Get Athel to *6. You NEED a Campaign farmer to make more food for your champions. That is your top priority now. Athel is still my Campaign farmer at account level 71. She will help you a lot in early Arena, and in Dungeons too, especially Fire Knight and Spider.

Do not waste your Gems. Fully upgrade your Gem Mine when you can. It is a lot of Gems, but the mine will pay for itself in 100 days. 

When you can, unlock all Market slots. Ancient shards will appear there here and then, for 200k silver. Not too often, but for a F2P player, that is free Ancient shards.

Your first Arena team may be:

- High Khatun leader - only needs to be *5, speed boost and turn meter boost, a little bit of turn meter manipulation

- Zargala - AoE Decrease DEF and hard hitter

- Athel - AoE nuke, Weaken debuff

- for the last position either Captain Temila - Increase DEF and healing 

or Vrask for healing, if you can guarantee Critical hits

or Reliquary Tender for AoE healing over time, full AoE cleansing, and single target revive

or Cardinal for AoE revive and single target healing

As a Rare, Reliquary Tender may be easier to max than the Epics. She is awesome and will help you in many areas of the game.

If you are willing to spend some money, I would recommend the daily Ancient shard for USD 1, and/or the daily Mini Max pack for USD 2.99 or how much it is. You may also want to invest in the month long daily Gems pack, that is one of the best things to get, as it will allow you to max your Gem mine and buy Masteries for your Campaign farmer (800 Gems), saving you a LOT of energy and time farming Minotaur.

I agree with Watchdog, go with Athel. Epics after her. You got very good ones, but they are not campain farmers.

You can farm "chickens" in Hard 12-3 (or 12-6). Is Athel-50 capable of doing it? Farm Normal 12-3 if she isn't. It's not that much worse than Brutal 12-3. Buying energy refills or buying gems to buy energy refills is more effective use of money than buying chickens. If you are ready to spend real time farming experience that is. You'll also get a lot of silver in the process.

This is really helpful, thank you! I wasn't sure who to 6* first but I will focus on Athel now! I'm able to do 12-3 on hard right now, I guess I just farm that until I can 6* Athel?

As far as gems go... I normally don't spend them. I used them to unlock all marker slots and I bought one ancient shard pack. I'll upgrade the gem mine now.

the arena advice is super helpful too. Thank you! it lets me know what champs to focus on getting up to 5* sooner. I did vrask and Zargala. I wasn't sure if I should do HK or the other speed booster with 50% attack boost.

as far as the $ spending goes, I'll have to think more about it. i Like the game and will likely play It long term so investing some is something to consider.

I guess one more question I have is... should I start sacrificing my 4* rates to get Athel to 6*?

Nope. You are not that far in the game to have an abundance of duplicates to sacrifice.

Use Uncommons. Keep the Armiger, use the rest as food. I use the Incubus most of the time, because he drops from Campaign chapter 12 where I farm. It is then easy to spot the food in my champions roster.

I'd say no. You may use them to beat some faction war stages. Even first stages are worth beating to accumulate glyphs, especially speed ones.

I also keep 1 copy of every rare and epic in case they are needed for fusion or buffed or otherwise become useful.

You guys are the bomb. Thank you!

Just a note, HK does her job well at 40. She is there for her aura and first turn speed boost. She doesn't need stats other than speed. Her aura is good for dungeons too. So after Athel I would go for Zagrala (AoE def down is useful everywhere), Vrask (great help in dungeons, carried me all the way to Arbiter, starting to fall off after that) and Occult Brawler (clan boss is worth hitting even if it's not ultra nightmare and OB is one of the best for it).

I might suggest zargala first. She may actually be a better campaign farmer and more viable for late game content. Then as mentioned, vrask and OB. 

Zargala is a bit difficult to max for a F2P. You see, she needs Epic books. Athel only needs Rare books.

I've got Athel fully booked so it seems like she'd be the best to take first. Zargala hits hard, def next to get 6*. I've wondered about vrask or HK to do next, so that's helpful info about leaving her 4* for now.

Ive been working on Occult Brawler and he def hits hard on clan boss. My clan only has the easy boss right now (no one goes for normal) and I can generally hit 1.2mill with my CB team. I've heard Flesh-Tearer is good at CB but im struggling with him. I just leave him in the training pit for now.

If your clan isn't hitting the boss you need, either get them to start doing it or move to another clan. The way the clan system works today, pretty much its only in-game function is the clan boss, so you need to choose your clan based on the CB level you need. When you say you can hit 1.2 mill on easy, you mean per key? Definitely need to move on to normal then... 

Regarding Flesh Tearer, I don't use him but clearly his biggest asset is the debuff extension - though it's on a long cooldown so he won't use it all that much. In any case that's not something that will show up in flashy numbers and it only really becomes valuable if the rest of the team is putting the right debuffs that he can extend. The healing with buff extension on your own team is also nice, though again mostly valuable if you already have other champs who are putting buffs (increase defense, most importantly). 

Yes, hitting easy CB 1.2mil per key. I thought I needed a clan who can hit normal. finding an organized clan is hard for some reason. My CB team right now is:

 Occult brawler, Athel, Zargala, Spirithost (I really like her 10%speed & 50% damage increase combo) and Vrask. 

High Khatun ---> Spirithost ---> Zargala ---> Athel 

Is a very good Arena Team.

Even though, You shouldn't really be focusing on Arena.

You should be focusing on Clan Boss.

I just didn't feel like mentioning a Clan Boss team.

Clan Boss teams are so boring.

Arena teams are so spicy & exciting.

Yeah, I'm sure someone esle can help you with your Clan Boss team.

HK- Arena Lead

Zargala- Campaign Farmer, Arena Defense Down, Arena Nuker

Athel- Nuker

Vrask- Healer Dungeons

OB- Clan Boss

Cardinal- Arena Revive

Zargala and OB priority-

Zargala needs Helmsmasher

OB needs Warmaster

Both could do with ACC Banners

You dont need Athel at 60 to pass bronze tier in Arena.

I have 2 players at 50, athel and corpse collector, and just upgraded souldrinker to 5 stars. I used H katun when she landed and the starting epics the game gives you to get to silver.. just pick ur battles wisely and dont take too many chances.follow the challenges and missions too for xtra gems and energy and silver here and there.

Im also working on 6 starring Athel right now. in the first month when i didnt know what i was doing i fed some epics and rares to my core team out of sheer laziness just to get em up to 4 and 5 stars. Totally regret that now.. just keep hacking away at campaign use uncommons and bring them on up..

Its.not as bad as u think.. half the fun of this game is the satisfaction of really putting in the work.. as an ftp   player otherwise..might as well spend the money on a pc or console game right?