Heroes

DragonSword: Awakening has twenty playable Heroes. Each Hero has a distinct Status Ailment ability, which is the primary thing that differentiates them mechanically from one another.

Nineteen of them shipped with the game on July 23, 2026. The twentieth, Ryza, joined in the Version 1.1 update on October 15, 2026 as the first of four free post-launch Heroes.

All Unlockable Through Play

Under the Buy-to-Play Model for the Western release, every Hero is obtainable through the story and in-game activities. No Hero is locked behind gacha pulls or extra paid purchases beyond the base game. Hound13 has stated on record that all heroes originally intended for World 1 are included in the package and obtainable through story progression and gameplay. This is a deliberate departure from the Korean free-to-play version, which used gacha to distribute heroes.

Hound13 has since spelled out how that unlocking works in the shipping build. Every one of the twenty is tied to a quest: some are handed to the player outright as a main-quest reward, and the rest are assembled from a material called Nameless Souls, earned through quest and exploration play. A separate item, the Invitation Letter, is also earned from quests and spent to recruit Heroes. Nothing in the chain is randomised and nothing is sold.

The character grade system carried over from the free-to-play build was removed during the rework. Instead of ranking Heroes into tiers, the studio averaged stats across the tiers that used to exist, so a Hero's usefulness comes from the Status Ailment they apply and the combos they enable rather than from a rarity label.

Where They Fit Into Combat

Status Ailment variety is the clearest way to understand what a Hero does. One Hero might specialise in stacking a particular ailment; another might chain debuffs that set up big burst damage. Players extend those ailments with Active Skills and close with Signal Skills through the Switching Signals tag-team system, so the practical question is which ailments and which Signal Skills the player wants to have in their active rotation.

Named Heroes so Far

All nineteen Heroes shipped playable on July 23, 2026, unlocked through story progression. Twelve were named during the pre-launch campaign. The first six (Lute, Castella, Aria, Kalien, Theresia, and Ornette) were revealed through April and May 2026; three more, the knights of the Orbis Royal Castle (Cerese, Reina, and Kalsion), were introduced in the Orbis Kingdom Hero Teaser at the start of June 2026, and a tenth, Charlotte, was revealed on June 4, 2026 ahead of a developer live stream. An eleventh, Roxy, a bow user, was playable in the June 2026 demo, where she featured in the demo roster and tag-team gameplay; her faction has not been detailed in official material yet. A twelfth, Dana, the youngest member of the Red Fox Mercenary Corps and an ice alchemist, was revealed on July 1, 2026 in her own Hero Trailer. A separate public name, Johnny, was recorded before launch only as a travelling companion of Lute; official post-launch screenshots have since settled him as playable, as the party-bar section below records. The remaining identities surfaced only after release, through screenshots and patch notes, rather than through the run-up or the Steam Next Fest demo. The June 2026 demo additionally included a demo-exclusive Hero who is not part of the full-game roster.

Post-launch patch notes have confirmed three further names in the shipped roster, and they are the only published source for any of them. Astria and Reina both received swimsuit costumes in the Summer Sea Set, Eileen appears in a combat fix for her Barraging Spear applying the Airborne ailment, and Alex surfaced in patch 1.0.10 in a list of hero skills. A fourth name, Ninian, has a Bond Quest of her own, but she has no entry in the per-Hero balance section of the Version 1.1.0 notes, which covers all nineteen launch Heroes, and the same notes describe her Bond Quest as an escort, so she is treated here as a non-playable character.

Roxy's kit also became clearer after release: she has a third Awakening with an aerial re-jump whose cooldown was cut from three seconds to one and a half in patch 1.0.4, plus repeatable in-place Air Stomps. Kalien and Dana both have Hero Quests, and Johnny appears in cooking scenes during the late Adventure Quests; his playable status is settled by the party-bar screenshots covered below.

Post-Launch Heroes

Hound13 has confirmed that Ryza is the first of four new Heroes it committed to adding after launch; a teaser trailer on September 16, 2026 announced her for October 2026 under the tagline "Would you behold the spear that once saved the world?", and on October 8 the studio dated her to the Version 1.1 update on October 15, 2026, billing her as the 20th playable Hero, and she joined the roster in update 1.1.0 that day. The studio has stressed these four are part of the full version rather than paid DLC and will be developed regardless of sales. Ryza arrives first because implementation issues kept her out of the initial roster, and the other three follow in an order still being decided internally.

The Version 1.1.0 notes introduce her as one of the six Heroes who defeated the Origin Dragon Arugal, known as the "Spear of Annihilation". She is the reward for Adventure Quest 53, Reunion, and players who had already completed it received her at once. The notes describe swift spearwork and lightning strikes that inflict Shock, with a signature pattern of leaping through space to spears planted on the field, then retrieving them to hit the enemies around her. Her Exclusive Karma, The Scar Lightning Left Behind, is available at the Exchange, and her Hero Codex entry carries an introduction video. A first-login fault that stopped some players levelling her up was fixed in update 1.1.1 the same day.

At the October 1, 2026 developer stream, which showed a build still in development, she was introduced as one of the six heroes of the story, long missing, who comes to the party's aid in a fight against Gauron. The stream broke her kit down further: her Q skill throws a lightning spear, and pressing F afterwards teleports her to where it landed for an area Shock strike; charging the throw lets the player aim it, and with two or more spears in enemies, F sends her darting between them. Her E skill is a wide area Shock sweep, Grab on a Shocked enemy inflicts Knockdown, and her Master Skill extends Grab to enemies under physical Status Ailments. Her own page covers the kit in more detail.

Alongside the new Heroes, Hound13 has outlined post-launch systems for the second half of 2026, covered in full in the Post-Launch Roadmap. Hero Quests will explore the untold stories of Heroes not covered in the main story, starting with Othello's quest, What the Wind Asks, which arrived in Version 1.1.0 on October 15, 2026 and opens after Chapter 5, and followed by one tied to Ryza. A Rift System is also in development, in which rifts appear across the world and let the player travel to other dimensions for combat. The studio has also named quality-of-life work, including a lock-on feature, gamepad and hit-feedback improvements, camera options, a Photo Mode, and a help system, as a top priority for the launch build and the updates that follow.

Another Hero, Othello, appeared in pre-launch material and received the first of the new Hero Quests in Version 1.1.0, ahead of one tied to Ryza. He shipped playable: official post-launch screenshots show him occupying a party slot alongside Cerese, Dana, Charlotte, and Theresia, fighting with a polearm. His ailments have not been detailed.

What the Shipped Party Bar Shows

Official screenshots taken from the released build put three Heroes on screen at once, numbered one to three down the left edge, with a Tag Combo marker on whichever one is active. That is the clearest confirmation yet of both the party size and several roster names that had never appeared in a trailer.

Adding Sion and Tarte to the twelve names revealed before release, plus Astria and Eileen from patch notes, accounts for sixteen of the nineteen launch Heroes; Othello, Johnny and Alex complete the count, as the sections around this one record. Enemy levels visible in the same shots run from 31 in mid-game areas up to 67, which gives a rough sense of the campaign's level curve.

The Roster After the August Broadcast

The August 10, 2026 developer broadcast also settled a name that had looked like a roster entry. Answering a question about a costume for Ysera, Hound13 said Ysera is one of the six heroes who appear in the story, so no skin is planned for now; making one would mean redoing combat sound and voice work. In a separate answer in the same set, the studio said the six story heroes are not planned to become playable, citing their symbolic weight in the story and the fact that their motions are built on existing player characters, with Ryza the one exception. Ysera is therefore treated here as a story figure rather than one of the nineteen.

Patch 1.0.10 then supplied the last name. Alex appears there in a list of hero skills, in the same breath as Aria, Castella, Dana, Johnny, Ornette, Tarte and Astria, which is about as unambiguous a playable-Hero context as a patch note offers.

With Alex in and Ysera out, the names confirmed in the shipped build come to nineteen, matching the advertised roster: Lute, Castella, Aria, Kalien, Theresia, Ornette, Cerese, Reina, Kalsion, Charlotte, Roxy, Dana, Astria, Eileen, Othello, Johnny, Sion, Tarte, and Alex. Hound13's October 8, 2026 description of Ryza as the 20th playable Hero fits that count, and the Version 1.1.0 notes settled it: their per-Hero balance section has an entry for each of exactly these nineteen names. Eileen, whose only kit evidence had been a single scripted Airborne application, is one of the three Heroes who received new costumes alongside Version 1.1.0, with Reina and Othello.

Hound13 has never published a standalone roster list, so the reconstruction above was built from trailers, screenshots, patch notes and developer answers. The per-Hero balance section of the Version 1.1.0 notes is the closest thing to an official list so far, and it matches the reconstruction name for name.

Kits Confirmed Through Patch Notes

Post-launch fixes are the most reliable published source on what several of the less-documented Heroes actually do.

What Hound13 Ruled Out

• Ursula will not become playable. She was designed as a raid boss and the studio said she is not suited to the role. See Dungeons and Raids.

• There are no hidden or secret Heroes in the current build.

• Villain characters are not planned as playable, and there are no guest characters from other properties.

• Skill swapping between Heroes is not planned, and explicit team-synergy bonuses are not planned either, though composition still matters through skills and stats.

• The Awakening ladder stays at six stages and is not being extended near-term.

On the additive side, the studio said more male Heroes are planned to keep the roster balanced, that upcoming Heroes are being designed with distinctive mechanics including transformation-style kits, that a support or healer-focused Hero is under consideration, and that a katana-wielding Hero is planned. It also said Cerese has significant story content ahead of her, and that Hero Quest coverage will expand for Kalien and Kalsion among others. New Heroes arrive gradually rather than in a batch, and a completely new Hero takes at least around eight months to build from concept through voice work.

Companions and Side Cast

With Dana confirmed as a playable Hero, the one named companion who was long listed here as unconfirmed has since been settled the other way:

Heroes of Old

Sixty years before the events of the game, a Dragon nearly destroyed the continent, and six legendary Heroes of Old rose to drive it back. Hound13 has said the six are not planned to join the playable roster, with one exception: Ryza, who joined in Version 1.1.0 on October 15, 2026, and whose update notes name the dragon the six defeated as the Origin Dragon Arugal. Developer answers also name Ysera as one of the six. One of the main pre-launch quest hooks is that the modern party is tracing the footsteps of the legendary Heroes across the continent to uncover their hidden secrets.

Becoming the Dragon Sword

The title of the game is in-universe as well as marketing copy. Hound13 describes the central question as whether the modern cast, led by Lute, can truly become the Dragon Sword, savior of the continent. The Dragon Sword is not a weapon item; it is the title borne by whoever rises to take on the Dragon threat. Whether the player's Heroes earn that title, and what happens if they do not, is the spine of the main story.

Related

• Status Ailments - the combat layer every Hero is built around.

• Active Skills and Signal Skills - the mid-combo and finisher layers each Hero contributes to.

• Buy-to-Play Model - why every Hero is unlocked through play rather than through gacha.

• Continent of Orbis - the open-world setting the Heroes share.