How Nexters’ Hero Wars Stayed on Top with a Winning Events Strategy

By Altti Fromholdt | July 31, 2025

Hero Wars is a popular RPG game that launched in 2016 to steady success. Since 2019, Hero Wars has consistently held a top 100 grossing position on US iOS, a testament to its exceptional long-term success in the market.

As a mature mobile game, Hero Wars achieved its success through a dynamic and expanding live event strategy, continuous iteration on core features, and the introduction of diverse monetization events and strategic collaborations to keep players engaged and spending.

Although Hero Wars is technically a mature game, the developers have found a way to increase revenue and DAU over successive periods. For example, we can see a spike in DAU from August 2024 to June 2025, making it a game we can learn from.

“GameRefinery’s Live Event Tracker has become a cornerstone of how we approach LiveOps and event design. Beyond just monitoring competitor activity, it’s enabled our teams to identify and implement event and competition formats that are highly relevant to our product—with a measurable positive impact on key product metrics. Thanks to this level of actionable insight, we’ve been able to align with emerging trends early, making sure we don’t miss out on critical market shifts. More importantly, the tool has been instrumental in helping us shape a long-term LiveOps strategy grounded in competitive data rather than assumptions.”

Aleksandr Sveikovskii
LiveOps Product Owner, Nexters

Hacking the Live Event Calendar for Growth

A key strategic initiative behind the success of Hero Wars is the expansion of its live event calendar.

Looking closely, we see that the overall event calendar expanded across various categories, but the key driver of growth is a significant increase in monetization-focused events.

The Monetization category in the Live Events Calendar also lists many more different IAP bundles and offers for players to purchase.

Battle Pass Feature Is a Top Revenue Driver

In particular, the Battle Pass feature has been crucial for Hero Wars. Battle Pass is a season-based monetization mechanic in which players can obtain rewards by progressing through different thresholds in the plan. They proved particularly effective during the event’s concluding days, driving revenue spikes as players strived to reap final rewards.

The game’s Battle Pass feature has also evolved through three iterations (Hero’s Way, Hero’s Way 2.0 & Hero’s Way 3.0), underscoring the critical role of continuous improvement.

Finally, Hero Wars expanded its Battle Pass offerings in September 2024 by introducing the ‘Season Pass’ alongside Hero’s Way 3.0. This ‘Season Pass’ repurposes the Hero’s Way 2.0 framework, doubling the active Battle Pass opportunities.

From Lara Croft to Titan Power: Hero Wars’s Expanding Event Horizon

The collaboration with Lara Croft in May 2024

IP collaborations are increasingly popular within the gaming industry, making thematic cohesion even more crucial. Strategic partnerships with recognizable IPs can help build structured events and streamline content delivery. This, in turn, can lead to significant reductions in player acquisition costs.

In May 2024, Hero Wars brought its first-ever collaboration event featuring the famous adventurer Lara Croft. This unique crossover created an adventure-themed ”Tomb Raider” atmosphere.

The Lara Croft-led event, The Mystery of Dominion, featured different events and offers that made varied use of the theme:

In the player must progress in the adventure to gain access to different items. Some levels require the player to play a minigame to defeat their enemies, find the exit, and collect rewards from that level. This minigame “style” is also used in user acquisition videos and playables.

Players who participate in the Solo Mission event can also acquire event currency to buy items in the shop. An interesting observation from GameRefinery’s Live Events calendar was Hero Wars’ introduction of a pre-order bundle for Lara Croft that allowed for early acquisition. This strategic offer culminated caused revenue to surge on its closing day.

Racking up wins with Legends Draft

Legends Draft was introduced in August 2024 as an overarching event that boosts the number of events in the game. Played in permanent PVP mode, the event lets the players build teams with a draft mechanic to battle against other players’ teams. Winners rise in the ranking and receive rewards.

In the event, each player chooses a team of five heroes to combat against other players’ teams in fully automated mode. Players need Draft Coins to compete, and these restore up to five coins automatically. You can also use Emeralds (Premium currency) to buy more.

You choose two teams: one for defense and one for offense. The teams will be made with a draft mechanic, where you have three choices of Heroes, and you need to pick one of the three. This will be done five times for each team until both teams have five. You and your opponent choose at the same time a defense team, then an attacking team. Your attacking team will battle against the opponent’s defense team, and vice versa.

Winning your battle will add to your win streak, and you will be rewarded once per day. Each players gets one Win Streak Shield to save their win streak from resetting in the case of a loss—but you can also acquire up to three daily with Emeralds (premium currency). Naturally, the more points from each victory, the higher the streak.

The Tournament of Titan Power!

Hero Wars has long featured a Tournament of Power, which focuses on leveling up your Heroes. But for the first time in October 2024, players could compete by leveling up their Titans in The Tournament of Titan Power. The first solo tournament focused on Titans, it also contributes to the increase in the number of events on the Hero Wars calendar.

For newcomers to the game, Titans are another form of characters, such as Heroes, generally obtained through PVE mode by getting shards or from Gachas. Titans differ from the Heroes as they are locked behind Guild mechanics, meaning they are only available if you’re in a guild, and if you happen to transfer or leave a guild, the Titans remain locked until you join a new guild. Players attempting to access this feature prior to joining a guild are directed to the guild application portal.

Getting points in the tournament is simple: you have to upgrade the power levels of your titan characters, and your tournament score equals the power increase of all your titans. There are four different stages with different rewards that unlock when you get enough tournament points. These refresh daily. Rewards include Titian Skin Stones, Titan Potions, and Elemental or Summoning Spheres.

The main rewards for the winner include Fairy Dust, Titan Potions, and an Avatar. The event lasts 3 to 5 days and recurs at intervals ranging from 19 days to 1.5 months.

New Event Type: Seer’s Game

One example of a monetization-related event we discussed is Seer’s Game, a Russian roulette-style event introduced in March 2025 as a new event type. In the event, players test their luck to win resources and prizes. They participate by drawing cards, each round offering a chance to win rewards or encounter a cursed card that ends the round.

To win prizes and advance to the next round, the player must choose a card from two to four options. There are 30 rounds in the game, and each attempt costs 25 Seer’s Orbs. The orbs can be obtained from tasks or bundles. In each round, one card is cursed and will end the round if chosen. Players can continue by using more orbs, and the cost increases with each purchase. Some rounds have no cursed cards, indicated by a special mark. Rewards accumulate as players progress through rounds.

Tower 2.0: revamping a popular event

Tower 2.0, which is a Permanent PVE Mode, was revamped in January 2025. It’s a daily event where the player aims to get to the top of the tower by defeating enemy teams, collecting buffs, and opening chests.

Let’s talk about the changes to the previous version of Tower:

Before, there were three level types: one with chests, one with buff altars, and one where the player fights. Now, there are just three types of floors: Relic Floors, Treasure Floors, and a final, Boss Floor. This simplifies the floor types and streamlines the experience.
Before, by winning battles, the player earned Skulls, which can be used to get different buffs at the altar levels. Now, winning battles allows you to choose one out of three Relics. This is a clearer buff and relic system. Relics are chosen after winning battles, making them more immediate.
The energy and health levels of the heroes used to not reset between battles. Now, the energy and health levels of the heroes reset between each Relic Floor. This is a major gameplay change, making each Relic Floor a fresh start for heroes.
In the previous version, chests gained from levels contain gold, Tower coins, or random item fragments. Tower 2.0 has “Treasure Floors” with three chests. The first is free, and the next two cost “Emeralds” (premium currency). One of the chests contains gold, another Tower coins, and the third one contains fragments. This offers a more strategic, potentially more rewarding experience while providing a clear monetization avenue for the game.
In Tower, points reward the player with Tower coins and gold at the end of the day. In Tower 2.0, gold is directly earned by winning Battles or Chests.
In the previous version, gold from chests increases by 10% after three chests and 40% after 15 chests and with VIP level. Now, you get 25% more gold if your VIP Level is 6. The tiered increase based on the number of chests is removed.

Summary
Hero Wars has consistently ranked among the top 100 grossing games on US iOS since 2019, demonstrating remarkable long-term success. A key factor in its sustained success is the increased number of live events, especially monetization-focused events and staying on top of the latest trends.

The highlights we covered here were:

Lara Croft Collaboration (May 2024): This was the game’s first collaboration event, featuring a “Tomb Raider” themed adventure, solo missions, and various IAP bundles. A pre-order bundle for Lara Croft significantly boosted revenue on its last day.
Legends Draft (August 2024): A permanent PvP mode where players draft teams of heroes to battle others for rankings and rewards, while introducing options to use premium currency.
The Tournament of Titan Power (October 2024): A new solo tournament focusing on leveling up Titans, a separate character type “linked” to guild mechanics.
Seer’s Game (March 2025): A new monetization event based on a Russian roulette-style card drawing game, offering rewards and requiring “Seer’s Orbs” to participate.
Tower 2.0 Revamp (January 2025): A permanent PvE mode that was significantly revamped, streamlining floor types, altering the relic/buff system, resetting hero health and energy between certain floors, and a direct gold reward from battles.

These highlights are just a small fraction of the game’s large live event calendar. We highly recommend taking a look at it, especially the overarching themes!

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