Hero Wars: Dominion Era

Hero Wars is a free-to-play fantasy idle RPG and hero collector from Nexters Global Ltd, which trades under the holding company GDEV Inc. on the Nasdaq. You build a team of five heroes, and battles play out automatically while you influence the result through team composition, positioning, equipment and when you fire your ultimate abilities.

The most important thing to understand before you read anything else about this game is that there are two versions, and they are not the same product. Hero Wars: Dominion Era runs in a web browser and on Facebook, and launched on 23 March 2016. Hero Wars: Alliance is the mobile app for iOS and Android, released globally on 15 March 2017. This page is about Dominion Era.

They share the setting, the hero roster and the core progression, but they differ in available game modes, interface, and which heroes are obtainable. Most importantly for anyone reading a page like this: their promo codes are not interchangeable. A code posted for Alliance will not work in Dominion Era, and this is the single most common reason a code fails.

Across both versions the game has passed 190 million downloads and more than $2 billion in bookings since 2016, which makes it one of the larger titles we cover.

You assemble a team of up to five heroes, drawn from tanks, damage dealers, healers and support units, each with its own skills and faction synergies. Combat is turn-based auto-battle: the fight resolves itself, and your input is everything you decided beforehand plus the timing of ultimates.

Progression and the energy gate

Heroes are levelled with gold and experience potions, and promoted by collecting soul stones. As your team level rises you unlock further modes: Arena, Tower, Guild Wars, Outland and others.

The pace is controlled by energy, which is the thing that most shapes how you play. Energy regenerates at one point every six minutes, up to a cap that is commonly cited at 240. Campaign missions cost energy, so the practical effect is that you cannot binge this game; it wants short sessions spread across the day.

That has one concrete consequence worth acting on. At one point per six minutes, a full 240-point bar refills in roughly a day, so if you only log in once every 24 hours you are almost certainly hitting the cap and wasting regeneration. Two logins a day is the routine experienced players recommend, and it costs nothing.

Where the depth is

Arena and Guild Wars are the competitive heart of the game, and they are where team composition and counter-play actually matter. Tower gives a solo climb with its own rewards. Guilds are a genuine feature rather than a chat box, and the game is noticeably better inside an active one.

Three currencies matter, and they do different jobs.

• Gold: The everyday currency, spent on levelling heroes and upgrading equipment. Plentiful early, and a genuine bottleneck later.
• Emeralds: The premium currency. Emeralds refill energy, buy chests and bundles, and accelerate almost everything. They can be earned free, but slowly.
• Energy: Not a currency you spend at a shop, but the resource that gates how much campaign content you can run. One point per six minutes, capped.

There is also a VIP system driven by cumulative spending, which grants permanent perks. Some content, including Hydra raids and various daily action limits, sits behind VIP levels. That is worth knowing plainly: parts of this game are gated by how much you have spent rather than how well you play.

On the browser version specifically there is Valkyrie's Favor, a subscription-style feature that pays daily Emeralds and other perks and feeds VIP progression. The mobile version has a battle-pass equivalent called Hero's Way instead. This is one of the places the two versions genuinely diverge.

Hero Wars is one of the few games we cover with a real, actively used promo code system, so this section matters more than it does elsewhere.

How to redeem a code in Dominion Era

1. 1

   Open the browser or Facebook version: Codes must be entered in the version they were issued for. This is the Dominion Era path.

2. 2

   Click your profile avatar: It sits in the top-left corner of the screen.

3. 3

   Open Settings: Then find the Promo Code field.

4. 4

   Enter the code exactly as posted: Codes are case-sensitive and unforgiving about stray spaces.

5. 5

   Activate, then check your in-game mail: Rewards arrive in mail rather than landing directly in your balance.

The mobile Alliance version uses an entirely different route, through the Alliance Hub's Bonuses section, and its codes are separate. If a code is not working, the first thing to check is whether it was issued for the other version.

What codes are worth

Typical rewards run from 100 to 1,100 Emeralds, 100,000 to 255,000 gold, 20 to 200 energy, and anywhere from 3 to 30 hero soul stones, sometimes with artifact chests or summoning spheres attached. These are meaningful amounts rather than token gestures.

Nexters distributes codes through the official Facebook page, the official Discord servers, in-game mail with event notifications, the official website blog, and occasionally through creators and streamers who get exclusive ones. The Dominion Era Discord is large, at close to 260,000 members, and is where codes tend to surface first.

Expiry is aggressive. Codes tied to livestreams or limited events can last 24 hours; others run a few weeks. Assume any code you find is expired unless it carries a stated deadline that has not passed.

Emeralds are sold in bundles, and Google Play lists in-app purchases running from $0.99 all the way to $449.99, which is one of the highest ceilings of any game on this site.

Alongside those there are time-limited bundles combining emeralds, gold, energy, hero stones and skins, typically from $4.99 to $99.99, plus hero skins sold for emeralds or cash. Larger bundles give better emerald-per-dollar value and more VIP points, which is the usual structure.

The revenue concentration here is worth stating, because it explains the design. In 2025, 88 percent of bookings came from about 125,000 high-spending players. This is a game built around a small number of very large spenders, and the pressure a free player feels is a side effect of that.

Chests and published odds

Heroic Chests contain random hero soul stones and items; Artifact Chests contain artifact fragments or complete artifacts. Unusually for this category, Nexters does publish drop rates for these, in compliance with regional regulations including China's disclosure rules and EU consumer protection guidance. Odds for the Emerald Exchange are published too.

That is a genuine point in the game's favour. Most titles we cover publish nothing at all. Pity systems exist in some events and chests, with guaranteed rewards after a set number of pulls, though the thresholds are not published consistently across every mode.

Ratings are strong: 4.5 to 4.6 on Google Play across more than 1.68 million reviews, and 4.5 to 4.9 on the App Store depending on region. Around 82 percent of Google Play ratings are five stars, against roughly 8 percent at one star.

The praise is about depth. Players value the team-building, the faction synergies and the counter-play in Arena and Guild Wars, and the guild communities get credit for making the game social in a way many idle RPGs are not. The update cadence is fast, with new and reworked heroes arriving regularly.

The complaints cluster into three. Pay-to-win perception is the loudest, particularly for top Arena and Guild War placings. Energy gating is the second, with players finding the cap restrictive by design. Crashes are the third, and they sting more here than in most games because a freeze can cost you energy or battle tickets you cannot get back.

There is a fourth, more specific complaint worth flagging for anyone arriving from an advertisement: a number of players report being drawn in by ads showing puzzle or pull-the-pin style mini-games that are not what the actual game is. Hero Wars is an auto-battling hero collector. If you came for the puzzle from the advert, it is not in here.

No. Hero Wars is an RPG rather than a casino game, and there is no wagering and nothing to cash out. Gold and Emeralds buy progression inside the game and have no value outside it.

The chests are the part that draws comparison, since they are randomised and can be bought with premium currency. What separates them from an unregulated loot box is that Nexters publishes the drop rates, which is more disclosure than most games in any category offer.

Dominion Era runs in a web browser and on Facebook. Alliance covers iOS and Android. Progress does not simply merge between them, so pick the version you intend to play and understand that the codes, some modes and parts of the hero roster differ.

The game is under active development with a fast live-ops cadence on both versions. Recent updates have added new heroes such as Eva, reworked existing ones such as Nebula, and introduced Singularity skins for heroes including Ginger, Polaris, Isaac and Peech. Seasonal events including Winterfest, Summer Festival and the anniversary run through the year, and their free tiers usually include emeralds and hero stones.

Community resources are unusually good for a game this size. The official Dominion Era Discord has close to 260,000 members, the Alliance one around 120,000, and community-run references including the Hero Wars Wiki and Hero Wars Library are actively maintained.

Hero Wars sits outside the casino games that make up most of this site. These are the other non-casino titles we cover, and the closest things to it here.

• Mutants: Genetic Gladiators: The nearest match on this site: a Facebook-native collector with auto-resolving battles and a breeding and collection layer instead of hero soul stones.
• Klondike: The Lost Expedition: Another long-running Facebook and browser game with energy-gated progression, if the play-in-short-bursts rhythm is what suits you.
• Diggy's Adventure: Puzzle-driven rather than combat-driven, but the same shape of energy limits and steady daily progress.
• Coin Master: A very different game, but the closest comparison for how aggressively free rewards and codes are distributed through social channels.
• Match Masters: Head-to-head against real opponents with a gift and reward-link culture, if the competitive side of Hero Wars is the appeal.

Hero Wars is considerably deeper than anything else on this list, and it asks more of you in return, both in daily attention and in spending pressure at the top end. If you want the strategy without the competitive squeeze, playing it casually and ignoring Arena rankings is a perfectly viable way to enjoy it.