Basic Gameplay Guide
Early to Mid Game
Progress to chapter 31 to unlock the forge and Hard Mode (HM).
Save your gems to unlock Blademaster (BM) and passively level him to 80, whilst using your Knight. You can unlock Shaman first (strong early game) OR use Fire Wizard that new players can get for free. Fire Wizard having more use for dungeon as well.
These two heroes work great as interim heroes whilst leveling BM. You need 10 hero shards, which can halt your progress in going past level 60. You will need to use BM in Faction Wars to farm his shards up which can take a while.
Unfortunately it is very RNG based if you will get enough shards via rune portal, to get your hero to the first star so you can level to 80 for the ultimate. As such your main may have to switch to whoever you can get to 80 first, and later on 100 first. It is not possible to have a clear cut pathway (unless you make in game purchases for the shards).
Farm Haunted Forest (1) HM for keys and gold to put your sets together. As you get stronger you can farm a few chapters ahead.
Temper your chapter progression with your gear and hero levels as progression affects Adventure mode difficulty. Hard Mode increases the difficulty of Adventure more aggressively as compared to Normal Mode.
Once your Knight and Blademaster are at max level, you can raise the levels of other heroes to unlock their global buffs (at levels 30, 60, 100), choosing the order of the hero and to which level depending on the globals they offer.
Level your talents whenever possible, there's no reason to "save" gold. You'll farm plenty whilst gathering hero orbs / scrolls to level heroes and gear.
Do the weekly dungeon to level up so you can receive better rewards from higher dungeon ranks. A good way to get a few extra keys each week as well.
Do the guild event daily if in a guild. Do not waste gems doing extra runs at this stage. Use guild tokens to purchase Ultimate Charge & Ultimate Duration jewels.
Try your luck in the weekly Arena but there may not be much success till you meet gear checks and hero level requirements. Most recommended forge upgrades with supers is to get Fire Orbs to 4 stars and Bombs to 4 stars.
Do Boss Brawl if you have a hero for it.
Use the daily Adventure ticket to progress towards the current adventure hero. If you are F2P, you will need about 1300 gems to rescue the hero as you will not have enough tickets even if you used one daily. Make small steps progressing chapters based on how difficult Adventure mode feels.
Mid to Late Game
Make your way towards Library (81) HM once your legendary sets start filling out and hero is getting to level 80.
Spend time farming in Library to raise your talents to get stronger. Talent choice selection is below.
Gold talents > Purple Talents > Blue Talents > All grey talents besides damage and HP > Damage > HP.
Check the Tier List to help you plan and select the best hero to focus on, otherwise continuing with Blademaster is the best choice from the standard pool of heroes.
Keep progressing in Arena as your progression sets come online. Blademaster is one of the best in Arena.
Upgrade weapons in the forge starting with Fire orbs 4 stars, Bombs 4 stars, and then your main hero’s weapon. For more survivability get Ice Wand 2 stars and Boomerang 2 stars.
Till you feel stronger there isn't much incentive to push ahead as you are at coin rush plateau from Library (85) HM.
Once you start feeling stronger you can start progressing towards Toxic Jungle (140) HM to farm more gold.
Remember to temper your progression against Adventure mode difficulty.
Continue with Dungeon, Adventure, Boss Brawl, Guild Events.
As you get stronger make your way towards the next farming spot: Toxic Jungle (140) HM. Stop inbetween to farm if you need to.
At this point it can start to be challenging. Elites will likely be one shotting you, a lot of damage, globals and forge evolutions would play a big part in making it easier.
As and when you feel ready, you can make your journey towards 200/200 and eventually beyond, farming when necessary for talents and keys to upgrade into Ascended and Mythic gear.
Remember to switch to progression set once hard mode progression gets too hard for noble gear. This is likely to start happening after Toxic Jungle (140) HM.