RPG Dice: Heroes of Whitestone - review and beginners guide

Heroes of Whitestone - review and beginners guide

Last edited: 2022-6-13

There are several problems with the game, lets take the biggest problems first.

Every game should come with two possible warnings. 1. Is there a strong gambling element involved, like a loot box. 2. How much time does an average player spend each day.

For this game the answer is: 1. Yes. 2. Too much.

Gambling: I am not talking about the annoying “Hayes the High Roller”, but the Mystical summoning scrolls. These are rare scrolls with a 0.5% chance to get a 5 star hero. There are serveral heroes in the game which are not available other places than from mystical scrolls, and as time passes, more and more heroes are only available there. These scrolls can be purchased by gems, which can be purchased by real money, making gambling an important part of the game. This should set off a warning and probably a 18+ age limit. After opening 672 mystical scrolls I have still not gotten any 5 star heroes from mystical scrolls. So I still miss the best hero in the game. The designers should make these heroes available in a more predictable way, until then, stay clear of this game.

Time: Heroes of Whitestones second biggest problem is that it is quite time consuming. The battles will take some time, some of them can be done instant if you are VIP 2, which you get either by paying real cash, or for free by playing for about 3 months. But even after 3 month, the daily playtime reward max out at 3 hours, so you are expected to play more than 3 hours each day. You might do something else while letting the fights run on your phone, or just plug your phone to a charger when the game is open and go do something else. Even if you can do that you will use a lot of time to grind in “the spire” each weekend, a very boring concept. If you try to play this game while not doing anything else you will probably be bored. This is the second reason to stay clear of this game.

Not as boring as farming “the spire”, but still quite boring, is moving gear and dice. There are no easy way to do this. Yet. Maybe in 1.6 there will be a solution, so either wait a couple of month, skip part of the gamee, or be in for a lot of boring stuff.

Game economy: While not a dealbreaker, it is worth mentioning that part of the economy is wrecked. After introducing Twilight Halls gold has become unlimited for those that can invest unlimited amounts of time. Noone has unlimited time, but the game can take endless amounts of time, as there are no limits to how much time you can spend now. Since gold was the only thing that restricted the amount of cards you could buy then cards are unlimited, and so then everything you can get with cards becomes unlimited. Everything you can get from campaign and relic boards, like relics, upgrade material etc. are in theory unlimited if you want to invest a lot of time. Yellow +7 gear was already abundant through chalice event, so what’s not abundant is mystical scrolls, which gives 4* and 5* heroes, dices and some kind of rare materials. The broken economy is possible to fix, the easiest way is through inflation. But the lack of understanding or caring about the game economy from the developers is a bad sign for a game. Long time players lose interest from the endless and pointless grind, the player base dwindles, and the game is shut down or at least not further developed. My guess is that this is a dying game now.

If I haven’t scared you away, here is a guide:

Beginners guide

Maybe you have just started and want some advice, then read on.

You start in the campaign, and move by throwing a dice, or using a card. If you throw a dice the direction you move in is defined by a little arrow in the corner of every square. If you use a card, you can go in the direction of the square or the opposite direction. I almost never use cards in campaign, just if a quest tile is right behind me and it will take forever to move forward. I save almost all cards for loot lagoon, golden chalice and maybe for shadow spire.

You do quests, and for some of the quests you get to choose one of three actions where only one gives a reward. Answers for some of the questions are on the community discord server, link is at the bottom of this guide. There you can find a community where tips and tricks are shared too.

Doing campaign will unlock other game modes. Each time you level up you get 40 energy, you level a lot in the start, which gives you an abundance of energy in the start. Daily tasks, hero gauntlet, dungeons etc. resets at GMT+0, at least for me, so make sure you use all your attempts, at least for hero gauntlets, and gold dungeon, and boss battles, before they reset. Because you have limited attempts each day. In Hero Gauntlet just do Vorrgh, he is the only 4-star hero you can get there, and currently one of the best heroes in the game.

I like to keep one dungeon attempt open, so I can fail it at a higher level. You get xp by spending energy, so I try to spend all energy before I go to bed, or put away my phone. Spending as much energy as possible, will give you player xp, and you can’t level your hero above your player level, so player level is important.

My advice is to progress to campaign map 4 as soon as possible, there you will find a good farm spot for chalice event. A good farm spot for Chalice Event is a gambling tile close to a turns tile with the direction going from the gambling tile to the turns tile. Because you want to gamble as many gems as possible during Chalice Event.

​​If stuck before you reach the farm spot in campaign map 4, then farm somewhere else in campaign, or farm in relic adventure. You can do the relic adventure over and over again, but a campaign map you can only finish once. That's why you will wait a long time before finishing map 7 before you progress.

In the start collect blue gear and level them up to level 8, at campaign 6 you will start getting purple +4 gear regularly from crafting, now only level purple gear. If you max out in the chalice event you get +7 gear, then you only want to level those.

Try to use dices that helps to enable bonus effects of skills.

Fights

You can do fights manual or on auto. When stuck you should try manual fights, it helps you learn how your team works together and how the battle system works.

Heroes

You get heroes from scrolls and mystical scrolls. The best heroes you get from mystical scrolls, but you can get some good heroes from normal scrolls too, like Mandatta.

Heroes have one of three classes: Caster, Rogue and Warrior. Gear is class specific.

Heroes have one of five elements: Light, Dark, Water, Nature, Fire. Water gets a bonus against Fire, Fire against Nature, and Nature against Water. Light against Dark and Dark against Light. I rarely pay attention to this.

Heroes have one of several races: Human, Elves, Dwarves, Orcish, Wild, Saurian, Beast. Right now it does not have any impact, but in the future it will.

There are some differences in opinions about which heroes are the best. Here is my opinion: Reynard, Siglind, Mandatta, Vorrgh, Urghuk and Lothar Goldenhart are the best heroes. They have skills which give good bonuses, aoe attack skills, aoe support skills, attack twice skills etc.

Branwyn, Daanu, Gerrick, Hellestral are also very good. And since you probably won’t be able to get 5 of the best heroes at max stars, you would want to develop these too.

For faction strongholds you need 5 heroes of each race. Some of the factions have very few support heroes, then you have to use what you have. Some of the lower levels you can solo with just one hero, but three heroes with shield wall where a tank protects two weak ones in the back can be good too.

My suggestions for starter teams in each race, best first:

Human: Lothar, Reynard, Daanu, Gerrick, Branwyn, Valara 

Dwarf: Siglind, Binda, Balorn

Beast: Vorrgh, Plaguetooth, Kimma, Jaltma, Koth

Orcish: Urghuk, Kurga, Stika

Wild: Old Stonebark, Bluebark, Amaranth

Saurian: Mandatta, Hakka, Gnar’ok

Elf: Dread Queen, Ethryl, Hellestral, Glinnthal, Melanor, Nienah

Gear

For gear you will probably focus on speed, crit chance, crit damage and attack for offensive heroes til Reynard, Siglind, Mandatta etc. and speed and defense for defensive heroes like Vorrgh and Urghuk.

Dices

A dice have some effect sides, and some sword or shield sides. If the effect is rolled it does what you want it to do, if the sword or shield is rolled, then it does damage or give shield according to the power of the dice. White dices usually only have one effect side, yellow have the most. +7 dices have the most power. To get a yellow dice it has to have at least +5 power.

When you level up dices they can get more effective. A yellow dice with 3/6 chance of getting an effect, can get 9/12 chance instead. But a blue dice with 3/6 chance can get 5/12 chance levelled up, so actually it can get weaker. I only level up yellow dices to level 20. I level up a lot of different dices to level 10.

For dices I think support dice are most important. I recommend buying bonus action dice from arena shop, and get initiative boost from boss 3 (the deep one) for your first two dice on every support skill. The third dice can be increased shielding/greater healing/greater thorns/cleanse whatever suits that particular battle.

On attack skills I am actually not sure which dice are best. Disable / Sleep / Initiative Drain is probably the most recommended among players. In the start, just use whatever you get from boss fights and events. Later you can try to use dices with synergies.

Talents

You get talents from the spire. Worth mentioning is that when you start getting tomes, about half of the tomes are given to a hero of the same class as the boss you fight. So if the boss is a rogue and you don’t have a rogue in your team, you miss out on half of the reward. So you need one of each class in your team.

The three buttons at the bottom right corner

Do guiding goals there are a lot of good rewards by doing these.

Complete daily, weekly and monthly goals. The xp from daily and the mystical scrolls from weekly and monthly goals are valuable. Besides you get a lot of gems and other useful stuff. The “Claim the reward for completing all Daily Goals” are often the bottleneck for weekly and monthly goals, but when it is completed, you should complete the other tasks at once if you can, so you can start over again with the tasks.

Try to get all playtime rewards each day.

Events

There are two events in the game, golden chalice and loot lagoon

Golden chalice

Lasts 4 days, every 14 days.

Golden Chalice Event is about spending 22000 crystals in 4 days. It is not as hard as it sounds, you can do it without paying real cash, but it is time consuming.

In map 4 and map 7 there are spots which are good for chalice event. A gambling tile close to a turn tile in the right direction. If you do it in normal campaign where every roll cost 1 energy, you can manage 22.000 chalice points with just all the free energy you receive, but it is very time consuming, and you should try to make a good farming team to make it easier. A good farming team consists of heroes that have attack all / attack all exposed, and use it as the first auto move, so that the fights take as short a time as possible. I use Siglind, Thorgrim, Branwyn and Gerrick. A hero with expose should move first (have highest speed), either Branwyn, or Siglind with (greater) expose die. If you struggle with winning battles at your current place you might have to use your best team, until you can level up a bit.

When you complete campaign you will have to do it in relic map 4. It is possible to get 22000 chalice points by tossing the dice 580 times, and spending about 180 cards, which will cost you 180000 gold.

Loot lagoon

Lasts 2 days, every 7 days.

Loot Lagoon: You have limited amount of special energy. If you lose a battle or run out of this energy your run is over. But you can get everything by spending some cards. Use 1 step cards after taking down a boss to get extra energy. Use a card to get exactly on an arrow to follow the big arrow instead of the small. You have to stop on the tile with the big arrow to utilize it. Pay attention to the small arrow in the corner of the tile, to know where it will take you in the next step. It is probably best to take out the goblins clockwise. The best stuff is Gems, Mystical scrolls and Demonic Mask. Next best is special resources like Adamantium, Steel, Leather, Cobalt and Cadmium powder. Make sure you take out the goblin with the best reward last. If you finish all goblins you get 100 loot lagoon currency you can spend in the shop.

Twilight halls

Lasts 2 days, every 14 days.

Currently bugged, don’t go in if the recommended heroes does not contain one of each class. If none of the recommended heroes are a warrior you will get stuck if the skill check rolls a warrior.

You have a limited amount of special energy, use cards to avoid going empty.

Twilight halls is a great place to get gold and xp. Each skill-check tile give 150xp, and each chest 2000 gold. Use cards to move between chests. You can buy cards for 1000, and use them to collect 2000 gold.

Difficulty 1: Recommended heroes used should be at least level 15. 150xp for a successful skill check. 300 gold per chest.

I got 3 of 4 skill check successfully.

Difficulty 2: Recommended heroes used should be at least level 30. 200xp for a successful skill check. 750 gold per chest.

I got 2 of 4 skill check successfully.

Difficulty 3: Recommended heroes used should be at least level 45 300xp for a successful skill check. 1500 gold per chest.

Difficulty 4: 

Arena

You get 5+5 fights each day, use them all and take out the hardest enemy you are fairly sure of beating. You get 10 arena shop coins for a victory and 3 for a loss. If you win all fights you get 700 a week. The harder fights you pick the higher you will go on the leaderboard, but that will lead to harder enemies, which can halt your progress. In my opinion there is not much use in paying gems for extra fights. Maybe you can get a short time gain, but in the end it won’t help much.

Campaign

Campaign maps can only be completed once. If you want to farm gold, then stay on map 7. Try to not get stuck. When you have to try several times to win a battle, consider not finishing any more quests before you have improved your team. Completing quests in campaign gives xp, but it will also increase the enemy level, and make your fights harder. This can cause you to get stuck unable to move in campaign. And then you wil have to use all your xp in relic adventures, dungeons and stuff. This is bad as you will want to farm stuff in campaign too. But you will get stuck from time to time, just try to avoid it.

Relic Adventure

Relic adventure maps can be completed as many times as you wish. To maximize guild banners, relics and quest completions do map 2 or map 3 over and over again. Those are small maps with turn tiles, which make them easier to complete than the other maps. Since these don’t have very good crafting items, then switch to campaign right before you get 100 moltenite and complete an item, throw the dice in campaign a couple of times, and get the item before returning to relic adventure.

Guilds

Guild chests and guild shop increase with level. If you join a level 9 guild you will get better chests, than a lower level guild. Level 19 guilds have access to everything in the shop.

If you want to maximize your guild banners you can leave the guild after completing all daily guild tasks, join the guild again and finish some of the tasks again to get the reward once more. If you are in a guild which is full, there is a risk that someone will take your spot when you are away, but I think it is small anyway.

Swine Chief

Use AOE heroes to destroy most of the chests and get more gold.

Ziggurat

Use greater thorns dices on heroes with support skills or heroes with thorns/greater thorns like Grimroot and Pavel. Thorns might be nerfed in update 1.0.

Hero Gauntlet

In Hero Gauntlet just do Vorrgh, he is the only 4-star hero you can get there, and currently one of the best heroes in the game.

Dungeons

If you get +7 gear from golden chalice then the items from the dungeon are not much use until later in the game, but you get resources and can sell the items for gold, and gold is scarce. Elixirs are in abundance, but you need some and you get them from a dungeon.

When you can instant win it becomes nice to perfectly clear levels. Then you have to pay attention to the rune set: Toxic, support and control. If you can’t get a perfect clear, then wait for the next rune set, maybe that will be easier at the particular level you are at.

Boss Battle

All bosses drop useful dices. Try to get +5 dices or higher, since those can be yellow, and yellow dices are the very best.

Shadow Spire

Shadow Spire give pages, tomes and compendiums, which you need to develop talents.

The layout of each level will change from week to week, but not from run to run, so if you run a level twice in a weekend, you will know the layout, and can try to avoid a boss you lost against in the last run.

You might try to avoid hard hitting single damage bosses, especially Dread Queen and Danuu, but Rorlok, Kritch, Lothar Goldenhart, Doomfrond. etc, can also be lethal. And try to hit the resurrection tiles if you need them, they can come in really handy.

When you start getting tomes, half of the tomes are given to a hero of the same class as the boss you fight. So if the boss is rogue and you don’t have a rogue in your team, you miss out on half of the reward. So you need one of each class in your team. If you are wondering which class you are fighting you can often sort your heroes by class, and if you have the hero you are up against you will see where it sorts and know which class it is.

When you can complete the last level that gives you pages, then do it a couple of extra times, because you need pages for tier II skills, and you need tomes for tier III skills. You will probably do the last level with tomes a couple of times with different heroes, just to be able to max new heroes.

When some of your heroes are full, like don’t need more tomes or compendiums to max all skills, they will not get more either. Then other heroes on your team will get those instead. So there is no use in removing them from the team, but keep in mind that you should always have a hero of the same class that the boss you fight, which is not full. That’s why it might be convenient to have at least one of each class that is not full.

Shops

Gauntlet shop I buy a lot of iron, and Reynard and then Thorgrim.

Arena shop I buy bonus action dice.

Loot lagoon shop I buy adamantium, steel and leather.

Cards

Which cards to spend where:

Backward 3: Farming gambling tile during Golden Chalice / Shadow Spire

Backward 2: Farming gambling tile during Golden Chalice

Backward 1: Farming Twilight Halls (Golden Chalice)

Forward 1: Loot Lagoon / Farming Twilight Halls

Forward 2: Loot Lagoon / Farming Twilight Halls

Forward 3: Loot Lagoon / Farming Twilight Halls / (Golden Chalice)

Forge: Farming gambling tile during Golden Chalice if doing Relic 4 map.

Value of cards in dice tosses when farming relic map 4 for golden chalice event:

Backward 3: 100 cards = 931 tosses and 93 merchant hits.

Backward 2 (moving to the left): 100 cards = 468 tosses and 48 merchant hits.

Backward 2 (moving back): 100 cards = 466 tosses and 48 merchant hits.

Backward 1: 100 cards = 469 and 51 merchant hits.

Backward 1 (from left of turn tile): 100 cards = 469 and 46 merchant hits.

Forward 2: Moving from turn tile to gambling tile: 100 cards = 469 tosses and 44 merchant tiles.

Forward 1: Moving from left of gambling tile: 50 cards = 200 tosses and 14 merchant hits.

Forward 3: Moving from right of gambling tile 100 cards = 468 tosses and 46 merchant tiles.

Conclusion: You can use almost all cards, you just have to accumulate a lot of cards.

1 Card = 15 energy, 1 card = 30 gems

I chalice event

On Relic map 4, if you are to hit a gambling tile 469 times, you can use: 70 -3 cards, 38 -2 cards, 50 -1 cards, 23 +3 cards, 50 +2 cards, 26 +1 cards and 688 dice tosses, and get 84 merchant tile visits.

Used cards: 257 Bought cards: 251 Throws: 688

On Relic map 4, if you are to hit a gambling tile 469 times, you can use: 0 -3 cards, 0 -2 cards, 0 -1 cards, 0 +3 cards, 0 +2 cards, 0 +1 cards and 2198 dice tosses, and get 227 merchant tile visits.

Used cards: 0 Bought cards: 680 Throws: 2198

On Relic map 4, if you are to hit a gambling tile 369 times, you can use: 0 -3 cards, 0 -2 cards, 0 -1 cards, 0 +3 cards, 0 +2 cards, 0 +1 cards and 1731 dice tosses, and get 179 merchant tile visits.

Used cards: 0 Bought cards: 535 Throws: 1731

On Relic map 4, if you are to hit a gambling tile 469 times, you can use: 81 -3 cards, 0 -2 cards, 88 -1 cards, 17 +3 cards, 85 +2 cards, 16 +1 cards and 506 dice tosses, and get 65 merchant tile visits.

Used cards: 284 Bought cards: 195 Throws: 506

100 backward 2 cards and forward 2 cards: 100 gambling tiles and 100 merchant tiles

Used cards: 200 Bought cards 300, Cost 300.000

469 backward 2 cards and forward 2 cards: 469 gambling tiles and 469 merchant tiles

Used cards: 200 Bought cards 1407, Cost 1.407.000

Relic map 4: Farm gambling tile and merchant tile during chalice event

Relic map 3: Farm missions OR -2/+2 cards between gambling and merchant OR -2/+2 cards between merchant and xp.

Relic map 5: Farm merchant tile/xp can use -2/+2 cards to move between the two.

Relic map 4:

Turn tile: 1 Gambling tile, 2 Gambling tile, 3 Fight, 4 Merchant, 5 XP 6 Forge

Fight tile: 1 Turns tile, 2 Gambling tile, 3 Gambling tile, 4 Fight Tile, 5 Merchant, 6 XP

Forge

In the start the forge is a great way to get items, later on you get better items from the dungeon.

I strongly recommend this discord server if you are playing this game, lots of resources here: https://discord.gg/A3G2ucehMu

And if you have questions, ask them in discord. The people there are very knowledgeable and some of them probably disagree with some of the recommendations in my guide too :)

Resources

Cards: Golden Chalice Event / Twilight Halls

Gold: Armor, Dices, Cards

Gems: Golden Chalice Event / Mystical scrolls

Energy: Everything, Gambling(Chalice Event), Cards