the buff, with the rest being ignored. However, if a later player joins the rally with a lead Hero whose 1st Expedition Skill is at a higher level than one of the initial four joiners, their skill will replace the lower-level one, dynamically adjusting the rally’s effectiveness.

This is why it’s often advised to send no Hero rather than sending the wrong one. For example, joining a Bear Hunt rally with a Hero whose 1st Expedition Skill is irrelevant to the attack, such as Gina’s stamina reduction, might do more harm than good. If your Hero is included in the rally buff but contributes little, it could push out another player’s Hero with a more useful skill, reducing the overall rally performance. Selecting the right Hero ensures your contribution strengthens the team rather than inadvertently weakening it.

Escorts

Escorts are the Troops that a Hero takes with them when in Exploration game modes such as Arena and Exploration. The type of escort they take with them is tied to their class, so a Lancer Hero will have escorts who are Lancers. On the Heroes profile you will see the number that they currently take with them and this number is increased by improving their level as follows:

• Level 1 – 2 Escorts
• Level 5 – 3 Escorts
• Level 10 – 4 Escorts
• Level 20 – 5 Escorts
• Level 30 – 6 Escorts
• Level 40 – 7 Escorts
• Level 50 – 8 Escorts
• Level 60 – 9 Escorts
• Level 70 – 10 Escorts

Troop Capacity

A Hero’s Troop Capacity indicates the number of Troops they can take with them during Expedition battles and increases with their level. However, it should be noted that this number will look artificially low versus what you can actually send out due to additional buffs gained from areas such as research and the level of your Command Centre.

Buffs / Stats

Finally, in this section of the Whiteout Survival Hero Guide let’s discuss a Hero’s Overall Stats / Buffs. You can view the current total for your Heroes by selecting the small list icon on their profile as indicated in the image above. As seen, their overall stats are split into two sections: Exploration and Expedition. As you’d expect, Exploration stats are active during Exploration game modes and Expedition stats are active during Expedition game modes. The Expedition Stats always add a buff to a single Troop Type that is directly linked to the Hero’s class.

Talents

Certain Heroes also have a special skill called a Talent. This can be viewed on the Hero’s profile and is indicated by a small symbol next to their star rating as indicated in the image above. The buffs these grant are typically always active for your account regardless of whether or not the Hero is present in a certain activity. These are unlocked by getting the Hero to Star Level 1 and hit their maximum buff once the Hero is at 5 Stars. However, it should be noted that they do not work for rally joiners.

Upgrading Heroes

To get the most out of your Heroes you’ll need to make sure you are upgrading them using all the methods available to you: leveling, ascending, skills, and gear. Join us in the next sections of this Whiteout Survival Hero Guide as we explore this idea in more detail.

Level

The most basic way that you can upgrade your Heroes is by increasing their level. Heroes can go up to a maximum level of 80 with each increase in their level increasing their power and their overall stats. To increase their level you must give them Hero EXP. The amount of experience required for each level is as follows:

Level	Furnace Level Required	Hero XP
1	4	N/A
2	4	480
3	4	690
4	4	920
5	4	1,200
6	4	1,500
7	4	1,800
8	4	2,200
9	4	2,600
10	4	3,100
11	4	3,800
12	4	4,200
13	4	5,100
14	4	5,700
15	4	6,800
16	4	7,800
17	4	8,900
18	4	10,000
19	4	12,000
20	4	13,000
21	10	14,000
22	10	15,000
23	11	16,000
24	11	17,000
25	11	18,000
26	12	19,000
27	12	20,000
28	12	21,000
29	13	22,000
30	13	24,000
31	13	26,000
32	14	28,000
33	14	30,000
34	14	32,000
35	15	36,000
36	15	40,000
37	15	44,000
38	16	48,000
39	16	52,000
40	16	58,000
41	17	64,000
42	17	70,000
43	17	76,000
44	18	82,000
45	18	90,000
46	18	98,000
47	19	100,000
48	19	110,000
49	19	120,000
50	20	130,000
51	20	140,000
52	20	150,000
53	20	160,000
54	20	170,000
55	21	190,000
56	21	210,000
57	21	230,000
58	21	250,000
59	21	270,000
60	22	300,000
61	22	330,000
62	22	360,000
63	22	390,000
64	22	420,000
65	23	470,000
66	23	520,000
67	23	570,000
68	23	620,000
69	23	670,000
70	24	770,000
71	24	870,000
72	24	970,000
73	24	1,000,000
74	24	1,100,000
75	25	1,300,000
76	25	1,500,000
77	25	1,700,000
78	25	1,900,000
79	25	2,100,000
80	26	2,400,000

How to get Hero EXP

As you progress in Whiteout Survival, you will quickly find out that it is quite difficult to actually accumulate enough Hero EXP to improve their level. The best place to get Hero EXP is via the Exploration game mode. Depending on what stage you are at you will gain a certain amount of Hero EXP every 10 minutes, the higher your stage, the more you will get. In addition to Exploration, you can also get Hero XP as a reward from events, by buying it in shops, defeating Beasts, completing Intel Missions, and purchasing it for Gems.

Drill Camp

In addition to Hero XP, you can also use the Drill Camp to increase the level of your Heroes. Here you can assign 5 Heroes to be Drill Instructors, these will be your 5 highest level Heroes. Once this is done, you can then assign Heroes to Drill Slots. Heroes in the Drill Slots will then take on the level of the lowest level Hero from the Drill Instructors. The number of open Drill Slots can be increased by leveling up your Furnace. At a Furnace level of 30, you will have a total of 15 available Drill Slots. It should also be noted that you can reset the level of your Heroes in the Drill Camp which will return all the Hero XP you have used on them.

Ascending

Once you have unlocked a Hero you can ascend them to increase their star level up to a maximum of 5 Stars. To ascend a Hero, you must use Shards of that Hero or General Hero Shards of the same rarity as the Hero you are trying to Ascend. Each Star has 6 tiers that can be ascended through with each new tier increasing Overall Stats and Power. In addition to this, the max level of a Hero’s skills depends on their star level.

How to get Hero Shards

As mentioned in the previous section, you must use Shards to ascend a Hero. It depends on the Hero as to where you can get these from with each Hero having different sources. You check out our Whiteout Survival Hero List for details on where each Hero can be found. However, for an idea of the easiest shards to acquire, check out our list of the Best Heroes for F2P Players.

Hero Shards Needed for Ascending

Stars	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4	Tier 5	Tier 6	Total
1	1	1	2	2	2	2	10
2	5	5	5	5	5	15	40
3	15	15	15	15	15	40	115
4	40	40	40	40	40	100	300
5	100	100	100	100	100	100	600

In addition to the above, it is also worth mentioning that to unlock a Hero in the first place will require a certain number of shards depending on their rarity as follows:

• Rare – 10 Hero Shards
• Epic – 10 Hero Shards
• Mythic – 10 Hero Shards

If you get lucky and pull the full Hero from an event or Hero Recruitment, then you will instead gain the number of shards for that Hero that it would cost to unlock under normal circumstances.

Skills

As mentioned in our Hero Overview section of this Whiteout Survival Guide, each Hero has different types of skills they can learn: Exploration and Expedition. Exploration Skills are active in battles where you just send Heroes, such as Exploration and Arena, whilst Expedition Skills are active when you send Heroes and Troops, such as when attacking Polar Terrors or engaging in PvP.

When a Hero is first unlocked, most of their Skills will be locked and remain locked until they reach a certain star level. You can then increase the skill up to a maximum level of 5 with each level improving the buffs gained from the skill. However, again, you will be limited by how far you can level a skill based on the Heroes star level. The Star Level required to unlock each skill and upgrade its level can be summarized as follows:

Skill	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5
Exploration 1	0	1	2	3	4
Exploration 2	1	1	2	3	4
Exploration 3	2	2	2	3	4
Expedition 1	1	1	2	3	4
Expedition 2	1	1	2	3	4
Expedition 3	2	2	2	3	4

As should be clear from the above, this is why it is generally recommended to aim to get the Heroes you use the most up to star level 4. This allows you to upgrade all of their skills to the maximum, giving you full use of their kit. With this in mind, for an idea of the best Heroes to focus on as a F2P player, check out our List of the Best Heroes for F2P Players.

Skill Manuals Required

Upgrading a skill requires you to use Skill Manuals of a rarity that is equal to that of the Hero. In addition, there are different Skill Manuals for the 2 different types of skills: Exploration Skill Manuals and Expedition Skill Manuals. The Skill Manuals required for each increase in a skills level are as follows:

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Total
0	10	30	50	75	165

How to get Skill Manuals

As should now be obvious from the previous section, you will quickly run out of the Skill Manuals required to improve your best Heroes. As a result, as mentioned in our Whiteout Survival Tips for Beginners, it is important not to waste any on Heroes that you will not actively be using. In addition to this, you need to ensure you are tapping all the Skill Manual sources so that you are accumulating as many as possible. They can be found in the following places:

• Bought using Gems
• Hero Recruitment
• VIP Shop
• VIP Rewards
• Intel Missions
• Event Rewards

Gear

Each Hero is also able to equip 4 pieces of Gear with Mythic Heroes having an additional 5th slot for a Hero specific exclusive Gear that has a powerful skill associated with it. The 4 Gear slots are as follows:

• Goggles
• Gauntlets
• Belt
• Boots

Each piece of gear equipped will increase a certain stat for the Hero depending on their class. Like Heroes, Gear can also be upgraded to improve their stat buffs even more. For more on this topic, including details on how to get Gear, upgrade it, and more, check out our Whiteout Survival Gear Guide.

How to get Heroes

As already touched on in our section on Hero Shards, there are a number of ways to accumulate Heroes that will differ for each Hero. To see where to get each Hero check out our Whiteout Survival Hero List which also contains information on Hero Generations and Rarity. However, as a quick point of reference, some of the best places to get Hero Shards are as follows:

• Packs
• Hall of Heroes
• Lucky Wheel
• Intel Missions
• SvS
• Hero Recruitment
• Exploration
• Gina’s Revenge
• Hall of Chiefs
• King of Icefield
• Shops

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