Whiteout Survival hero XP and star costs, level 1 to 80 and 0★ to 5★

Taking a hero from level 1 to 80 costs 23,641,790 XP, and 14,840,000 of it, about 63%, goes on the last ten levels. Stars are just as back-loaded: a recruited hero needs 1,065 shards to reach 5★, and the last star alone is 600 of them.

How XP grows with level

The first 20 levels are close to free. Level 2 needs 480 XP, level 20 needs 13,000, and the whole climb to level 20 costs 91,790 XP, under 0.4% of the total. From there every ten levels cost two to three times as much as the ten before:

The single step to level 80 costs 2,400,000 XP, about the same as levels 1 to 55 combined, which come to 2,421,790. Within each band of five levels the cost climbs in even steps (1,000,000, 1,100,000, then 1,300,000, 1,500,000, 1,700,000, 1,900,000, 2,100,000 at the top), so there is no cheap level to stop at near the cap.

The Furnace gates hero levels

From level 21 a hero can't level past what your Furnace allows. Levels 21 and 22 need Furnace 10. After that each Furnace level opens three hero levels up to Furnace 19, which opens 47 to 49. From Furnace 20 each Furnace level opens five: Furnace 20 opens 50 to 54, Furnace 21 opens 55 to 59, and so on to Furnace 24, which opens 70 to 74. In this game build, Furnace 25 opens the last six levels, 75 to 80.

In practice this means XP is rarely what holds a mid-game hero back. A player at Furnace 20 can take every hero to level 54, which costs 2,231,790 XP each, less than the single last level.

Star and tier costs

Each star has five tiers before the next star. Every step costs hero shards of that hero, and from 1★ on the price is the same for all five tiers of a star. The step that completes a star costs the next star's tier price, so the jumps arrive one step early:

The last two stars are 900 of the 1,065 shards, about 85%. A hero at 3★ has spent 165 shards, under a sixth of the way to 5★, so the shard sinks are 4★ and 5★, and those stars are where shards are best saved for the heroes you will keep using.

What each hero needs

Recruiting a hero takes 10 of its shards for 66 of the 68 heroes, so the full cost from nothing to 5★ is 1,075 shards. Two heroes cost more to recruit: Jessie needs 40, for 1,105 to 5★, and Jeronimo needs 20, for 1,085. The star costs after recruitment don't depend on rarity or generation: a Rare hero like Eugene and a generation 18 Mythic like Aisha both need 1,065 shards from recruitment to 5★.

The roster has 4 Rare heroes and 9 Epic heroes, all from generation 1, and 55 Mythic heroes. Generation 1 has 4 Mythics; every later generation, 2 to 18, adds three.

Putting it together

Maxing one hero's level and stars costs 23,641,790 XP and 1,075 shards. The two costs behave alike: both are cheap early and steep at the end, with the last ten levels holding most of the XP and the last two stars most of the shards. Spreading XP across several heroes up to your Furnace cap costs little; the expensive choices are the final levels past 70 and the stars past 3★, so make those for the heroes your formations rely on.