How Earning Works

Updated 7 November 2026

Your hero is paid $AFKHERO continuously out of a shared reward pool the entire time it is fighting. Your pay is your share of that pool, and your share follows your earning weight: how strong your hero is, how deep a zone it can hold, and which boosts you have switched on. This section explains each part, and the rules that most often cost players earnings without them noticing.

The share model

Everyone is paid from the same pool at the same time. Each day a fixed fraction of the pool is released and split by earning weight across the heroes that have been active in the last 8 hours. Getting stronger or adding a boost raises your share; it does not create new tokens, so a boost changes your slice of the pool, not the size of the pool. That also means the game is more generous when few players are active and leaner when it is crowded.

Heroes that have not bought a pack are not paid $AFKHERO.

Your earning weight

Your weight is a base number, multiplied by your boosts, plus your staking bonus.

• Base weight grows with your hero level (a little faster than the level itself), is multiplied by the earning weight of the zone you fight in, and doubles in Nightmare. A defeat in Nightmare returns you to normal mode.
• Boosts multiply the base. They are listed in the table below.
• Staking bonus is added alongside, as a share of your base weight. See Staking Vault.

Gear in detail. A worn Angel piece adds about +36% and a God piece about +71% at +10, and 40% of that at +0. A seal multiplies the piece's own bonus: Star x1.5, Moon x2, Sun x3. The total is capped, and no full set is needed.

+10 Mastery. An Angel, God or Titan piece at +10 gets a 30% bigger bonus: about +46% for an Angel piece and +93% for a God piece, before its seal. A full +10 set makes your whole gear bonus 15% bigger. The cap is applied first, then +10 Mastery. See Items & Rarities.

Zone earning weights

Each zone carries an earning weight that climbs with depth. It applies to $AFKHERO only — loot, gold and XP are unchanged.

Pushing into the next zone as soon as your Power can hold it is the biggest step-change available to you. But a zone's weight is only collected in full once your Power reaches its Full premium from figure. You always collect the base x1; the extra part grows in proportion to your Power divided by that figure. A hero far below it collects little more than the base, because it spends the window dying instead of killing — so a shallower zone can pay more than a deeper one you cannot hold.

Which zones pay

You only receive $AFKHERO in zones close to your level — a level 60 hero cannot drop back to zone 1 and farm it for easy tokens. A zone pays while its unlock level is within 10 levels of yours (Frozen Spire, which unlocks at level 40, stops paying at level 51). A zone far below you still pays gold, XP and loot, but no $AFKHERO. The two deepest zones, Singularity Vault and Void Abyss, always pay, so an endgame hero is never stranded.

Power raises your share

Building Power directly increases your share. It scales on a curve with diminishing returns rather than one-for-one, from a fixed baseline of 52,000 Power that is the same in every zone:

Each ten-fold increase in Power is worth another +1. Power never lowers your share — the multiplier starts at x1 and only goes up.

Power is not the only lever: the zone's weight multiplies on top of it. The best return is usually gear up, then push deeper — not one or the other.

Fighting time

Earnings accrue for the time your hero spends fighting, and the short gap between one kill and the next counts. Time spent downed after a defeat does not: heroes above level 10 wait out a 10-minute recovery timer with no pay, and a Revive skips it. Good gear keeps you alive, and alive time is paid time.

While you are away

Your hero keeps fighting while you are away, and the server settles the whole absence when you return — up to an 8-hour catch-up per absence. Time beyond 8 hours does not count.

The whole absence counts only at a 100% Earning Boost. Below 100%, a return counts only the first 15 minutes, no matter how long you were gone, so a closed tab earns almost nothing. This covers everything your hero earns while you are away: XP, gold, loot and $AFKHERO. Mining is not affected by this rule: a mining hero keeps digging until its energy or its pickaxe runs out.

Earning Boost

Your Earning Boost is a 0-100% score built from six tasks, shown in your Rewards panel. It does three jobs: it sets a multiplier on your whole share (x0.2 at 0%, rising to x1 at 100%), it decides how much of an absence counts (everything at exactly 100%, otherwise the first 15 minutes), and at exactly 100% it unlocks mining and Diamond Digger trips.

In the Rewards panel the tasks are called Make a deposit, Spend $AFKHERO in Store (not Market), 24h no withdraw, Hold 200K $AFKHERO, Link X and Link Discord. A season reset does not reset the boost: deposits and Store spend count over your whole account life, and your holdings and links carry over.

If you plan to be away, withdraw after a long session rather than before it, and keep at least 200,000 $AFKHERO across balance and stake so only the 17% task is affected — it restores itself 24 hours later.

The boost is recalculated every two hours, and your absence rule updates immediately when you complete a task from the Earning Boost panel.

Why an open tab can still be limited

The server tells whether you are present by how recently your game checked in. Browsers freeze background tabs to save battery, which slows those check-ins, so a tab that is open but buried behind other windows can look closed to the server and be limited. The game sends a quiet keep-alive about once a minute to prevent this, but a tab the operating system has suspended — phone screen off, laptop asleep — cannot be helped. If you are below 100% boost and want a long session to count, keep the tab visible.

Name tags and profile frames

A name tag and a profile frame each add a bonus while worn. You wear one tag and one frame at a time, and the two work together. They change your share of the pool; they do not add tokens. See Store & Boosts for where each comes from.

See your own numbers

Open Earnings and tap See breakdown to see your base weight and every part above, and the one change that would raise your share most.

Your share of the network in the breakdown is your earning weight divided by the total earning weight of every paid hero active in the last 8 hours. Heroes who are mining are left out. Your $AFKHERO per day is that share of the pool's daily release. It goes up when your own weight grows (level, a deeper zone, Nightmare, Earning Boost, gear, badges and the other parts above) and down when more or stronger players are active.

How to raise your share — the short version

• Push deeper as soon as your Power can hold the next zone. The biggest single jump.
• Build Power — it multiplies your share up to x6, and every 10x of Power is another +1.
• Reach 100% Earning Boost and stay there. It lifts your multiplier to x1 and lets a long absence count in full.
• Wear your best name tag and profile frame.
• Join an active guild — up to +25%.
• Complete the Origins card binder — a boost for good, from +10% (Collector) up to +200% (Prismatic Master). See Collectible Cards.
• Stake — a higher tier adds a bonus to your base weight. See Staking Vault.
• Stay alive — sustain keeps the fight, and the pay clock, running.