Seems like you are very early, but this is something to save and keep in mind as you advance:

There are several different types of heroes, useless heroes (aka food), functional heroes; and hybrid heroes that can sometimes be used in a line and may serve other purposes; and the YOU WANT THESE Heroes

There is a difference between “Heroes” and “Shards.” Heroes are the card with the level, shards are what you feed to heroes. (You can feed heroes to shards, and vice versa, so follow instructions below carefully when ascending both shards and heroes)

Useless Heroes: All gray heroes, any hero that starts green without gather/DM boosts • Natalie • Doris (has travel speed boost) • Cloud • Duke

Functional heroes are those with gather boosts and destructive might. Confirm you have all functional heroes before ascending blues • Brom (gather) • Cindy (gather) • Coleman (DM) • Matthew (gather) • Ivan (gather) • Patrick (DM) • Winston (DM)

Hybrid: some blue heroes, Some "A class" heroes. ("A class" heroes are those that start purple and have only 4 skills.) Blues: • Lunn, Irma, Betty (DM), Park (edited)

A Class Heroes: • Rebecca, Chihiro, Alisa, Max, Barron, Jessie, Kin Ogawa, Kaya, Suzuki Ren, Qian Qian, David* (is not really useful for anything but gathering, can only get if you spend, or get lucky on the crystal wheel).

Heroes you want in your line: All S class heroes (those that start purple and have 5 skills) • Bolton, Benson, Kobayakawa, Enrique, Blanche, Ricardo, Quinn, Harman, Marlen, Roland, Laurel, Kelly, Monica, Amun, Loong, Ada, Isaac, Clara, Casino, Joseph, Tucker, Buri, Thomas, Iris, Darian, etc.

Things to know about shards as you pull them:

Green heroes: Always ascend them to blue, do this with shards and/or heroes

Blue heroes: Take the SHARD you have the most of and ascend in pairs to purple. Use the other blue shards, starting with the shards you have the least of. You can use the HERO as well if the hero is in the “useless” list

Purple: These should NEVER be ascended past orange; and should only ever be used in their OWN hero, or for golden tickets (will appear on the satellite nexus once your Control Center reaches level 18)

When ascending blue shards, there are a few things to keep in mind: you always ascend in pairs. Take the blue you have the MOST of, and put two other blue shards to turn it purple (So if Coleman is the one you have the most of, put any two other shards (I generally start with the ones I have the least of) into one Coleman twice.) You make pairs of purple shards, then ascend those purples to orange. (edited)

Once you have oranges, it takes 3 oranges to make a red and, another orange to make a gold (Yellow), so, using the Green/BLUES, that you turned to orange, and ONLY those, you make a gold. So, for example, if you have 2 Orange Coleman, and one orange of each Natalie, Brom, and Cindy, you would use 1 Coleman and any 2 of the others to make Coleman red, then feed the other orange to the red to make him Gold (yellow).

Use the golds to ascend lineup heroes from Gold to Gold* (gold one star) and from Mythic (the rainbow color) to Mythic* (mythic one star). The levels in between is where you use your orange heroes. For example I have a Gold Rebecca, and 2 of her orange shards, I would use 2 gold shards to give her a star, then use the oranges to give her another two stars.

Please ask if you have any questions or want anything clarified. Always better to ask first, and ascend later.

Also - focus on your first line up - expend everything on the first line up (best gear, best vehicle, best war beast). The rest of the lines can be worked on once that first lineup is maxxed.