Worlds, unlocks and progression

Time Heroes has ten live worlds, from Forest Realm to End of Time. Each one is a gate with three parts: a player level, a coin cost, and the previous world's boss on the floor. From World 6 a fourth part is added, a number of Paradox resets. You cannot skip a world, and buying a shuttle does not open one on its own.

The single most common question is how to unlock World 3. The answer is level 30, 10 million coins and the World 2 boss, and that is the pattern everywhere: the fight standing in the world you are in is what opens the next one.

The full unlock table

The shape of the ladder changes at World 6

Worlds 2 through 5 are paid for with coins and a boss fight, which is a power problem. From World 6 a second currency is added, Paradox resets, which is a commitment problem. A Paradox is a deliberate restart that trades your current progress for permanent multipliers, so the back half of the game asks you to go backwards on purpose, five times, to reach End of Time.

Level requirements climb in a clean pattern of ten levels per world, from level 20 for World 2 up to level 100 for World 10. The maximum player level is 250, so reaching the last world is nowhere near the end of levelling.

World bosses are the real door

Coins and levels get you eligible. A world boss gets you through. Boss encounters unlock on the pattern of the world number times ten, plus ten, so the World 1 boss opens at level 20, World 2 at level 30, and the ninth and final boss at level 100. World 10 deliberately has no boss.

A boss fight is a damage check wrapped in an action fight. Boss health is indexed to the expected power of its world and you have 90 seconds, so if your total damage per second cannot cut through in time, the attempt fails no matter how well you play. On top of that you have five hearts, and dodging is a keyboard verb: space, enter, arrows and WASD all work.

The two ways to lose need opposite fixes, and the defeat screen names which one fired. Running out of time means bring more damage. Losing your hull means dodge better. Grinding coins will not solve a hull loss.

Everything scales five times per world

Pet damage multiplies by five for every world past the first, and egg prices follow the same curve on purpose. A World 10 Common Basic pet does 1,953,125 times the damage of the same pet in World 1. This is why moving forward always beats optimising a world you have outgrown, and why a deeper world's egg is not really more expensive in the way the raw number suggests.