Incremental Epic Hero 2 - Understanding the Epic Store options

Overwhelmed by the options in the Epic Store? This guide lets you know what they do in practical terms, helping you to make your own choices about what to get.

About this guide, and highlights

Rather than attempting a tier list, I've worked my way through the UI, and tried to provide some useful commentary about what's there. In the course of playing the game actively for a few months, I've done a lot of dailies - those dailies have generated epic coins, and I know what most of the epic store items do because I've bought most of them.

The best item in the store is the very first item in the QoL section, make sure you check that out.

You'll want to read the Special section, too. Most of the specials are garbage, but one of them is powerful.

If in doubt, save for a global skill slot. It's expensive, and it's worth it.

QoL items

QoL1

The top left item in the top left tab of the Epic Store is the unanimously agreed 'must buy first' item: the Additional Epic Coin Daily Quest. Each daily quest will earn you between 100 and 1000 epic coins. Getting to do them 4 times a day instead of 2 times a day gives you a reliable (and significant) epic coin income. Buy it.

Improving Minimum Daily Quest Rarity is one that I consider 'must buy', but others point out that the high rarity quests take longer to complete. Some people used to say that these quests are also harder, but if you can clear a zone once, you can clear it 30 times, so those people were wrong. With the 1.0 release, they're obsolete too: the difficulty of the quests has been tuned downwards.

Queues and Super queues these are handy for automation, so they're nice to have.

Advanced Auto Ability Point Adder you'll know when you need this, which is when you want to automatically add points to your stats up until your hero is strong enough to clear the area, and then put all the rest of your points into Luck, so that you get better loot. Midgame and Endgame farming strategies rely on this add-on, but in the early game it can be safely ignored.

QoL2

The easy access items are never strictly necessary, but they do spare you from looking at loading screens. You'll know how often you find yourself switching from one hero to another and wishing that you could make changes without switching heroes.

QoL3

Skill Tenacity is kinda useful, kinda not useful, up until you get to Super Dungeons, at which point it becomes compulsory. If you manage your MP carefully, you can get by without it until then. (In a Super Dungeon, good MP management is almost impossible.)

Equipment Tenacity becomes compulsory once you start finding good enchanted gear. A piece of gear that requires hero level 800 is not particularly uncommon. With equipment tenacity, you can get maybe 66% of the bonuses that the equipment gives on a level 5 hero (assuming that you meet the attribute requirements). 66% of a really good bonus is often very very useful.

Active Pet Slots are pretty obvious in terms of how you benefit from them. Wait until you've run out of pet slots, and then you'll know how much pain you're suffering from being unable to equip everything.

Convene is... fine. It does what it says. It can be useful for getting your dailies done, and for swarm chasing. Don't consider it unless you have at least two heroes who have completed Proof of Rebirth, and you probably want Proof of Rebirth 2 done before it's worthwhile. The real value is when you combine it with...

Swarm Chaser There's good rewards for killing swarms. This becomes a must-buy once you've got a track record of actually killing swarms (or at least earning good XP from swarms), and you want to be able to kill swarms while AFK or idle.

Pause becomes mandatory around the time of your first World Ascension. Completing one of those "Do the thing in 5 minutes" challenges becomes a lot more reasonable when you can pause, spend 10 minutes getting everything exactly the way you want it (and spending a lot of gold on upgrades), then unpause for 30 seconds, and then do another round of adjusting and spending.

QoL4

Advanced Auto-Dissasemble Equipment there will come a point where you simply can't keep up with the volume of garbage equipment that your pets are picking up for you (or that is lying on the battlefield). Since you'll want to keep the enchanted equipment, you'll want this feature when you reach that point.

Advanced Auto-Disassemble Potion comes into its own when you want to raise a few million gold really quickly, so you sell thousands of healing potions at once. Once you get to that point, the need will become obvious.

Advanced Auto-Disassemble Crafted Equipment is mainly used when preparing for world ascension. You can rank up "Pro Disassembler" by disassembling large quantities of equipment. If you want to craft a thousand swords and disassemble them in one click, then this is the tool to use. (You can then use the materials you get from that to make a smaller quantity of swords, until eventually you're out of materials.)

Utility Keeper is also pretty handy. Wait until you're having difficulty keeping your Normal Magicslime pet working properly, and buy it after that.

Advanced Auto-Buy traps can wait. It stops your utility inventory from filling up with traps when you have auto-buy configured. That won't be a problem for a while.

Multitrapper seems really cool, but you need several utility slots to make it work, and there's a lot of things competing for those utility slots (not just traps). I've bought most of the things from the store, and I'm still getting by just fine without multitrapper.

QoL5

Loadouts are cool, but they can wait. The ability to switch your skills and equipment quickly from one configuration to another can afford to wait until it's a serious hassle. You'll get one loadout of each type for free, so wait until you've got those and then ask yourself "How much value will I get from another?"

Rebirth

Rebirth 1

Everything on this page becomes compulsory in the end, but it's all worthless until you've unlocked auto-rebirth. Favourite Quest is probably the one to get first, because it allows you to claim quest completion, and Favourite Area is really good if that quest isn't located in Slime 1. Timing becomes especially good once you unlock the ability to rebirth at lower levels. Lazy Questing Mode is best for when you're trying to repeatedly complete a group of quests, and is less critical.

Rebirth 2

If you've bought things you regret when doing rebirth... don't buy these items. Spamming rebirth is good for a lot of reasons, not just rebirth points. Don't buy this stuff.

Super Dungeon

By the time you have unlocked the Super Dungeons, you'll understand the basics of the game and what the different things do. Don't think about buying any of this stuff until then.

Special

Special 1

Looking for a way to spend epic coins for the least strategic benefit possible? Nitro Max Charger is that item. Nitro Cap Expansion is something I've done without quite happily, too.

Don't use Ability Reset either. Rebirth resets your ability points, and gives you rebirth points.

Guild Ability Reset is the least bad reset option, because guild points are hard to get, and resetting them with a World Ascension is kind of a big deal. That said, it's still a reset.

Bribes for IEH1 are very powerful, and are always a good purchase. Each one gives you a talisman that gives a multiplicative XP bonus. Do not underestimate these babies, buy them. (Or play IEH1 and earn the achievements that way.)

Ambition

Ambition 1

Inventory slots are a trap. You'll be out of inventory slots again quicker than you can blink. The only path to sanity is to learn to disassemble things. Don't buy inventory slots, disassemble things.

Equipment slots are worth having. They get expensive pretty quickly, and you'll be fine without them, but you'll be more powerful with them.

Class Skill slots are awesome, and Global Skill Slots are significantly more awesome.

Ambition 2

Expedition Team Slot is a pure and simple increase to your expeditions. Maybe wait until you've unlocked expeditions though.

Dictionary Upgrade Reset is good if you want to take all your dictionary points off your warrior and put them on your wizard, and then switch them back again later. It allows you to be really clever and optimized in a very niche component of the game. Good if you're really really keen on equipment proficiency, or desperate for enchanted loot.

Smart Use of Proficiency Scrolls becomes compulsory if you want to use proficiency scrolls without going insane. Wait until you've unlocked proficiency scrolls, and don't sweat the first lost scroll too heavily - proficiency scrolls aren't too hard to replace.

Smart Use of Anvils becomes compulsory once you've started collecting significant numbers of anvils. Wait until you've actually got some anvils, then imagine losing some of them because you mis-clicked. Then buy this item. (Losing anvils to bad clicks is definitely a first world problem, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.)

Purple Fox Mastery is for optimizing automated equipment mastery. Wait until you've got a purple fox pet and are getting frustrated that your equipment is trying to level up to 20 when you only wanted it to get to level 10. When you get there, you'll want this, but it's going to take quite a while to get to that point.

Advanced auto-use Proficiency Scrolls is for when you've got loads of proficiency scrolls and you just can't spend them fast enough. Wait until you reach that point.

Advanced Auto-Disassembling Equipment Enchantments Filter is for when you're finding so much enchanted gear that you want to automatically destroy everything that doesn't have the specific enchantments that you're looking for. This is not a first world problem, this is a 1% problem. Wait until you have the problem before fixing it.

Auto Area Progression is probably most useful when doing timed content, and you want to unlock areas with minimum waste. Also good if you're planning on an extended AFK, and don't want to repeatedly grind the same area (although there's very real benefits to repeatedly grinding the same area, once you've unlocked Area Prestige).

Ambition 3

Above, I said, "Don't buy resets". Area/Dungeon Prestige Reset is an important exception to that rule. There's progression strategies that depend on spending prestige points in an area to make it easier to get prestige points, and then resetting those points to spend them on something else. There's tricks with dungeons that rely on resetting the prestige points, too. But do wait until you've unlocked the Area Prestige mechanic before you consider buying this.

Scroll Filter deals with the first-world problem of "I keep collecting scrolls that I don't actually want."

Stackable and Stack-Use of Scrolls addresses the very real first-world problem of "Dammit, I have so many Wizard Skill 10 scrolls that I want to use later, but where did I put the Thief Skill scroll?" It can also save you a ton of enchantment inventory slots, when you get to that point.

Persistent Skill Set can save you a whole bunch of clicking and fuss when you do World Ascension. Wait until you've done at least one World Ascension, and then work out how much clicking and fuss it would actually save you.

Auto Mysterious Water Adder prevents a very minor inefficiency that doesn't happen terribly often.

Utility Max Stack + 5 looks bland and terrible, but it's not. The reason why it's good is that you can make a bigger stack of talismans than you could if you didn't have it. A bigger stack of talismans means a bigger buff. Maybe wait until you've actually hit the stacking limit with a talisman though.

Ambition 4

The Auto Super Ability Point Adder is for when you're AFKing Super Dungeons shortly after resetting your Fame level. If you're reading this guide, you probably don't know what that means, which is a good indication that you don't need this unlock.

One-Click Super Dungeons is for when you are blitzing through Super Dungeons so quickly that clicking on them individually has become a waste of your time. You'll know when you've reached that point (and you'll have bought most of the other stuff in the epic store by then).

Daily

The Regular Daily Chest is free. You should claim it every day. If you're planning on World Ascension, then claim it immediately after you ascend, for a nice XP bonus.

If you've got more nitro than you can use, then this first world problem can be solved by spending it on a Passive Playtime Offline Bonus. With the introduction of Super Dungeons, we might not see a return to the Great Nitro Glut of 2023, but truly optimized alchemists can always find a way to make too much nitro.

Real Money tabs

The Epic Coin and Bundle tabs are for spending real money. I'm here to explain game mechanic stuff. Note that everything listed in this guide up to this point can be bought (over time) by doing daily quests and collecting epic coins.