Hey, all.

After leveling my first hero up a bit, I wanted to branch out and try a couple other races. After I finished the first match with a my second hero, I was put back on the menu. When I clicked on skirmish again, I was given the hero create screen instead of the hero select screen.

I quit the game and reopened it, and this time when I clicked on skirmish I got the hero select screen and saw my first, leveled up hero, but the option to scroll between heroes was grayed out. I tried creating another hero and the same thing happened. Now, if I try to create a new hero with the same name as one of the two I created before, it says that name is already taken, so the heroes are in there somewhere. It's just not letting me select them.

Any help much appreciated!

I'm bumping this as it's still an issue. I was able to locate the actual hero files on my hard drive, so the file are there for the game to read—they're in the same directory as the hero who I can play as and everything.

So when you say it's still a problem do you mean the 2 heros from before are still unplayable or that it keeps happening?

I do remember this happening from time to time. Restarting the game always fixed it for older heros but new ones might get lost. What I think it is, is that for some reason the hero's progress wasn't saved after the game. I've never had this happen with an old hero before (though I have lost the progress from the last battle I did with them) but I have lost new heros to this. (By new I mean they only did one battle and then were gone.)

Also where were the hero files you found? I know there's a saved games folder but that actually isn't the hero data. Your heros are stored in a file called herodata.xcr I think. Unfortunately I don't know of any reliable editors for WBC 1 (though maybe someone else here does?) so it might be hard to check if they're actually in there. I would guess either some part of them got corrupted or for some reason it only has their name in the file.

There's a text file in the WBC directory called preselected hero that determines what hero is the first in the list. If you change the name to one of the characters you lost that might remind the game that they're there, assuming that they are.

If you can get a few battles in with a hero this shouldn't happen to them hopefully. I wish I knew what actually caused this to happen but it always seemed random to me. You might try saving at some point in battle to see if that increases their chances of survival?

I have a similar problem: No hero in skirmish despite completing both campaigns. I first completed the path of light and i got the message saying my hero was exported to skirmish. I didnt check if it was. I completed the path of darkness and cant remember if i had the same message again. Then when i clicked skirmish i immediately got to the create new hero screen.