Heroic difficulty is where Emberward stops being a game about building a maze and becomes a game about building a maze under constraints you chose. Two systems define it: the altar's elemental pacts, and the Infernal Shards you equip before the run.
Heroic is not just harder Normal
The three tiers below it (Casual, Normal, Heroic) change more than health pools. Heroic is where:
- The Pioneer achievements live — every region's top clear tier.
- The altar and elemental pacts are part of the run.
- The hardest set-piece achievements require a clear (Void Depths Conqueror, Mad Genius, All In, Emberwarder).
The developer has adjusted Heroic's opening stages downward since early access (the Sealed Citadel update explicitly lowered early Heroic difficulty), which tells you the intended shape: a punishing mid-game and endgame rather than a punishing first wave.
Elemental pacts and the altar
On Heroic you can make a pact with an element at the altar. A pact is a trade — you take an element's condition and get its power for the run.
The achievement that explains the system is Oathkeeper: on Heroic, make a pact with every element at the altar at the same time and successfully complete the pact. That means pacts stack, that holding all of them at once is survivable with the right build, and that the altar is a core mechanic rather than a curiosity.
Practical read: pacts are how Heroic mazes get their damage scaling. If your Normal build stalls on Heroic, it is usually because you are not using the altar at all.
Infernal Shards
Shards are optional modifiers you equip before a Heroic run. They make the run harder in a specific way and, in exchange, count toward progression — several achievements are gated behind Infernal Shard level 24, including the Void Depths Conqueror line.
Known shards and what they do:
| Shard | Effect |
|---|---|
| Shard of Fatigue | Increases the price of consecutively built towers |
| Shard of Fragility | Reduces your HP; level 3 now sets HP to 3 (previously 1) and no longer blocks maximum-HP increases |
| Shard of Confusion | Extends the duration monsters disable your towers for |
| Shard of Corruption | Drives corrupted battles |
| Shard of Malice | Affects boss abilities; its third tier makes sections of wall disappear on some maps |
| Shard of Nightmares | Level 2 previously could spawn werebeasts and frost elementals as large monsters from other worlds — a fix removed that, because it could stack large-area malfunction effects and end a run through an unlucky roll |
Shard level is a single number that scales the whole set you have active, which is why "level 24" is a meaningful gate rather than an arbitrary one: it is the top of the current ladder.
How to approach a Heroic run
- Pick your shards before you pick your flame. Shard of Fatigue punishes greedy tower spam, Shard of Confusion punishes towers that must keep firing, Shard of Fragility changes how much HP buffer you have. Each one invalidates a different default.
- Decide your altar element in the first waves. Pact scaling wants time; a pact taken at wave 15 has fewer waves to pay off.
- Expect tower-disabling. The disable mechanic exists on Normal, but Heroic shards and modifiers make it the difference between a good maze and a dead one — the community's answer is Protection Runes on your blocks, plus the Debugging Encyclopedia relic as insurance.
- Treat the Corrupted Altars as terrain you have to plan around. On several maps they spread corrupted tiles across your build area, and the Purification System is the counter.
- Do not attempt the constraint runs first. Mad Genius (Heroic Void Depths, no talents) and Emberwarder (all five regions on Heroic at shard level 24 with no event character) assume you already know the region and have a settled build. They are second-pass achievements.
Where the difficulty actually lives
Community write-ups converge on the same point: Heroic punishes spread and rewards depth. Two enhanced towers plus a good buff beats four towers of the same size, and the shards that hurt most (Fatigue) are exactly the ones that punish building wide. The players who describe Heroic as manageable are the ones running fewer, stronger towers with control effects layered on top — buffs and debuffs scale into the late waves, raw damage from many small towers does not.