DragonSword Heroes: All 19 and How to Unlock Them

DragonSword: Awakening ships with 19 playable heroes, and the thing that actually differentiates them is not damage — it is which Status Ailment they apply. Your team is a relay, and a hero who cannot start or continue your chain is dead weight regardless of their numbers.

Eight heroes come from the story. The other eleven are bought in the Exchange with Fate's Invitation tickets, and there is no other way to get them — no gacha, no paid characters, no drop chance. The game hands out exactly enough invitations to complete the roster.

The roster

How unlocking actually works

Story heroes join as the campaign progresses. Johnny is the clearest example: he is a story unlock and never appears in the Exchange at all.

Exchange heroes cost one Fate's Invitation each. Players report receiving roughly one per chapter through Chapter 5, with the final five arriving from Hero Quests. That account comes from a single player thread rather than from Hound13, so treat the pacing as approximate — what is confirmed is that the Exchange is the only source and that the game supplies enough invitations for everyone.

If you want to work out what completing the roster costs you from where you are now, the hero unlock planner takes the table above and lets you tick off what you already own.

There is no way to buy a hero with money. This matters because DragonSword launched in Korea in December 2025 as a free-to-play gacha, and the Steam version deliberately strips that out — the developer terminated its publishing agreement and relaunched as a buy-to-play package with gacha removed.

Four more heroes, free

Hound13's roadmap lists four post-launch heroes, and the producer was explicit that these "are included in the full version — not paid DLC — and will be developed regardless of sales":

• Ryza — shock specialist; throws her spear then teleports to it
• Jerome — knockdown specialist; huge greatsword, 3-stage Grab
• Veronica — fists and gun; Stun
• Logan — tank with a massive shield

Ryza is first in the order.

Building a team

You field three heroes and control one at a time. Each carries 2 Active Skills and 2 Signal Skills — the producer's framing is "up to 4 skills… making 12 total skills in play."

The constraint that shapes every team: Signal Skills arm when a specific ailment is inflicted. So your three heroes need overlapping ailment coverage, not complementary damage types. A team of three heroes who each apply a different ailment nobody else responds to will never chain.

Practical pairings that follow from the table above:

• Airborne core — Astria, Eileen and Aria all launch. This is the most self-sufficient chain in the roster.
• Stun core — Lute, Castella, Theresia and Kalien all apply Stun, and Lute's heal makes the group forgiving.
• Burn / Shock — Kalien and Aria for burn, Ornette for electrocution. Useful against enemies that gate on element (see below).
• Bleed — Theresia is the primary applier; check which of your others respond to Bleed before committing.

Read the skill text in-game to find each hero's trigger. As one long-time player puts it, the way to work out a team is to "read through the skills and find out what is their trigger mechanism" — the game does not present a compatibility chart.

Why elemental coverage matters beyond combos

Some enemies are outright immune until hit with the correct element. Soulwarden Zemoor takes no damage at all until struck with shock or burn, and the game signposts this with a note on a nearby staircase. Kalien is the community's standard answer to undead.

If a fight feels like your damage is being ignored, look for the environmental note before you look at your gear.

Hero-specific bugs worth knowing

Patch 1.0.8 fixed four issues all caused by dashing via a held dodge key: characters dropping out of combat state, Sion's field Relic being retrieved, Theresia's [Inquisition] ending mid-combat, and Kalsion's [Royal Flame] ending mid-combat. If you play any of those three and your state keeps cancelling, make sure you are patched past 1.0.8.

Earlier fixes: Roxy's consecutive in-place Air Stomps and her 3rd-Awakening aerial re-jump cooldown (3s → 1.5s) in 1.0.4; Eileen's Barraging Spear not applying Airborne, same patch; Dana's Summon Chako rage consumption.

What we cannot tell you

Tarte's playstyle, Johnny's weapon, and the full kits for Othello and Charlotte are not documented in any source we consider reliable. The exact chapter or quest that grants each Fate's Invitation is likewise unconfirmed. There is also no verified complete ailment list — the nine names above are each individually confirmed, but Hound13 has never published the full set.

The auto-generated wikis will give you all of this in a confident table. They cannot tell you where the numbers came from.