Everything a new or returning account needs in its first weeks of season 18: the heroes to open with, the order to spend cores on transcendence, the stats that actually differ between heroes, and where Season Shop currency goes. The advice assumes a main account or an alt started during the High Roller event.
When to start an account
High Roller is the best window to open a new or alt account, because the event hands out a hero selector on top of its usual rewards.
Most of High Roller is priced for spenders rather than free-to-play players. A fresh account still comes out ahead, because the selector and the head start it gives are free. What the event sells and what to skip is covered in the season guide.
Which heroes to open with
Build your first team around one of the starts below. Jormungand is the pick if you can get her. Her passive Poison Fang raises the active skill multipliers of every ally, basic attacks included, so she makes whichever carry you pull later stronger. Nothing else on this list keeps its value as well as she does.
Elisha is the fallback when no event hero is on offer. With her on the field every ally can Freeze on a critical hit, and each allied crit adds team ATK and Max HP, so she scales with the team rather than with her own damage.
JormungandDemon SupportAt 7 stars: the strongest and safest start, and the main priority for a new account.
ElishaDemon WarriorAt 6 stars: the first summon priority when no event hero is available.
TsukuyomiDivine MageAt 7 stars: an optional extra start next to either of the above. She drives Corrode teams.
DorabellaEmpire MageA 7-star Arcane Dorabella start works, but it may need a guaranteed Elisha next to her.
BaalDemon TankBuild him next to Jormungand. That pairing is the one early step you shouldn't skip.
The High Roller selector
If you are still stuck on the Palace of Penrose sustain stages, take 6-star Alice from the final-day selector. Her Enigmatic Tea Party shields her and the allies in her row every round, and the shield is sized from those allies' stats rather than her own, so it grows as the rest of your team grows. That is exactly what the sustain stages ask for.
Once you are past those stages, Catrina, Portia or Sandra are the better long-term picks.
Why Epic heroes fall behind
At level 100, HP, ATK, PDEF and MDEF are the same for every hero who shares a faction, a class and a rarity. What separates two Legendary Demon mages is their kit, not their stat sheet. Rarity is where the stats really split: an Epic hero has roughly half the ATK of a Legendary of the same faction and class, and a little over half the HP.
The table below compares each Epic with a Legendary counterpart at level 100. A gap this size is a big part of why the Epics sit in the bottom rows of both tier lists. Baal is the exception early on, because his shields and damage sharing keep a Jormungand start alive while the rest of the team catches up.
Atalanta
Althea
Medusa
Arkdina
Clotho
Behemoth
Death Knight
BojjiSPD is the stat that differs
Because the other stats are shared, SPD is the one number worth reading on a hero page. It sets turn order, so a buffer only helps if she moves before the damage dealers she buffs. Most of the game's key supports sit at SPD 126, including Jormungand, Lucifer, Chronos, Hela and Cleopatra, which is why their buffs are already up when your carries act. Wu Zetian is the fastest hero on the roster at 135.
The slowest heroes are Epics such as Percival at 78 and Brutus at 82, one more reason they struggle to find a slot. In modes where turn order matters to the round, you can take the speed-slot accessory off a specific hero to push them back in the queue.
Early chores
The High Roller event quests include 20 guild challenges. A new account can finish them quickly by switching guilds several times.
Buy the 5 extra arena runs as well.
How transcendence works
Transcending a hero adds one to their synergy's count. A transcended hero can therefore complete a bigger synergy tier without an extra body in the line-up, which is what makes cores so valuable.
Never spend cores on the heroes that transcend automatically. They transcend on their own once they reach 9 stars, so cores spent on them are wasted.
Transcend the Fates first
The four Fates are Royal supports, and every one of them changes a whole team rather than one slot. Transcend them in this order.
| Order | Hero | Why, and the star target |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Lucifer | Shares her ATK, DEF and Max HP with every ally. The key unit for all PvE and PvP content. |
| 2 |  Chronos | Can multiply every ally's ATK, DEF and Max HP each round. Usable from 10 stars in PvP and 9 in PvE. |
| 3 |  Hela | Pledge of Death raises the team's ATK from hers every round. Needs 12 stars to reach her peak. |
| 4 |  Victoria | Kills shield the whole team. Usable from 7 stars, needs 9 for PvE and 12 for PvP. |
Next: the synergy anchors
After the Fates, these damage dealers are the high-priority transcends. Each one either anchors a synergy team or completes one.
PandoraDemon WarriorFirst in line. Essential for clearing Lost City, and strong in PvP with 7 or more Valiantors.
- ElishaDemon Warrior
Stays relevant in both PvE and PvP for the long run.
LeviathanDemon WarriorFor PvP synergy teams.
AphroditeDivine MageTranscend together with Isis to reach 5 Avengers easily in PvP.
IsisDivine MageThe other half of that 5-Avenger pair.
Synergy fillers
Worth transcending once the anchors are done, either to finish a synergy or to build a second team:
- Wu Zetian: a flexible Glorians filler that gets you to 4 Glorians and their crowd-control immunity.
- Hades: a filler for pure Valiantors teams built around Pandora.
- Gaia and Tsukuyomi: late picks for a second Mystifiers team.
- Ophelia and Arthur: Doomsdayers fillers.
- Cleopatra: optional at 60 cores, for competitive PvP players who need flexible 10-synergy line-ups.
- Amaterasu: worth it for her own strength and synergy, though she can be replaced.
Not worth transcending
Both of these have kits that work on paper, but neither is worth cores this season.
WukongDemon WarriorHis Swap loop needs kills to start, and he is hard to fit into current teams.
RaDivine TankThere is no established team to put her in right now.
Rune priority
When an event sells runes, buy Chronos runes first if you focus on PvP and Lucifer runes first for PvE. Hela's runes come third either way.
Always buy the Epic runes on offer and evolve them into Legendary ones.
Season Shop buying order
Season Shop currency is limited, so buy in this order and stop wherever your currency runs out.
| Priority | Buy | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Legendary relic shard chest | Max it out first. |
| 2 | Diamonds | Once the relic shards are done. |
| 3 | Doomsdayers rune | |
| 4 | Relic summon vouchers | |
| 5 | Advanced summon vouchers | |
| 6 | Ascension Ore II (gold) | Far rarer than Ore I, and the late-game bottleneck. |
| 7 | Epic soul selectable chest | Buy it before refining ore. |
| 8 | Refining ore |
When to open relic shards
Hold your relic shards until the Relics Challenger's Journey event in the season's second week, and open them then for the event points.
New players should take Pharaoh's Sarcophagus or Kusanagi from the shard chests. Both are part of the minimum Chaotic 13 trial setup, so neither goes to waste.