Clearing a dungeon is just the first step of your journey in Heroes of Hammerwatch. After that, the New Game system opens up. As you progress through the NGs, many of the mechanics you have grown used to lose relevance and are replaced by new mechanics to master. These mechanics depend on nuances which aren’t always made clear in game, so I've broken them down and explained how best to use them to your advantage. The goal of this guide is not to tell you what to do step-by-step, but to give you the tools you need to build an effective strategy which suits your play-style.

Quite a bit of math is involved in analyzing scaling in Heroes of Hammerwatch. This guide will avoid going through most of the details to keep it accessible to everyone. If you want to work through things yourself, head over to the wiki for explicit formulas.

http://wiki.heroesofhammerwatch.com/Main_Page

The single most important piece of information for NG progression is how damage gets calculated:

Base Damage * Attack or Skill Power * DMG % Buff * Other Multipliers (e.g. Crit) * DMG Reduction

Because base damage, attack or skill power, and damage % increase are multiplied together instead of added, upgrading them all equally is more effective than upgrading just one. Also keep in mind that attack power scales primary damage, while skill power scales everything else.

The formula for damage determines which statue combinations are best, which class titles are most impactful, and which builds scale effectively.

With each NG level, the armor and resist penalty increases. It’s difficult to balance the penalty completely, but minimizing it keeps you from getting one-shot by everything in the dungeon.

The main sources of damage reduction are armor and resist. Armor reduces physical damage taken, while resist reduces magical damage taken. Every point of armor or resist above 0 reduces damage taken. The first few points increase the reduction by 1% with diminishing returns for higher amounts. Every point of armor or resist below 0 increases damage taken by 2%.

After the game calculates the percentage, armor and resist work the same way as other damage reduction effects. Each effect is multiplied together to get the final damage. (Typically, the order isn’t important, but an instance where it matters is for Priests using Divine Protection with the Ring of Transmutation.)

There are a few mechanics which help scale your damage and damage reduction with the NG level. Some are more important than others, but it’s best to take advantage of all of them. Let’s look at them one-by-one.

Class Titles: Class titles provide a little of everything. They’re upgraded from clearing the Forsaken Tower on higher NG’s. For damage reduction, the Paladin class title scales armor and the Warlock class title scales resists. For damage, Ranger scales attack power, Wizard scales skill power, Gladiator scales primary crit damage and Witch hunter scales skill crit damage.

Statues: The statues are the most powerful means of scaling damage. There's a lot to talk about, so we'll cover them in their own section.

Sword Tokens: These function as stand-ins for continuous upgrades from the shops. While they can be used to scale damage, it’s better to use them to scale damage reduction. Sword tokens should first be used to reduce NG armor and resist penalties, and eventually to increase either armor or resist depending on whether you are using the Cedric or Calis statue.

Leveling: Leveling up does a lot of things. It increases your health, mana, regen, armor and resist stats, and it gives stars to spend on attunements. The armor and resist gains are small, though, and there’s a practical limit to attunements.

Blood Rites (Witch Hunter DLC): A Blood Rite gives a random buff to either health regen, mana regen, attack power, skill power, armor or resist at the cost of a multiplicative 10% reduction in max hp per Blood Rite. The buff is significant and scales with NG level. All blood rites are lost on death. Unfortunately, the only way to get strategic use out of blood rites is by duplicating profiles to force a specific buff. Fortunately, Blood Rites are non-essential.

Now let’s touch on mechanics which aren’t endlessly scalable. These mechanics sometimes provide a bump in power to push through the first few NG’s, and other times they are cornerstones of builds.

Drinks: Drinks provide damage buffs which take a long time for statue upgrades to overtake. There are also a few options for damage reduction. Rare drinks such as Frenetic Eruption, Evil Infusion, and Incendiary Demise are key to the game's most potent builds.

Item Attuning: Attuning items helps offset the armor and resist penalty for the first few NG levels and allows you to double up on the effects of the best items for your build.

Monster Attuning: Attuning a monster gives a DMG % buff against it and damage reduction from it. Monsters can be attuned multiple times, but the cost grows exponentially. This puts a practical limit on how many times a monster can be attuned. In the long-run, the damage reduction is more important.

Blessings: Many blessings lose their relevance as you push into the NGs. Blessings which scale well include the Path of the Defender, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Intellect, and Symbol of Essence and divine blessings for primary builds.

Combo: Combo is useful as a source of damage, but the extra mobility it provides is often more important. For example, it allows the Paladin and Priest to move unhindered while using their primary, and it allows the Wizard to move while casting spells.

DLC Dungeons: Neither of the DLC dungeons are important for progression, though they each come with a small perk. The Pyramid of Prophecy gives 10 stars per NG level and a potion upgrade, while the Moon Temple gives Lunar Shield instances per floor per NG level.

Statues become the biggest power buff once regular upgrades run out. The nine statues can be separated into three categories based on which part of the damage formula they increase.


Wylmir, Kyra and Bolgarth are the options for increasing base damage. Unfortunately, none of them scale primary damage. This makes true primary builds suboptimal compared to skill builds.

Calis gives a percentage of armor back as attack power, while Cedric gives a percentage of resist back as skill power. By level 20 (if you can get the ore), a point in either armor or resist also becomes a point in either attack or skill power.

The DMG % statues give a DMG % buff against enemies afflicted with a certain status condition. Ozreth provides the largest % increase and is overall the easiest to enable. Ozreth and Daran have the advantage of being enabled by status conditions most (all?) bosses are vulnerable to, while Daran and Phalarath have a base effect which scales in power with the enemy’s health. Which DMG % statue is best depends somewhat on the class being played.

Bolgarth and Ewren are the worst of the statues for scaling. Bolgarth starts powerful but his damage doesn’t increase, and Ewren has the most conditional buff.

There are three main types of builds: True Primary builds, Skill Primary builds and Skill Mastery builds. Here’s a summary of the statues and class titles important to each build:

• True primary: Calis, Paladin, Ranger, Gladiator
  
• Skill primary: Cedric, Kyra, Warlock, Wizard, Witch Hunter
  
• Skill mastery: Cedric, Wylmir, Warlock, Wizard, Witch Hunter, Sorcerer

True Primary builds exploit Calis to make their primary as powerful as possible. Skill Primary builds use Kyra to add a skill to their primary. Skill Mastery builds use Wylmir to increase the base damage of their castable skills.

Skill Primary and Skill Mastery builds both care about skill power. The difference is whether the main source of damage comes from Kyra’s arrows or class skills. Cedric is essential either way. The Warlock and Wizard both provide skill power increases and the Witch Hunter gives extra critical damage to skills. Skill Primary builds will want to supplement Kyra with items like Earthsplitter. Skill Mastery builds will want a high Sorcerer class title to keep their skills fueled.

As mentioned before, skill builds scale best. However, True Primary builds still scale quickly enough to keep up with the rising health and damage resist of mobs. In the early NGs, True Primary builds are actually better for single-target damage, mostly because of the Incendiary Demise drink.

(skill build insight from Sinistralis’ Pestilience Paladin Guide: https://gameplay.tips/guides/4088-heroes-of-hammerwatch.html)

It’s possible to use any of these three types of builds for each class, but typically one will be more effective. Giving specific advice on how to build each class isn’t the goal of this guide, but you can find detailed builds in Bweeks’ The Ultimate Heroes of Hammerwatch Guide.

Seeing as statues and sword tokens aren’t free, it’s worth the time to go over the most efficient ways to farm in the late game.

The fastest way to farm statue blueprints is by rerolling for old map in the shop, playing paladin, and dashing through the Desert on the highest NG available. This is also a great way to farm for item blueprints, drinks and dyes.

Bweeks explains how to do this in one of his videos:
Heroes of Hammerwatch Speed Statue Blueprint Farming Strategy

And now for the most controversial part of the guide. The fact is that the game is designed to make grinding more and more time-consuming as the game progresses. The rate at which regular gold and ore gain increases is lower than the rate at which the cost for sword tokens and statue upgrades increases. Magnifying this issue is the cap on tax reduction.

The only legitimate way to counter this is by imp farming. The gold and ore given from the imp grows much faster than the gold and ore picked up from the floor. The fastest way to imp farm is to run through Act 1 of the Forsaken Tower on the highest NG available and with the Plentiful Gifts modifier turned on. Of course, gold will still be taxed, so it’s only a “success” when an imp gives you ore.

Here's a video of Bweeks going through this approach:
Ore Farming Methods Compared

Unfortunately, even though imp ore gain grows faster than sword token or statue costs, the ore gain from the imp starts further behind. The ore from one imp will equal the cost of one statue upgrade at around NG 70000.

There’s a much better way to imp farm if you’re comfortable exploiting the game a bit. A floor is generated after entering it, and imps decide what to give you after talking to them. By duplicating profiles, it’s possible to force an imp to spawn on every floor and to control what it gives every time. Using this method, the best approach is to get gold from an imp on floors 1 & 2 of Act 1, and then send your gold to town with an imp on floor 3.

Bweeks shows this method in more detail:
The fastest way to get ore in Heroes of Hammerwatch, Unethical?

But there’s an even better way. A way which will give all the gold and ore you desire and remove the need to ever farm again, for the small price of your soul and all your grinder’s grit.

The catch is it requires multiplayer. Have a friend make a modded profile and activate at least one mod. Tell them to use cheat commands from the console to set their NG level to 10000. Now, have them turn off their mods and set up a lobby so you can join them. Enter NG 10000 with them and proceed to wreak havoc on enemies who have had their health reduced to 1 (?) due to integer overflow. Manipulate one imp into giving you ore and then find an elevator shaft to send the ore to town. Spend the rest of your days finding a way to spend your 40,000,000 ore.

Cheating to other NG levels will work as well, but may require some experimentation. In the Far Realm of the ultra-late NGs, the game mechanics can’t be trusted to work quite as expected.

Some of the conclusions above change without the Pyramid of Prophecy and Witch Hunter DLC. Without statues, primary and skill builds scale at the same rate, and without the Witch Hunter class title, there’s no way to scale skill crit damage. The absence of sword tokens and blood rites also makes it much more difficult to keep up with NG armor and resist penalties. Farming efficiency isn’t really affected. Instead of farming item blueprints, drinks and dyes in the Desert, you can do it Act 1 of the Forsaken Tower.

Mercenary builds fall into the same categories as regular characters, but there are a couple big changes:

• Mercenaries can't earn or benefit from class titles. Instead, the Master of Arms offers extra upgrades as you increase your Mercenary Rank with Prestige Points.
  
• Mercenaries don't benefit from statues. There is no compensation for this; your mercenary is supposed to die eventually.
  
• On the bright side, you get to mix and match castable skills from every class! These skills have as set upgrade level, probably for balancing. All but a handful of skills are available.

Your choice of mercenary class only decides your primary skill and base stats. There are a few standouts:

• Warlock: Good HP for a caster and primary helps with early MP and HP problems. Primary also has great damage and hit rate if you can work with the short range. Best single-target primary DPS at General Rank.
  
• Witch Hunter: Best primary for single target damage and highest hit rate before General Rank. Pierce is unlimited but damage falls off fast.
  
• Ranger: Primary has best range, good single target damage, and good pierce. Can overtake Witch Hunter in DPS with Divine Strike at General Rank.
  
• Sorcerer: Best MP growth and regen. Primary is better for crowds than Ranger, but usually worse for single-target damage.

For a step-by-step road to General Rank, see Mercenary Mode - Road to General Rank. Forsaken Tower is arguably the safest dungeon, but the Pyramid and Moon Temple are more time efficient for earning prestige.

Your build options will evolve as you unlock things with your rank. Here are some examples:

Skill Mastery, Private Rank
Class: Warlock
Skills: Throwing Knives, First Aid, Company Banner, On the Prowl, Ice Shield, Fanatic Zeal
Drinks: The Groovy Ghost, Smelly Old Man, Ancient Spirit
Best Items: Markham's Wand, Essence Collector, Lucky Hat
Chapel: N/A

True Primary, Corporal Rank
Class: Witch Hunter
Skills: Crippling Net, First Aid, Grappling Hook, Sidestep, Slice And Dice, Twinned Arrows
Drinks: Homemade Hazard, Enchanted Slammer, Crazy Eye
Best Items: Bloodthirst Ring, Judgement, Spreading Corruption
Chapel: Path of the Warrior

Skill Primary, Sergeant Rank
Class: Ranger
Skills: Company Banner, Aura of Purification, Smoke Bomb, Sidestep, Slice And Dice, Flames of Devotion
Drinks: Incendiary Demise, Wicked Sickness, Evil Infusion, Primal Fury
Best Items: Amulet of Vengeance, Scarab of Protection, Earthsplitter
Chapel: Path of the Magician

Endless farming is not possible in Mercenary Mode. Instead, you have to capitalize on gold and ore bonuses to keep up with upgrades. This is very doable, but I recommend starting aggressive. You want as many of these items in your runs as possible:

Markham's Stone > Shaftlocke Pickaxe > Markham's Purse > Cloak of Many Pockets

Starting with some of these items and attuning them is a good idea. In addition, you should use the Treasure Rooms and Expanded Floors effects from the Fountain. For drinks, Miner's Delight and A Fool's Errand are easy ways to further increase your resource gain.

You can get an early infusion of cash and a few extra Prestige Points by running some ranks in the Arena. Sword upgrades get expensive, though, so only buy a few until you've run out of other upgrades.

• Your build options and DPS will be very limited until you unlock rare drinks by getting 200 Prestige Points. For this reason you may want to run the Pyramid or Moon Temple first so you don't have to struggle as much through NG+1.
  
• Boulder traps in the Pyramid are no joke. Consider skipping them.
  
• First Aid, Lay on Hands, and Consecrated Ground are helpful substitutes for lifesteal.
  
• Effect descriptions can be vague. To find out exactly what skills, drinks, and items do, copy your profile and whack some dummies.
  
• For those who need to balance real-life needs, there are a couple options to avoid losing the time you've invested in a mercenary. First, copy your profile in between runs. If you do this outside of the dungeon it will even work with multiplayer! Second, you can trivialize the NG armor and resist penalties by forcing an Immortal or Fey Blood Rite each run. This, however, is not possible in multiplayer runs.