Spirit Highlands is where your pets come from, and it is also where evolving a unit at the wrong time can cost you a stage clear. This Endless Frontier 2 Spirit Highlands guide covers how the stage puzzles work, the star system that decides whether you ever fight a stage twice, the tribe counters that solve walls, and the evolution trap that catches players who max everything.
This page is part of our Endless Frontier 2 guide, and it closes the loop with the pet tier list: the daily routine there is farmed here.
Key Takeaways
- Spirit Highlands is the pet mine: a permanent mode where pet fragment stages bookend every row of five, with gem and currency stages between them.
- Fewer units means more stars: each stage shows its thresholds, and on early stages a one-unit clear pays three stars.
- Three stars unlocks sweep: a 3-star clear lets you instantly repeat that stage forever, which turns daily farming into taps.
- Keep one unit unevolved until you are done: stages carry entry conditions like grade caps, and evolving a unit can lock you out of the solution that needs its base form.
What Spirit Highlands Is
Spirit Highlands is Endless Frontier 2’s permanent stage-puzzle mode, spread across many pages of 30 stages each. Unlike your main runs, nothing here rebirths or resets: stages stay cleared, star ratings stay earned, and the rewards are the pet fragments your whole pet roster is built from. Progress deeper through the pages and better fragment stages open up, which is why the community treats Spirit Highlands progress as pet progress.
How Stages and Rewards Work
The stage select tells you most of what you need:
- Pet stages sit at both ends of every row of five (1 and 5, 6 and 10, 11 and 15, and so on), 12 per page, with the stage card showing which pet’s fragments it carries.
- Currency stages fill the middle three slots of each row, paying gems and other currencies on the same 3-attempt schedule.
- Every stage allows 3 attempts per day (the 3/3 counter), refreshed daily. Specific pets live on specific stages, which is why pet farming has a daily ceiling.
- A pet can appear on more than one stage, which is how 6 fragments a day per pet becomes possible: two stages, three attempts each. That is the number behind the Tinkey and Icy daily buyouts.
- Star ratings persist on the stage card, so you can see at a glance which stages still owe you a better clear.
Stars and Sweeping
Star ratings reward restraint: the fewer units you field, the more stars you earn. Each stage screen shows its exact thresholds. On early stages the scale is one unit for three stars, two units for two, three units for one.
The payoff is sweeping: a 3-star clear unlocks instant repeat clears of that stage forever. No fight, no setup, just the rewards. Since pet farming means hitting the same stages three times a day for months, sweep access is the difference between a tap and a chore, and it is why the community solves stages with the fewest units possible even when a full team would clear comfortably.
Solving a Stage
Each stage is a formation puzzle. You see the enemy lineup, a set of placement slots whose layout changes stage to stage, a cap on how many heroes are eligible, and sometimes an entry condition (stage 1-1 caps units at 5 stars or below). You pick units from your roster, place them in the slots you choose, and press battle. Solving order:
- Try your own solution first, and have fun with it. A loss never costs a ticket, so experimenting is free. Solve what you can on your own before looking anything up.
- Stuck? Check the community’s posted solutions. Stage solutions specifying exact units and placements are maintained and shared, and there is no shame in using them on a wall.
- Play the counter cycle. Human beats Elf, Elf beats Undead, Undead beats Orc, and Orc beats Human. A wall is often just the wrong race on the field.
- Then move units between slots. Placement changes outcomes, so the same team in a different arrangement is a genuinely different attempt.
- Lean on the budget stars. A fully ascended (A3) Skeleton Warrior is the community’s early workhorse here, cheap to build and strong enough to carry low-unit clears.
The Evolution Trap
Best practice is simple: keep at least one unit unevolved until you have cleared what you need, and it makes moving level to level much easier. Evolving consumes the base form, entry conditions can cap grades, and solutions sometimes call for base forms, so maxing everything can leave you unable to field the answer for a stage. The roster screen shows it as a number: a unit line reading 0/1 is a base form you no longer have.
Evolution is still correct almost everywhere else in the game (the unit tier list covers the passive trades). Spirit Highlands is the reason you do it one unit behind your appetite.
Tickets and the Daily Routine
Spirit Highlands tickets are the mode’s entry currency, and the community’s gem rules apply every day:
- Use tickets as soon as you have them or they will not refresh.
- Buy 3 to 4 extra tickets with gems daily, worth it up to the 800-gem price tier.
- Sweep your farmed stages, then spend attempts pushing new stages toward 3-star clears.
- Pair it with the pet buyouts: Tinkey and Icy fragments daily, plus 12 or more extra fragments with gems. The full order lives in the pet tier list.
Free gems help fund all of it: three working codes pay 500 each on our Endless Frontier 2 codes page.
Gear for Long Idle Sessions
Idle games run for hours whether you watch them or not, so the gear that helps is a bigger screen, comfortable controls, and charging that keeps up. Prices checked August 2026.
TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus
An 11.5-inch 120Hz Android tablet at 46% off as a renewed unit. Formation puzzles are easier on a screen this size.
Anker 20,000mAh Power Bank
Twice the capacity of most banks with a built-in USB-C cable, so an all-day session never ends at 1 percent.
Mophie Powerstation with Stand
A 10,000mAh MagSafe bank with a built-in stand, 40% off: prop the phone up between sweep sessions while it charges.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Spirit Highlands in Endless Frontier 2?
The permanent stage-puzzle mode where pet fragments are farmed. It spans many pages of 30 stages each, pet stages sit at both ends of every row of five, every stage allows 3 attempts a day, and clears and star ratings never reset.
How do I get 3 stars in Spirit Highlands?
Clear the stage with fewer units. Each stage screen shows its thresholds; on early stages one unit earns three stars, two units earn two, and three units earn one. A 3-star clear unlocks sweeping that stage forever.
What does sweeping do in Spirit Highlands?
Sweep instantly repeats a stage you have 3-starred: no fight, just the rewards. It turns daily pet farming into a few taps, which is why low-unit clears are worth the extra difficulty once.
Why should I keep a unit unevolved for Spirit Highlands?
Evolving consumes the base form, and stages carry entry conditions like grade caps that evolved units can fail. If a solution needs a base form you evolved away, that stage is locked until the game gives you another copy. Keep at least one unit unevolved until you have cleared what you need.
Summary
Spirit Highlands runs on four rules: pet stages bookending every row with three attempts a day, fewer units for more stars, three stars for a permanent sweep, and one unevolved unit held back until you are done. Experiment freely (losses are free), lean on posted solutions and the race counter cycle when you hit a wall, and spend gems on tickets daily. The pet tier list tells you what to farm here, and the Endless Frontier 2 guide holds the rest of the map.