Beginner's Guide
New to HeroBrowser? This page walks through the whole game loop, floor 1 to floor 100, in the order a new player meets it. Every number and picture on this page comes straight from the live game data.
Start
Pick Your Hero
You field exactly ONE hero per run, chosen from 6 playable classes, and it soaks the whole dungeon alone. The tanky and sustain-focused classes are the forgiving picks; the crit and glass-cannon classes hit harder but punish mistakes. Click any card for that class's full stats, abilities, and talent tree.
First run? The Knight and the Archer and the Berserker are the roster's easy-rated picks. See Classes for the side-by-side comparison table.
Your account is not locked to one hero forever, either: it holds 3 free hero slots, with two more purchasable for a total of 5, so you can build several classes side by side and switch between them. Give each hero a nickname and it follows that hero everywhere it is shown, including the leaderboard.
Where to find it: the Hero Select screen, when you start a new run or switch heroes.
How a Run Works
Combat is fully automatic: you never click an attack or choose a target mid-fight. Your job is everything BETWEEN fights, spending gold, gear, skill points, and talent points to make the next floor survivable. A floor is not one brawl but a gauntlet of waves, 5 per floor in the opening forest rising to 9 deep in the abyss, and the horde grows with every floor you descend. Every 10th floor is a boss fight, and each act also hides one earlier guardian miniboss with its own exclusive loot.
See Combat Mechanics for exactly how a fight resolves and Bosses for every boss and guardian and which floors they hold.
Where to find it: the Portal tile, then Travel to enter a run.
The Descent: Six Acts
The 100 floors are grouped into six biome acts, each with its own look, its own enemy roster, and its own act boss at the gate. This is the road down:
See Biomes & Floors for each act's enemy roster and Enemies for the full bestiary.
Where to find it: the Portal tile.
Death and Progression
HeroBrowser is a roguelite. A wipe sends you back to floor 1, but your permanent upgrades and talents carry over, so every attempt starts a little stronger than the last. An optional Hardcore mode also destroys your equipped gear on a wipe, for players who want the extra stakes. At the very far end of the game, a max-level hero can undergo a one-time Rebirth that resets nearly everything in exchange for a permanent blessing; it is strictly endgame and nothing a new player needs to plan for. Players chasing an extra challenge can also pledge Vows before a descent, trading a restriction for a combat bonus or, with Ordeals, for richer loot; see Vows & Ordeals for the full list.
Where to find it: the Portal tile, after a wipe sends you back to floor 1.
Sustain
There is no rest heal between floors: your hero's HP carries straight from one fight into the next. The only ways to recover are lifesteal earned in combat and potions bought with gold. Managing that sustain across a whole descent, floor after floor, is the core tension of the run. See Stats for the lifesteal and heal-power stat entries and Combat Mechanics for how a fight actually plays out turn by turn.
Where to find it: any floor. Buy potions from the Hero tile.
Power
Gear and Rarities
Your hero wears seven pieces of gear: a weapon, four armour pieces (helmet, armor, gloves, and boots), and two accessories (ring and necklace). An empty slot gives nothing, so filling all seven matters more than perfecting any one of them.
The full ladder, weakest to rarest, left to right.
Gear runs from common up to legendary. Common and uncommon pieces only ever drop from kills, never from the shop; the shop's regular stock (rare and up) and the fusion Cube (any rarity) both top out at legendary, the ceiling that ordinary economy can reach. Three apex tiers sit above it, and all three can also be summoned in the Summoning hall: cursed has no crafted path; mythic comes from boss and guardian kills on Nightmare or Infernal difficulty from floor 50 on, but also has a forged path once Nightmare is unlocked, the Cube's Mythic Ascension recipe. Divine comes from boss and guardian kills on Infernal (from floor 90) and has its own Divine Ascension recipe once Infernal is unlocked, while cursed "blood pact" relics drop rarely from any enemy on floor 80+ (on Infernal, only from boss and guardian kills, the same kills that can drop a mythic), and only one cursed relic can be equipped at a time. See Items for the full rarity ladder and every item, and Bosses for which fights can drop what.
Where to find it: the Hero tile, Equip tab.
The Forge and Salvage
Gear you already own is not finished gear. Every one of your seven slots carries its own forge level, up to +20, bought with gold and Arcanite. Two things make this friendlier than it sounds. First, the level belongs to the slot, not the item, so upgrading the piece in it never costs you the levels you paid for. Second, forging only ever adds flat Attack, Magic, Defense, HP, and Resistance: it never touches percentage stats like crit or lifesteal. Up to +10 every try succeeds; from +11 a try can miss, down to about one in five for the last push to +20. A miss still spends its gold and Arcanite, but it never takes a level away.
Arcanite is the fuel, and it comes from gear you no longer want: salvage a piece and it melts into crafting material, in three tiers, better gear giving better material. That is the loop: the drops you would have vendored become the levels on the drops you kept. Selling or salvaging a piece with a socketed card returns the card to your binder. Past +10 the forge enters Radiant Tempering, a deliberately expensive late-game tier that leans on the rarest Arcanite; it is somewhere to spend a deep-run surplus, not something to plan an early build around. Full cost ladder and bonus tables on The Forge.
Where to find it: the Forge tile, Enhance and Salvage tabs.
Reading Your Hero: the Seven Attributes
The character sheet sums everything you have earned, levels, upgrades, gear, and talents, into seven primary attributes, and marks each class's signature attribute with a crown:
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Vitality
: How much punishment this hero can take before falling.
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Armor
: Combined physical and magical damage mitigation.
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Strength
: Raw physical power behind every attack.
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Intellect
: Magical power behind spells and heals.
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Speed
: How often this hero acts in the fight timeline.
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Agility
: Chance for an incoming hit to miss. The attacker’s accuracy above 80% cancels dodge, the rest counts half, capped at 25%. Almost no effect for Samurai and Berserker.
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Critical
: Chance to land a critical hit, and how hard it strikes.
Behind each attribute sit the raw combat stats the engine actually rolls; see Stats for every one of them.
Where to find it: the Hero tile.
Skills and Talents
Two separate systems grow your hero's kit. Skill points, earned from hero level, rank up your basic attack and each of your class's abilities individually, each rank adding more damage; see Abilities for the full list of what you're ranking up. Talent points build out a permanent, per-class talent web, up to 25 spendable points, including keystone capstones that define a build; see your class's own page under Classes for its tree. A third currency, rune shards, which belong to each hero, buys runes, which raise your gold, XP, and offline earnings rather than your combat stats. Progression covers all three side by side.
Only three of a class's moves ever fire in a fight: the basic attack, always on, plus up to 2 of your abilities toggled on from the Skills page. Cooldowns run on the fight's own clock in real seconds rather than on turns, so which two you pick changes the whole rotation, not just your ranks.
Where to find it: the Skills tile and the Talents tile.
Talent Build Pages
Your talent tree lives on a page, and each hero slot starts with 2 free pages plus a third purchasable one, for up to 3 builds saved side by side. Switch pages any time to swap your whole talent spread instantly, no respec needed.
Every page also has a short build code: a typeable string, with up to 16 characters for the page's own name, that captures the exact tree. Paste it to a friend or into Discord, and pasting one back in respecs your active page to match it exactly.
Tap a build code you have not applied yet to preview it first: a summary popup shows what it spends and what it changes before you commit anything.
Where to find it: the Talents tile.
Runes and the Vault
Rune shards are a separate currency that belongs to each hero, and they buy that hero permanent, passive bonuses on three branches: Economy raises your gold, XP, and drop rate; Repose unlocks and improves rewards for time spent away from the game; Expedition covers quality of life, like auto salvage.
Every floor clear pays 1 shard, plus 3 more on a boss floor and 1 more for reaching a new highest floor, so shards build up steadily across a long descent.
Past the tree, the Vault Exchange trades surplus shards for Radiant Arcanite, the forge material every apex re target and deep enhance level needs: 250 shards buys one Radiant Arcanite, up to 100 at a time. The trade only runs one way; Radiant never turns back into shards.
Shards also buy Vault Exclusives: 8 cosmetics, titles, frames, digit skins, and banners, found nowhere else, priced from 300 to 6,000 shards.
Where to find it: the Vault tile, Economy, Repose, and Expedition tabs.
Cards and the Binder
Cards drop from monster kills and socket into gear to add a passive effect. Every card has one of 3 grades, rare, epic, or legendary, and a stronger grade carries a stronger effect. Each hero keeps its own binder of every card it has found, socketed or not. Cards from Infernal monsters are ×1.25 stronger than the same card from the base world.
Only legendary and apex gear can hold a card, 1 socket per item, so a fully socketed hero carries up to seven at once, one per equipment slot. See Cards for the full list and what each card does.
The rarest cards drop from boss and guardian kills, including a set exclusive to the World Boss raid, one per week it runs.
Cards are tradeable, so you can send a spare straight to a friend through the Gift feature, the same way you would gift any other item in your inventory.
Where to find it: the Hero tile, Equip tab; open the Binder from any socket slot.
The Cube: Fusion
Fuse 5 items of the same equipment slot and the same rarity for a chance to upgrade one to the rarity above. Common and uncommon fuses always succeed; rare items succeed 50% of the time and epic items 40%, the step most players actually chase, since it reaches legendary.
Once Nightmare is unlocked, the Cube also offers Mythic Ascension: fuse 10 legendary items of the same slot plus 50,000 gold for a 1% chance at a mythic, with a pity counter that guarantees one within 100 attempts.
Once Infernal is unlocked, the Cube also offers Divine Ascension: stake 3 mythic items of any class plus 250,000 gold for a 2% chance at a divine. A miss destroys the whole stake, and once 100 attempts in a row have missed the next one is guaranteed. Drops are the main road to a divine; this is the slow, certain backup.
Where to find it: the Forge tile, Fuse tab.
Modes
Difficulties
The tier row above the map on the Portal is only a preview: it shows what a difficulty and floor would look like before you commit to anything. Tap Travel to actually lock in the mode and the floor and start the run.
HeroBrowser has four difficulty tiers: Normal, Hard, Nightmare, and Infernal. Hard unlocks once you clear floor 100 on Normal, and Nightmare unlocks once you clear floor 100 on Hard. Clearing floor 100 also carries your hero on to floor 1 of the next tier as soon as it is unlocked (the first Normal clear asks first, through the New Game Plus choice, and Infernal still needs its gear and Rebirth). Going back down is always one Portal trip away, so you can farm a lower tier for as long as you like. Guest accounts (Continue as Guest, no sign-in) are limited to Normal; signing in unlocks Hard, Nightmare, and Infernal. Normal and Hard run the same floors in the same order as each other, just tuned harder, including the bosses along the way. Nightmare and Infernal are also one-way descents: the portal only ever offers Floor 1 on either of those two, so a wipe deep into one means climbing it again from the start.
HeroBrowser also has a true ending. The first time a hero clears floor 100 on Normal, a story cutscene plays, followed by a one-time New Game Plus choice: descend again on Hard, or stay on Normal. It fires exactly once per hero, so a later floor 100 clear on Normal, Hard, or Nightmare never triggers it again. Infernal ends differently: felling Abraxion on Infernal floor 100 plays the true ending, and with no harder road left to offer, the hero walks straight back into Infernal from floor 1.
Infernal is not just bigger numbers. It only unlocks once you have cleared floor 100 on Nightmare, equipped mythic-or-better gear in all seven slots, and completed that hero's one-time Rebirth. In exchange it swaps in six entirely new biomes with their own bestiary (see Enemies), where every drop is rare quality or better, common and uncommon gear never appears at all. Every floor drains you directly: a flat 5% of max HP each turn spent in combat, plus another 2% just for stepping onto the next floor. Guardians and act bosses carry their own enrage mechanics on top of the usual scaling, and floor 100 holds Abraxion, the Infernal Sovereign, the true final boss of the game. Divine relics, the rarest tier in the game, drop only here, and on Infernal the boss-kill guarantee pays out a divine: within 2,140 eligible boss and guardian kills from floor 50, one is certain. Mythic still drops here at 1% per eligible kill, while Nightmare keeps a mythic guarantee of its own at 534 kills. Chase legendaries drop from about 2% of boss kills here, and cursed relics from about 1.5% of boss and guardian kills from floor 50, so the ladder reads legendary, cursed, mythic, divine. Divine Ascension in the Cube is the slower second road.
Where to find it: the Portal tile.
Vows
Before a descent you may pledge one or more Vows: trade a restriction, like never healing or fighting with a weaker weapon, for a combat bonus. Ordeals go further, trading extra risk for richer loot. Both are entirely optional. See Vows & Ordeals for the full list and what each one changes.
Where to find it: the Portal tile, before you tap Travel.
Hardcore, Rebirth, and New Game Plus
Hardcore is an optional mode that raises the stakes: on top of the usual roguelite wipe, it also destroys your equipped gear. Turn it on for a hero that wants an extra edge of danger, from the same screen where you start a run.
Rebirth is a once per hero, max level ceremony that restarts that hero at level 1 on floor 1 of Normal, resetting its skills, talents, gold upgrades, forge levels, and runes, in exchange for a permanent blessing and extra talent points. Mythic, cursed, and divine relics and any gear you paid for survive in your bag; ordinary gear does not. It is strictly endgame, nothing a new player needs to plan for, and it also gates Infernal difficulty.
The first time a hero clears floor 100 on Normal, a story cutscene plays and offers a one time New Game Plus choice: descend again on Hard, or stay on Normal. It fires exactly once per hero. On Infernal, the true ending sends the hero straight back to Infernal floor 1 instead.
Where to find it: the Hero tile for Hardcore and Rebirth; the Portal tile for New Game Plus.
Economy
Gold, Upgrades, and Potions
Gold drops from kills and floor clears. Spend it on permanent stat upgrades for your hero and on potions, your only source of healing outside of combat lifesteal (see Sustain, below). Each potion restores 30% of your max HP, your belt holds at most 5 at once, and prices climb as your hero grows, so an empty belt is a choice you feel.
Stamina has its own potion too. Each Stamina Potion always restores 45 minutes, even after your stamina has run out for the day. The shop shows how many you hold and how many you can still buy today, and you drink them from the Stamina screen.
The shop also sells combat tonics: Swiftness, Might, and Stoneskin, each a 60 second combat buff you can drink any time, not just before a fight. Buy a pack of 3 for 10 Red Diamonds, or pay gold starting at 25,000 and rising every time you buy one that way. Your belt holds up to 3 of each kind.
Where to find it: the Hero tile.
Diamonds and Hero Skins
Diamonds are the one currency your whole account shares, split into two ledgers. Red Diamonds are earned for free, from one-time milestones (bosses, guardians, floor 100, Hardcore titles) and from two daily faucets on the Daily Quests board: 10 the first time each day one of your heroes claims every core quest on its board, plus 2 per boss or guardian kill for your first 20 such kills each day, for a combined cap of 50 Red Diamonds per day. Gold Diamonds are the premium currency, bought with real money.
Gold Diamonds can be switched into Red Diamonds one for one, from the market's Buy tab or the in-game menu, but the trade only runs that direction: Red Diamonds never turn back into Gold Diamonds.
Diamonds also buy hero skins from the Skins entry on your hero's Equip tab. A skin changes how your hero looks, and the one your hero is wearing also adds a small bonus to two stats (+1% each on an epic skin, +1.5% each on a legendary one). Two skins per class are direct buys, no chance involved, and a third comes from the Hero Pass: the Red Hunter skin costs 2000 Red Diamonds, and the Summer skin costs 700 Gold Diamonds.
Gold Diamonds spend on the same things Red Diamonds do, drawn from your Red balance first and your Gold balance only for the rest, so a mixed wallet is never wasted. Gold only purchases are the themes, each a whole interface recolor priced at 600 Gold Diamonds, and the Gold priced skins.
Where to find it: the Hero tile, Equip tab for skins; the hamburger menu for the diamond convert.
Cosmetics and Themes
Beyond hero skins, there are 5 more purely cosmetic kinds: titles that sit under your name, nameplate frames, colored damage number digits, victory banners, and whole interface themes. None of them touch combat. Titles, frames, damage digits, and banners belong to each hero, so switching heroes never carries them along; themes and hero skins are shared by your whole account.
Each kind comes from a different door: chests and chest exclusives, hardcore and binder completion milestones, Red or Gold Diamonds, Vault shards, the season Hero Pass, and World Boss prizes. Your Cosmetics tab always shows exactly where a piece you do not own yet can be earned.
A theme recolors your panels and buttons across the whole interface; it never touches your hero portraits or the bottom navigation tiles, so the game always stays recognizably itself underneath.
Where to find it: the Vault tile, Cosmetics tab.
Hero Pass and Seasons
Each 6 week season runs its own Hero Pass: a 30 tier reward track with a free lane everyone earns and a paid lane you unlock for 920 Red Diamonds in game. Tiers fill as you clear floors during the season, up to a weekly cap of 144 floors, so the pass rewards steady play rather than one marathon weekend.
Every season also ships its own class skin, included on the paid lane. When a season ends its pass closes, and a fresh one begins with the next.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Hero Pass.
Market
List gear, cards, or crafting material lots for other players to buy, or browse what everyone else is selling. Every listing costs a refundable 25 gold deposit, back in full once it sells or expires, and forfeited only if you cancel it yourself.
A sale takes a 5% cut on ordinary gear and 20% on legendary and apex gear, burned rather than paid to anyone. You may run up to 5 listings at once, each open for 72 hours, and anything you buy is locked from immediate resale for 14 days.
Where to find it: the banner at the top of the Shop tab, or Sell on any bag item, then List on the Trading Post (it opens this site with the item already picked).
Mailbox, Gifts, and Codes
The Mailbox is where every reward lands that is not handed to you mid run: milestone diamonds, event and World Boss prizes, market sales, and anything an admin grants you. Claim an entry and it moves straight into your save.
Once your hero has reached floor 10, the Gift feature lets you send a tradeable item straight to another player by their code, up to 5 sends a day.
Promo codes redeem the same way: enter one from the Settings menu and its reward lands in your Mailbox.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Mailbox.
Together
Events and Puzzles
Live events rotate through the Events tab in several shapes: daily attendance check ins, an arcane quiz, tavern games, a community boss hunt, 4 kinds of puzzle, and community goals the whole playerbase delivers together.
Playing during an event window also earns sigils, a currency specific to that event, spent in its own limited shop before the window closes. See Events for every event and what its track pays.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Events.
World Boss
Once a week, from Sunday 00:00 to Monday 00:00 UTC, the whole playerbase can take on one of 5 rotating World Bosses. You get exactly one attempt, up to 10 minutes long, and the boss cannot kill you: this fight measures your hero's power, it is not a survival check.
Every attempt banks gold toward a shared community goal; if the community drives it back, that week doubles everyone's participation gold. Contribution is scored per class, so no single class dominates the ranking.
The top 3 contributors split the same fixed weekly prize every week, no matter how many heroes fought: rank 1 earns 65 Red Diamonds, 400,000 gold, and a 1 week champion crest; rank 2 earns 50 Red Diamonds and 300,000 gold; rank 3 earns 40 Red Diamonds and 200,000 gold.
Before you fight, the shop sells one Bane Draught for 25 Red Diamonds, a 20% damage boost against that week's boss. Every attempt also has a tiny chance at that week's exclusive boss card. See World Boss for all five bosses and the full prize table.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, World Boss.
Ranks and Inspect
The leaderboard ranks every player by their highest floor reached. Tap any row to Inspect that hero: their gear, talents, and equipped cosmetics, exactly as they appear to everyone else.
A World Boss champion crest, hardcore titles, and binder completion titles all show here too, right alongside your rank.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Ranks.
World Chat and the World Feed
Tap the chat bubble to join the World Chat, one room shared by every hero. Drag the bubble wherever it suits you; a red count shows what you missed while you were away. Anyone can read along, guests included; to post you need a signed in account and a best floor of at least 10. Each message holds up to 120 characters, with a few seconds between messages.
Open any piece of gear and tap the paper plane to show it off in the chat. Tap a name to inspect that hero, mute the player for 24 hours, or report a message. The World Feed calls out the great moments as they happen: a hero clearing floor 100, reaching level 99, or transcending, each announced the first time only, and the World Boss being driven back.
Where to find it: the chat bubble, in the Hub and during a run.
Account
Settings and Speed
Battle speed runs at 1x or 2x for free. 4x is a one time unlock for 1000 diamonds, drawn from Red Diamonds first, or a 24 hour pass some events hand out or sell in their shop.
The interface itself supports three languages; switch any time from Settings, mid run included.
You can also install HeroBrowser as an app straight from your browser, for a full screen icon on your home screen with no separate download.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Settings.
Offline Rewards and the Daily Ritual
Once unlocked on the Repose rune branch, your hero keeps earning while you are away: a base 4 hour cap, worth 4 gold and 1 XP per hour for every floor you have reached, both extendable with further Repose ranks.
Every day each of your heroes draws its own Daily Ritual board of up to six quests, with its own gold and its own free reroll. The first hero to finish every core quest on its board each day earns 10 Red Diamonds for the account, and every boss or guardian kill pays 2 more, up to 20 such kills a day across all your heroes, a combined daily ceiling of 50 Red Diamonds for showing up.
The Boon Key is a second daily reward: fight for 20 real minutes in a day and you earn one key, and you can hold only one at a time. Spend it for 20 minutes of either Gold Rush, which doubles gold from floors, shop sales and quests and sends a Treasure Dummy that pays a gold bundle each wave, or Scholar's Hour, which doubles floor XP. The bigger boost wins against an XP Elixir or a Double event, so it never stacks. Guests earn it by playtime. A new day starts at midnight UTC.
Where to find it: the hamburger menu, Daily Quests; the Boon Key is in the hamburger menu and the key at the top bar.
Your First Descent: Five Tips
- Start with a forgiving class. The Knight and the Archer and the Berserker leave the most room for mistakes.
- Spend your gold. Permanent stat upgrades survive a wipe, so banking gold helps you less than buying strength that carries into every future attempt.
- Fill all seven gear slots before chasing upgrades for any single one. Even a common item beats an empty slot.
- Top up your potion belt before a boss floor. There is no rest heal, and walking into a boss gate with an empty belt is how runs end.
- Treat wipes as progress. Every run banks upgrades and talents, and the next attempt starts stronger for it.
Where to find it: the Hero Select screen and the Portal tile.
Saving and Accounts
You can play instantly as a guest; a guest save lives only in that browser, and guest play is limited to Normal difficulty. Signing in with Google or an email account stores your save on the server, follows you across devices, places your best runs on the public leaderboard, and unlocks Hard, Nightmare, and Infernal.
Where to find it: the sign in screen, before your first run.
Still have questions? Check the FAQ.