Prior to the release of Season 2, players in the Exos community started to reach a plateau in hero growth as their main teams consisted of 6-star grade units with fully equipped level 60 fated equipment. At this point, there was little that could be done in terms of hero enhancement that would really help to progress their accounts.

The resource investment to reach level 100 and enhance fatecores beyond level 10 were too great considering the progress a player could make in PVE and PVP content at that time. As a result, Line Games released the recent Season 2 update and blessed players with the Hero Awakening system to push their accounts further to tackle the new end game content while also adding more depth to the PVP system.

While there is much to discuss and explore with the new Hero Awakening, this guide will provide the fundamentals of the system for you to navigate to find the best path to take for your own account and playstyle.

The basics of Hero Awakening

In contrast to the other new hero enhancement systems that Season 2 introduced (Signature Force, Elemental Enhancement, and Core Memory Sharing), Hero Awakening is one that cannot be accomplished at any point in a player’s progress. Due to the requirements and the results of awakening a hero, it is currently an upgrade that should be a focus for mid to end game players as it requires careful consideration of resources and hero management. To summarize the requirements for Awakening:

1. The hero must be blessed to a maximum 6-star grade.
2. The hero must be enhanced to a maximum +5 level. 
3. The hero must be equipped with 5 pieces of level 60 or greater fated equipment, weapon excluded. 
4. Fated equipment will be consumed when awakening and will not be recoverable

As this is a new upgrade system released with Season 2, it is meant as a hero enhancement feature to help complete the higher level PVE content, allow mid-game players to compete at higher level PVP, and allow late-game players with a larger hero and gear collection to create new meta teams to challenge others at the top ranks.

Receive guardstone set benefits and huge stat increases with Awakening

Given the requirements above, it becomes immediately obvious that you should choose carefully which fated armor you will feed to awaken your hero. If you only have enough fated armor to fully equip a single unit on your team, I would recommend postponing awakening heroes until you have a team of heroes fully equipped with fated pieces; I will discuss this further later. Now that you know the minimum requirements, let’s review the benefits:

1. Awakening will increase a hero’s CP and basic stats by the following:
   1. CP - 160,000
   2. Attack - 1500
   3. Defense - 1000
   4. HP - 1600
2. Awakening will provide guard stone set bonuses and additional stat increases depending on the guardstone set equipped on the unit. Guard stone set bonuses can be combined, see below for details
   
   

   

    

3. If magic enhanced or special forged equipment is used for awakening, the materials and gold used to enhance/special forge will be returned
4. The stat bonuses from enhanced equipment will not be inherited
5. The new Season 2 Ranked (R1) armor can only be equipped by awakened heroes
6. Additional stat bonuses received from guard stone set effects below:

The new hero upgrade for end game players

As mentioned earlier, awakening is meant as a hero enhancement feature for mid to end game players given the stringent requirements. Since a hero’s base CP greatly increases as a result, awakening heroes will benefit players as it would help greatly in clearing Season 2 PVE content. Mid/end game players should prioritize clearing Chapter 11 prior to awakening as that would unlock the final stages of the Solar and Lunar Trade Routes so you can obtain the resources needed to potentially craft fated Ranked armor in the Door of Creation. 

As awakened heroes can only equip Ranked armor, awakening a hero early without fated level Ranked armor will leave the unit with a single guardstone. Using heroes vulnerable to guard stone breaks in late game content and PVP is a big risk and not recommended given the break mechanics which you can read about here on the Inven Global Exos site.

In addition to prioritizing the completion of Chapter 11, careful consideration should be given to specific units to awaken first. As this also depends on the units you have recruited, I will give a basic summary of which types of units you should prioritize to maximize efficiency for progression.

1. General level Fated heroes (Bathory, Garff, Rachel, Shufraken, Jinai, Dorka) — Although the rarest units to obtain, these six provide marks that synergize with other units to greatly improve performance as a team. However, the marks provided by these units activate when specific stat conditions are met. Those lucky enough to recruit one or multiple Generals should prioritize awakening one first and building a team that synergizes around that General. For example, Bathory’s Tranquil mark synergizes with Rera and Uloom, so an awakened Bathory is a safe choice to awaken first if you use a team with Rera and/or Uloom.
2. Units with stat scaling abilities — This can range from Rare to Fated type units, but due to the massive stat gain provided from awakening, units that have skills that scale off their own HP, Attack, or Defense should be next on your list as this can potentially have an impact on your team performance. One example is the fated hero Rudley who’s active 1 and 2 skills provide a barrier to himself and another ally based on his max HP. Awakening Rudley with a full (6) fire guardstone set will increase his HP significantly providing a stronger shield for allies.
3. Attack and support types — The last priority should be your damage dealers and support types. As these heroes typically do not provide much benefit to your team aside from healing and attacking, awakening these units will help increase their sustainability.

As there is much more to explore with the new awakening system, this summary should help get you started on building specific team compositions to focus on PVE and PVP content. Check back on the Inven Global Exos Heroes site weekly for additional guides that will dive deeper into the awakening system to show different team compositions that can be built to challenge the current meta.