This is a simple bullet-point guide of tips to assist you from your first play-through all the way to your first transcension in Clicker Heroes 1.0. This guide assumes you’ll be starting with an idle build on a fresh save file. After transcending and acquiring enough in-game auto-clickers, using an active or hybrid build will be advantageous. More info is available in the Hybrid Build guide.

Your First Run

• Level each hero to the first upgrade at level 10 then move to the next.
  
• As you get farther down the list of heroes, you can go to the second upgrade at level 25 before moving to the next hero, and later level 50.
  
• Go back and purchase “All hero DPS[clickerheroes.wikia.com]” upgrades when you have gold.
  
• Don’t level heroes past their last upgrade for now.
  
• Farm gold from the previous level if you fail a boss.
  
• Your first few ascensions will be very slow. For your first few ascensions, when you fail a boss you will need to AFK for awhile or do something else. Gold accumulates even when offline.
  
• Use all your skills to push through higher level bosses every half hour.
  
• Levels 110, 120, and 130 are all primal bosses (guaranteed hero souls.)
  
• If you wish to continue further on your first run, continue to Beyond 130.
  
• If you’ve played Clicker Heroes before, check out the What’s New in the Transcendence Update guide.

When to Ascend

• Ascension is the primary building block of progression in Clicker Heroes.
  
• The more hero souls you earn before ascending, the quicker your next ascension will be. It is strongly recommended to beat level 130 since it is a guaranteed primal boss.
  
• Keep going at least until you fail a boss and can’t defeat it. If it’s a primal boss, farm gold until you can beat it.
  
• Every 100th level is guaranteed primal boss. (Guaranteed hero souls)
  
• Before you ascend, buy as many hero levels as you can. Every 2000 combined hero levels gives you 1 HS when you ascend. Later on you won’t have to worry about this, but for now those extra HS will be useful.

Beyond 130 & Next Runs

• Backup your game save to a cloud backup regularly such as OneDrive or Google Drive! This helps insure you won’t lose your save file in case something happens to your Steam files or website cookies that contain your game data. If you prefer not to use cloud drives, you can simply e-mail the text file to yourself instead.
  
• Level Frostleaf to 150, then go back to the top and level Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Seer and Samurai (known as the “Power 5”) in multiples of 25. You can buy all remaining hero upgrades at this point, too.
  
• Dread Knight has a terrible cost/dps ratio. Don’t worry about not being able to buy him. You want the x10 bonus for leveling a hero to 1000. You’ll be using the Power 5 for awhile.
  
• After a few ascensions, you should be able to advance through most of the early stages by leveling your heroes up 25 levels at a time.
  
• Random de-gilding to the Power 5 isn’t necessary, but if you absolutely wish to do this, don’t spend more than 10% of your hero souls moving gilds. (If you haven’t transcended yet, don’t bother moving gilds.)
  
• For more information on gilding, check out my Hero Gilding guide.

Pre-Transcendent Ancient Leveling

• Using an idle build is most effective for starting out since you can accumulate gold offline.
  
• Siyalatas, Libertas, Mammon and Mimzee are the only four ancients you should buy before transcending. Don’t buy any others until you transcend!
  
• Keep all four of these ancients at the same level, or as close as possible.
  
• Keep an amount of unspent hero souls equal to the square of their level. (i.e. level 5 ancients = keep 25 unspent hero souls)

Post-Transcendent Ancient Leveling

• If you haven’t transcended yet, refer to the previous list.
  
• Try to get an idle ancient or Juggernaut ASAP when starting out a new transcension (depending on whether you are planning on using an idle or active/hybrid build.)
  
• You do not need to buy the ancients in the exact order listed, they are simply ranked by relative general usefulness.
  
• Buy first as idle: Libertas, Siyalatas, Nogardnit
  
• Buy first as active/hybrid: Juggernaut, Bhaal, Fragsworth
  
• Buy next: Atman, Kuma, any gold ancients.
  
• You can use the ‘Summon All Ancients’ button to buy all remaining ancients if you have enough hero souls to do so.
  
• Only level up Nogardnit if you have in-game autoclickers since he provides no benefit without them.
  
• Level ancients according to this calculator.[graceoflives.github.io]

First Transcension

• Transcendence is a second tier ascension. It allows you to progress farther when each ascension stops providing a significant boost to progression.
  
• You gain ancient souls when you transcend. You sacrifice your ancients, relics, hero souls, zone gilds and zone progress.
  
• Outsiders are meta-ancients leveled with ancient souls. There are nine of them, and each one provides a different type of bonus.
  
• Ancient souls, rubies, outsiders, mercenaries, clans, and gilds purchased with rubies are not lost when transcending.
  
• Transcendence becomes available at level 300 and should be done immediately to start reaping the benefits of transcendent power.
  
• Transcendent Power gives you an exponentially increasing amount of bonus hero souls from defeating primal bosses.
  
• For more information about ancient souls and transcendence, please see my When To Transcend and Outsider Leveling guides.

How to Spend Rubies

• Start off by buying one or two auto-clickers and the permanent double damage increase.
  
• Save a few rubies for reviving mercenaries when it’s cheap to do.
  
• You no longer need to save rubies for Quick Ascension when starting a new transcension, thanks to the outsider Phandoryss.
  
• For a greater detailed list, please see my Ruby Spending guide.

Mercenaries

• Mercenaries have a predetermined amount of time until death.
  
• Their reward gets multiplied by their level.
  
• One day of time on quests gains a mercenary one level.
  
• Revive mercenaries if it’s cheap and if you have rubies available.
  
• There is no way to get higher quality mercs other than RNG.
  
• Ruby quests are the best quests, others are of limited usefulness.
  
• For more mercenary tips, please see my Mercenaries guide.

Clans

• Fight a daily raid boss with up to 9 other clan-mates.
  
• The minimum reward is 4 hero souls.
  
• The reward increases as you kill primal bosses.
  
• It’s best to join a clan with people of similar progression level.
  
• Find a clan on the Clicker Heroes Recruit subreddit.

Relics

• All relic stats eventually get dwarfed by ancient levels, but they can be helpful early on.
  
• Kuma is the best relic stat overall. Atman & Revolc are also OK.
  
• For active/hybrid builds, if you don’t have infinite skill times, having a good Sniperino and/or Kleptos relic can be helpful to boost your Lucky Strikes and Golden Clicks duration.

(This guide was originally written for the first iteration of 1.0 with Transcendence, but has been updated to reflect all of the changes since then.)

If you’re returning to Clicker Heroes from an extended break, you may notice a lot has changed in the new version. Transcendence, the flagship feature of this patch, allows you to reset your ancients to gain a huge progress boost. The first thing you’ll probably be wondering is when to transcend, and the next order of business is going to be how to spend ancient souls. Both of these things are covered in the respective guides. You may also notice some other changes. Here’s a full list of what’s new in Clicker Heroes 1.0:

• Transcendence: Once you reach zone 300, the ability to transcend becomes available. When you transcend, you sacrifice all of your ancients, hero souls, relics & forge cores. These are then converted into Transcendent Power and Ancient Souls.
  
• Transcendent Power: The higher your TP, the larger the exponential growth of your HS income will be as you conquer higher level zones.
  
• Ancient Souls & Outsiders: Outsiders are the new “meta-ancients” which provide tremendous boosts. You level them up with AS gained from transcending. Every time you transcend, you have the option to respec your outsiders at no cost.
  
• Gilds: You lose all of your gilds when you transcend, but any that were purchased with rubies are restored evenly between levels 100 and 300 as you defeat bosses every 10 levels.
  
• Uncapped Ancients: Ancients no longer have a level limit. Every ancient that used to have a level cap no longer has one, but the cost of each level doubles and provides diminishing returns. Prior to transcending for the first time, you will notice your ancients have had their levels adjusted to reflect the new level required to obtain the same effect as before the patch. The effect has not changed; only the level.
  
• Retired Ancients: Iris, Khrysos, Solomon and Thusia are now gone. Once you transcend you will not be able to obtain them, and they will not appear on relics. Each ascension is longer than before, but provides much more lucrative rewards.
  
• Ancient Leveling: You can now press “V” to enter a number of levels to upgrade an ancient. (You can also press “T” to toggle between different quantities.)
  
• Relics: Relics no longer have a level cap, and can be upgraded indefinitely. Each level costs about twice as much as the previous level for the same benefit, in a similar fashion to the now uncapped ancients.
  
• Mercenaries: Hero souls from mercenary quests are now given after you ascend, instead of immediately. Additionally, HS rewards from quests are now calculated dynamically based on your Quick Ascension value.
  
• Dark Ritual Nerf: Dark Ritual can only be used 20 times per ascension, though it can be Energized and will only count once each time.
  
• Getting Started: You will be guaranteed a better choice of ancients on your first play-through. Also, monster health is now lower at low zones, but higher at high zones.
  
• Achievements: Achievements no longer award DPS bonuses, but several new achievements have been added.
  
  Here’s what’s been added and/or changed since 1.0 was first released:
  
  
• Patch 1.0e2: Offline progression, zone progression during Timelapse
  
• Patch 1.0e3: Five new heroes: Tsuchi, Skogur, Moeru, Zilar, Madzi
  
• Patch 1.0e4: Leveling animation for ancients and heroes
  
• Patch 1.0e5: Auto-clickers: can be used on monsters, heroes, skills
  
• Patch 1.0e6: Nogardnit, Ancient of Moderation
  
• Patch 1.0e7: Transparent auto-clicker option
  
• Patch 1.0e8: Clickmas event
  
• Patch 1.0e9: Ascension & Transcension logs, improved auto-clicker functionality, improved options in the settings menu
  
• Patch 1.0e10: Full patch notes available here.
  
• Patch 1.0e11: Full patch notes available here.

Transcendence is the second tier reset in Clicker Heroes. It’s the next level of ascension. When you transcend, you sacrifice all of your hero souls, ancients, relics, and gold, keeping only rubies, mercenaries, clan immortal damage, ancient souls and transcendent power. You gain ancient souls that are spent on Outsiders; another level of ancients. You also gain transcendent power (up to 25%) which exponentially increases how fast your hero soul rewards grow. This guide will help you determine when to transcend and help you get you up and running on your new transcension.

The Flow of Transcendence

The idea behind transcendence is to start over with a generous boost every time your progress comes to a halt. In older versions of Clicker Heroes, the end game was all about grinding a small range of levels for a very small gain each time. In version 1.0, transcendence changed that. Once you’re making very small gains from one ascension to the next, it’s time to transcend and start over again; but with a bigger boost the next time around.

Earning Ancient Souls

Each ancient soul costs about 58% more than the one before it. Every order of magnitude of hero souls (10, 100, 1000, etc.) will give you 5 ancient souls. When you transcend, you’ll spend several ascensions building back up to where you were previously until you start earning ancient souls. Once you get to that point, you’ll earn a whole bunch of ancient souls over the span of a few ascensions until it starts to slow down. Which brings us to the #1 question…

When Should You Transcend?



While the number of ancient souls you’ll gain when you transcend is a useful piece of information, the most important thing you need to look at is how fast you’re getting them. Since hero soul gain correlates with ancient soul gain, the easiest way to track this is by looking at how many hero souls you’re gaining each ascension. Once the growth of order of magnitude slows down, it’s a very good time to transcend. However, this changes once you reach the transcendent power cap of 25%.

Your First Transcension

Your first transcension will be done immediately at zone 300 when you unlock transcendence. It’s not worth grinding out more ancient souls before your first transcension because transcendent power will allow you to earn them a lot faster afterwards.

Post-Transcendence to Near-Cap

From your first transcension all the way to about 24% Transcendent Power, you’ll be transcending whenever your ancient soul earnings slow down as described above. Doing one extra ascension or skipping one last ascension isn’t a terrible mistake at this point as long as you’ve earned a lot of ancient souls in the current transcension relative to your current amount.

The End Game Grind

Once you get close to 25% TP, you won’t be transcending very much anymore. You will only be transcending once you can’t progress because there are too many monsters per zone. Once you’ve got the maximum of 24.99% TP, leveling Borb up will be the only way to progress into the highest of zones. From here on in, you’ll be doing a lot of ascensions for a few thousand zones each; more when hero upgrades unlock.

Preparations For Transcendence

Spending 50 rubies on a Quick Ascension is no longer needed at the beginning of a new transcension. Using the current and previous day’s clan rewards will help get you off the ground quicker, though. You can use these hero souls to buy Juggernaut or an idle ancient, and/or Kuma if you have enough Borb & Chor. Lastly, a few points in Phan should provide enough of a DPS boost to get you to zone 130 or further.

Which Outsiders to Level with Ancient Souls

When you’re ready to to transcend, learn more about the Outsiders and how to level them with my Outsiders Leveling Guide.

Every transcension, upon defeating the boss at level 100 for the first time, and every 10th level after that, you will receive 1 gilded hero at random. As you get farther into the game, you can start moving the gilds to other heroes in order to increase your DPS. This guide will help you determine when to start moving gilds and which hero(es) to place the gilds on.



The Power 5

Until you’re at the point where you can spend 80 HS per gild to directly move gilds to The Masked Samurai, you’ll be leveling the “Power 5”: Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, the Seer and Samurai. You can use the “random degild” option to move gilds to these 5, but it’s not necessary to do so. If you do this, don’t spend more than 10% of your hero souls on moving gilds.

The Masked Samurai

Once your runs are getting to about level 500, you should have enough HS to move your gilds directly (Shift-click) for 80 HS each. Once you can comfortably afford to do so, move your gilds onto Samurai. Continue spending most of your hero souls on leveling ancients, as that will help boost your progress more than regilding.

Atlas

Once you’re able to level Samurai up to 2425 (that’s his hero level – not your zone level) then it’s optimal to move your gilds over to Atlas. Level Atlas to 725 before moving the gilds. If you can’t instantly clear all the zones before you can buy Atlas, move 1 gild onto Samurai and level him until you have enough gold for Atlas. This is known as a “transition gild”.

Terra through Wepwawet

For all of these heroes, you will follow one simple rule: Put all your gilds onto the best hero you can level to 1000 (hero level, not zone level.) Once you can level Atlas to 1500, you’ll be able to level Terra to 1000 so you can move your gilds over. Once Terra is 1500, you regild to Phthalo, and so on all the way down to when Gog is 1500 and you regild to Wepwawet.

Wepwawet, Betty & Midas

At level 1500, Wepwawet unlocks an ability that gives Betty Clicker a huge DPS boost. She becomes the best hero until the boost to King Midas at 2000 Wepwawet. Betty Clicker can often be skipped, as it is a very narrow range where she is the optimal hero. If you can level Wepwawet to 2000 without slowing down, then skip Betty.

Returning to Gog & Wepwawet

Once you can get Wepwawet to 5000, he becomes the best hero once again. If you can get Wepwawet to 5000 without slowing down, then you can skip both Betty and Midas. Beyond that, Wepwawet and Gog alternate being optimal every 500 levels, mathematically speaking. But for practical purposes, you can keep it simple and leave your gilds on Wepwawet at 5000 as the difference isn’t very noticeable.

After Transcending

Once you’ve transcended a couple of times, you can skip the random regilding into the Power 5 and head straight to Samurai. Depending on how far along you are into the game, you may even be able to skip straight to Atlas. The same rules will apply; regild to Atlas at 2425 Samurai, and then use the best hero you can get to 1000 without slowing down.

When To Regild & Transition Gilding

While you can regild as much as you want if you have enough hero souls available, you don’t need to regild while you’re instantly killing monsters. Once you see health bars appear, that’s the time you want to regild to your most optimal hero. It’s not necessary to regild before then.

“Transition gilding” refers to putting gild(s) on a lower level hero until you unlock your main gilded hero. Once the cost of regilding is negligible, you can dump all your gilds on any hero you want (Treebeast, Samurai, etc.) until you get further into your ascension and have enough gold to level up your optimal hero.

Don’t Forget – Level First, Move Gilds After

When you’re getting ready to move your gilds to the next hero, always make sure it’s leveled to 1000 (725 for Atlas, and 5000 for Wepwawet the second time) before transferring your gilds over. If you don’t, you’ll slow down considerably until you get a treasure chest.

1.0e3 Update – Tsuchi, Skogur, Moeru, Zilar, Madzi

For these five new “elemental” heroes, you can regild to each as your main gilded hero as soon as you unlock them. One level of each of these heroes far surpasses thousands of levels of the previous hero because the gap between each of these heroes is so wide.

1.0e10 Update – Xavira, Cadu, Ceus, The Maw, Yachiyl

-Xavira is optimal to use as soon as you can buy one level.
-Cadu and Ceus buff each other and are gilded in an alternating fashion as described in the -regilding chart (link below). You can start using Cadu (or Ceus) as soon as you can buy one level.
-The Maw is optimal to use as soon as you can buy one level.
-Yachiyl doesn’t do more damage than The Maw until you can buy the first upgrade at level 157,500.

1.0e11 Update – Ace Scouts

Please reference the regilding chart for more information.

Quick Reference Guide

You can use this regilding chart as an easy reference tool for when to move your gilds. For more information on gilded heroes, check out the Gilded Heroes FAQ from the Clicker Heroes Wiki.

Once you’re ready to transcend, you have nine options for spending your Ancient souls. Each of the Outsiders – Xyliqil, Chor’gorloth, Phandoryss, Borb, Ponyboy, K’Ariqua, Rhageist, Sen-Akhan, and Orphalas – offer a unique enhancement that will help boost your progression. When leveled correctly, they will work together to boost you farther and farther into Clicker Heroes each time you transcend. Which ones you level will depend largely on what stage of the game you’re on.

TL;DR: use this Outsider Calculator.

Who Are The Outsiders & How Do I Level Them?

• Xyliqil: Provides a bonus to all other idle bonuses. Good for idle and hybrid builds, though idle alone can’t get you to the very end of the game.
  
• Chor’gorloth: Decreases the cost of buying ancients, up to -99.95%. Level Chor up progressively as you go, especially farther into the game.
  
• Phandoryss: Provides a flat DPS boost of 100% per AS spent. Some Phan is helpful but it’s an additive bonus so you need not go overboard.
  
• Ponyboy: Increases your primal hero soul income. Good for early game but diminished usefulness for late game.

The last five are often referred to as “super outsiders” since they “super size” ancients, making them more helpful at higher zones:

• Borb: Increases the effectiveness of Kumawakamaru. Borb is the only outsider you’ll be leveling when you’re far into the late game, passing hundreds of thousands of zones.
  
• Rhageist: Increases the effectiveness of Atman.
  
• K’Ariqua: Increases the effectiveness of Bubos.
  
• Sen-Akhan: Increases the effectiveness of Dora.
  
• Orphalas: Increases the effectiveness of Chronos.

OK, But How *Exactly* Do I Level Them?

The Outsider Calculator can be used for both Hybrid and Active builds. An active or hybrid build is required to progress to the end game in the current state of Clicker Heroes.

In Clicker Heroes, there are three styles of play you can pick from: Idle, Hybrid and Active. Idle is the easiest to begin with. While idle’s better in 1.0e10 & 1.0e11 than it was before, an active or hybrid build will provide the largest amount of progression in your game. This guide will help you understand what a Hybrid build & play style is, as well as when, why, and how to go Hybrid (or just Active.)

What Is Hybrid?

With an idle build, you don’t click. With an active build, you’re always clicking. With a hybrid build, you get the best of both worlds. The strategy of hybrid is to play as idle until the monsters stop dying instantly, then instead of ascending, click and use skills until you’re unable to progress to boost your ascension into deeper levels.

Why Hybrid and not Active?

Ignoring the idle ancients is OK, but using a hybrid strategy instead of active gives you two distinct benefits: You can turn the game off and continue to progress further, and you can utilize Timelapse to skip more levels. If you leave it running all the time, and you don’t use timelapses, then pick active instead of hybrid.

When Should I Go Hybrid/Active?

A good time to switch from idle to hybrid (or active) would be once you have at least 2-3 autoclickers and enough hero souls to buy all of the remaining ancients. Between 250,000 and 500,000 hero souls should be sufficient to upgrade from idle to a hybrid build.

How Do I Level Ancients For Hybrid?

Use a hybrid ratio of 10 in the ancient calculator.[graceoflives.github.io] This means you’ll be spending 10% of your hero souls on idle ancients. Additionally, make sure to check the box for leveling your skill ancients. The default value of 5 below Chronos is sufficient. You can also put some ancient souls into the outsider Xyliqil. A few levels should suffice as you want to be spending them on other things.

What Happened to “Nog Fish”?

Nogardnit is now a DPS bonus instead of a gold bonus, so this trick is no longer something that can be used.

TL;DR

Idle + Active = Hybrid
Hybrid allows for more offline progression and bigger timelapses
Switch from Idle to Hybrid with at least 2-3 autoclickers & all ancients
Level idle ancients with 10% of your HS by using a hybrid ratio of 10 in the ancient calculator (10 Frags : 1 Siya)
Skill ancients can be 5 levels below Chronos (default option on the calc)

Rubies are the in-game currency in Clicker Heroes. You can earn them by clicking fish, doing mercenary quests, watching mobile and Kongregate ads, and by simply buying them. But what should you spend them on? In this guide, I’ll rank the order of things you should buy from best to worst and explain why.



1.) Auto-Clickers #1 and #2
Even if you are an idle-only player, having one or two auto-clickers will boost your idle progress with the ancient Nogardnit, and they are handy for leveling heroes and buying upgrades.

2.) Double Damage Multiplier
This is a permanent boost. After you pick up one or two auto-clickers, buy this.

3.) Reviving Mercenaries
It is smart to revive low level mercenaries if you have enough rubies available. Once they’re above level 11 or 12, they will become too costly to revive and you can save your rubies for other things.

4.) More Auto-Clickers
Auto-clickers now scale exponentially once you have at least five of them. Keep some rubies on hand to revive mercs, and spend the rest on more auto-clickers until you’re at the point in the game when you need to start using Timelapse regularly.

5.) Timelapse
Once you’re well into the tens of thousands of zones, Timelapse will move farther up the priority list. Without using Timelapse, your transcensions will take a very long time. You can skip up to 36,000 zones with an 8 hour timelapse, and a proportionate number for the large timelapses (108K, 216K, and 756K). The closer you can get to that number, the more value you’ll be getting. The best time to use timelapse is when (A) your mercenaries are on long ruby quests, and (B) you’re at the beginning of a long ascension. Stack all your gilds on the best hero you can level to 1000 or higher before timelapsing, and try to line up as many long ruby merc quests as you can.

6.) Quick Ascension
Quick Ascension is no longer needed at the beginning of every transcension. You might, however, use one on the last ascension of your transcension in order to push a little further without having to redo an entire ascension. This is optional and should only be done if you have enough rubies to spare. As of patch 1.0e11, QA has no benefit when used past zone 1 million, so you shouldn’t use it once you’re that far into the game.

7.) Start a Clan
You can join someone else’s clan for free, but if you want to start your own, this is an OK investment of rubies. The clan reward will help get you farther on your first ascension of a new transcension, but it’s not needed all that much because of Phandoryss’ DPS boost.

8-11 – TL;DR – Don’t Buy These!

8.) Buying Mercenaries
Since you can recruit mercenaries for free, this is not something you want to be doing 99.99% of the time. The only situation where you would even consider spending rubies on recruiting a merc is when you lose one, and all of your remaining mercs are very high level; high enough level that you wouldn’t want to send them on an 8 hour recruit mission. Generally speaking, though – don’t spend rubies to recruit mercenaries.

9.) Gilds
Every gild you purchase with rubies gets restored every transcension, but these aren’t needed because you’ll get plenty of them from beating zones. Even if you transcend frequently these are a waste of rubies.

10.) Relics
Relics are not restored every transcension, so they are of almost zero usefulness. You should avoid buying these completely.

11.) Extra Raid Boss Fights
Prior to the Transcendence patch, these were often worth spending rubies on as the reward was significant compared to what you’d earn from one ascension. In the current state of the game, it is not worth spending rubies on raid boss fights.

Mercenaries were added to Clicker Heroes in patch 0.23, and rebalanced in
patch 0.25. You can’t keep them around forever, but when used properly, they can provide a substantial boost to your progress. This guide should answer most of your questions about mercenaries.



How do I unlock mercenaries?

At the beginning of the game, and every transcension, you must ascend once, or purchase a Quick Ascension from the ruby shop to unlock mercenaries.

Do I keep my mercenaries when I transcend?

Yes, but you must ascend once to gain access to them again (or QA.)

How long do mercenaries live?

Every mercenary has a “time until death” that is predetermined. Only time spent out on quests counts toward this “death clock”.

How do I level up my mercenaries?

Every 24 hours spent on quests gains a mercenary one level. A mercenary’s quest rewards are multiplied by its level, so a level 5 mercenary will provide 5 times the reward of a level 1 (not including specialization bonuses.)

Is it better to do short quests or long quests?

Short quests give a better payout per minute invested, while long quests require less micromanagement. It is a trade off, and the length of quest you choose will often depend on your schedule. However, if you have a high level mercenary, it is beneficial to avoid the longer quests so as to minimze the chance of it dying on a quest.

When is it worth reviving mercenaries?

Mercenaries up to level 11-12 are worth reviving because of the bonus reward they provide for each level. Once it costs more than 100 rubies it’s best to let the merc rest in peace unless it’s a high quality bonus ruby merc and you’ve got a sizable ruby stash.

A mercenary with extra lives should be revived with rubies the first time, provided you have the available rubies and the cost isn’t too big. That way you can save the extra life for the more expensive revival.

How do I get a Leeroy Jenkins/Transcendent/Legendary?

This is completely RNG-dependent. You’ll most likely get Leeroy if you play long enough, but Transcendent & Legendary mercs are much rarer.

What is a Demigod mercenary?

A Demigod is a level 8 mercenary. Beyond level 8, it will have a plus sign followed by the number of additional levels, i.e. level 11 = Demigod + 3.

Why doesn’t my Extra Lives merc have a bonus?

The extra life or lives is the bonus.

Should I pay 40 rubies (400 on mobile) to recruit a mercenary?

No, you can recruit them for free using other mercenaries.

Should I cycle through mercenaries to get better ones?

No. Send them on useful quests. The levels you gain from questing will provide far more benefit than the occasional higher quality mercenary with a bonus perk.

Which quests should I send my mercenaries on?

Holiday Quests (Clickmas Presents): See below.

Ruby Quests: These are currently the best. You can’t have enough rubies!

Which quests should I avoid?

Hero Soul Quests: Patch 1.0e10 made these close to useless. Without Solomon in the game, the ‘mercenary ascension’ trick is now obsolete. HS quests now only provide a small boost from one ascension to the next.

Gold Quests: If you are pure idle, these will help push your ascension a bit farther. However, active/hybrid is a much stronger build to use.

Relic Quests: Relics are random, they only last for one transcension, and they get dwarfed by ancient levels quickly enough.

Random Skill Activation Quests: Not very good, aside from earning the achievement for doing them.

What’s the deal with the holiday quest?

Clickmas presents are available until the end of the year, and can contain a Snowman auto-clicker skin, relics, and rubies. The relics’ level is determined by the level at which you open the presents. Each ruby is successively less likely to drop than the one before, but you should be able to earn plenty before reaching a point where these quests aren’t worth it anymore.

More information:

Clicker Heroes Subreddit – Mercenary Revival Math
Clicker Heroes Subreddit – Mercenaries FAQ
Clicker Heroes Wikia – Mercenaries Wiki[clickerheroes.wikia.com]