Age of Wonders 4: Best Hero Skills for the Early Game

Age of Wonders 4 lets you command and control your ruler and several heroes as you expand your domains. With each hero, you’ll have additional functions at hand, earning more perks and abilities as time goes on. Our guide focuses on the best hero skills in the early game of Age of Wonders 4.

Hero Skills Explained

As mentioned in our hero recruitment and functions guide, you’ll be able to select new heroes when establishing or acquiring new cities. Your ruler and other heroes can then battle foes, earning XP along the way.

How to Spend Hero Skill Points

Each time you level up, you’ll be able to allocate skill points to acquire passive boons. You can see this screen by left-clicking a hero’s unit card on the map, then right-clicking on them.

How to Reset Hero Skills (Respec)

These hero skills can also be reset freely from the same panel, allowing you to redistribute them when the need arises.

How to Unlock Signature Skills

Moreover, you can unlock Signature Skills at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. Still, for our Age of Wonders 4 hero skills guide, we’ll primarily look at the regular perks that are good for the early-game experience.

Best Hero Skills for the Early Game in AoW4

Heroes come in different variants, such as melee, ranged, casters, and support. Their upgraded skills, meanwhile, can be classified into Warfare, Battle Magic, and Support. These may have tiers that you can increase, too. Here are the best to choose early on:

Warfare:

• Searing Weapons (or other equivalent) — Melee and physical ranged attacks have +4 fire damage and -2 physical damage; +20% damage versus burning targets.
• Keen Edge — +20% critical hit chance.
• Eagle Eye — Gain physical ranged attacks; +1 range and +10 accuracy.

Battle Magic

• Lightning Evoker — Deals damage to the target and causes a chain lightning effect to two other enemy units within three hexes.
• Fire Evocation — Deals fire damage in a one-hex radius; 90% chance to inflict burning.
• Distant Evocation — +1 range to magic attacks.
• Weaver – Refresh all ability cooldowns and once-per-combat abilities.

Support

• Experienced Leader — All non-hero units in this army gain +2 XP per turn.
• Battle Seeker Training — All Tier 1 units in this army gain +20% damage.
• Strength Training — All non-hero units in this army gain +10% damage.
• Precision Training — All units in the army gain +10 accuracy and +10% critical hit chance.

These are what we consider the best hero skills in Age of Wonders 4, at least for the early-game experience. For other tips, visit our AoW4 guides hub.