Hi everyone, this is a general guide for those who are interested in helping out/fighting during server war. As most of us know, server war is where the big battles happen between servers and against players that you have never met in your brutal age journey (well unless you are playing on that other server as well). It is what all the events have trained us for, and what you have been building up your power to – for the honor and glory of the server.
You should have the basics of war fighting and understanding how simple things like color tiles work. If not, please read the War Fighting Basics guide before continuing on with this.
[toc]Pre War Strategies
Preparation
Never boost troops before server war
This is because server wars opponent is allocated based on the total power of the server. Hence the earlier you boost, the harder the opponent will be for us. Try to boost only after the server war opponent is out.
Farm enough resources for boosting during SVS preparation event
This is where you can get free rewards from boosting, making it more worthwhile. There will be daily event ongoing as well so time your boost accordingly so that you can get double the rewards/points from one boost. For example, for SVS preparation, there are rewards given for hitting certain power tiers. And there could be training event as well. So if you boost during the training event, you can get the rewards for the training event, as well as getting points for your SVS prep event.
There are 3 events part for SVS preparation in which you can get rewards for hitting certain tiers
- Power boost
- Mana spent on rune fusing
- Souls used
Hence make sure you have enough rss for all these 3 if you want to get all the rewards
Communicate with your clan r4/r5
Provide the following information to your r4/r5 if possible so that they can help out in planning for SVS
- Will you be joining the war?
- If yes, what is your troop count, march capacity, tier of troops
- What timing will you available to be on? (Give in UTC)
- Make sure you are in LINE chat, else download it
- If you are not joining the war, shield and help out whatever you can. Post your shield timing in the message chat so that others can hide their troops
- Please note that once you have post your shield timing in messenger chat, this means that you will never participate in the war at all and you will never let down your shield.
- DO NOT ever post your shield timing in messenger chat, and then dismiss your shield and went to war. If your outpost hold reinforcement, you can easily get your allies killed.
Help your server out by creating a dummy account in enemy server, getting to SH6, and providing intel information to your clan/server.
Below are the relevant information that is good to provide
- Screenshot of their top 20 players
- Screenshot of their partners and war patterns & partner stats (especially for those that are of a threat)
- Best is that you have a good understanding of partners, and are able to run through each enemy partner profile and see which are those that could be a threat
- Scout enemy outpost to have an understanding of their troop count/troop tier
- Scout for mana banks
- Mana banks are players that store huge amount of mana for their clan or players that farm large amount of mana. These players will be good to hit if they are not shielded so that our server can get lots of free mana
- Identify where are all their hives located.
- Monitor their world chat for critical information
Shield earlier rather than later, and make sure you shield for the right amount of duration
A lot of players tend to be cocky and thinks that they will be able to come online exactly when server war starts. If you are not confident of this, please activate a shield earlier so that when server war commence, you are already shielded.
Don’t just activate an 8 hour shield if you are not confident of coming back within that 8 hours window. Activate a 16 hours etc depending on your own confidence. Remember, once you are open, you are practically giving free points to the enemies and you won’t want that to happen.
Others
Dummy accounts also allow you to provide free points to your main account when porting over. Create lots of t1 troops, and remember the location of your dummy account. When SVS start, port over and go to the dummy account location and hit the outpost for free points. This will help guarantee you get the SVS rewards.
Another way of course, is to do the opposite and get your dummy account to port over to your main server, and get your main account to hit it. However this is more risky and usually requires two devices for better coordination.
Reason being is that one your dummy account port over, everybody on your server will be informed and they might hit it first.
Your account either have to hit it first, or let your dummy account suicide their troops by hitting you. If you choose the suiciding way, that means your outpost must be unbubbled while this was executed which is once again, dangerous.
Offence
The offence team will be jumping to enemy server to attack. One critical thing to note is that the moment you port, your location could be announced in enemy world chat and you can have enemies porting left and right to hit you if you are not ready. Hence you have to ensure that everything is done fast to protect your troops.
Lastly, you cannot shield on the enemy server. This is very important to note so be prepared.
Preparation
Clan Message Chat
Coordinate with your clan to make sure that you have a clan message chat set up. Once you port over to enemy server, clan and horde chat will immediately become that of the invaders chat. Hence having a clan message chat set up will allow you to still be informed of what is happening in your main server and to provide intel back if needed (for example enemy porting over etc)
Hide all rss by sending to your fellow clan mates who are not participating in the war
You do not want enemies to hit you and get tons of free rss. So hide them before jumping over unless you are super confident of your power.
Prepare the necessary battle runes and talent page
Set your talent page to combat, and prepare the necessary attack/defence runes
Make sure your march partners/Stronghold partners are set
Make sure you have your march partners/Stronghold partners set in case you get collapse by enemy fast or you need to make an attack fast. This allow you to immediately choose which team composition you need when attacking instead of having to manually select each time you attack. Do note that every second counts when fighting, so the less time you take, the better.
Make sure you have a number of friendly/advance teleport ready.
This will be useful if you want to secure kills etc in enemy server.
Knowing our own invader information
If you have allies that already teleport over, find out what is the clan name or what is the hive location (if any)
Destroying your outpost (Optional)
All your outpost will be ported over to enemy server. This means if you have 5 outpost, 5 will be ported and you will have 5 to monitor. Destroying your outpost means that you will have less to monitor, but at the same time, this mean you will need time and resources to build them back up again so it’s entirely up to you.
I would recommend to have at least a minimum 3 outposts – one for hive, one for temple, one for offence while temple is being taken.
Porting Over
Before porting over, make sure that you have a super teleport ready. To port over, click on the purple swirly thing on the right side of your city screen. Scroll to the bottom and you will see a button that states “Teleport”. Click on that and your game will close and reopen, with you being now in the enemy server.
Usually it is recommended that the strongest guy port over first, identify hive location, set up clan, before informing the rest to port over.
Once you are given the signal to port over, you will have a shield that will only last for a few seconds.This is where you have to do things fast.
- Port one outpost to hive location (if any)
- Join invader’s clan immediately (so that you can do a fake rally)
- If the invader’s clan require approval to get in and it takes too long, immediately create your own clan and start fake rally
- Send your troops immediately on a fake rally to a clanless outpost (Please do not select an active enemy outpost or else they will be notified of your existence or troop details or outpost location etc.)
- For any remaining troops, either send to an ally outpost as reinforcement (usually recommended all to send reinforcement to the top guy as he is the safest), remain at outpost, or send on a long march. Pros and cons are listed below:
| Description | Pros | Cons |
| Sending troops as reinforcement to ally | Fast and easy especially when there is a hive | Need to monitor. If ally is attack, need to pull troops out and send to another ally for reinforcement |
| Remain at outpost | Easy to maintain. If hospital is huge, troops hit will just go straight to hospital.
Have troops to defend your outpost if enemy try to hit you. |
Free points to enemies if they choose to port and hit you.
Excess troops will be killed. |
| Sending on a long march (usually best to send to a clanless outpost to hit and return) | Can protect your troops for that duration they are send out for | Callbacks etc will be time consuming.
Have to monitor the return timing. Enemy can time the return and do a port and hit |
Once you have safely protect all your troops, you can start preparing for temple or looking for enemies to fight.
Temple Attack
Enemy temple is important and is critical for securing victory as it gives a large amount of points, extra titles and resources, and of course an additional usage of heavenly fury to destroy your enemy hives.
Never port to enemy temple until your team are ready to attack. Doing so can lead to your outpost being destroy if your team is not ready.
Once your team is ready, port to temple and join rally. This is because the rally outpost is the one that is nearest to the temple. Hence all porting to the same place will allow you to join the rally faster. Do note that you cannot teleport your outpost out from temple ground until the rally is completed, and the troops are in the temple. In which then you can choose to either remain in temple ground (in case there is re-rally etc), or port your outpost out to be safe.
Do note that if you choose to port your outpost away, if the rally got hit and fail to defend, or when the 4 hours is up, your troops will travel back directly to your outpost which will give enemy an idea of where your outpost are, and the timer for your troops to return to it. This will usually mean your troop will end up with a long travelling time.
Recommended: Stay for the full 4-8 hours if possible. Your server might have strategies involve or plan to pull out troops, reset temple etc. You will need to be on in case this happens to prevent your troops from getting killed.
Never ever pull out your troops from temple until confirmation and communication by your leader.
Another way is to port to an area near temple ground but is not within the swamp. Execute rally from there and then the leader is to use speed boost to get his march to enemy temple. In this case, your outpost are safe from getting hit and can never get destroyed easily as compared to it being in temple ground.
This is because if you lose the battle in temple ground, your outpost immediately get destroyed. However, if it’s not in temple ground, it will just end up burning.
Rallying Temple (Only for leaders)
Key things to note when rallying temple
- Make sure your talent is set for offence
- Use rally runes if you have when initiating rally (You have to set this BEFORE you rally)
- This is the only way to get full 2.5m rally size (2m from hall of war, 300k from march capacity, 150k from 50% march capacity boost, remaining 50k from rally runes)
- Change to offence runes once rally is complete, and when your troop is marching over to temple
- Choose your best partners, or counter partners if enemy is in temple
- Recommended to have 90% of your strongest tier troops, and 10% of the lower tier as meat shield
Securing enemy temple
Congratulations! You have officially captured the enemy temple. This means the warchief is entitled to the temple benefits.
For players to receive enemies temple titles, they have to port to enemy server in order to receive them. You could also give negative titles to your enemies to deny them the growth for an entire week.
Natural grace can be used on enemy server and if you want to collect them, you have to port over as well. Do note that if your warchief choose to do a mana drop, you will run the risk of enemies porting to hit you on your horde tiles.
Heavenly fury can also be used on your opponent hive etc.
Hence if you manage to secure your own temple, this means that you get double the amount of titles. Securing temple double the points hence it is a very critical process in winning server war.
It is heard that titles can stack, but unfortunately i do not have enough knowledge on this to fully know how it works.
War Techniques
Scout, Port to neutral, Hit and Scout or Port to neutral, scout and hit
First thing first is to find possible enemies to hit, and this of course require you to know who are those with resources or troops in them. You don’t want to waste an attack hitting someone that has hidden their troops for 8 hours and return empty-handed.
If your outpost is near some outpost, send some scouts. Once you find a possible target, port to neutral, cancel rally or recall all your hidden troops, and do a fully march hit. Keep scouting the enemy in case there are any reinforcement etc.
As walking through enemy tiles takes time, try to make sure that your attack duration is as short as possible. Don’t forget to hide any remaining troops once you send your march out. Enemies can port and hit your outpost once your march is out and you can’t run because your march is still moving.
Always aim for an enemy outpost that you are confident you can take it with ease. Low tier SH players have low reinforcement too so you don’t have to worry too much of it being a trap city. However, always remember time is of the essence when attacking.
Scout, Advanced Port, hit, random teleport out
Before you do this, always make sure you do not have any reinforcement on you if possible or else you will risk getting all your allies troops killed.
This is one of the fastest and most expensive way to hit. Once you find an enemy, advanced port to him, launch a full march, hit till zero, and immediately random teleport out. Since doing so will put you on enemy tile, this mean that if you have any remaining troops in your outpost, enemy can just port in and kill all of them. Hence this must be done extremely fast and giving the enemy as little time to react as possible.
Always remember, once you are done, immediately port out. Stay on enemy tile as short as possible.
Rally and hit
This is one of the safest way to take down low power enemies (enemies with less than 5-10m of power) and the best way to cripple a huge power enemy if you have strong players and reinforcement.
Usually, players with 5-10m of power has low reinforcement capacity. So doing a massive rally and hitting them is very easy for you to deal large damage with minimum losses. Of course this means the enemy will be informed about it but there’s hardly anything they can do to defend their ally since his reinforcement capacity is so small.
However, that doesn’t mean they can’t do a thing. They can start porting and hitting the weaker players to kill off any remaining troops that is remaining in the outpost.
To execute a rally hit, someone is to port to a neutral location near enemy outpost and start rally. Rest of players to friendly port and join rally to hit. Keep doing scouting to look for possible reinforcement. It is good to have someone keep an eye out on their hive as well so that you will know if there are huge reinforcement ongoing and whether should the rally continue.
For large power players, this is the best way to cripple their power if you have good rally size + support + troops + partners.
Scout outpost 1, advance port and hit outpost 2, random teleport away
This is another interesting war technique to use by confusing the enemy but in order to do so, you will need to find 2 outpost of the enemy. Scout 1 of it so that enemy will be focus on that outpost in case you attack. While their attention is focus on outpost 1 for instance, you advance teleport another outpost to their outpost 2 and hit them while their eyes are still focusing on outpost 1. In this case they wouldn’t even know it when you attack.
Using March Capacity Boost
This is useful as the larger your march capacity, the more troops you can hold, and the less damage you will take when attacking. This means less soldiers being killed each time you attack.
It also give you a larger march size to hide your troops in fake rally. Though this boost only last a short duration, but once you are done, you can easily make use of it to hide all your troops in fake rally just before it expires.
Using low tier troops as meat shield
It is recommended that if you have t4/t5 for instance, to send 90% t4/t5, and 10% t3s. In this case, the troops that died will be that of t3 instead of your t4/t5. It is always important to protect your t4/t5s since they take a lot of resources and speed up to train.
If you have t3, it is recommended to use t2s as meat shield.
Defending Attacks
Random Teleport
If someone ports beside you, the easiest way is to random teleport away as fast as possible if the enemy has yet to launch an attack.
Fake Rally or gathering piles
If the enemy has already launched an attack, try to faster send your troops out to fake rally, or to gathering piles/clanless or inactive outpost so that they can’t be targeted. This will give you some time to react.
March Speed boost
Enemies can time your troops return. Use march speed boost if need to confuse the enemy timer.
Using meat shield while you think of the next strategy
For those with lots of troops, this will be tricky. You will definitely want to have a good amount of t3 as meatshield. This will give you a short window for you to think what to do while your t3 takes the hit. For instance, if you advance port and hit, enemy can hit your outpost while your troops are still out, even though its only a short 4-8 seconds. In this case, you can immediately go to another outpost to fake rally your t4s, and prepare to random teleport the outpost that is being hit. During that 4-8 seconds, you can’t do a thing since your troops are out, but at least the damage hit will only kill your t3 which is better than your t4 or t5s.
Post-Offence
Once you are done with all the attacking, there are two options
- Teleport back to main server
- Wait till 8 hours cooldown is over
| Description | Pros | Cons |
| Teleport back to main server | Fast. Doesn’t have to wait. | Need to use gems to purchase the server teleport |
| Wait till 8 hours cooldown is over | Free. | Need to hide all troops till cooldown is up.
Need to be awake when cooldown is up as you will be teleport back to your main server and be unshielded. This means you are free food for enemy if you are not awake to shield or hide your troops. |
Benefits of attacking enemy server
- Partners cooldowns are reset for raids
- Weekly stone coins are reset
- Extra packs can be purchased
- Able to snipe enemy monster hunter and get their rewards
Defence
Defence will be played by those that remain in your own server, and of course there are a few roles that you can play to help your server out
- Help in securing temple if your horde is the one doing it
- Killing invaders that crossover
- Not participating in war but providing the shield to protect your allies troops
- Providing information to clan/server
- Denying points to enemies
- Trap City
Securing Temple
This should be quite straight forward. Help your server secure temple by joining rally. Make sure to be on if possible for the full 4 hours in case they need you to pull out your troops.
One thing to note as per what is mention at the top, once your troops have enter the temple, your outpost is free now to port away from temple ground and shield.
Killing invaders that cross server
Self-explanatory. Refers to the offence section to know how to do good attacks.
One thing to note is that when invaders crossover, they all belong to the same horde. This means that if they have a hive set up, they could easily reinforce each other so be careful of this and don’t end up hitting a trap city (more explained below on what is a trap city)
Providing Shield to Allies
In this case, your role is very simple – Shield and don’t participate in the war at all. Once you post your shield timer in your clan message chat, never ever once break the shield to hit. You could risk your clan mates troops and get them killed.
Note that people send their troops for you to hide. This does not mean that they send you what their hospital can hold. They could probably send you more than that. Hence never ever lower your shield if you choose to hide.
If you plan to shield but join the fight later, do not post it in the clan message chat to prevent confusion. People should also only join those that post, and not any that they see have a shield.
Providing information to clan/server
This is something that everyone can play a part in. Inform your clan/server if you find an enemy outpost. Inform if enemy is near your clan mates and launching an attack so that you can get them reinforced if possible.
This of course, include providing information of players that did not shield or hide their troops. However for this, it is critical that all information are provided through another channel of communication instead of through world chat or horde chat. You could easily end up giving these information to the enemies and giving them free points.
It is recommended to use a LINE channel where leaders from all different hordes can communicate and help one another to kill these irresponsible players.
Denying points to enemies
This is simple. Barb usually start one hour after SVS commence. If you find any players that are gathering or are not shielded and have troops in them, provide these information so that these players can be killed.
Of course, if you can do so yourself, do it so that you can gain barb points. It is always better to kill your own ally and take the points than giving them to the enemy.
Of course, if you see an empty outpost with resources in it, take it too (especially if its mana). Players need to learn to hide both troops and resources during the war.
Trap City
This is a role that least people want to take on, but one that is extremely effective in war. A trap city is to bait the enemy to attack you thinking you are weak and easy to kill. Only when they do so, they will be surprised to find it heavily reinforced. You will lose a lot of power but don’t forget, your troops are hospitalized, while the enemy is killed.
How a trap city works is that the player must have the following max out as much as possible to their max stronghold level
- High hospital capacity
- Max horn of defence to as high as possible
- Max hospital capacity research to as high as possible
- Max reinforcement capacity research to as high as possible
- Anti-scout
- Good partners set to defend stronghold
- Proper defence runes set up, with talent page focusing on defence.
Once a player has all those, the clan is to fill up his reinforcement capacity with all their strongest troops, and as much as their hospital can hold.
Then the trap city is to remain unbubbled and try to find a way to get the enemy to hit him. Since the trap city has anti scout on, the enemy doesn’t know how much troops the outpost is holding. Usually, it is best that the trap city isn’t someone of great power, but someone that is of the mid-tier power range.
Once the enemy hits, immediately they will lose lots of points. If the enemy choose to do a rally instead, it is best that the trap city immediately choose to shield if the power difference is too huge since it isn’t worth it.
Do note that trap cities are most effective against solo arrogant players that think they have enough power to destroy someone weak.
Post War
Congratulations. Server war have ended. Be it win or lose, this is a team game and a server game. Grow strong and continue to come back stronger if you did not do well. If you won, don’t get overconfident and prepared for the next battle.
Once again there are 3 different events for post-war. Save your resources, speed up for post war so that you can get the different tiers of rewards. The 3 events are:
- Power Boost
- Energy spent
- Resources gathered
Get the rewards if possible. And tada, server war have ended…. For now 🙂
Guest Post Written By XnightsnowX