Account Guidance & Daily Tasks

This guide is mostly for smaller/medium accounts trying to grow as fast as possible.  But the hope is, some of the things in this guide can help everyone maximize their accounts even if they’re already higher level.  This is a long read, this is a lot of info, but it’s totally worth the time investment to read this guide and do these things every day if you’re looking to grow and be a competative player in this game.

Some of this is very basic, but I’m still hoping you can get value out of it or maybe there’s something here that you missed before or maybe hadn’t thought of yet.  These are in no particular order but I’m numbering them anyways.  We all know to upgrade heroes, and there’s a separate guide for that so I’m going to skip stuff like that, this is mainly for growth, economy, development, and daily tasks.

1. Always complete your daily tasks (bottom left above Heroes button) and get at least 200 points so you can collect the Decoration chest (as well as the Season 2 Dog Food recipe peices).  Collect decoration chests as often as possible, a lot of power and buffs come from decoration, you get one chest daily so don’t miss it.
   
2. Arms Race – you really should open every chest.  This is the primary source of Skill Medals every week.  You might not think you need skill medals right now if your heroes aren’t all 4-or-5-stars yet, but you WILL and they will go insanely fast.  Arms Race has a new challenge every 4 hours but now that there’s an option to do a “swap” then there’s really no reason you would miss a challenge.  I used to miss the “overnight” Arms Race, but now before I sign off I can “swap” to the overnight slot and do it real quick before calling it a night.  Your goal is to get about 120k-150k skill medals a week to spend on VS Hero Day
   
3. VS – Open as many chests as you can.  All 9 if it’s possible.  This is your main source for Valor Badges, and if you’re a smaller account you may not be using Valor Badges on techs YET – but when you get started on tech trees that require Valor you are going to be so glad that you have a stockpile.  You also get shards, premium chip material, and other loot that you really want to be stockpiling.  If you haven’t researched the VS tree yet and gotten it as high as possible, this will help you open every chest much easier.  Researching the VS tree is like investing Valor and resources into something that will give you long term valor and resources.  See the VS guide here.
   
4. Always – overlap your VS and your Arms Race.  What this means is (for example) if you’re on Day 2 “base building” for VS, don’t do any of your base upgrades until the time slot for Arms Race is also Base Building.  This way you get points in 2 places for completing the same actions and using the same speedups.  You can double dip on most VS days.  Day 1 is VS Drone day, and you can upgrade your drone during Arms Race “Drone Boost” and get points in both places at the same time.  You can do this on Tech Research day, Hero Day, Total Mobilization day, etc.  All have corresponding Arms Race challenges and you can open both sets of chests with the same actions.
5. GOLD ZOMBIES – This is a big one that’s often underestimated in value.  Spend 300 stamina every day to open your Arms Race chests BUT be sure to save a large amount of stamina for Gold Zombies (aka Zombie Invasion) that takes place every few weeks.  It’s so important to save stamina for this event that you might consider spending 300 diamonds daily to buy 100 stamina so you’re not dipping into reserves.  I will do a separate tutorial on Gold Zombies soon, but you can get up to 1 billion gold coin (repeat ONE BILLION coin) in just the few days of the event.  You kill the smaller zombies on the map using 10 stamina and you get 10 zombie store credits.  You kill enough of them and you’ll randomly spawn a Zombie Boss.  You have 10 minutes to kill this boss or other alliances might steal it.  Rally on the boss and you get 80 zombie store credits.  Join a rally for 40 zombie store credits.  After a zombie boss that you spawned gets killed (by you or anyone) you get around 300 zombie store credits delivered to your mail.  In a given week, using enough stamina, you can generate 20k-30k zombie store credits and clear out every gold coin chest they have to offer.  Between the chests in the store and the income per zombie and boss, you can generate a LOT of coin.  Do NOT skip this event, and do not waste stamina on Doom Elites or anything else for that matter.  Get your “First Blood” on a single Doom Walker and then kill nothing but gold zombies until they disappear.
   
   The photo above shows what I was able to generate in zombie store credits, over 27k in a single 3-day event on a level 24 HQ account.  Anyone can do this.  There’s a lot more in the zombie store than gold coin, but when you start working for T10 troops that’s all you’ll want to cash in on.  But there’s EW shards, chip chests, drone parts, and a lot more.
6. Do not be afraid to use your speedups.  Use all of them if you want.  They become so abundant that you’ll run out of things to use them on.  You can get 200 hours of speedups a week in the campaign store.  You can get 8-hour and 1-hour speedups in the Allinace store.  You can get speedups in the VIP store for diamonds.  Plus Arms Race chests gives them to you, get them from digs, get them from plundering, there’s no reason you shouldn’t use speedups when you have them.  And you should be able to find them when you need them.  Most of the points gained in VS and Arms Race are from Speedups so using them at the appropriate times are big points and good loot.
7. Secretary of Development hat and Secretary of Science hats should be applied for an used every day!  Don’t start a build or a tech without the hat.  It saves so much time and helps you grow much faster.  Combine them with Coop Development and Coop Research and you’ll be maximizing the time savings.  See the guide to Hats here and use them daily.
8. Resource production.  This game is all about resources, if you’re good at managing them and maximizing them then you’ll be ahead.  This means a few things:
   1. Upgrade your Economy tree in the tech center.  Upgrade all of the techs relating to “Output” because this makes your resource fields generate more daily passive income.
      
   2. Upgrade your resource fields with your HQ, stop at around 23… but 26 is max.  You do end up hitting a point of diminishing returns on resource fields, but try to get them to 23.  If you’re needing to build “something” while you’re waiting on prereq’s for HQ and you have multiple builders, finising up a resource field is a great way to open VS/AR chests, but your focus should be HQ once you get fields to level 23.  Once you get to HQ30 then you can start putting focus on fields again.  I ended up upgrading my gold mines to Level 27 but ONLY after I hit HQ30 and after my T10 troops were complete.
   3. Always always always collect Iron/Food/Gold resources while wearing the Secretary of Interior hat.  Season 2 has a heat buff, so get your base to 40c degrees before collecting resources and do it in the 5 minutes that you’re Secretary of Interior.  Resource fields alone are NOT a good source of income for you.  But if you get the 100% heat buff on top of the 100% Secretary of Interior buff, and Engineer Professions can use the “Rapid Production” skill (everyone following this guide needs Engineering Profession with Rapid Production skill) then all of a sudden your “meh” resource income becomes worth investing in the fields and the output research.  To get the heat buff, turn on your furnace or share your coords to Alliance Chat and ask for heat.  If you need clarification on ANY part of this step, message me (MediumRascal).  It’s important that you use all of these tricks to maximize resource income.  See the guide to Hats here and look for Secretary of Interior.
   4. Attack bases.  aka “Farming” – Find an UNALLIED inactive base on the map, scout to see what resources they have and if it matches what you’re looking for (more iron, more food, more coin, equal parts of all, etc) then send your squad 1 and attack, hit the base 9 times and stop, that way you don’t destroy it.  If you hit 10 times and destroy it, it’s much harder to find it and you’ll have to find a new farm.  If you keep it alive, it will slowly rebuild throughout the day and you can hit it again the next day.  Find 2 farms, this is really all you need.  With Engineering profession you should expect to bring in about 40m resources per day attacking 2 bases.  After 40m you get capped, so it’s not worth the stamina.  You should do your farming during Arms Race “Drone Boost” so you can get points for using the stamina.  The reason you’ll want to send Squad 1 is because you should be upgrading Squad 1 research in your tech, and one of the things you can research is “Squad Load Boost” which lets you carry more resources when you are raiding.  If you get messaged by a player saying they are active, you should just find a new farm.  For the most part, attacking unallied bases will result in no problems.
9. Level-tiered UR resource chests – Do not open these until you reach Level 30.  Plan on using these for gold coin after you reach Level 30 so you can easily research the Special Forces tree while having a nice nest egg of coin.  To get to T10 troops from Special Forces 0% is over 12 BILLION gold coin, and over 100k Valor Badges.  You read that right.  Save those chests!
   
   There are other color chests that are also Level-Tiered, but I would say saving the UR/Orange ones are the most important, but save all that you can.  If you DON’T save them all, it’s not the end of the world.  I didn’t, no one told me, and I managed but HOLY COW it was an uphill battle and I wish someone told me earlier, so here it is.
10. Get to HQ level 30 as fast as you can.  Two big reasons:  You can open your gold UR resource chests, you can upgrade your heroes to Level 150, and you can research Level 10 Troops.  Ignore upgrading buildings that you absolutely do not need (unless next HQ level requires it) such as:  Builders Hut, Iron/Food/Coin Protection buildings, Gear Factory (stop at L20).  Basically if it’s not a prerequisite to the next HQ level, ignore it.  There is no need to get every building upgraded to your HQ level before starting the next HQ.  Get the resource fields to level 23 and put all focus on getting HQ to 30.  And don’t start the HQ upgrade without a coop builder buff and dev hat combo!
    Don’t get caught off guard with a big upgrade on a prerequisite that you weren’t expecting.  Use this guide to plan your build path so you can keep the HQ upgrading at all times, sometimes the prerequisites take longer than the HQ itself.
11. Multiple builders – if you don’t buy multiple builders, you can spend 500 diamonds to “rent” a temporary builder so you can start a new LONG upgrade (like HQ or barracks or tech center) and then do small building upgrades with your first builder, that way you can maximize the use of 2 builders.  3 builders is even better, but you have to buy it.  4 builders (I found out the hard way) is likely more than anyone needs.  I bought the 4th builder and ironically it sits idle most of the time, especially after I hit about HQ level 27 or so.
12. Tier your barracks, you don’t need to upgrade all of them.  Your barracks should be Level 17, 20, 24, 27 and those are the minimum levels for the next level of troops.  The idea is, you train level 6 troops in barracks level 17, then you UPGRADE them to level 7 troops in barracks level 20.  Then you upgrade those to level 8 troops in barracks 24 and then level 9 troops in barracks 27.  This gets you WAY more points in Arms Race and VS because you get the same amount of points for upgrading troops as you do building new ones, but it’s done in a fraction of the time.  So you will save LITERAL DAYS of speedups by building them from level 6 and then promoting them to the max level.  Do not waste resources on additional barracks upgrades until you need to train Level 10 troops.  The easiest way to upgrade troops is in the Drill Ground, click the drill ground Troops, then click the green Promote button under the lower level troops to upgrade them to a higher level.
    
13. Train troops CONSTANTLY.  Even if you don’t get VS or Arms Race points for it, just do it.  Have troops building all the time and then use speedups to open your AR chests.  Season 2 has wars a few times a week and just PLAN on those wars to completely drain your troops every single war.  Forget about buster day, attack enough to get the chests, but the real troop drain is the wars and we need as many troops as we can get several times a week.  Maybe I should have put this one first.  OH – BUT definitely shield up EVERY buster day at reset.  Friday night, don’t forget.  You’ll lose what you’ve worked so hard at building all week.  Set an alarm on your phone for Friday evenings 9pm central, 10pm eastern, 00:00 server time.  Log in and set that shield!  You’ll lose troops and resources, overall bad deal if you’re trying to maximize growth on your account.
14. Get VIP.  Just do it.  It’s 10k diamonds a month, which you should easily be able to get from digs, mystery boxes, plunders, all kinds of places.  Get the diamonds and spend them on VIP.  I’ve even spent diamonds on upgrading my VIP level, it’s worth the VIP.  It provides resource production buffs, build time and research time buffs, really so much help growing is found in VIP.  Now I’m thinking maybe I should have put this one first too.
15. Always send UR tasks and UR trucks, even if the VS day doesn’t give you points for it.  You get a lot of resources and other valuable loot from it, that it ends up being worth the cost of diamonds to buy those “refresh” attempts.  Trucks are easy and usually more plentiful but the Secret Orders are harder to come by, just plan on using Diamonds for refreshing these tasks.  I heard this a while back and was “too cheap” to commit to it, then I realized the real value isn’t really in the “loot” from the tasks but it’s in the buried treasure pieces you get from doing UR tasks, and that makes the expense WAY worth it.  Don’t “dig” until you get 10 of each piece and then dig 10 at a time.  The loot is usually way better this way.
16. Always plunder max tasks and max trucks.  It’s free loot, no reason to miss out on these.  Also Set an Alarm to collect your secret tasks so no one else can plunder them.  Some people start their tasks then go to bed, don’t do this.  Just wait until tomorrow and send them so you can collect them.  If you’re only sending UR tasks and don’t have enough high level heroes to send them all in one shot, send what you can then send the rest when more heroes return (usually 2 hours).  This guide is how to maximize resources on your account, and this is a small part of it.  Make sure you do not plunder on our server (1813) just travel to another server and plunder there.  For more information on this click here.
17. Alert Tower Campaign Challenges – this is literally free loot, do this every 2 days.  If you see the Sheriff’s badge over the alert tower, that means challenges are available.  Your squad 1 (likely tanks) has the best gear (hopefully by this point it’s all orange UR gear and upgraded quite a bit).  Your squads should be separated into only tanks, only aircraft, and only missiles.  This aligns with the Campaign challenges.  So you’ll be able to do the tank battle and get as far as you can get.  But then your aircraft won’t be as strong right?  Well take the time and remove the gear from your tank squad, move them to air, and move air to squad 1 so it can get the Tech upgrades being in the squad, and THEN do the aircraft challenge and you’ll get much further.  Then do the same with Missiles.  If you fail a challenge, try it again.  If you fail again, swap the front row defenders and try again.  If it still fails, rearrange the back row and try again.  Sometimes it gives you the right combination to get another victory. Yes it takes some time, but the purpose of this guide is being able to maximize economy on your account and this will help a lot by giving you the most possible that you can spend in the campaign store.
    
18. Never stop upgrading tech!  Your tech center should run 24/7 and use at least 2 days worth of speedups every day during “Tech Research” Arms Race.  The closer you get to HQ27 you should start heavily pushing Special Forces tree, the first goal is getting it to 40% so you can unlock the upgrade that gives you an extra hospital.  Try to get to the bottom of the tree as fast as possible, only doing bare minimum on the top of the tree to unlock the tech that’s underneath it.  If you have a 2nd tech center, that’s even better, but keep them both running at all times.  Lower level accounts can focus on Development and Economy, but quickly move to VS (Alliance Duel).  Alliance Duel, Squad 1, Units, Hero, and Special Forces all need upgrades, but eventually Special Forces will be the main focus until Hospital is unlocked and after that until Level 10 troops are done.  You get more Squad power out of tech than anything.  More than Hero XP, more than Shards, more than Orange gear.  Tech is where the real power is.
19. Gathering at resource tiles.  The VS guide mentions gathering resources starting Sunday so that when you collect after reset, you get points for Monday’s VS immediately.  But you should be gathering resources the rest of the week too.  I gather “most of the time” but admittedly not as much as I could, and last week I still got “gather fanatic” which means I gathered more than anyone in the alliance and brought in over 24 million resources in gathering.  Those wanting to maximize their income on their accounts need to do this daily, and not let me get “gather fanatic” again.  If you were to do this “all of the time” instead of “most of the time” then you would get similar or more.  And it might not seem like a lot, but every little bit adds up.  24 million over a month is almost 100 million resources.  That’s a significant tech upgrade.
20. Arena loot.  Give 6 “likes” on Arena.  Find the Arena icon over the building and go into the arena.  In both “Storm Arena” and “3v3 Brawl” click “like” on the top 3 names and you’ll get 30 diamonds per like.  That’s 180 diamonds per day, free.  If you’re able to compete in the Arena, do this at least 5 times to open the chests.  You’ll get honor badges among other things, and the Honor badges can buy blueprints in the Honor store.  The ONLY thing you should be buying in the Honor store is Blueprints.
21. Desert Battlefield & Winter Battlefield – Every Friday you should participate in both of these events for Honor badges (plus other loot).  It’s fun and gives us something new to do that’s different than just working the account.  Desert Battlefield is our alliance vs another alliance and has 2 time slots and needs to be signed up in advance, HereticSoldier posts a poll every week.  Respond to the poll to pick a time slot, the signups have to be done in advance so if you miss the signup you don’t get to play.  Winter Battle takes place during 3 time slots and you can just jump in whenever you have time.  It’s fine if you’ve never done it before, just join in and you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.  And it uses free hypothetical troops, so if troops die in battle they don’t die on your account.  Just a reminder in case you missed it on #20 above, ONLY spend Honor badges on Blueprints in the Honor store.  Never buy anything else from that store.

This is NOT a complete guide, not even close.  But this is a great start to maximizing the growth on your account.  I am open to all suggestions, additions, and modifications on this.  My goal here is to help us grow as big and fast as possible to make a stronger group through the rest of Season 2 and beyond, so anything that anyone can contribute to this guide is certainly welcome.  Message me (MediumRascal) and let me know what you think!