Beginners Guide - Hero Farming
January 10, 2016 1:17PM
edited December 2016
For an F2P min max approach use this strategy for maximum table payouts after creating a new account:
- Stim to top 5 of squad arena by day 1 or 2 at award time.
- Use 3 cantina refresh, plus midday 45 free energy per day with daily crystal income for maximum shards, ability mats, and mods.
- 2 energy refresh per day for fast leveling to 40 and hero gear, after that at your own discretion or gear impatience.
- Win every GW.
- Join a heroic guild for fastest guild shop shard farming (bottom ranks will still award better loot than all but top 4 Tier VI raid ranks).
- Have crew members prepared for fleet arena unlock and stim to top 5.
This can be very difficult playing f2p if you are not actively playing and ranking high if not 1st in your arena at payout daily, particularly if too many whales or payout competitors in your timezone spawn in your arena.
Using this strategy (and assuming 30% cantina mission shard drop rates on average) you can farm at these rates per week:
Using 8 cantina energy missions:
459 missions (137 shards)
68 cantina shipment shards.
Using 10 cantina energy missions:
367 missions (110 shards)
82 cantina shipment shards.
Using 12 cantina energy missions:
306 missions (91 shards)
80 cantina shipment shards.
Or using 16 cantina energy missions:
204 missions (61 shards)
71 cantina shipment shards.
Plus
96 Arena shop shards max (ranking 1st daily).
105 GW Shipment shards max (undefeated daily).
166 Fleet Shipment shards max (ranking 1st daily).
And there you have it. Max f2p hero shard farming rates for the main sources.
You will also slowly accumulate crystals you can save for gear shipments, mods, and the odd fourth cantina refresh, depending how often you may need to refresh battles or countdown on the arena to snipe 1st each day, or failing to make 1st every day you should still be able to easily fund your cantina refreshes when including your daily activity, GW, and achievement rewards.
On a shard per crystal basis, spending 400 on a cantina refresh is more expensive on average than saving for an 8 chromium pack.
F2p chromium exlusives will be useless until they are moved to a farmable source.
Shipments are relatively expensive for hero shards per crystal, but are a good way to speed up key hard mission heroes you are also slow farming, and will save a lot of time in the long run if you are accumulating crystals from high arena ranking.
Based on these farming rates, the fastest complete Arena squads you can promote to 7☆ from the beginning of your game is roughly:
2 cantina mission heroes
1 GW shipment hero
1 Arena shipment hero
1 Cantina Shipment hero (last to 7☆)
There are a few strong synergy teams that you can build from this pool, and if you focus on these exclusively you will also not neglect GW.
The release of fleets has changed things up a lot, as you can no longer focus entirely on a single squad for the squad arena to the detriment of the awards earned by ranking in the fleet arena once it unlocks. Hero ☆, level, gear, and mods will improve various ship stats and overall power.
For details on hero end game stats, abilities, and synergies I highly recommend checking out http://swgoh.gg.com
In my experience you can also activate some of the stronger early game heroes without promoting further to essentially hold arena rank while you build a stronger end game squad to be used, as some squads only show their colours as their omega abilities are upgraded, and raid gear is equipped towards level cap.
Arguably the top starting heroes from these farming sources would be:
GW: Biggs
Arena: Storm Trooper Han
Cantina Shipments: Boba Fett
Cantina 8 energy mission: Lando
Cantina 10 energy mission: Plo Koon
Cantina 12 energy mission: Wedge Antilles
Cantina 16 energy mission: Jedi Knight Anakin
Guild Shop: Jawa Engineer
Shard Exchange: Bace Malbus
Fleet Shipments: Sun Fac
Hard Missions: Jedi Consular
Although there are very good heroes in later stages of Cantina you can already have a full 7☆ squad by the time you reach these, so are not ideal for your startup squad.
Plo Koon has the fastest to 7☆ Ship available in cantina on level 7, which unlocks at level 77, so you will want to start farming this as soon as you can.
With hero sharding and modding, at best you can hope for 2 7☆ heroes from cantina missions before this point (one of which is Plo himself on level 4).
It is important to amply maintain extra heroes for events, challenges, mod challenges, and missions. Make use of high level allies so you don't need to waste resources on heroes you only use on 1 non essential table.
Here are some good example startup squads, in order of usefulness. This list was made prior to the release of fleets:
Old Ben
Qui-Gon Jin
Geonosian Soldier
Luminara Unduli
Stormtrooper Han
Poggle
Geonosian Soldier
IG-88
IG-86
Poe Dameron
Captain Phasma
Geonosian Soldier
Leia
Old Daka
IG-86
Qui-Gon Jinn
Luminara Unduli
Geonosian Soldier
Stormtrooper Han
Lando
Lando
Leia
Geonosian Soldier
Luminara Unduli
Poe Dameron
Ahsoka Tano
Luminara Unduli
Talia
Jedi Consular
Asajj Ventress
Asajj Ventress
Nightsister Acolyte
Nightsister Initiate
Old Daka
Talia
IG-88
Lando
Poe Dameron
Old Ben
Poggle The Lessor/Captain Phasma
Lando
Biggs Darklighter
Luke Skywalker
Hoth Rebel Scout
Stormtrooper Han
Nute Gunray
Datcha
Nightsister Acolyte
Teebo
CT-5555
Given the importance of upgrading crew members if you want to use heroes that can work in both arenas this drastically limits your options, but ideal startup squads would be:
Squad Arena:
Lando
Boba Fett
Biggs
Jedi Consular
Storm Trooper Han
Fleet Arena:
Mace/Akbar
Plo Koon
Wedge
Biggs
Jedi Consular
Ahsoka
Resistance Pilot
Fives
Try and have Biggs and Resistance Pilot 7☆ by the time you can farm blueprints from GW so you can immediately focus farming on a primary and secondary starfighter to 7☆.
You can face blocks depending on how you progress, for example, whilst Rebels have very good synergy and strong heroes you can farm early, as a starting squad it becomes difficult once you are trying to get them gear with protection, as the nodes you need to farm for their gear is high on the darkside missions where you are now weak due to a light side focus.
The droid startup squad is probably the most powerful, however vulnerable to game updates and changes, and will currently not help you in the fleet arena.
Whilst you will need to also level and gear your heroes used for L&D side missions make sure you save all your tier III purple ability mats for your intended end game starting 7☆ max gear squad because you will have a shortage of these.
High tier mods are very costly in credits to upgrade so it is important to prioritise your Arena & Galactic War squad(s), to protect the income from those tables.
The best way to chose a starting Arena squad is to consider where you would like to go from there once you have reached 7☆ and then level cap, because ideally you want your starting squad to have as many heroes as you can that will be used for where you want to go.
Some squads you may want to use will have heroes that share farming sources, so will need to be built even more slowly.
For details about how to maximise your holotable payouts for the fastest progression check out the beginners guide for strategy.
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/1195/beginners-guide-its-all-about-the-tables
It is also important to work on crew members from hard missions as these will be slow to farm. JC should aslo be farmed from hard missions as there is more important things to use cantina energy for, for eg:
Close Sergeant
Jedi Consular
First Order Tie Fighter
At the end game it can be difficult to compete against p2Wers in your arena, however I believe the strongest f2p squads are still very competitive so getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible will keep you in the fight.
Mods have changed the dynamic of arena battles, especially when it comes to speed bonuses, as battles will vary depending on the opponents mods equipped and depth of back pocket to keep ahead.
Guild shop currency should be used early for hero shards as well. The only crew member there is Rey but the Millennium Falcon is not f2p yet. You may wish to get her shards first in case the ship is added to f2p farming later. You will also jeed her for offense mod challenges much later.
Shard heroes here as needed for a squad of 5 without upgrading them at all for mod challenges later in the game, like Jawas, Scoundrel, Jedi, and resistance heroes. Focus on 1 at a time to 330 shards and a secondary with spare currency making sure you don't miss a shipment for your primary farm.
- Stim to top 5 of squad arena by day 1 or 2 at award time.
- Use 3 cantina refresh, plus midday 45 free energy per day with daily crystal income for maximum shards, ability mats, and mods.
- 2 energy refresh per day for fast leveling to 40 and hero gear, after that at your own discretion or gear impatience.
- Win every GW.
- Join a heroic guild for fastest guild shop shard farming (bottom ranks will still award better loot than all but top 4 Tier VI raid ranks).
- Have crew members prepared for fleet arena unlock and stim to top 5.
This can be very difficult playing f2p if you are not actively playing and ranking high if not 1st in your arena at payout daily, particularly if too many whales or payout competitors in your timezone spawn in your arena.
Using this strategy (and assuming 30% cantina mission shard drop rates on average) you can farm at these rates per week:
Using 8 cantina energy missions:
459 missions (137 shards)
68 cantina shipment shards.
Using 10 cantina energy missions:
367 missions (110 shards)
82 cantina shipment shards.
Using 12 cantina energy missions:
306 missions (91 shards)
80 cantina shipment shards.
Or using 16 cantina energy missions:
204 missions (61 shards)
71 cantina shipment shards.
Plus
96 Arena shop shards max (ranking 1st daily).
105 GW Shipment shards max (undefeated daily).
166 Fleet Shipment shards max (ranking 1st daily).
And there you have it. Max f2p hero shard farming rates for the main sources.
You will also slowly accumulate crystals you can save for gear shipments, mods, and the odd fourth cantina refresh, depending how often you may need to refresh battles or countdown on the arena to snipe 1st each day, or failing to make 1st every day you should still be able to easily fund your cantina refreshes when including your daily activity, GW, and achievement rewards.
On a shard per crystal basis, spending 400 on a cantina refresh is more expensive on average than saving for an 8 chromium pack.
F2p chromium exlusives will be useless until they are moved to a farmable source.
Shipments are relatively expensive for hero shards per crystal, but are a good way to speed up key hard mission heroes you are also slow farming, and will save a lot of time in the long run if you are accumulating crystals from high arena ranking.
Based on these farming rates, the fastest complete Arena squads you can promote to 7☆ from the beginning of your game is roughly:
2 cantina mission heroes
1 GW shipment hero
1 Arena shipment hero
1 Cantina Shipment hero (last to 7☆)
There are a few strong synergy teams that you can build from this pool, and if you focus on these exclusively you will also not neglect GW.
The release of fleets has changed things up a lot, as you can no longer focus entirely on a single squad for the squad arena to the detriment of the awards earned by ranking in the fleet arena once it unlocks. Hero ☆, level, gear, and mods will improve various ship stats and overall power.
For details on hero end game stats, abilities, and synergies I highly recommend checking out http://swgoh.gg.com
In my experience you can also activate some of the stronger early game heroes without promoting further to essentially hold arena rank while you build a stronger end game squad to be used, as some squads only show their colours as their omega abilities are upgraded, and raid gear is equipped towards level cap.
Arguably the top starting heroes from these farming sources would be:
GW: Biggs
Arena: Storm Trooper Han
Cantina Shipments: Boba Fett
Cantina 8 energy mission: Lando
Cantina 10 energy mission: Plo Koon
Cantina 12 energy mission: Wedge Antilles
Cantina 16 energy mission: Jedi Knight Anakin
Guild Shop: Jawa Engineer
Shard Exchange: Bace Malbus
Fleet Shipments: Sun Fac
Hard Missions: Jedi Consular
Although there are very good heroes in later stages of Cantina you can already have a full 7☆ squad by the time you reach these, so are not ideal for your startup squad.
Plo Koon has the fastest to 7☆ Ship available in cantina on level 7, which unlocks at level 77, so you will want to start farming this as soon as you can.
With hero sharding and modding, at best you can hope for 2 7☆ heroes from cantina missions before this point (one of which is Plo himself on level 4).
It is important to amply maintain extra heroes for events, challenges, mod challenges, and missions. Make use of high level allies so you don't need to waste resources on heroes you only use on 1 non essential table.
Here are some good example startup squads, in order of usefulness. This list was made prior to the release of fleets:
Old Ben
Qui-Gon Jin
Geonosian Soldier
Luminara Unduli
Stormtrooper Han
Poggle
Geonosian Soldier
IG-88
IG-86
Poe Dameron
Captain Phasma
Geonosian Soldier
Leia
Old Daka
IG-86
Qui-Gon Jinn
Luminara Unduli
Geonosian Soldier
Stormtrooper Han
Lando
Lando
Leia
Geonosian Soldier
Luminara Unduli
Poe Dameron
Ahsoka Tano
Luminara Unduli
Talia
Jedi Consular
Asajj Ventress
Asajj Ventress
Nightsister Acolyte
Nightsister Initiate
Old Daka
Talia
IG-88
Lando
Poe Dameron
Old Ben
Poggle The Lessor/Captain Phasma
Lando
Biggs Darklighter
Luke Skywalker
Hoth Rebel Scout
Stormtrooper Han
Nute Gunray
Datcha
Nightsister Acolyte
Teebo
CT-5555
Given the importance of upgrading crew members if you want to use heroes that can work in both arenas this drastically limits your options, but ideal startup squads would be:
Squad Arena:
Lando
Boba Fett
Biggs
Jedi Consular
Storm Trooper Han
Fleet Arena:
Mace/Akbar
Plo Koon
Wedge
Biggs
Jedi Consular
Ahsoka
Resistance Pilot
Fives
Try and have Biggs and Resistance Pilot 7☆ by the time you can farm blueprints from GW so you can immediately focus farming on a primary and secondary starfighter to 7☆.
You can face blocks depending on how you progress, for example, whilst Rebels have very good synergy and strong heroes you can farm early, as a starting squad it becomes difficult once you are trying to get them gear with protection, as the nodes you need to farm for their gear is high on the darkside missions where you are now weak due to a light side focus.
The droid startup squad is probably the most powerful, however vulnerable to game updates and changes, and will currently not help you in the fleet arena.
Whilst you will need to also level and gear your heroes used for L&D side missions make sure you save all your tier III purple ability mats for your intended end game starting 7☆ max gear squad because you will have a shortage of these.
High tier mods are very costly in credits to upgrade so it is important to prioritise your Arena & Galactic War squad(s), to protect the income from those tables.
The best way to chose a starting Arena squad is to consider where you would like to go from there once you have reached 7☆ and then level cap, because ideally you want your starting squad to have as many heroes as you can that will be used for where you want to go.
Some squads you may want to use will have heroes that share farming sources, so will need to be built even more slowly.
For details about how to maximise your holotable payouts for the fastest progression check out the beginners guide for strategy.
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/1195/beginners-guide-its-all-about-the-tables
It is also important to work on crew members from hard missions as these will be slow to farm. JC should aslo be farmed from hard missions as there is more important things to use cantina energy for, for eg:
Close Sergeant
Jedi Consular
First Order Tie Fighter
At the end game it can be difficult to compete against p2Wers in your arena, however I believe the strongest f2p squads are still very competitive so getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible will keep you in the fight.
Mods have changed the dynamic of arena battles, especially when it comes to speed bonuses, as battles will vary depending on the opponents mods equipped and depth of back pocket to keep ahead.
Guild shop currency should be used early for hero shards as well. The only crew member there is Rey but the Millennium Falcon is not f2p yet. You may wish to get her shards first in case the ship is added to f2p farming later. You will also jeed her for offense mod challenges much later.
Shard heroes here as needed for a squad of 5 without upgrading them at all for mod challenges later in the game, like Jawas, Scoundrel, Jedi, and resistance heroes. Focus on 1 at a time to 330 shards and a secondary with spare currency making sure you don't miss a shipment for your primary farm.
Post edited by Keaven on
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Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
I got roughly 40% since I started farming my currently 5* geonosian soldier.
Either you are victim of your own cognitive bias, and you remember more the cold streaks (which is common human behaviour) or you happen to be the outlier example of the normal random distribution.
I used them as an example, and that is why I listed the total number of missions so anyone can see how many attempts they will have for shard drops primarily. The example using my experience equates that to shards.
I have had plenty of refreshes that dropped 1 or no shards, and I have had plenty more that have dropped almost all (no 100% refills yet though lol).
With two accounts refreshing cantina at least twice a day on each I have done a lot of Cantina missions, and received enough shards to 7☆ three 8 energy node heroes and one 10 energy node hero since hard launch.
Guild: Fear The Boot
I like the strategy overall. I may make a free account for a bit more to do. If only it were easier to have two accounts in the same iPhone.
Guild: Fear The Boot
The shards and tier III ability mats available there are higher value than the crystals used for refreshing at 100 and 200.
Poe is overpowered at the moment and not likely getting nerfed anytime soon. The best counter to a Poe at the moment is another Poe.
Guild: Fear The Boot
Nice! Unto the ff questions
1.) now am i on the right track to focus farming on Sid, JC, and Geo Soldier at the moment (along with Poe of course)? I will be unlocking GW later in the evening as i am currently lvl 39 and focus on Luminara shards.
2.) i havent seen doku on your list, is he not worth farming anymore (other than JC, i spend my energy in farming him)?
3.) Btw, should i get old daka too once i get poe? or just outright focus star farming on poe? (sorry for the noob questions).
Many thanks!
2) if you have extra energy go for it but unless you got him from a pack I would wait and do the cantina missions much later on. I have been using Dooku since launch so I have been at it for a while, I am pot committed, to take a poker term. Dooku is a good hero but not top tier. Since you can only farm 3 quickly (GW, Arena, Cantina missions) you have Cantina shipments at a good rate (if you buy refills) that leaves that odd man out hero which for me since launch was Dooku. He started as my best hero but has been my number 5 for a while.
3) Get old Daka if you cannot borrow one for dark side missions and your Talia isnt healing well enough. Daka is okay but Poe is OP in the current meta.
There is no right answer in what you chose to farm as there are many ways to play, and with the level cap raised to 70 it is wiser to focus on GW more for the short term.
You want to make sure that by the time you reach level 70 you can still win while you shift your focus onto Arena squads.
Guild: Fear The Boot
Per the current meta GS is the best option by far, JC is great for GW though. Luke seems solid (based on vs him) I went with Kylo and he is good but not great. Dooku and Barriss much later.
Sorry if you already answered this but how can you get 2 refreshes of normal energy AND 2 refreshes of cantina energy? After I end up refreshing twice for the normal energy the cantina energy ends up costing 100 crystals while I may have barely enough crystals, is there any way to get around it without it making me pay 100 crystals for the cantina refills?
Curious to see why you say that because Poe seems to be the game changer with so many people mentioning to nerf him, but no one ever mentions nerfing GS. I am all for GS actually and don't have a functioning Poe.
He says he finishes about #1 in the Arena.
I dont understand your question, you get Poe from Cantina Shipments not Cantina Missions, all the heroes I mentioned were Cantina Missions. Get Poe from Cantina Shipments. Or are you trying to ask why I mention getting GS when you think he is going to be nerfed? If you start to farm the best hero you dont think will be nerfed you will either miss out or change your farming strategy once a month. With that said its also not worth chasing the new FoTM unless you are between farming. I am working on Poe but honestly I don't really have a good team for him because I was working on my previous plan of a first order team and I place between 20-3 on my server so it has been working well enough for me. Right now I have a hard choice of farming GS for my future Poe team or JC for current GW help. I made very bad decisions in the Cantina when I started...
I must have missed that. Thanks for clarifying that
If I don't earn enough from arena, GW, and daily rewards then I skip the L&D Energy refills. That's 300 crystals reserved for Cantina, which doesn't require too high a rank to get, and Galaxy war victories make a difference too.
Whilst gear is important, overall it is faster to farm than hero shards, and tier III ability mats.
Guild: Fear The Boot
Hey man, nice guide .. It helped me a lot leveling my account, after reading and doing all the stuff in game that you recommended I've been stuck with one question.. On what should I spend my Crystals if I don't want to buy Chromium Data Cards?
I'm level 41 and slowly leveling past 40 atm, so is Energy refill worth 50 Crystals? Also whats with Cantina energy? 100 Crystals for 120 cantina Energy worth since I have only completed 1st stage and I'm too weak for 2nd stage atm.
Thank you for your reply in advance.
Cantina energy refills and regular energy refills.
You know you have purple energy numbers to the left of the regular energy, that is cantina energy because it is used for cantina squad battles.
If you have only completed 1 stage of cantina you can farm Geo Solider or Luke (but GS is better) so have at it.
Phasma
GS
QGJ
Asajj
Luke/Biggs
Guild: Fear The Boot
I followed your guide and Tomorrow level to 7 stars Sidius and Luminara, what is the next step?
I have 6 star poe, GS y 5 stars Jedi consul,
I'm lvl 60 what is the next chars I need to farm?
Thx in advance.
As for GW I would say Phasma, Poggle, or IG-86 depending which direction you want to go.
http://www.swgohcantina.com/swgoh-hero-rankings/
You could always check there, but ideally after the ~month it takes to get Lumi and Sid 7* you should an idea what you want to expand.
After every 2 regular refills the price doubles.