As usual we will announce servers in time...as soon as we know the date and want o announce it.
–Leander
The intended audience of this book are beginner and semi-advanced players, who are not only curious to know how to play, but also why specific approaches are being recommended.
You are currently reading version 0.4.1 of the book. To get the latest text go to
https://github.com/learningsf/sfbook.
If you have no wood or stone in your wood-cutter and stone quarry, other players stealnothing from you, and only receive the bonus that the game gives them. The amount of that bonus depends on the level of your woodcutter and stone quarry, so the higher the level of those, the better the chances other players will be motivated to attack you.
People often ask which class is the best. There is no right answer, but each of them has its pros and cons. Knowing those can help you make a choice that suits
your play-style and is strong in the parts of the game you find most important.
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Once you reach level 25 you will be allowed to build the Fortress building. It’s the main one in the Fortress screen and determines the wood and stone capacity
of your storage.
The level of the Fortress building also determines the amount of wood and stone rewards you get from wheel of fortune, dice or quests during the Fortress event.
This is an important point, so will get back to it again later.
Without further ado, we have to first tell you which buildings to keep at level 1 forever and never upgrade beyond that:
Consider that not building defense buildings or units is a sacred law that should never be broken. Actually you don’t have to take our word for it, as there is a
reasonable explanation.
Every time someone attacks and defeats your Fortress, you get 24 hour protection. During that time other players can’t steal anything from your main storage, they only take 50% of your woodcutter and stone quarry (also called resource buildings),and also a bonus that is not substracted from your resources, but is given to them by the game, out of thin air. With each attack your protection is extended with another 24 hours, and as that usually happens every 5 minutes, it last almost forever (as long as people continue attacking you).
If you have no wood or stone in your woodcutter and stone quarry, other players steal nothing from you, and only receive the bonus that the game gives them. The amount of that bonus depends on the level of your woodcutter and stone quarry, so the higher the level of those, the better the chances other players will be motivated to attack you.
On the other hand, if you upgrade the wall or build defense units, less people will attack you. Thus protection won’t be extended and will expire. And when someone attacks you without protection, they steal 10% of your main storage, which is much more than the 50% in your resource buildings (which are usually empty anyway).
Not only that, but you will also have less chances to counter-attack, as few people will attack you in the first place, because of the strong defense.
Also, have in mind that the amount of resources you receive from fortress attacks also depends on the Fortress level of yourself and your opponent. If your opponent has equal or higher Fortress level than you, then you get the full attack amount. If his Fortress level is lower than yours the amount is reduced, and if the difference is more than 3 levels, you win nothing.
Once you build Fortress level 1, you can buy the Fortress mushroom pack. It gives you 100000 wood and 50000 stone. Most important things to build with those resources are Fortress level 6 and Hall of Knights 6 (HoK 6).
Total guild HoK is important as it influences the stats of gems everyone in the guild receives. And getting better gems early helps to defeat dungeons, raids and portals faster.
For this reason you could first use the resources from the Fortress pack to build:
Table 2.1: How to use Fortress mushroom pack
| Building | Level | Wood | Stone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fortress | 1 | ||
| HoK upgrade | 1 | 720 | 240 |
| Lab. Quarters | 1 | 35 | 12 |
| Fortress | 2 | 150 | 50 |
| HoK upgrade | 2 | 1408 | 448 |
| Lab. Quarters | 2 | 138 | 46 |
| Fortress | 3 | 440 | 140 |
| HoK upgrade | 3 | 2640 | 800 |
| Lab. Quarters | 3 | 406 | 129 |
| Fortress | 4 | 1100 | 333 |
| HoK upgrade | 4 | 4800 | 1536 |
| Lab. Quarters | 4 | 1015 | 308 |
| Fortress | 5 | 2500 | 800 |
| HoK upgrade | 5 | 9600 | 3200 |
| Lab. Quarters | 5 | 2308 | 738 |
| Fortress | 6 | 6000 | 2000 |
| HoK upgrade | 6 | 18400 | 6080 |
| Lab. Quarters | 6 | 5538 | 1849 |
Ambitious guilds often skip building of everything up to HoK 6 (costs ~132 mushrooms) at the very start of the server. That helps them to reach total guild HoK of 300 as early as day #2 of server. And HoK 300 means +100 stats for your gems (compared to HoK 0).
Next most important buildings to have at that early stage are only the frst level of Gem Mine and levels 1-5 of Woodcutter and Stone Quarry:
（表格略）
Gem Mine is necessary as this is where you find gems, and equipping gems in socketed items gives them additional attribute points (stats). Once you unlock gems you should try to wear only socketed items, even if they are not epic, as a normal socketed item is better than an epic item with no socket (unless the non-epic item has wrong attributes, or is older, or your guild has too low HoK).
You need a decent level of Woodcutter and Stone Quarry in order to become an attractive target for others to attack, thus having more chances to counter-attack others yourself.
And in order to do any attacks at all, you also need a decent level of Barracks too. Each level of barracks gives you 3 soldiers. It takes 10 minutes to rebuild a single soldier, so, if you have Barracks 6, it would be enough to make 18 fortress attacks once per 3 hours,
without losing a single chance for attack.
表格略
All buildings listed above cost 66 201 wood and 23 320 stone, so once those are ready, you will have some materials left for Fortress 7 and Laborers’ Quarters 7 too.
After the inital 48 protection on new servers, your main source of wood and stone become fortress attacks, Fortress events and wheel of fortune (dice too,but after you unlock Tower). Woodcutter and Stone Quarry are only relevant as a means to attract others. You can read more on that in section “Fortress attacks after 48-h protection”.
Keep Gem Mine at level 1 As mentioned above you need Gem Mine level 1 early. As early as you can.
Gems are important, but there is a gotcha that catches many players. Often new players assume that the higher the level of the mine, the better. It is, but not early in the game. Upgrading Gem Mine before level 70 (even to level 2) is considered a mistake, and truly slows you down.
Each level of Gem Mine slightly improves the stats of the gems you receive, but there is a trade of. With each next level the price of gems increases (they cost more gold, wood and stone), and so does the time required to mine them.
For example, with Gem Mine level 1 a single gem costs 150 gold, 2 wood and 1 stone, and takes 42 minutes to find a gem (with Laborers’ Quarters level 6, also called just Lab). In comparision, with Gem Mine level 6 gems cost 900 gold, 400 wood and 133 stone,and take 5 hours and 36 minutes to harvest (with same level of Lab).
As you can see the time needed to find a gem inflates a lot with each next level, which means you get less gems. Unfortunately you can’t use all gems, as only some gems are suitable for your character. That means you could have waited for hours for a single gem only to find it is for the wrong class (yep, the RNG god often gives you gems for other classes, or luck gems, which are considered useless).
What’s worse, the gold price also inflates a lot, and before level 50 you will find it hard to collect enough even for the gems that cost only 150 gold. Early in the game you level up quickly and need that gold for so many other things (guild skills, stats, starting raids, buying epics).
And on top of all that, the more time needed to mine a gem, the more expensive it is to skip waiting with mushrooms. This is the very reason why fast-leveling try-hard players keep Gem Mine at level 1 until their character reaches 215-225 level. To level up quickly they need to change gems very often, and having the mine at level 1 means that skipping a single gem costs only a few mushrooms.
Don’t upgrade Smithy beyond level 9. At server start, don’t rush to build the Smithy yet. Do that only when you can’t win enough attacks anymore (usually around the time you have Fortress 10-11 ready).
Level 9 of Smithy allows you to upgrade your soldiers to level 70, and at that level training one soldier costs 346 wood and 112 stone. At the beginning of a new server level 70 is more than adequate to defeat just enough opponents, and the cost of the soldiers is low enough to allow you to attack opponents that give no resources, just to force a change of the opponent.
You might even manage to do just fine without ever building Smithy. Possible if you manage to find active players to exchange fortress counter-attacks with, as long as those players have no defenses (no one should, right?).
After the initial protection on the server is over, your main source of wood and stone become:
Fortress attacks give much more wood and stone than you could collect from the Woodcutter or Stone Quarry. Each server is different in that regard, but still it’s pretty common to regularly find fortress attacks that give more than 4K wood and 1K stone:
But to make use of that you need to attack other fortresses multiple times per day. How often depends on the level of your Barracks. As was already explained earlier, each level of Barracks give you 3 soldiers, and you want a minimum of 18 soldiers in order to not lose any chances for attacks, while keeping your sanity by not having to make those too often.
Always attack with 1 soldier (only use more soldiers, if it gives lots of resources).
If attack is going to fail with 1 solider, and no gold is required to change the opponent, do that.
If changing the opponent costs gold, do NOT do that.
Instead, go to MAIL BATTLES (B from keyboard) and find a Fortress defense to counter-attack with 1 soldier. By doing a counter-attack you gain resources, and also change the opponent for free. Always check Fortress defenses from the bottom of the list first, cause the bottom ones disappear first.
Or, since scrolling to the bottom is still kind of slow, pin all Fortress defenses to the top of the list.
Then counter-attack them, starting from the top.
After that check again what is the next available Fortress attack (F from keyboard). If it would be successful with 1 soldier, do that. If not, go to MAIL→BATTLES again, unpin the one you just did, and choose the next one to counter-attack. Repeat until you have no soldiers left and start training new soldiers. Training a soldier takes 10 minutes, so if you have Barracks 6, you can take a deserved brake and come back to do counter-attacks again in 3 hours.
Make this a routine and soon you will know by heart the names of the players that give the most resources. If you need a simple example on what attacks to look for, try to find ones that give 1K stone or more, or at least close to that.
Some of the players that you attack will start to counter-attack you too, as long as your woodcutter and stone quarry are leveled up enough (eg. at least to lvl 10). That way you will both have more chances for counter-attacks.
Players often ask why one would want others to attack his fortress at all. The reason is that when someone attacks you, he receives more resources than you actually lose. You only lose 50% of the resources in your woodcutter and quarry (as long as you have protection), but the player attacking you is given an extra bonus. This bonus is not taken from you and depends on the level of your resource buildings. Same happens when you attack someone else. So by constantly counter-attacking each other, you both earn that extra bonus, which is much more than what you lose.
When you have no soldiers, but notice a Fortress defense that would give lots of resources, use the pin button to save it for later. Pinned defenses move to
the top and won’t be lost when the list is overwritten with new messages.
It’s tempting for new players to just keep all buildings the same level. And since there is an achievement for upgrading all of them to level 15, many get tricked that this is the expected way to play.
But practice shows that some buildings are substantially more important than the rest, while others are so useless, that you don’t ever need to upgrade them beyond level 1 (as was already explained in first section of this chapter).
The most important building of all is undisputedly the Fortress building itself. And it’s not because you need to build that just to please some Fortress deity, sacrificing your nerves and free time. As always, there is a reasonable explanation.
First of all, the amount of the wood and stone rewards that you receive from the wheel of fortune, dice game and quests (quests can give wood and stone only during the Fortress event) depend on the level of the Fortress building.
For example, you can expect the following wood and stone rewards with Fortress 15:
As you can see above, with Fortress 15, a single quest during the Fortress event rewards you with 750K wood or 250K stone. How many of those quests you will be given during the event depends on pure luck. That is why it’s impossible to calculate exactly how much wood and stone you can earn. Yet consider that getting 10+ quests with wood or stone rewards for a single day is pretty common (with 320 thirst per day), and netting +7M wood and +2M stone during the whole event is definitely not unusual.
Each level of Fortress almost doubles the amounts of those rewards. At level 20 of Fortress (the maximum Fortress level), you will see the following rewards:
To make better use of the rewards during the event,you should plan what to build, trying to have the highest level of Fortress possible at the Friday morning, when it starts.
There is a very useful website (https://en.4m7.de/sammelalbum/festung.php) that
shows exactly how much resources each of the Fortress buildings costs, and how much time it takes to build.
I can’t recommend you to skip any building time with mushrooms, as that is very expensive. But if you really want and can afford to do that, at least limit yourself to skipping it only on the Fridays during Fortress events. If you skip only the remaining building time, completing the next Fortress level (exactly before starting quests or using dice/wheel), you will still benefit from nearly double rewards during the event, without even skipping a whole level.
Another well known way to maximize rewards is to choose the shortest quests during Fortress events. That is, the shortest quests that have no item/fruit/hourglass reward (you can’t find resources with quests that give items/fruits/hourglasses). The goal is to do more quests with same thirst, and thus to have slightly better chance for getting more wood or stone.
The most important buildings you should focus on are Laborers’ Quarters, Fortress, Gem Mine, Academy and Teasury:
(often called just Lab), as for each level it reduces by 5% the building time and
the time needed to find gems. Usually this is the first building to upgrade immediately after building a next level of Fortress (always keeping it same level as Fortress). Though, people who push for HoK 15 early stop upgrading the Lab at level 12 (sometimes even at level 11), and continue building it only once they have HoK 15. And since Lab is important, if you follow this approach, you should immediately upgrade it to level 15 (the max level) as soon as you have bought the HoK 15 upgrade.
because, as was already explained in the previous section, the amount of the rewards you get from quests during the Forest event, and also the amounts you get from the wheel of fortune and the dice game, depend on the level of your Fortress building.
because it improves the stats of the gems you receive. There are different approaches on when to start upgrading the Gem Mine. What most players do, is to start upgrading it sometime after level 70-80, and have it at level 10 by the time they reach level 100-110. The reason is that around those levels they are strong enough to clear the first 9 dungeons, and to unlock the Tower dungeon. And having Gem Mine level 10 and access to the Tower dungeon are the two requirements for unlocking the Underworld.
It was already explained how long you should keep Gem Mine at level 1 before pushing it to level 10. People also often ask when to start upgrading it beyond level 10. As you already know, the higher the level of that mine, the longer it takes to find gems, and the more wood and stone they cost.
It does not take much time for your character to reach level 215-225, and that is completely possible with Gem Mine 10 (even with Gem Mine 1). Quickly reaching those levels means you need to change gems with better ones more often (as stats of gems depend also on your character level). That is why it is not advisable to even think about making it level 11 before your char has leveled up to 225.
One can say that leveling up from 225 to 315 is also not that slow, so keeping Gem Mine at level 10 throughout those levels is generally a good plan, again, allowing you to change gems for your char and your companions more often. Around level 315 dungeon monsters become much more harder and progress slows down. That’s why level 300 is a pretty good moment to start upgrading the Gem Mine beyond level 10 (eg. at least to level 13-14), without ignoring too much the other important buildings.
Whatever time you choose to do that, make sure that your Fortress is always at least 1 level (may be even 2 levels) above your Gem Mine, or you might find yourself short on wood and stone. This actually matters only if you don’t have a serious fortress buddy to exchange counter-attacks with.
I personally keep Gem Mine at level 10 until I have a Fortress of at least level 17 or even 18, then upgrade Gem Mine to level 13-14 as first priority, before focusing on Fortress 20.
Academy is not very useful early as it gives too little XP when your character is low level. Still, if you completely ignore it, you will lose lots of XP later on. My approach is to usually upgrade Academy to level 10-11 after getting Gem Mine to level 10 and Laborers’ Quarters to level 12, and to keep it at that level until I have Fortress 20. Upgrading Academy to level 20 is my first priority once my Fortress reaches the max level.
If you already have enough resources for next level of Fortress, you could also build a few levels of Academy (eg. to level 12-14) in between, when your Fortress is at level 17-18. It’s good to have Academy 14 early, as at that level it can accumulate exactly 8 hours of XP. This means you don’t lose any XP while you sleep. And if you sleep longer than that, just build 1 more level.
Teasury determines how many slots for items you have in your backpack. And space in backpack is never enough. It’s considered especially important at higher levels (eg. around 370 level), as by that time you already find normal items that sell for 5M gold to the witch. And 5M is half of a stat point. You also need some free space for backup items with quest runes (max 8 slots for that), and some to save epic items for toilet (minimum 3, to be able to save at least 3 items for Toilet events). All this just goes to show that upgrading Teasury is never a mistake.
The fastest way to reach HoK 20 (the maximum), is to build Fortress 20 first (again, the maximum) and only then to buy all of the HoK upgrades.
Of course, you can’t stay with HoK 0 until you reach Fortress 20, since the quality of gems (stats) in your guild depends on everyones HoK, yours included. Actually the quality of the gems depends on your level, the level of your gem mine and the guild HoK. But early in the life of a new server players have low levels and Gem Mine 1, so the amount of the guild HoK has the most tangible effect at gem stats in the early game (and thus at progress in dungeons).
The good news is that all HoK upgrades until level 12 actually don’t cost much, so there is no reason to save resources for the main building by not bying those. 50 players with HoK 12 amount to total HoK of 600, which means +200 stats on your gems. That is more than enough even for the most ambitious and impatient players, who want to push dungeons and level up quickly.
I often see players who are tricked to believe that small differences in HoK have a huge effect on their characters even at higher levels. Sometimes leaders and officers use small difference in HoK as a reason to kick and replace players (guilty, also happened to me several times). Others protest when someone in the guild has 1-2 less HoK than the average and use that as a reason to change guilds.
As was already explained a HoK of 600 gives you +200 stats on your gems (1/3 of HoK), so if another guild has 660 HoK that means they can only get +20 stats on their gems. If you were level 50 those +20 stats could matter more, but at level 250+ (when your Gem Mine is already level 10), those +20 stats can at best help you pass a single floor of a dungeon. Small differences are even more meaningless when you are close to the maximum (max is 1000 HoK, and that happens when your average guild level is at least 370+).
Deviated from the topic a bit, but seemed important to emphasize how insignificant those small differences are. Now full ahead to HoK 20.
Since HoK upgrades from 13 to 20 are much more expensive, it makes sense to make some planning and change the approach once both your Fortress and HoK are level 12. Buying HoK 13 alone costs ~3M wood and ~1M stone. Getting that before Fortress 14 can delay you in collecting enough resources for the main building, which in turn would mean smaller rewards from dice and wheel, or the next Fortress event.
That’s why many players stop bying HoK upgrades at 12, and only continue to build Fortress until it’s level 15. Once that is ready, they can afford to buy HoK 13-15 almost at once. Now you could ask why stop at Fortress 15 then, why not push to Fortress 20 and only then buy the upgrades.
As was already mentioned, you can’t ignore HoK completely. Gem stats depend on that, but what’s more important is that each player with HoK 15 in the guild increases everyone’s chances to mine black gems. A popular belief is that each HoK 15 in the guild increases the chance with about 1%, so having 50 players with HoK 15 in your guild could give you a chance of 50% to mine a black gem (and +250 stats for your gems).
Once you have HoK 15, make sure to frst upgrade your Laborers’ Quarters building to level 15. At that level it reduces both the building time and the time for mining of gems by 75%, so getting it should be your first priority. After that feel free to focus only on the Fortress building until it reaches its maximum level of 20.
There are different approaches to develop your Fortress. What was outlined above is a popular way to max out the main building and HoK, even if you are not too invested in fortress counter-attacks and have no intention to skip any building time. I will often
give opionated advice in this book, trying to suggest an approach that works well for most people. To stay true to that, what follows next is a sample build plan for development of Fortress after level 7 (for the early build order check several sections above), which tries to summarize everything said so far:
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First explain how to find the pet nest
Which pets to feed Shadow Pets
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Light Pets
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Earth Pets
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Fire Pets
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Water Pets
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Upgrading items
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What to use splinters for
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Getting more metal and splinters
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What does the aura give you
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What items to throw
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