This guide is outdated, do not use it.

While freemium games give advantages to players who are willing to invest real money into the game, I’ve been able to replicate this process on three accounts, regardless of the amount of money I’ve spent on each account. My first account is a Pay-To-Play account ($4,400 spent) that always places Rank 1. My second account is a mostly Free-To-Play account where I only purchased the dark side starter pack, crystal subscription and $20 crystal pack ($37 total investment) and usually it places in the top 3 each day. My last account is a purely Free-To-Play account that I didn’t invest anything in and I was able to reach rank 2 on my Arena ladder by day 3 and have placed top 10 ever since. The trick to getting in the top 10 is to gain an advantage early in your first two days playing the game and then push that advantage in order to obtain resources in the game that only the highest level / best Arena rankings players get each day. Follow these instructions and you too can be one of the best in the galaxy.

The Basics (Energy / Resources)

First off, since this is a Freemium game that restricts how quickly you progress in the game by giving you a limited amount of energy & resources per day, you need to know the basics about in-game energy and resources:

Mission Energy – This energy signified by a yellow lightning bolt is used to complete Light Side & Dark Side Battles or Missions. You can have a maximum of 60-129 energy depending on your current level and you recharge 1 energy every 6 minutes or 240 energy per day. You can refresh or purchase 120 additional energy for premium currency, and the cost increases as you refresh each time. It costs 50/50/100/100/100/200/200/200/400/400/etc crystals to refresh your energy bar, and the cost to refresh resets at midnight each night.

Cantina Energy – This energy signified by an orange lightning bolt is used to complete Squad Cantina Battles. You can have a maximum of 60-129 cantina energy depending on your current level and you recharge 1 cantina energy every 12 minutes or 120 cantina energy per day. You can refresh or purchase 120 additional Cantina energy for premium currency, and the cost increases as you refresh each time. It costs 100/200/400/800/1600/etc crystals to refresh your Cantina energy bar, and the cost to refresh resets at midnight each night.

In Galaxy of Heroes, certain areas of the game open up at certain levels. The most important of those being the Squad Cantina Battles at level 28 and the Galactic War at level 40. The first players to unlock these areas in each Arena ladder gain a competitive advantage because they gain access to resources and character shards that other players do not have access to until later. Because of this, you want to earn as much XP as possible and level up as quickly as you can during your first few days playing the game.

There are two ways to earn player experience in the game. Completing all your daily activities each day for ~900 XP total and then completing in-game battles. Every Light/Dark/Cantina Battle earns XP equivalent to the amount of energy spent. In other words, one energy refresh (120 energy) is worth 120 Experience. Because 1 Energy is the equivalent of 1 XP, it’s very important to earn and spend your energy wisely.

There are three ways to earn energy. You naturally recharge energy at a rate of 10 normal energy and 5 cantina energy every hour. Three times per day, at 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM you can collect 45 free normal energy in your daily activity section for an additional 135 energy/XP per day. And finally you can purchase normal and cantina energy refreshes for premium crystals. Energy refreshes start out costing low amounts of crystals and increase in cost the more you refresh. How many energy refreshes you should purchase per day depends on your real money investment and your Arena placement each day.

If either of your energy bars fills up to the maximum, you stop recharging energy naturally and you waste potential energy and XP. For that reason make sure you time out your play times to always use your Mission/Cantina energy. I play when I wake up, again on my lunch break around 12PM, again after work around 6PM to finish at the top of the Arena ladder right before the reward time and then finally late at night before going to bed. This allows me to always use my current energy, finish all daily tasks and also collect the bonus energy at 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM. I obviously play more than the average player because I have multiple accounts, but even if you have minimal time available you can be a top 10 player on Arena while only spending about 1 hour per day on the game.

In-Game Currencies

	Crystals – Crystals are GoH’s premium currency and can be purchased with real money or be earned in small amounts each day through daily tasks, missions & Arena placement. Crystals are used to purchase Chromium data cards as well as speed up your progress in the game by refreshing energy, shipments, cooldowns and more. It is the most important currency to use efficiently as players who don’t spend real money will be most limited by it.
	Credits – Credits are used primarily to upgrade your character’s level and star level. While they will seem plentiful early on, character upgrades eventually cost as much as 1,000,000 credits so it is a very valuable currency for high level players. It’s important to understand what to use your credits on in the early stages of the game so you can have enough to upgrade your most important characters later.
	Training Droids – Training Droids are used in conjunction with credits to level up your characters. How much XP they give your characters depends on their star level, ranging from 30 XP for a 1-star training droid up to 3000 XP for a 5-star training droid.
	Cantina Credits/Tokens – This currency is used exclusively to purchase character shards or ability materials from the Cantina battle store. It is earned by completing Squad Cantina Battles.
	Arena Tokens/Credits – This currency is used exclusively to purchase character shards from the Arena store. It is earned through completing 3 Arena Battles each day and also you are awarded a certain amount of tokens at 6PM each day based upon your Arena ranking at that time.
	War Tokens / GW Credits (Green Gems) – This currency is used exclusively to purchase character shards from the Galactic War store. It is earned by opening up loot crates in between each round of the Galactic War.
	Ally Points – Ally points are used to purchase Bronzium data cards from the store. You earn them by borrowing a leader during missions. Borrowing a random person’s leader earns you 10 ally points while borrowing a leader from an allied player earns you 20 ally points. SIM’ing a mission earns you 10 ally points.

Step-By-Step Instructions For Your First Day of GoH

The game is split up into multiple Arena ladders based upon when you start playing the game. Each ladder (some players call them servers or shards) contains 20,000 players and a new ladder is created every time the previous one is filled. This gives new players an equal opportunity to compete in the Arena since they don’t have to play against players who have been playing the game for months. The Arena is the best source for earning crystals in the game, but only the players at the top of the rankings get a good amount of crystals each day, so the players at the top have a big resource advantage over everyone else. Also, certain areas of the game open up as you level up, so being a high level on your Arena ladder is also important since you get access to new resources that other players won’t be able to access for a while. Because players who progress quickly and players who have a high arena ranking have the biggest resource advantage, it’s very important that we gain an advantage in your first two days playing the game, and then push that advantage over time to make sure that you maintain your position as one of the best players on your ladder.

Below, I’m going to post step-by-step instructions on what you should do your first day. Before you launch the game for the first time, make sure you have at least 2 hours to play so you can complete everything you need to do. Also, all reward and daily reset timers are based upon your local time, so I would suggest that you start playing before 10PM your local time.

1. Tutorial: When you first launch the game, you’re going to enter a non-skippable tutorial that will last for 5-10 minutes which teaches you the basics of the game.
2. In-Game Name: After finishing the tutorial, the game will ask you to Choose Your Name. It’s very important that you enter the name you want during this prompt, because currently there is no way to change your in-game name at a later point.
3. Samsung Data Pack: If you are using a Samsung device, you will receive a free data card pack with IG-86, 400 Crystals and some character shards. These 400 crystals are very important for Free-To-Play players so make sure you get them. If you’re on Android but not using a Samsung device, you can connect your account to a Google account and login on someone else’s Samsung device (or Android simulator on PC) and get the free bonus data pack later.
4. Welcome Reward: Check your inbox for 200 more crystals as a welcome reward from Capital Games. These early sources of crystals are vital for F2P player progress.
5. Light Side Battle 1-C: Enter the Light Side Battles and complete Mission 1-C with 3 stars.
6. Energy Refresh: Immediately after finishing the mission, click on the refresh energy button and purchase 120 energy and 20 SIM tickets. Use those SIM tickets to SIM Light Side Battle 1-C several times until you level up.
7. Free Data Card (Jawa): At level 4, you will be given a free data card which contains Jawa.
8. SIM to LVL 10: Continue to SIM Light Side Battle 1-C until you reach level 10. You can also redeem several daily activities at this point to speed up the leveling process. While leveling up you will unlock the Squad Arena & Shipment areas of the game.
9. Purchase Gear Shipments: The in-game shipments are a store where you can buy character shards, training droids, sim tickets & gear. The items available to purchase refresh every 6 hours with a new set of items, however this only resets when you actually login to the game, so it’s recommended to login to the game every 6-8 hours to reset this timer. Gear is the only item in the store that uses credits instead of crystals to purchase. This gear is very important to progressing later in the game. This gear only costs up to 2700 credits and usually comes in bundles of 3. The lowest cost gear piece will be a single piece of gear and it is usually the lowest rarity item and easy to farm. The 2300 & 2700 cost gear pieces are usually salvage materials which are used to combine into stronger pieces of equipment. All players should always purchase the three most expensive 3x gear items at the bottom of the shipment. Some of these items have a very low drop rate, so getting 3 of them for a small amount of credits is extremely valuable to a player. So valuable, that I recommend P2P players with a large budget refresh the shipments using crystals multiple times per day. Shipments cost increasingly more crystals to refresh (50/50/100/100/100/100/200/200/etc.) so I recommend that P2P players manually refresh shipments at least 2 times per day to start, or 6-10 times if you are a really big spender. This gear, while not doing you a whole lot of good in the early levels, will save you a lot of time and energy in the long run.
10. OPTIONAL STEP (1 Guaranteed Full Character a Chromium Data Card): The first single chromium data card that you purchase will always unlock a full character, usually a Light Side farmable character. I suggest that you go into the data card store and purchase one single chromium data card from the store. Ideally you would get a 3-star or 4-star character from your drop, which will help you immensely in Arena at the beginning. If you don’t get a character you want, you can reset your account by signing into a new google account and starting over from the beginning. The only players who wouldn’t want to buy a chromium data card are players who are purist F2P players who will never buy any crystals but still want to get rank 10 as soon as possible. If that is you, then you would be better off using the 350 crystals towards energy/arena refreshes instead of a full character.
11. OPTIONAL STEP (Initial Arena Ranking): At level 8 you will unlock the Squad Arena where you can battle other player created teams that are in your ladder. It is important to immediately go into the Arena and click on Ranks at the bottom of the screen to check your initial arena ranking. You could potentially start anywhere from rank 1 to 20,000. Because you can only do 5 Arena battles per day before needing to spend crystals to refresh your Arena attempts, and your only good source of earning crystals aside from buying them is placing in the top 10 ranks on Arena; Your initial rank is very important in determining how quickly you can get to the top 10. If you are above rank 5,000 and are not going to buy crystals you might want to consider resetting your game and try to get a better rank. Without a good starting rank you will run out of crystals fast. You should also take into consideration what character you pull from the step above because if you get a really strong character early, it might be worth it to continue on even with a bad rank. Click here to learn how to reset your game.
12. OPTIONAL STEP (Connect Facebook): Around level 10, you will be asked to rate the game and connect your Facebook account. Make sure to connect your Facebook account because you will earn yet again another 200 free crystals.
13. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Dark Side Starter Pack): Also around level 10, you will be offered the first Data Card Pack, the Dark Side Starter Pack for $4.99. This pack unlocks either Count Dooku, General Veers or Savage Oppress. It also includes 500 Crystals, 3 Darth Vader shards, 5 Snow Trooper shards, 5 Royal Guard shards, 150k Credits and 10 Five-Star Training Droids. This is easily the best pack in the game when it comes to value, and when they say “Limited Time Offer!” they mean it. All of the limited time offers will expire forever when they say they do (usually 3-10 days). CG has yet to bring back any of the limited time offers for existing players. So if you’re enjoying the game and ever plan on spending real money on this game, make sure to buy the Dark Side Starter Pack immediately. The earlier that you pay for crystals and data card packs, the bigger of an advantage you will have in-game.
14. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Crystal Subscription): If you decide to spend more than $5 on the game, a new crystal subscription option will show up in the store which will offer you 100 crystals a day for 21 days for $11.99. This is the best price you can get for crystals, it’s even more of a discount per crystal than buying a $100 Crystal Vault. So if you’re going to buy the dark side starter pack I also suggest you buy the crystal subscription. This extra 100 crystals each day goes a long way in your farming efforts and can help you collect/upgrade characters a lot faster than using your Arena rewards only.
15. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Chromium Data Card Warning): Chromium data cards contain characters and character shards. While about 1 out of every 4 cards will have a full character inside it, if you already have unlocked that character the card gets converted into character shards to upgrade that character instead. When a character is converted to shards, some of it’s value is lost. So you get the most value out of these cards when you open them early in the leveling process. However, the issue with these cards is that several of the characters that you get from them are chromium exclusive characters, meaning that you are only able to upgrade their star level by purchasing additional chromium data cards and getting them to drop. While these exclusive characters are pretty good at lower levels, they quickly become obsolete at higher levels without upgrading their star levels. For this reason, I recommend that you only spend money on Chromium data cards if you are able to spend $1,000+ on the game. If you want to support the game but not spend that much money then I recommend you use the money to either buy starter bundles or a Vault of Crystals ($100) which can then be used for energy refreshes and gear farming to allow you to collect and upgrade your characters faster.
16. Finish Light Side Battles Area 1: Complete and 3-star Light Side Battles 1-D, 1-E and 1-F. This will initiate another quick tutorial prompt for Hard Mode which explains what character shards are and how they can be used to activate/promote characters.
17. Level & Gear Characters: Now you need to level your 5 Arena characters to about level 15 and get them all to gear level 2. For now you can just select whatever five characters have the highest star level. What characters those are will depend on if you bought the dark side starter pack and whether you opened any chromium data cards. Complete all of the Light & Dark Side Battles for areas 1 & 2. Try to complete the battles with three stars so you can SIM them easily for gear. If you don’t three star a level, don’t worry about it you can come back once your team is stronger. Once your Arena team has a power level of 2500+ you’re ready to start climbing the ladder. As a reference point, my F2P account had an initial rank of 3,041 and a power rating of 2,868.
18. Arena Battles: Go into the Squad Arena and look at the far right opponent on your screen. The opponent on the right will always have the best rank out of the three opponents visible and since we are trying to climb as quickly as possible we want to target these opponents. Click on the refresh button for your Arena battles several times and take note of the best rank the game is offering you to battle until you find an opponent that will give you the best leap in ranking. The better your Arena ranking is, the less your rank can improve in a single battle. For example, when I started at rank 3,041 I was able to Battle the 2,592nd ranked player, jumping nearly 450 ranks in a single battle. However when you enter the top 20 ranks, you are only able to battle an opponent who is ~5 positions ahead of you.
19. Beat your Arena opponent: This should be fairly easy since you should be a much higher power level than all of your opponents on day 1, however if you happen to see someone with a higher power level than you in the selection, just skip over the battle for now. Losing an Arena battle this early is very detrimental. If you need tips on how to win your Arena battles, click here.
20. Continue Leveling/Gearing Characters: Since the cooldown on an Arena battle is 10 minutes, you should be progressing the Light & Dark side battles and farming gear for your characters in between your Arena battles. On my F2P account, I went from rank 3041 to 2592 to 2207 to 1878 to 1600 to 1375; I started with a power rating of 2,868 and finished with a power rating of 3,491. You should be leveling up your player level as well by completing daily activities and battles however if you run out of energy you can buy another energy refresh. If you’re a F2P player your first day you will want to buy the 50/50/100 crystal refreshes. If you’re a P2P player you can buy the 50/50/100/100/100/200/200/200 crystal refreshes and even higher depending on how quickly you want to gear and level up.
21. Refresh Arena Battle Attempts – After finishing your first 5 Arena battles, pay the 50 crystals to refresh your Arena battle attempts. Make sure that you do this after using up your first 5 daily Arena attempts or else you will just be refreshing the cooldown timer from your last attempt. Continue leveling and gearing up your characters and progressing the light/dark missions in between your Arena attempts. My next 5 battles on my F2P account took me from rank 1375 to 1168 to 997 to 849 to 725 to 620. I finished the day with a power level of 4,107.
22. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Arena Goals): If you are P2P then you should continue refreshing your Arena battles at least until you get into the top 200 rankings on Arena. If you can get in the top 10 then even better. The crystal rewards for your Arena rank spike drastically in the last 100 rankings. Ranks 51-100 receive 100 crystals, 21-50 receive 150 crystals, 11-20 receive 200 crystals, 6-10 receive 250 crystals and then ranks 5-1 receive 300, 350, 400, 450 and 500 crystals respectively. This means that for a P2P player, you can technically spend 500 crystals on Arena battle refreshes on day 1 to get rank 1 and break even on your cost. The other thing that you earn for your Arena ranking is Arena tokens, but as long as you place in the top 200 you will have enough each day for 10 character shards. We will talk about what character shards to buy later.
23. FREE-TO-PLAY STEP (Arena Goals): If you’re F2P then 10 Arena Battles on day 1 is probably good. Spending the 100 extra crystals for 5 more battles is probably not worth it, unless you can get into the top 50 rankings with those 5 battles. Shoot for a top 1000 ranking and prize payout on day 1 for F2P, but this will vary drastically depending on what your starting rank is.
24. Borrowing A Leader: When you reach Light Side Battles area 3 you will be able to start borrowing an Ally Leader to help you in each mission. I highly suggest at this point you add some high level allies so that you can quickly progress your mission progress. If you don’t know any high level players you can find ally codes for hundreds of players on the official Galaxy of Heroes forums here. (Look for an announcement thread that says POST YOUR ALLY CODES HERE or something similar, and then go through adding players who are higher level than you)
25. Challenges: At level 15 you will unlock the challenges area of the game. What challenges are available depends on what day of the week it is. Complete all of the challenges available to you on day 1. If you need help with the challenges you can find out how to beat every challenge in Galaxy of Heroes in this guide here.
26. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Starter Bundles): As you are leveling up eventually you will be offered several more starter bundles in the game offering characters, shards, crystals, credits and more. In my opinion, the only starter bundle worth the cost in the current meta is the Jedi/Apprentice bundle that costs $59.99 and includes Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin & Ahsoka Tano. Qui-Gon Jinn is one of the strongest characters in the game and Anakin is viable as well built around a solid team. Ahsoka Tano is too slow to do anything late game but in your early levels with a QGJ lead she can contribute. The Assassin Droid Bundle used to be an extremely strong bundle that allowed you to shoot straight to #1 and only cost $25 to buy, however after the most recent update droid teams are not nearly as strong at high levels. This will hopefully change when the Jawa Engineer is released but it’s not a for sure thing. If you’re going to buy a bundle, I suggest it be one of the two above, however you can read more about the estimated worth of starter bundles here.
27. NEW STEP (Free Energy Rewards): With the most recent update, CG added the ability to redeem 45 free energy 3 times per day. From 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM your local time (or whatever timezone your device was set to when you first started playing the game). It is crucial to collect this free energy in the early stages of playing the game because the 135 energy per day is like a free energy refresh and will really help you level up quickly. This energy can be collected in your daily activity task list during the two hour windows listed above. If you miss a window, you will not be able to claim that energy later.
28. Finish Arena Battles & Leveling: Continue gearing and leveling your player and characters like above using normal energy refreshes until you reach Level 20. Including the daily activity XP, natural energy recharge and 3 free Energy claims, you should be able to get to Level 22 by the end of the day. Reaching level 22 your first day is important because it unlocks a new tier of challenges for you to complete. Your 5 Arena characters should all be level 20+ with most of them being gear level 3. If you are a P2P player and really want to push it, you could try to reach level 28 and unlock Squad Cantina Battles day 1, but it would take approximately 14 crystal energy refreshes to reach lvl 28 in one day (50/50/100/100/100/200/200/200/400/400/900/900/1600/1600) crystals in the first day so it’s probably not worth it.
29. Daily Activities: During the step-by-step process above, you should have completed and redeemed most of your Daily Activities already. The last step is basically just a checklist to make sure you’ve completed everything you need to do on day 1:
    1. Complete 3+ Light Side Battles
    2. Complete 3+ Dark Side Battles
    3. Complete 5+ Hard Battles
    4. Complete 10+ Total Battles
    5. Finish 10+ Arena Battles (5 Daily + 5 on Refresh)
    6. Open 5+ data packs from the store (5 Bronzium data packs are available each day for free with a cool down of 20 minutes per opening)
    7. Purchase 3+ items from shipments (the 4 gear items only cost credits, and can be purchased every 6 hours when they refresh.)
    8. Train / Level Up a character
    9. Fill 1 Character Gear Slot
    10. Complete ALL available challenges
    11. Complete and claim all daily activity rewards
30. FREE-TO-PLAY STEP (Day 1 Recap): In Day 1 of the game you should have accomplished the following as an F2P Player
    1. Reached Player Level 22+
    2. Reached Rank 1000 or better in Arena and received 500+ Arena tokens and 50+ crystals
    3. Redeemed the 200 welcome crystals, the 200 crystals for connecting Facebook, the 400 crystals for Samsung users, and the 50+ crystals from Arena rewards as well as the crystals from completing daily activities.
    4. Redeem the 45 Free energy rewards in your daily activity list during the three blocks of time: 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM
    5. Your 5 Arena characters should all be level 22+ with Gear 3+ equipment
    6. Completed and 3-starred Light Side Battle Area’s 1, 2 & 3.
    7. Completed and 3-starred Dark Side Battle Area 1 & possibly Area 2
    8. Completed all Daily activities listed above
31. PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Day 1 Recap): In Day 1 of the game you should have accomplished the following as a P2P Player:
    1. Reached Player Level 22+
    2. Reached Rank 100 or better in Arena and receive 700+ Arena tokens and 100+ crystals. There is a big crystal incentive to reach the top 10 if you can, as every rank you improve near the top has a big jump in crystal payout.
    3. Redeemed your welcome crystals, facebook crystals, Samsung data pack and crystal subscription crystals.
    4. Redeem the 45 Free energy rewards in your daily activity list during the three blocks of time: 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM
    5. Your 5 Arena characters should all be level 22+ with Gear 3+ equipment
    6. Completed and 3-starred Light Side Battle Area’s 1, 2 & 3.
    7. Completed and 3-starred Dark Side Battle Area’s 1 & 2 and possibly started 3
    8. Completed and collected all Daily activities

Where to Acquire & Upgrade Characters

Because you have a limited amount of energy and resources you can use each day to collect & upgrade your characters, you need to focus on upgrading only the characters which are going to benefit you the most in the long run. Because of the way the game is designed, there are essentially 5 locations where you can earn characters shards to unlock and upgrade your characters. These locations are:

• HARD Light Side & Dark Side Battles – The hard battles are the slowest method for collecting and upgrading a character. You can only complete a hard battle 3 times each day unless you want to pay crystals to refresh your chances. A hard mission refresh costs 50 crystals and allows you to complete the mission another 3 times before increasing in cost to refresh again. The shard drop rate for hard battles is roughly 30% and some characters only have 1-2 hard nodes to farm, which is only 2 shards per day on average without refreshes. You can see how some characters will take a large investment of time or crystals to acquire and upgrade to a use-able level.
• Squad Cantina Battles – Cantina battles on the other hand are one of the fastest methods for collecting and upgrading a character. The drop rate is roughly the same as Light & Dark Hard Battles however there is no limit to how many times you can complete a Cantina battle other than how much Cantina energy you have. You will naturally recharge 120 Cantina energy each day, and I highly recommend that all players always use at least the 100 crystal Cantina energy refresh each day. P2P Players & F2P Players who place in the top 5 each day can also afford to purchase the 200 crystal Cantina energy refresh. Heavy P2P players will want to consider also purchasing the 400 crystal and possibly 800 crystal refreshes each day. Each batch of 120 energy will allow you to do 10-15 Cantina battles depending on what Area you are in (The cost goes from 8 energy to 10 energy to 12 energy as you progress to further areas). This means that on average you can earn 3-4 shards per 120 energy which is 6-8 cantina shards per day for F2P players and 12+ cantina shards per day for P2P players.
• Cantina Battle Store – Ability materials & character shards can be purchased using the Squad Cantina Credits currency (the bright orange coins) earned for completing a Cantina battle. NEVER use your Cantina credits on ability materials. Shards are always more valuable to buy. 5 character shards cost 400 credits and 120 Cantina energy will earn you roughly half of that (200 credits). This means that F2P players will have enough credits to buy 1 shipment or 5 character shards per day if you buy the 100 crystal energy refresh and use your natural 120 Cantina energy. P2P players will earn an additional 5 character shards for every 2 Cantina energy refreshes they buy each day.
• Arena Store – Certain character shards can be purchased using Arena tokens acquired each day depending on where you place in the Arena ladder at your rewards time (6PM your local time each day). You also earn a bonus 100 Arena tokens just for completing 3 Arena battles each day and collecting the daily activity reward. Any player who places in the top 200 rankings at their reward time will receive 700+ Arena Tokens. So including your daily activity bonus, ranking in the top 200 each day is enough to purchase 10 character shards each day. Players who place in the top 10 of Arena will earn 800-1000 Tokens each day plus the bonus which is enough for 10-15 character shards each day.
• Galactic War Store – The Galactic War is a set of 12 consecutive battles against other player-created teams. The difference GW has compared to Arena is that this is a war of attrition, with your cooldowns and health persisting between battles. Wars will drop a couple of character shards as you complete it each day, but the real advantage of Galactic Wars are the War Tokens. You will earn 1200 War Tokens for completing the Galactic War each day. That’s enough tokens for 15 character shards of your choice from the Galactic War Store and one of the fastest methods in the game to collect and upgrade characters.
• Shard Shop – The new store added in the most recent update, it allows you to exchange extra shards for characters who are already maxed out at 7-stars for currency to buy new character shards. The exchange rate is 10:1, so it takes 10 extra shards to get 1 shard of a different character. It’s a pretty garbage store right now, but might have some use in the future.

Since there are 5 locations to collect shards from, you can simultaneously work on collecting/upgrading approximately 5 characters at a time. Since upgrading characters requires a lot of time and resources, it’s very important to focus only on the characters which will give you the best Resource returns in the game, typically this is characters who benefit your Arena & GW teams the most.

Let’s Talk About Galaxy of Heroes Characters

There are currently 72 characters in the game and CG is adding several new characters this month and will continue to add characters frequently in the future. While there are plenty of characters with good synergistic qualities, if you want to be the best you need to invest in the characters which will allow you to place in the top 10 of Arena while also completing your Galactic War each day. While you will eventually be able to collect and upgrade enough characters to have teams for specific areas of the game, when you first start playing it’s important to put all of your effort into upgrading 5 characters exclusively, and only slightly upgrading the rest of your characters as you need to in order to complete light/dark missions as well as your daily challenges. Below I will list the best characters to collect and upgrade based upon your investment level into the game. The three classification levels I will use are Free-To-Play (F2P) which is less than $5 spent per month, Pay-To-Play (P2P) which is $5-100 spent per month, and Pay-To-Win (P2W) which is $100+ spent per month:

• Light/Dark Hard Battles – Because Light/Dark hard battles are the slowest method to farm characters, you really need crystal refreshes to upgrade any of these characters in a reasonable amount of time. If you are a F2P player, you won’t have any spare crystals to use on these refreshes. For this reason, I suggest that F2P players only complete ~5 hard battles per day, which is enough to complete the daily activity. What character you farm for these 5 hard missions every day is up to you. You can supplement your farming for a character you’re working on in a different area of the game or you can work on a long-term investment. But keep in mind that without refreshes it will take approximately 115 days or 4 months to get a 7* version of any character that only has 2 hard missions to farm. During those 4 months the character might get changed/nerfed or the overall meta of the game might change during that time as well.
  • F2P players should farm whatever 5 hard missions you want each day, enough to collect the daily activity reward.
  • Rey – Rey is one of the best damage dealing characters in the game right now. She has 3 hard mission nodes which is better than 2 of some hard mission exclusive characters, but she is also very squishy so she will probably need to be at least 6* before seeing any use in high level arena play. She is probably the best long term investment for F2P players right now, but don’t expect to use her anytime soon.
  • First Order Tie Pilot – FOTP was the best damage dealer in the game before the most recent update. He boasts a strong basic attack with a very high chance at attacking twice and a self-buffing passive that increases his crit chance/dmg and gives him advantage when enemies fall below 50% health. But since they nerfed Poe and changed the way speed functions in the game, FOTP has definitely fallen from glory. He is now a tier 2 damage dealer in the game.
  • Resistance Trooper – A full resistance team used to be one of the best team compositions in the game prior to the Poe nerf. Now it is just above average. While Res Trooper is a solid but under-rated character, he is also a hard mission farm only character like Rey. With 2/5 Resistance team members being hard mission farm only characters, it will take a while to get a fully upgraded/geared Resistance team together.
• Squad Cantina Battles – Cantina battles are a really good way to earn character shards, XP & ability materials. All players should utilize their 120 natural cantina energy per day and buy the 100 crystal cantina energy refresh. 120 energy is enough for 10-15 battles depending on which node you SIM which on average will earn you 3-5 character shards. That means with natural energy and 3 refreshes, you could be getting 12-20 character shards a day!
  • Geonosian Soldier (Cantina 1A) – A great damage dealer character that does well in just about any team composition. At max gear/star level he boasts nearly 12k health, self-buff chance on his basic attack, ally assist attack every other turn and an awesome +crit & turn meter increase passive. Both F2P & P2P players should probably start by getting a 7* Geo Soldier from Cantina.
  • IG-86 (Cantina 4E) – IG-86 is a staple character for any droid team, but droids were nerfed in the recent speed changes and Poe nerf. Droids should re-surge when Jawa Engineer gets released, but until then farming 86 might be a risk.
  • Kylo Ren (Cantina 4C) – Kylo Ren has some really cool abilities and looks awesome, but currently he doesn’t fit the high damage / high speed meta that is prevalent at the top ranks of each Arena ladder. For this reason I wouldn’t focus on him early.
  • Count Dooku (Cantina 6G) – Dooku is the fastest character in the game and holds a lot of value (especially in the early levels if you unlocked him in the dark side starter pack), however he doesn’t unlock until very late in Cantina and you won’t be able to farm him until you get there. You could consider farming him in hard missions until you unlock him in Cantina but it will take some time to reach Area 6.
• Cantina Battle Store – The Cantina battle store is currently the slowest store to farm a character and it is also the most competitive, with several key characters in the best team compositions being available only through this store.
  • Qui-Gon Jinn – QGJ is arguably the best Jedi in the game right now, and the developers just made him a farmable F2P character. Before a recent update, QGJ could only be obtained from Chromium data cards and most players had to spend $1000+ in chromium data cards to get him to max star level. Aside from his ally assisted attack every other turn which gives the ally who assists him a bonus 75% damage, QGJ also has great speed and a dispel ability which gives offense up to your entire team. Add on top of that a turn meter increase chance on every basic attack in between and you have one of the best Arena characters in the game.
  • Old Daka – Daka is one of basically two dark-side healers in the game right now. Because of that, she holds a lot of value in the late game because dark side missions get very difficult towards area 6 & 7. She has a chance to revive fallen allies, which can be really clutch if you are trying to three-star a mission to SIM it for gear. She also has a lot of utility in her stun chance on her basic attack. But because she is so reliant on RNG she isn’t as consistent as I would like her to be in Arena. She can be super clutch and single handedly win you an Arena match, but she can also be completely worthless and not land a single stun, heal or revive in a match. With the recent buff to Talia (the other viable dark-side healer), I would recommend starting with QGJ over Daka. However, if you like high RNG characters and variance between Arena matches, she is definitely one of the most random and annoying Arena opponents in the game. If you don’t choose to farm her, I would highly suggest finding an ally who has a good Daka leveled up so you can borrow her during difficult dark-side battles.
  • Poe Dameron – Poe used to be a staple in pretty much every top ranking Arena team composition, however CG changed the way speed functions and they also nerfed Poe’s speed, tenacity, expose & turn meter reduction. After all of that, he’s still arguably the best tank in the game. Which says a lot about how awful tanks are in the current meta. His strength comes in his speed and the ability to lower the entire enemy team’s turn meter, allowing his teammates to go first. The issue is that in top level play, there are about 2 dozen characters who now take their turns before Poe, and your damage dealers will likely die before Poe takes his turn.
    P2P/P2W Note: The force awakens bundle includes 50 Poe Dameron shards which is enough to unlock him at 3*. Those 50 shards are basically a 10 day head start on Poe for P2P players
  • First Order Officer – FOO is a great character when put into a First Order team with Phasma at the lead. All the First Order characters have a lot of synergies that help each other. However, Phasma & FOTP just had a few bugs that got fixed which lowers the overall worth of a First Order team comp.
  • Hoth Rebel Scout – HRS is another underrated characters who has some really good stats, good damage, turn meter increase potential for himself and his entire team as well as a stun chance on his special. With the recent speed leadership changes, Admiral Ackbar makes Rebel teams extremely strong. Leia & HRS are the 1st and 3rd fastest characters in the game when being led by Ackbar. This pretty much guarantees that you pick what character you want to die first on the enemy team.
• Arena Store – The only top-tier Arena store character used to be Darth Sidious. He was pretty much a must have first character for most players. However with the changes to speed and +speed leadership skills applying to turn 1, both Ackbar & Han became a part of a really strong Rebel team composition.
  • Darth Sidious – F2P players will benefit more from Darth Sidious than they will pretty much any character in the game. Not only does he have one of the best universal leader abilities in the game (crit chance/damage for all allies), he has a great AOE, healing immunity on his basic attack, and a self-heal passive when anyone dies which is extremely helpful for Galactic War. Nearly everyone should start with Sid on Arena shipments
  • Admiral Ackbar – AA became a much more threatening leader with the most recent update that fixed speed leadership abilities on turn 1. Ackbar is now a staple for any Rebel team which is arguably the best team composition in the game at the current level cap. Unfortunately, both Ackbar & Han are farmed from the Arena store which means that you have to either choose to go with Ackbar first and have a tauntless Rebel team for a while, or upgrade both Ackbar and Han at the same time and have a weaker leader/tank as a whole.
  • Stormtrooper Han – ST Han is a must have for Ackbar led Rebel teams. Not only does Han have a taunt that increases Turn Meter for his entire team, he also increases turn meter for his team anytime he is attacked while taunting. His only issue is that he is extremely squishy for a tank, so you need to star him up to be viable.
  • IG-88 (P2P/P2W) – If you bought the Assassin Droid Bundle starter pack and are going to use a Droid team in Arena, IG-88 might be the character you focus on in Arena. If that’s the case, you should start farming IG-88 in Arena shipments. However as stated earlier, droid teams are in a bad spot right now until Jawa Engineer or another character is released which allows the droid damage dealers to go first.
  • Greedo/Savage Opress – Both of these characters are honorable mentions. Opress is getting buffed in the coming update, and Greedo has pretty good base stats and damage. But neither of them should be farmed before the options above.
• Galactic War Shipments – GW shipments will be purchased frequently throughout the day during your 6 hour refresh timers since you can earn 1200 war tokens each day, enough for 15 character shards of your choice.
  • Luminara Unduli – Lumi is the best healer in the game and she packs a punch too which makes her viable in Arena. Her special ability is one of the best single-target spells in the game. Her heal is the best heal in the game which persists over the consecutive turns for your team. To top it off, she has an evasion/heal leader ability which is great for Galactic War. She can be used in just about any place in the game. Most players will want to 7* Lumi as soon as possible.
  • Poggle the Lesser – Poggle used to be a staple for any droid team, but with the recent nerfs to Poe, droid teams are in a weird spot right now. They should come back later when Jawa Engineer is released, but it’s still a risky investment.
  • IG-86 – One of the best damage dealers in the game and a staple for any droid team. IG-86 has a cantina & hard mission farm though so I prefer to farm Geo Soldier / IG-86 from Cantina and then Lumi/Poggle from GW shipments.
  • Captain Phasma – One of the best leaders in the game. If you’re going for a first order Arena team or a counter-attack team, you will probably want to use Phasma at the helm for her great assist chance leader ability. Phasma also has a lot of great utility with her AOE slow & Turn Meter increase / advantage buff for entire team. She did have a bug fix in the most recent update which made it so passive no longer procs when you’re using a non-combative action like healing/taunt/etc but she is still a pretty good pickup.
  • Resistance Pilot – Another underrated damage dealer. If you’re a F2P player who is looking for a second damage dealer next to Geo Soldier, this is your guy. He is also a staple for any Resistance team compositions.

Using the information above, here are a few team compositions I would suggest for new players to select from:

• Speed/DMG Team – Darth Sidious (Leader) / Rey (or F2P can use Res Pilot) / Geonosian Soldier / Hoth Rebel Scout / Dooku.
  The advantage of this team is that they are all extremely fast damage dealing characters and so on offense you will usually get to pick 1-2 enemies that you want to kill before the enemy gets to take their turn, giving you a huge turn 1 advantage.
• Rebel Team – Admiral Ackbar (Leader), Princess Leia, Hoth Rebel Scout, Stormtrooper Han, Luke Skywalker. Arguably the best team composition in the game right now. Ackbar’s leadership ability makes HRS & Leia take their turns before everyone in the game aside from a QGJ led Yoda. Combine speed with Han’s turn meter utility and Luke’s stun / Ackbar’s dispel and you have an all around awesome team composition. One issue with this team composition is that Leia is a chromium only character which means that you are looking at $800+ chromium card investment to use this team to at it’s potential. You could replace Leia with another damage dealer, but that hurts the team a lot. The other downside to this team composition is when the level cap increases to 80 and then 90, the landscape of the game is going to change, with the fastest characters in the game changing as well.
• Jedi Team – Qui-Gon Jinn (Leader), Yoda, Anakin, Lumi, Rey (or GS or any fast Damage Dealer). Qui-Gon Jinn was already one of the best Arena characters in the game. With the recent fix to +speed leadership abilities, he is even better. There isn’t a taunting Jedi in the game right now and all of the Jedi tanks suck so there is kind of a hole missing in this team composition that is best filled with a speed damage dealer like Rey or Geo Soldier. Also, in the future when the level cap increases, QGJ +speed leadership ability will apply to all characters, which will make this team look a lot different. Also, a big issue with this team is that when the AI controls your team on defense, they do a terrible job at utilizing Yoda’s kit and it severely weakens the Jedi team strength as a whole.
• First Order Team – Phasma (Leader), Kylo Ren, First Order Tie Pilot (F2P get Geo Soldier instead), First Order Officer (F2P can use Luminara instead), FO Storm Trooper? This team composition used to be a lot better with pre-nerf Poe. Well, I guess all team comps were better with pre-nerf Poe. But like the Jedi team, there isn’t really a character right now that can protect the slower FOTP from the enemy team.
• Resistance Team – Poe (Leader), Rey, Finn, Res Pilot, Res Trooper. Still a pretty good team composition, but it was hurt a lot by the Poe nerfs / speed changes.

Step-By-Step Guide for your 2nd & 3rd Day of GoH (In Progress):

As I was writing this guide, CG released their Feb update which made a lot of the above information obsolete. So rather than finish the section below I decided to update the section above and will work on finishing this soon. I apologize for the inconvenience. Here is a quick breakdown of what steps I will cover in this section:

• Daily activities reset. Complete all daily activities immediately for a quick 900 XP boost. This is the order that I usually complete them, however the order doesn’t really matter.
  • Open a Free Bronzium data card.
  • Train a character for a 25 quick SIM tickets
  • SIM 3 Hard Light Side Battles
  • SIM 3 Hard Dark Side Battles
  • Find/SIM gear for your 5 Arena characters, starting with the damage dealers first.
  • Equip/Upgrade the gear for your Arena characters
  • Purchase all the gear items from shipments
  • Complete 2 available challenges
  • Complete and claim all daily activity rewards
• Level & Upgrade your Characters while completing your Daily Activities: While you are completing your daily activities, focus on progressing the Light/Dark Side Battle Campaigns as much as possible so you can SIM higher level gear for your characters. Use your SIM tickets to start upgrading your characters to Gear level 3.
• Squad Cantina Battles: At level 28 you will unlock Squad Cantina Battles. Cantina battles require the newly acquired Cantina energy to complete, signified by an orange lightning bolt. You start out with a full Cantina energy bar, giving you a free 87 Cantina energy/XP. Cantina battles are different from Light Side / Dark Side battles in that you can use any 5 characters in the game to complete them. For now just use your Arena characters since they are the strongest. Complete Holotable Battle A (Cantina 1A) with 3-stars.
• Use all of your Cantina Energy to farm character shards: At this point you will want to use all of your Cantina energy to farm a new character. If you’re going to farm Geonosian soldier like I recommended above, you just have to repeat the Cantina 1A battle over and over again. If you’re going to farm a later character it is more difficult because your characters are not very strong right now and progressing to the later Cantina areas will be a challenge. While you can use SIM tickets for Cantina battles, you will run out of SIM tickets fast. Instead, I recommend you just auto battle all of your Cantina battles to save your SIM tickets for gear farming harder battles.  Because you can also borrow a hero during Cantina battles, having strong allies at this stage is really important for 3-starring all of your battles. P2P players will unlock Geonosian Solider very fast, most likely on your second day if you buy 3 refreshes. Geo Soldier is one of the best characters in the game, and I highly suggest you start leveling/gearing him up from the moment you unlock him and keep him as a staple on all your Teams.
• RISE TO THE TOP! At this point in the game you should be around level 30 and have one of the strongest power ratings on your ladder. You will want to start your climb now to the very top of the Arena ladder. Like day 1, you should look to battle players with the best ranking possible, so you can skip as many ranks as possible in one battle. You shouldn’t have to worry about the power level of your opponents, since you should be stronger than pretty much anyone. But if you happen to see someone that knows what they are doing with a really strong team don’t risk losing one of your Arena battles by fighting them. Since there is a 10 minute cooldown between Arena battles, I rotate what I’m doing at this point so you’re still doing something while your timers are on cooldown. (IE: Arena, Challenge, Challenge, Cantina, Cantina, Arena, etc). You should continue to climb the Arena ladder all throughout your 2nd and 3rd day of playing, with emphasis on ranking as high as possible at 6PM your local time when the Arena rewards are handed out.
• Purchase Energy Refreshes: With the daily activities reset, your refresh costs have also been reset, allowing you to purchase energy with your crystals. Purchase 2 (F2P), 5 (Low P2P) or 10 (High P2P) crystal energy refreshes and continue to level/gear your characters. F2P players should also purchase the 100 crystal Cantina refresh and P2P players should purchase the 100, 200 and possibly 400 crystal refresh on Cantina. Focus gear upgrades on your most valuable characters, especially your data card character you got for free if it is a good one and your dark side starter pack character if you purchased it.
• Refresh Arena Attempts: When you run out of Arena attempts, use 50 crystals to refresh your attempts again. Arena refreshes start to cost more and more crystals the more you refresh, so F2P players will have to stop somewhere. I started day 2 with a Power Level of ~4,100 at rank 625 and my battles on my 2nd & 3rd day went like this: 625 to 527 to 450 to 386 (then knocked down to 400 something) back to 376 to 321 (50 refresh) to 275 to 234 to 198 to 169 to 145 (refresh) to 124 to 106 to 92 to 77 to 65 (refresh) to 56 to 47 to 38 to 30 to 21 (dropped back to 30, refreshed) to 21 to 12 to 5 (this was before they clamped how many ranks you could jump in the top 10) to rank 2 at the reward time of my 2nd day. I was down to 15 crystals at this point but was awarded 450 crystals for finishing at rank 2.
• Balance Crystal Budget: With the crystals you earn each day from your daily activities and Arena rewards, you want to balance your budget for your next day of activities. You want to rank up as quickly as possible, but you also want to save about 200-300 crystals for the next day so you can purchase the 50/100 Normal/Cantina energy refreshes and gear your characters up before the next day’s Arena rewards. You also want to have 50-100 crystals saved for Arena refreshes in case you need to refresh your battle timer right before Arena rewards to improve your reward tier in the final minutes (in case someone tries to snipe your position from you). This is pretty easy to do as a P2P player but F2P players will have to be extra careful about how they spend their crystals each day. During my first 3 days on this F2P account I was always just scraping by with enough crystals to get to where I wanted to be. Having even a small crystal budget from a crystal subscription or DS starter pack can be the difference between finishing rank 1 and rank 20.
• Daily Activities: During the step-by-step process above, you should have completed and redeemed most of your Daily Activities already. The last step is basically just a checklist to make sure you’ve completed everything you need to do on day 1:
  • Complete 3+ Light Side Battles
  • Complete 3+ Dark Side Battles
  • Complete 5+ Hard Battles
  • Complete 10+ Total Battles
  • Finish 10+ Arena Battles (5 Daily + 5 on Refresh)
  • Open 5+ data packs from the store (5 Bronzium data packs are available each day for free with a cool down of 20 minutes per opening)
  • Purchase 3+ items from shipments (the 4 gear items only cost credits, and can be purchased every 6 hours when they refresh.)
  • Train / Level Up a character
  • Fill 1 Character Gear Slot
  • Complete ALL available challenges
  • Complete and claim all daily activity rewards
• FREE-TO-PLAY STEP (Day 2 & 3 Recap): During your 2nd & 3rd days playing the game game you should have accomplished the following as a F2P Player:
  • Reached Player Level
  • Reached Rank 100 or better in Arena
  • Redeem the 45 Free energy rewards in your daily activity list during the three blocks of time: 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM
  • Your 5 Arena characters should all be level 22+ with Gear 3+ equipment
  • Completed and 3-starred Light Side Battle Area’s 1, 2 & 3.
  • Completed and 3-starred Dark Side Battle Area 1 & possibly Area 2
  • Completed all Daily activities listed above
• PAY-TO-PLAY STEP (Day 2 & 3 Recap): During your 2nd & 3rd days playing the game game you should have accomplished the following as a P2P Player:
  • Reached Player Level +
  • Reached Rank 100 or better in Arena
  • Redeem the 45 Free energy rewards in your daily activity list during the three blocks of time: 12-2PM, 6-8PM and 9-11PM
  • Your 5 Arena characters should all be level 22+ with Gear 3+ equipment
  • Completed and 3-starred Light Side Battle Area’s 1, 2 & 3.
  • Completed and 3-starred Dark Side Battle Area’s 1 & 2 & 3
  • Completed and collected all Daily activities