Please make a brief explanation on screen in the Ascension area for troops of what’s required for ascension. If I need 5 of Astral Spirit and have 5, it’s confusing on why I can’t ascend that troop. Apparently, it’s a common question asked in chat.
It was also specifically requested that I tag onto that request that “snacrifice omnomnom” should be part of the explanation. (Sorry to the person who suggested it; I can’t remember your in game name!)
You only need FIVE?? hmm, what level is it? Most of mine need forty cards or more to ascend. what level are you trying to ascend to?
You always need one extra copy.
If it says you need 5 copies, you actually need 6 copies to be able to ascend.
One card will be ascended, and the other 5 will be consumed. If you have just 5 copies, you can’t ascend it, as all 5 would be consumed and you’ll remain with 0 copies lol. .
The very first ascension always uses 5 cards, regardless of rarity.
Like a base rarity white card needs 5 cards to ascend to green, while a base rarity legendary needs also 5 cards to ascend to mythic.
I think this is a fair request for some explainer text.
It feels like every other month or so someone’s confused by this and makes a post. It’s easy to explain and it makes sense when it’s explained, but for a lot of people that explanation comes from the forums.
If the game had a little ‘?’ button with a blurb, then we could make fun of them for not reading the in-game help before they post. 
(To be clear, the reasoning is the game does not allow you to go down to 0 troops via ascension. If you have 0, then it’s like you don’t own the card, so it won’t let you. I’m not sure if the same is true for disenchanting.)
We have an article for this:
Which could be linked in-game inside the Troop or Upgrade menu. As a support agent who gets a few requests as to why a player can’t upgrade (when an extra copy is needed) I agree that the game could also potentially make this clearer 
I’ll pass this onto the team.
Not all games play nice with alt+tab to look up stuff on the forums and for myself at least, it’s just easier to pop into chat to ask a question rather than trying to look up something. Thank you Cyrup for responding; very much appreciated.
Thank you to everyone else who took time to let me know how Ascension works.
Not a problem. The team are already considering some ways that this could be improved, so we may see some changes in the future.
Hmm, I just had a thought and while I’m sure it’s not feasible to code it, perhaps the idea will spark something else for the team.
Way back in the day, I used to play MOOs/MUDs/MUSHs and that sort of thing. There was always a newbie area where new players were “safe” from more seasoned users (PK was a serious thing for some of those games.) In this area, the user was given newbie equipment and set out into a small world not connected to the rest of the game. In this area, everything was explained . . .how to cast a spell, how to move around, how to equip/unequip gear etc. At the end of the newbie area, some games upgraded newbie gear to low end actual game gear and the player then exited the training zone to the actual game. There was always the option to skip it if one cared to but you usually ended up losing out on something if you did.
It’s been a long time since I had a new account on GoW but perhaps something like this could be feasible for it? Give the player some common cards to work through and then at the end of the area, a small gift that wouldn’t be impactful overall to the game. Perhaps a couple of rare cards and 1k gold to get them started.
Just a few thoughts my <haven’t had enough coffee> brain came up with.