Character creation | Basics Heroes & Generals Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
Character creation does not work in the same way as with a typical MMORPG, where you make your own avatar, while selecting from a dozens of attributes, skills and elements of attire. Instead, there's a possibility (and after a short while a necessity) of buying, training, and in a way customizing new soldiers to your own needs.
After you've completed the "training" and the "first blood" missions, you will have three soldiers at your disposal, one for each side (America, Germany and Soviet Union). Each one starts with a zero rank - except for the one you used to complete the "First Blood", because he should be awarded to the first rank upon its completion. Soldiers in the game are called Heroes and they are used in the Action Game portion of the game, where you select your soldier and join a battlefield, playing in a first-person view (there's a separate game mode called "General" or "War", in which you are in charge of a group of assault teams, but this will be explained later on in this guide).
Besides the basic, available at the beginning soldiers, you will be able to buy additional ones. There are dozens of options and you can basically buy a soldier of any rank and class, starting with those who don't even have a rank yet (like your starting ones), to Generals of the Army. The whole purchasing system is, basically, divided into two separate parts. The first one allows you to buy rookie soldiers, with a zero rank - those can be purchased by using Credits, a currency received by taking part in missions. The second option gives you access to more experienced soldiers, but it requires you to spend Gold, which can (mostly) only be acquired by spending real money in the shop. If you, however, plan to have a longer adventure in Heroes & Generals, and at the same time you don't want to spend hundreds of hours of your time grinding for experience and/or Credits, it's worth to invest a couple of bucks (or euros) - getting a soldier to rank 12, so that he can gain access to "War" mode, will require you to play at least several hundreds games.
As it was mentioned in the introduction of this section, you can rely on a single soldier for some time, but you will soon notice some serious limitations, resulting from different class-related requirements for some equipment. You want to ride a tank? That's good, but you will first have to retrain your soldier so that he can be a Tanker, and when you decide to have a little adventure behind the "wheel" of an airplane, you will have to transform him into a Pilot. Of course, each and every transfer costs a lot of Credits (especially with the Tanker) and it's a lot more profitable to just buy a new soldier, rank him up and retrain him to become a class of your need - later on in the game you should have one soldier for each class.