Combat is a tactical puzzle
The battles in Heroes of Steel are genuine tactical RPG fare, and the sooner you treat each one as a puzzle to solve rather than a brawl to win, the better you will do. Combat is turn-based: you and the enemy take turns, and on yours you move and act with each of your four heroes, choosing attacks, spells, special abilities and healing. What decides the outcome is not raw stats but how well you use your party — where you position your heroes, how you combine their abilities, which targets you focus, and how you manage your healing and resources. Played carelessly, as a series of attacks, the game will get your fragile heroes killed; played deliberately, as a coordinated team solving a tactical problem, the same fights become winnable and deeply satisfying. This guide covers the principles that turn difficult battles into victories.
The mindset to carry into every fight is teamwork and intention. Your four heroes are far stronger together than apart, and a battle is won by the party acting as a unit — the front line holding, the casters and rogue striking from safety, the healer keeping it all alive — rather than by any one hero's heroics.
Take your time on your turn. There is no penalty for thinking, and the difference between a careless move and a considered one is often the difference between winning a fight and losing a hero. Look at where enemies can reach, what your abilities can do together, and which target matters most before you commit.
Hold the line and protect your heroes
The foundation of every battle in Heroes of Steel is your front line. Your heroes differ enormously in durability: your warrior is built to stand at the front and absorb punishment, while your sorcerer, healer and rogue are fragile and will be cut down fast if enemies reach them. So your first tactical priority in any fight is to anchor a front line with your warrior, positioning it between the enemy and your vulnerable heroes, ideally at a chokepoint where it can block the enemy's path. With the line held, your casters and rogue can act in safety, and your healer can sustain the party without being exposed. Lose control of that line — let your warrior get bypassed or your fragile heroes get surrounded — and the fight can collapse quickly, no matter how strong your heroes are individually.
This is why positioning is the heart of the game's tactics. A well-placed party that protects its fragile members can win battles that the same party, scattered or exposed, would lose. Every turn, think about where enemies can move and attack, keep your warrior between them and your back line, and never let a key hero get caught in the open.
Use chokepoints and terrain to your advantage. Funnelling enemies through a narrow gap that your warrior holds means only a few can attack at once, protecting your fragile heroes and letting your sorcerer hit the bunched-up enemies with area spells. Letting the fight happen in open ground, where enemies can swarm your back line, is how parties get overwhelmed.
Combine abilities and focus your targets
With your line held, winning fights comes from using your party's abilities together rather than attacking one hero at a time. Each character brings distinct powers, and the game rewards combining them into a coordinated plan: your warrior controlling and holding enemies at the front, your sorcerer hitting clusters with area spells, your rogue striking priority targets, and your healer keeping everyone standing. A turn where your abilities work in concert — enemies bunched and blasted, a dangerous foe struck down, the party healed — accomplishes far more than four separate attacks. So think of each turn as deploying your party's combined toolkit toward a goal, not just dealing damage.
Targeting is the other half of offence. Concentrating your damage on the right enemies is usually far better than spreading it: a dead enemy stops dealing damage entirely, while a lightly wounded one keeps fighting, so focus down the biggest threats — heavy hitters, enemy casters, anything that can cripple your party — to reduce the enemy's offensive power quickly. Removing dangerous enemies fast both protects your party and shortens the fight, whereas chipping away at everything at once leaves all the threats alive and dangerous. Identify the priority targets each fight and concentrate your party's power on them.
| Principle | How to apply it | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Front line | Warrior holds a chokepoint | Keeps fragile heroes out of reach |
| Combine abilities | Control, area damage, strikes, heals together | A coordinated turn beats four attacks |
| Focus targets | Concentrate damage on threats | A dead enemy stops dealing damage |
| Manage resources | Heal early, spend abilities wisely | Running dry mid-fight loses battles |
Healing, resources and putting it together
The final piece is managing your healing and resources, which is what lets your party last through the game's tough, drawn-out fights. Heal proactively: cast before a hero is critically low rather than after, because a hero who drops is out of the fight and far costlier to recover than one you kept topped up, and keep an eye on your whole party's health each turn. Your strongest abilities often draw on limited resources, so spend them where they will have real impact rather than wasting them on trivial moments — but do not hoard them so anxiously that you lose a fight you could have won by committing them. Good resource management is about having the right tools available at the decisive moment, which comes from spending neither too freely nor too cautiously.
Bring it all together and a won battle in Heroes of Steel looks like this: your warrior anchors a front line at a chokepoint, your fragile heroes work safely behind it, your party combines its abilities to control and blast the enemy, you focus down the most dangerous foes first, and your healer keeps everyone standing while you spend your resources at the moments that matter. None of it is complicated alone, but together it turns the game's challenging fights from desperate scrambles into solvable puzzles. To build the party that executes these tactics, see our party guide and classes tier list; if you are new, start with the beginner guide.
Do not let your fragile heroes get exposed. The fastest way to lose a battle in Heroes of Steel is to let your sorcerer or healer get reached and cut down, which removes your damage or your sustain and unravels the party. Keep your line intact, watch where enemies can move, and never trade your back line's safety for a little extra reach.
