Introduction

State of Survival: Zombie War has an elaborate system of heroes, that can benefit your game play in various way. This guide explains the hero system.

Basics

There are (at this moment) a total of 19 heroes. Some you can get for free (fragments available via e.g. Hero Search, Explore Stages, special Events). In addition there are heroes you can only acquire via purchasing packs. Each hero belongs to one of the 3 troop types, Infantry, Hunters and Riders.

You need to collect fragments to unlock a hero, and also to upgrade its rank.

Each Hero has three Skills. Each Skill has effect on the performance of the Hero in the Explore game, and on doing regular combat (often boosting the troops the hero accompanies, or a debuff on the troops they combat).

Each Hero provides some basic benefits that increase when increasing the Hero's EXP level. For the Explore game these are Health, Attack and Defense values. For Military/general combat these are March Capacity increase, some boosts specific for the troop type of the Hero (e.g. Hunter Attack and Hunter Defense for a Eva, a Hero of the Hunter type), and one or more boosts related to the specialization(s) of the Hero. Specializations do not have to be focussed on combat, e.g. Chef has Gathering a specialization and gives a Wood Gathering boost.

There are 3 grades of Heroes, Rare (blue), Epic (Purple) and Legendary (Orange).

Hero Precinct - Explore and Search

The Explore game is accessible via the Hero Precinct building. There are 12 Trails, each containing various stages. You can need to complete a certain trail and stage before you can continue to the next trail and stage. Whether you can complete a stage depends on how well you have developed your heroes. Any 3rd stage you have completed you can decide to replay for rewards.

Playing a stage costs stamina (Squad stamine, which is different from the chief stamina required for the infected and dev camps), which automatically slowly recharges. Pay attention to not letting the stamina bar ever fully recharge, when you can play stages to get rewards. The rewards you get in the Explore game are useful for developing your heroes.

The Hero Search functionality is also accessible via the Hero Precinct building. Whenever you see the search map above the Hero Precinct building click on it. You get several Advanced Search maps daily (with a cooldown timer each time you use one) and an Epic Search map with a cooldown timer of 3 days. You also can get Search Maps as rewards from your Dailies and from events.

Intel Special - Daily Intel

The Daily Intel is the better way to get extra items necessary to develop your Heroes. From the Intel menu there are several missions available that refresh after a cooldown timer is added.

Focus on doing these as much as you, if you don't have time to do all, pick out the ones that give best rewards for you. Note that there are tasks that give Maddie & Frank fragments.

There is a Radar Level and a Max Strength Level. Supposedly higher levels give better rewards. My Max Strength level is Maxed at lvl 10, Radar Level is at 15. I am still getting a mix of Rare, Epic and Legendary missions and I have the feeling that will stay the same.

Events

Besides the above there are also events that provide items to unlock and improve heroes. When you start the game there is the "Mission: Locate Jane" event, which is a good one to focus on as all activities also help developing your account. In general you should always look at events and see whether you can get good rewards.

Also pay attention to recurring events like Ray's Place and Value Vouchers. Here you can get some of the rare Heroes.

Assigning Heroes

Whenever you use Heroes you can assign 3 (if you don't assign a best selection is made by the game), one of each troop type Infantry, Hunter and Rider.

Upgrading the XP Level of a Hero

Upgrading the XP Level of a Hero is relatively easy. You can get XP by letting the Hero be part of a team that you use for Explore, or you can use Combat Manuals to assign EXP to it. The maximum level you can upgrade an hero is determined by its Rank.

Upgrading the EXP level of your heroes will increase their basic attributes, which makes it an important part of making your heroes stronger.

Increasing the Rank of your Heroes

You can increase a Hero's rank with fragments specific for that Hero. You will also get generic hero fragments for a specific grade, which you can convert to any hero (as long as it is already unlocked). A high hero rank allows you to level up your Hero to a higher level, and allows you to upgrade hero skills to a higher level.

Improving the rank directly is not improving your hero, but your hero rank is restricting the maximum exp level, and the level to which hero skills can be upgraded, which makes the rank very important.

See in below table the requirements for upgrading the rank of heroes.

Note: The fragments to get to this rank column assumes 10 fragments are required to unlock the hero, which is not the case for all heroes.

Upgrading Hero Skills

Initially when you have unlocked a hero only one Skill is available. You will need to increase the Rank of a Hero to unlock the two extra Skills and to allow the Skills to be upgrades. You also need skill books of the grade of the hero to be able to upgrade the skills.

Skills have effect for both the Explore game and combat, improving skills is an important part of making your heroes stronger.

Note that when joining rally there is something special wrt hero skills. For the first 4 players joining a rally the first hero skill of the first hero in their team is activated. This means you have to make sure that the first hero has a hero skill that compliments the activity of the rally, e.g. when doing Influencer Trap rallies you should as first hero have Eva, Sarge or Zoe to increase troop damage or attack, and not for example an infatry hero.

Hero Focus

Before you realize it you will have unlocked quite some heroes (7+) and you probably start to wonder which heroes to focus on to develop. There are specific fragments for each hero, but for each of the three grades there are also generic hero fragments, for each grade there are also generic skill books required to unlock and level up skills of heroes of that type, and the Combat Manuals can be used to improve the EXP level of any hero. Meaning you should be selective about how to use most of the ingredients.

Very early on in the game it is best to focus on Rusty, Ghost and Sarge. Rusty and Ghost are the only Rare/Blue heroes and you will unlock them very early. You will get quite some Rare hero materials, so it is easy to develop both of them to a high level. You'll need a purple Hunter to complete your first time. Sarge is not necessarily the best of the choices you will have early on (Eva and Mike are alternatives), but you will get most fragments for Sarge so it is the logical choice.

Chef is the alternative for Infantry Rusty, and Travis and Jane for Rider Ghost. Select which to focus on and keep improving them until they are better than their blue/rare alternative.

Maddy & Frank is a Legendary hero you will likely unlock very early as well, and from the available legendary heroes she is by far the easiest to get fragments for. You can get Maddie & Frank fragments by doing Plague Zones, from the Daily Intel and there is also a bunker that gives Maddie & Frank fragments.

Maddy & Frank, Chef and Eva (or Sarge or Mike, I prefer Eva because of the Enemy Settlement Troop Health Debuff specialization bonus) will be a good team to focus on once you played for a while, until you get some more legendary heroes to a higher level.

Note that new heroes are introduced and also ways to get heroes always change. Often in these type of games it will be easier to get good heroes as time goes by. Keep this into considerations when reading these tips for your team composition.

Hero Gear

At first I thought Hero Gear was a spenders only feature, but I soon find out there are various ways to get the necessary Hero Gear Parts for researching the two cheapest sets. The most common way is from the Influencer Trap, you get some based on your damage ranking (irrespective of whether your alliance succeeded or not).

For each troop type there are three pieces, and you should research each of them one time (well, actually three times for each of the three levels), after which you can craft one for each hero of the troop type.

Once you have researched the 3rd level of the first set, you can continue to the 1st level of the second set.

The 3rd set has different requirements, besides the Hero Gear Parts you also need Set Design pieces. These pieces you also get from the Influencer Trap, but it will take some time to accumulate enough.

Tip: Save up on the Hero Gear Parts until there is Alliance Throwdown, you can score a lot of points by consuming certain amounts of Hero Gear Parts.

Tracking Hero Progress

If you register on this website you can track the progress of your heroes.

Conclusion

The combat benefits you get from your heroes are very significant compared to the benefits from your chief or research. Pay a lot of attention to developing your heroes will be key in doing well in combat.