Economy
Gems: earn them, spend them in order
A free player can clear a few thousand gems a day. Where they go matters more than how many you have.
Spending order
- Enough gems for the extra boss-raid tickets every day (and extra Invasion tickets if you're chasing shards).
- Everything else into soul chests until you own an exotic hero with a couple of stars.
- Then switch to S-tier weapon chests, set to wands until your first legendary wand.
Skip exotic and mythic shard chests entirely; the same gems in S chests go much further. Skip the weekend spins.
Where a free player's gems come from
Experienced free players report 3-3.5k gems a day on average and 4-5k on a good day, most of it from ads and dailies. The pieces:
- Daily and weekly missions, the 7-day attendance calendar, and the free track of the level pass.
- Tower of Challenge (below), the biggest single line item.
- Invasion and boss-raid shops pay in their own points, which buy hero shards and materials rather than gems.
- Ranking events pay well (one paid out around 30 evolution potions) but need 30k+ points.
Tower of Challenge
Five free tickets a day from ads, plus five reward-multiplier (5x) ads a day. The catch: the 5x is only offered when you clear a new floor. Re-running old floors pays the base reward. So climb every day and take the 5x on each new floor; players put the daily value at roughly 1k gems and 2k weapon-upgrade materials. Extra floors beyond the free ones cost two ads each, and reward-ad skips can be spent here.
Soul chest math
One player ran the numbers: about a 1.5% chance per pull of a specific exotic hero at 135 gems a pull, which works out to 8.5-9.5k gems on average per targeted exotic, around 7k if lucky and 11k+ if not. Reports of pulling the same exotic twice in one ten-pull and of three empty ten-pulls both exist; that's what 1.5% looks like. There does not appear to be a pity counter you can rely on. unverified
S weapon chests cost 2,250 gems and players estimate about five per legendary weapon. An exotic S weapon is on the order of 150k gems of chests. The S chest may not show up in the shop until a higher level.
Free hero shards
Exotic hero shards (100 for The Skull, for example) are sold in the Invasion shop and the boss-raid shop. One free player had 53 of 100 after two weeks of buying every time they appeared. Pick whichever exotic you already have the most shards for; players who have several say they're all similar in value. Event heroes (Hana, Blaster) have no known way to obtain them once their event ends.
If you're going to spend
Players who spend a little rate these as worth it: the new-user Legendary Phoenix pack (a real head start), the small evolve special, and the trait pass (a large bundle of S-trait tickets, but you level the pass by spending green trait stones, so don't burn your stones before you've used the tickets). Rated not worth it: weekend spins, the ad-removal products (see Protect your save), and S-tickets bought individually. Nothing you buy raises XP except the royal membership's XP doubler; several heavy spenders learned that the hard way.
Community-sourced, not official. Compiled from player reports in the XP Hero Discord and last checked 4 Sep 2026 against game v25.3.0. Balance changes ship often; if something here no longer matches the game, it's probably the guide that's stale. XP Hero is made by Supercent, Inc.; this guide is not affiliated with them.