1. Welcome to the Kingdoms of Heckfire Forums Guest!
    Please review our Code of Conduct before posting.
    Dismiss Notice

The Magical Mythical Heckfire Multiguide!

Discussion in 'Help & Guides' started by ProfessorDaddy, Aug 7, 2019.

  1. ProfessorDaddy

    ProfessorDaddy Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    52
    Hello, Hello, and welcome to my laboratory!


    Housed within, you will find the various chapters I’ve written, now brought together into a single Multiguide! Oh boy, lucky you! As the game continues to update and change, I will do my best to update the guide to reflect those changes. I’ve done my best to provide information I’ve found relevant in my journey regarding most major aspects of the game. Your thoughts and feedback are always appreciated as I continue to edit and expand my work. I’d like to extend an incredibly heartfelt thank you to everyone who has supported me and helped me along the way as you watched this guide grow on Discord. I couldn’t have done it without you guys! ❤️



    📜Introduction📜


    Before we begin, let’s establish the importance of why this guide exists:


    Currently, PvP in Heckfire leads near-exclusively to detriment for all involved parties. It lacks a reward structure of any kind, as well as being devoid of nearly any potential for strategical play. In addition, the PvP that currently exists is actually almost entirely PvOP. (Player vs offline player!) Isn’t that fun!?


    The only entity who benefits from the current PvP structure is ATA. Time spent retraining lost troops, or trying to boost PvP stats, means ignoring other sections of the game that help you get more out of the time you spend playing. Meanwhile, ATA gets to try to sell you a vast majority of tempting options to speed up your progress. I call this the “temptation phase”, and obviously the less time you spend here, the better.


    You can call Heckfire a PvP game if you want, but the fact remains that this game is centrally based around PvE, with elements of PvP sprinkled in to set you back as you go through the real bulk of the game: upgrading your buildings/research.


    The gameplay doesn’t really change that much as you progress. You do essentially the same things over and over, but continually upgrade. And upgrading is fueled by PvE not PvP.


    The PvP elements of the game don’t involve strategy, they involve statistics. Numbers and percentages, with all the advantage coming from *ahem*, your upgrades.


    Therefore, the quickest, smartest way to play the game is to upgrade the PvE side first. Maximizing the part of the game that fuels your upgrades.


    With that being said, this guide aims to maximize a (mostly) free-to-play player’s time spent playing the game as they progress. More specifically, this guide was designed to help you hone in that long-term strategy of how you’re realistically going to achieve your goal of completing every upgrade, update, and thing to do except for pick on all of the rest of us below you!


    Please note that this guide is not intended to teach you how to begin playing Heckfire, nor is it filled with pages of meticulous game statistics (just a few of specific interest)! This is not a how-to guide. You can already find those sorts of guides on the forums. This, is a strategy guide.


    So buckle up, because this game requires a sheer mind-boggling amount of hours to complete, but this guide highlights key decisions along the way that can help you reach the finish line quicker, maximize your in-game time efficiency, and help ensure a substantial edge on the competition as you grind your way towards that finish line. I truly hope that whether you’re at townhall 1 or 25, you can find at least a tid-bit or two among my collection that you find useful, interesting, or even mildly amusing. Remember friends, we’re all in this together out there. 🍻


    -Professor Daddy 🔬


    🏠SECTION 1 - Buildings🏠


    This is where it all begins. Your buildings essentially set the pace for the entire game. You want your townhall to be the one corresponding to the top of the bracket you compete in. If you rush townhalls, you’ll find yourself struggling to compete in the events for your bracket. If you pause at the top to max all possible buildings, you’ll find it gets easier and easier to finish at the top of each event. The three townhall levels you will pause at before going all the way are 18, 22, and 24. Pause at each of those townhall levels, and ensure that you have maxed allbuildings before jumping to the next number you pause at. If you follow the rest of the advice given in this guide, you’ll find you have more than enough tokens to ease each transition.


    Although the game does little to inform you of this, after reaching TH25 you will have 10 buildings left to build, but no more land to build upon. There are 64 land spaces, and 74 unlockable buildings. Therefore, it is important that you only build one Farm and one Quarry. The resource production buildings are drastically lacking in usefulness. You’ll want those left over buildings you can’t build to be those two, otherwise another end-game area will suffer. Use your final two unlocked lands to build second copies of your Farm and Quarry, as they’ll be your only options left.


    There are 8 total buildings to choose from when building on a new land space. We have already established the importance of 2 of those, so that leaves us with 6 realistic options to choose from. As a free-to-play, casual player, this should be the order that you prioritize your buildings, broken down into 3 tiers:


    Tier 1:

    Dragon Alters- When gaining XP via attacking monsters and collecting resources, you want to be getting the absolute maximum return for your time and brew. One of the ways you do this is by maxing your Dragon XP Bonus ASAP. The quicker you max out your bonus, the bigger the difference it will make in the long run.


    Treasuries- The levels of protection your treasuries provide when you have built all you can and maxed them for your townhall (plus the bonus from research) corresponds quite well to the amount of ore you need to be able to protect in order to afford to max out other buildings at that townhall level. Therefore, building and maxing these ASAP will save you from needless worrying over capacity, and allow you to easily stockpile tokens for when they really matter.


    Tier 2:

    Studies- There is an absolutely overwhelming amount of research to be completed. Obviously, the sooner you reduce the total time required to finish it all, the better off you’ll be.


    Wards- These are the only thing that will prevent you from quitting when you inevitably get zeroed. Having these built and maxed provides you with a cushion of troops that allows you to continue to grind your way towards glory, albeit a march or two slower for the time being.


    Tier 3:

    Barracks- Barracks provide a relatively small production boost to troop training, and since this game is a marathon, not a sprint, its best to leave these buildings low on your priority list.


    Embassies- You don’t really need to worry about allies until late-game. This is discussed further in a dedicated section.


    🐉SECTION 2 - Dragons🐉


    How much chow could you redeem right now? 2 million worth? 10 million? Maybe even 100 million. But what if you had over A BILLION XP ready to feed to your dragons in the most glorious feast of all time? Stop feeding you dragons, and you can. It really is that simple.


    As was noted in the prior section, your dragon xp bonus is of utmost importance. One of the reasons you should be focusing on your dragon alters, is because your dragons should only be growing via use, not feeding. If you save your chow from townhall 18 forward, you will build up a massive stockpile of all sorts of chow (including event chow). Meanwhile, you’ll be raising your dragon xp bonus which makes every bit of chow you’ve saved grow more and more valuable.


    You can reach a whopping 750% dragon xp bonus, 173.5% of which is locked from TH 24 to TH 25. So hang in there, and by the time your dragons get to feast, you’ll surpass the dragon levels of everyone else who has put in the same amount of time and work as you have, so long as you have more patience than they do. As an added bonus, 1st place in a major dragon xp gaining event (easily multiple) is guaranteed yours when your time does come to chow down!


    Not feeding your dragons means that maximizing your dragons’ xp gain elsewhere in the game is very important. This is another reason to send out gathers as frequently as possible to collect resources. Another great way to gain xp is via special event titans. Check out that brew to xp ratio! It’s phenomenal.


    Oh and hey, if you’re somehow not positively convinced that saving your chow is worth it, I’ve got one last thing for you. By not feeding those dragons, you’ll bypass the games chokehold it has in place for dragon growth anyway: relics. You’ll stack up plenty of relics before the time comes that you’ll need them.


    🙋🏼‍♀️SECTION 3: Allies🙋🏻‍♂️


    With an in-game ally system that is in no way designed to help you find good allies, you’ll find that constantly dealing with scrolling through the system is often more of a headache than it’s worth.


    Allies serve two main purposes: extra resources, and extra power. Considering the fact that monster resource rewards are relatively low, adding a multiplier onto this still won’t yield tons of resources. Most of your daily gain and eventual stash of resources (in an active clan) is tokens. That leaves us with the power boost. It’s nice, but totally unnecessary until end game.


    The biome research trees contain upgrades that grant an additional 100% bonus to stats gained from allies, but you won’t finish maxing this bonus until late-game. It’s better to invest your gold into getting to this point first.


    The developers have stated that they are “...looking into improving ally UX in general”. Until this time arrives, it remains my sincere recommendation that you save worrying about allies for late-game. One of my goals with this guide is to lay out how most efficiently to spend your time playing this game. When you get tired of having to do the same thing over and over again in a game, the game becomes less fun. Suddenly logging on just feels like a chore. Until the system sees improvement, I honestly can’t in good faith recommend that you bother with the hassle.


    But maybe you don’t really care how I feel about allies and want to start buying them right now... well, then I congratulate you on the amount of free time you must have. Here are your best options:


    Ally Pools: This is the most common method Heckfire players use to hunt for allies. It also requires a significant investment of your gold, and subsequently introduces you to risk of loss of said gold. There are certain ally prices which contain massive percentages of the available allies for purchase. You can always find a “good” ally in these pools if you have the time to search through. There are charts which show which prices to type in and search through. (I won’t be posting a chart here, you can find them all over Heckfire Discord’s and other guides.)


    Ally Ghosting: If you want to spend some time on allies before end-game, I recommend this method. It requires substantially less gold, time, risk, and most importantly: frustration. Sometimes when a player quits playing, they cease to appear on an ally list. The only allies I’ve ever had that never sold are players who quit. Look for unowned players who are not in a clan. Alternatively, you can buy all kinds of new players and see who ends up quitting! I’ve managed to keep double digit allies for months without a single one selling. All for less than 200 gold, and all with around 2% total bonus. Search for 100 gold allies, click on players who are in a clan, go to their clan, and buy all of the players in that clan that fit your criteria. Some of them will quit, and they’ll (almost) never sell.


    ⚔️SECTION 4: Troops⚔️


    I recommend that you only build huntresses for Tier 3 Troops, followed by starting with Trophy Huntresses when you unlock Tier 4 Troops and training 3-4 full marches of those before moving on to PvP troops.


    I also recommend that you rarely speed up your troop training. Only do it when you know you’ll be asleep when it finishes, or if you’re within 2 hours and the troop training quest is on. This applies up until end-game, when you’ll have nothing to spend your gems on except this!


    I know it’s tempting to want to speed things up, troop training is a particularly slow game aspect in Heckfire, but here’s the thing: I can promise you that no matter how good you are about remembering to put up a shield before bed, or how good your clan is about reinforcing you or pinging you on discord when you’re being attacked, or any other thing, you will almost certainly be zeroed before you reach endgame.


    It’s a serious speedup/gem hole when this happens, growing larger as your troop count increases. The reason I say this is simple; There will be times in your life as you dedicate more than a year to reaching endgame, that you simply won’t be able to prepare for. Maybe you won’t be the person who gets zeroed because their phone died while they had no way to charge it, sure. But if not some other way, then likely because sometimes we just don’t think about our phones at all, much less the silly little game we play on them. And this is okay! Pretty healthy, I’d actually argue. There are plenty of times in life where we just get absorbed in being human, living in the now, doing something we enjoy so much that it actually gets us to forget about the machine we all spend so much of our lives on these days. If you can manage to never be zeroed on your way up, I commend you. I’ll bet on the rest of us experiencing a setback or two, one way or another.


    🔬SECTION 5: Research🔬


    Oh boy, this is the big one. This is where the real grind is. This is what increases all of your base stats, and this is what separates you from all of those names you see at the top of the leaderboards. This is also where you actually get to have fun speeding the game along, and blowing through all of those hard-earned resources! I recommend that you funnel the vast majority of your gems and speedups to this section of the game. If you’re following the rest of the advice given in other sections of this guide, you won’t be struggling nearly as hard as other players. Gold is primarily what is required for most research, but it’s much easier to handle if you’re following the advice in the Allies section. Before you get to TH25, you’ll also need a sizable chunk of both ore and food as well, but you’ll find you have the tokens to pop if you’re following the advice given in the Buildings and Troops section. I’m going to break down each Research Tree giving a few key points about each, as well as recommendations for what parts to focus on within each tree and when.


    But first, there are a number of research options that have upgrades scattered in multiple trees. Let’s address the importance of each of these first so that we can focus on just the unique options of each Research Tree when we break them down.


    March Capacity

    Easily one of the most important research options to invest in, regardless of what Tree you’re in. More troops per march helps you clear tiles for more building spaces, as well as helping ensure that you’re able to hit the top monster level for your bracket.


    City Defender March Cap

    This is for PvP. If you’re following the advice given, it’s unlikely you’ll even have any PvP troops until endgame. You can ignore this until you decide to step into the PvP realm.


    Rally Reinforcer March Cap

    The same concept as the City Defender March Cap applies here.


    Reinforcement March Speed Boost

    It applies here as well.


    Rally Leader Cap

    And here too. Beginning to see another reason why postponing your PvP adventures is helpful?


    Ally Bonus vs Players

    Regardless of the biome, these all raise the cap on stats you can receive from allies. If you’re not bothering with allies, no need to bother with these until you do.


    As you can see, if you’re following along with the rest of the sections, the majority of these can be ignored unless necessary for unlocking further research. Moving on to each Research Tree as a whole, your personal play-style will affect how you prioritize each individual research and you’ll be hopping from Tree to Tree throughout the game regardless, so don’t stress the individual selections, just focus on your big picture goals.


    Army Strength

    This is the research tree where you unlock and upgrade troops. You’ll want to upgrade the troops as soon as you unlock them, as all of the bonuses are relatively short compared to many other research options, and provide you with significant boosts. You can ignore those PvP troop unlocks until you’re ready. You only need one troop type to upgrade the bonuses, so whenever you do decide to unlock your PvP troops, they’ll already be upgraded. You’ll also find the upgrade for concurrent marches here, that you’ll want to upgrade ASAP for obvious reasons.


    City Growth

    You’ll spend a lot of your early upgrading here, and some of your first ‘bigger’ upgrades are unlocked here once you reach the bottom of the Tree. Almost all of these upgrades speed up other aspects of the game. The sooner you do them, the faster the game will go. The upgrades to the hospital cap and garrison cap at the bottom of the Tree are the bigger upgrades mentioned earlier, and they are well worth investing in. Both can protect more troops and buy you time before your troops start to die!


    Monster Hunting

    This is where you unlock what you can kill on the PvE side, and how good you are at killing it. Everything in this Tree is beneficial to upgrade as soon as you can. It’s that simple.


    Resource Gathering

    Although I recommend you only ever gather gold resource nodes, you’ll want to upgrade everything in this Tree after you finish with your top priority items. Of particular note are the upgrades for your protected resources, as well as the higher reward gathering levels you can upgrade to unlock.


    Raid Tactics

    If you live in a hive location with your clan, you may want to invest in this at your leisure in order to participate in raids. If you don’t, you’ll probably want to ignore it. Ignoring this section for as long as you like won’t leave you missing too much, as you’ll just be stacking up raid brew to use at some point later on.


    Biome Skill Trees

    I’m going to combine the next three Research Trees together as they mirror one another. This is where you can upgrade that dragon xp bonus we talked about in an earlier section. Max that as soon as you can. You should know why! I recommend that you mirror all of what you upgrade for each biome, so that they grow equally. You don’t want to be a one-trick pony, do you? These upgrades are pretty steep, so you probably won’t want to dive deep into them until around TH24. I recommend prioritizing maxing the right side over the left, as the left is primarily helpful for PvP and allies.


    Shrine Specialties

    This is a PvP research category. I recommend you leave this for last. There is a hospital capacity bonus which you may want to modestly invest in at your discretion.


    Realm Mastery

    The Crown Jewels of Research right here ladies and gentlemen. By the time you unlock these, most of the upgrades you can get your hands on in here are more than worth investing in and speeding through. There’s quite a variety of upgrades, with some of the best upgrades from other Research Trees being brought together in a beautiful harmonious union.


    Remember, you can always upgrade some of the sections you’ve been ignoring for some easy might gain when you need it for special events. However, I do recommend you exercise caution and restraint when it comes to doing this. You never know when you may want to transfer to a realm with a lower might limit for one reason or another. It can be hard being a PvE player and transferring into the smallest realm you can is often a good idea. If you primarily focus on my research suggestions, it will be incredibly easy for you to slip into a realm as a slumbering PvE giant, then rapidly morph into a PvP monster within the Realm with a bit of careful planning.


    💰SECTION 6: Pinching Pennies💎


    While this guide is designed for free-to-play players, I acknowledge that many (like myself) will in fact splurge a bit here and there, and actually drop a few of our hard earned dollars on the game. We can’t buy our way to the top, so when we do spend our money, we want to be getting the biggest bang for our buck. That’s why I’ve included this section, which highlights how to get the most from every dollar you spend, as well as some tips for gem spending.


    Firstly, I wish that I could tell you that the legendary dragons aren’t worth investing in, but I simply can not do that. ATA charges a steep price for the 3rd dragon purchase, but the versatility of the legendary dragons ensures that you’ll use them in every aspect of the game from completing early dragon quests to crushing end-game PvP. The bonus speed they provide to other aspects of the game from their unique stat boosts is invaluable as well.


    Keep in mind, you’ll progressively rake in more and more resources by playing as you advance, hitting higher level monsters and gathering higher level resource nodes. That being said, spending money on resources is not at all a priority. Just be patient.


    You’ll primarily use gems for speeding things up. You can speed up substantially more for the same amount of money by buying gems as opposed to buying speed-up packs. Likewise, It’s never a good idea to buy speedups with gems; the conversion rate is worse than if you just use the gems to finish your upgrade.


    To use your gems to speed things along, Heckfire charges you 2,500 gems per day for the first 2 days, and 2,000 gems per day for every subsequent day. Therefore, if the upgrade is less than 2/3 days, avoid paying the extra premium by using your speedup tokens. For those larger requirements, go ahead and use your gems.


    The best conversion rate ATA offers for dollars to gems is 3,000 gems per dollar. It is offered during events, $20 for 60k gems, but it only appears as a flash sale these days so grab it when you can! They also offer an event package with a tiered option ($5, $10, $20) which offers close to this conversion rate when you buy all 3 and average the return (this includes gems awarded from opening event chests with keys included in the package).


    The only way to acquire a 7-Day shield is to purchase it with gems (85k). You can buy the 3-Day shield for $5 in the shop (once a week) or for 35k gems. Since 35k gems is equal to about $11 worth of gems, Cedric’s Magic Package is worth it if you need the shield.


    Once you start hitting level 8 monsters, the brew to gem ratio you get for spending your brew attacking monsters becomes positive. You’ll average just slightly over 1 gem per 1 brew spent. This causes brew to become one of the most valuable resources you can acquire. It’s worth it’s weight in gems, and gives you dragon xp, relics, chow, and resources on top of that! Late-game, brew is easily one of the most worthwhile things to spend money on.


    🧠SECTION 7: Playing Smart🧠


    Some of the remaining advice may seem obvious to many players, but it remains important nonetheless.


    Get into an active clan, where everyone buys a pint each day. Whatever your max chest capacity is, you should be able to collect that many multiplied by 3-4 easily each day.


    Be nice to people; make friends with your neighbors, especially if you live alone. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to be kind in return. Furthermore, you may find that you’re a lot less likely to be targeted for zeroing (or get warned/helped by more people) than the player who treats others like trash.


    After Townhall 15, your dragon quest only gives a single shield, down from two. You’ll still sometimes get more than 1 in a day, since the resource swap chests can give them among other ways, but regardless you’ll still want to avoid putting a shield up outside of sleeping hours. Otherwise, you’ll run out quick.


    Finishing your daily dragon quest is one of the most useful things you can do to progress. Furthermore, consistently sending out your gatherers to collect resources (one in each biome) is also incredibly beneficial both to you and your clan (daily clan quest lb).

    Ensure that the 4th March of gatherers you send out is not in the same biome your castle sits on. This will send out your wall dragons, and leave you more a much more vulnerable target when your first 3 matches return.


    You’ll want to exclusively gather gold. In addition to the obvious importance this guide highlights for gold, the game makes it very clear that this is the most valuable resource. ATA charges more for gold when compared to food/ore regardless of the medium of payment. It nevermakes sense to gather any other resource type.


    Even if you decide to ignore raids, you’ll still acquire the items you need to upgrade your Idolith structure and Idols from occasional chests given as event rewards. The notification icon can be annoying, so if you want to upgrade an idol, the only one most players use is Mermolga’s Misfortune. Once you max it out, upgrade a titan idol or save them for future idol releases.


    Save your brew as much as you can, but don’t be afraid to splurge a bit here and there. It’s one of the only actual gameplay activities to do in Heckfire, so have a little fun every now and then. Titans are always worth spending extra brew on, since you need their unique relic drops.


    ~~~


    “I’ve been asked time and time again why I don’t live with the rest of my clan in our hive. So many times, in fact, that I’m going to include my explanation here, in my guide. At first glance, it may seem counterintuitive to live alone as you grow, but with a little routine and kindness, it can easily be your safest bet. So here it is,


    The argument for living solo:


    Following all of this guide means that you will have exclusively PvE troops until some time after you reach TH25. In other words, most of it. This puts you at a higher risk than most players of being targeted for troop kills. I’ve found that living away from my (or any other) clan’s hive has led to a much easier life than had I lived within. Here’s why:


    1. Most clans keep track of all other clan hive locations, so therefore, the location of almost any player is known by most of the realm. Few people pay attention to individuals.
    2. Often the only people who will take the time to scout you will be your nearest neighbors. If you’re never over capacity on any resources, some of them won’t even bother. This is even more true when you constantly have dragons out gathering while you aren’t playing! (Which you totally should!!!)
    3. There will be tons of mobs around you that are all the level you need to hit. That means that you can very quickly rack up massive points on the any sort of monster quests, including major event ones! More importantly though, on days when life gets in the way and you hardly have any time to dedicate to the game that day, you can still invest less than 30 mins into the game that day and complete your Daily Dragon Quest. (It’s super imperative to do this for growth and shields!)
    4. If you’re kind to most people on the game, especially towards your neighbors, many won’t target you for 0ing even when they can. Don’t do anything stupid, be kind, and you’d be surprised how few people have any interest in doing you any harm. This can make a world of a difference when you forget to put up a shield one night before bed, trust me!

    So yeah, it comes down to safety and swift gameplay. You probably won’t want to participate in your clan’s raids depending on your distance, but as I’ve mentioned before, there’s nothing wrong with just stockpiling your raid brew.


    When choosing a location, look for a spot where all 3 biomes are present (duh) and where in each area you see an abundance of the level of monsters you need. Ideally, find a safe pocket where there are other clan hive’s a little ways away. When they kill monsters, some will spawn far enough away from them that they won’t bother with them, but those will be very close to you. You definitely don’t want to be close enough to more than 2/3 other players who kill monsters in your area. You’ll need plenty of time with 0 players paying any attention to your area, so that you have time to solo titans when they spawn.”


    ~~~


    Now What


    So you made it to TownHall 25, that’s awesome! You’re in the home stretch, so let’s make sure you finish strong. The game feels the need to send you some mail letting you do what to do next. Here’s what it should say:


    Stage 1:

    You unlocked a ton of cool new , but everything officially costs a bazillion resources. That means you need to be both making and protectingmuch more than you were before. Focus on upgrading your treasuries and unlocking your new research capabilities in the Monster Hunting and Resource Gathering sections. The toughness, strength, and ability bonus upgrades for your troops in the Army Strength section are also a top priority.


    Stage 2:

    It’s finally time to finish maxing that dragon xp bonus! Turn your attention to your dragon alters, and focus on fully maxing out those Biome research sections! Your Dragon March Capacity needs to be maxed as well.


    Stage 3:

    You’ll want to max your hospitals and universities before moving on to your barracks and then finally your embassies. Max out your newly unlocked Realm Mastery section, as well as your remaining Army upgrades.


    Stage 4:

    It’s finally time to enter the PvP realm. You should have at least 3 million Trophy Huntresses. Switch to pugs and knights being trained if you haven’t already, and blow through all those PvP researches you ignored. You’ll soon have plenty of gold to start pouring into allies, and can speed-up troop trainings more efficiently than 95% of other players! You’ve already done pretty much all of the hard work, so just breeze through the rest at your leisure, and enjoy being at the top!


    📜Conclusion📜


    So here we finally are, ready to wrap things up. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read through my work. It has been an arduous project, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of my many friends throughout the realms who provided feedback and support as the guide has grown.


    As you can see, the road to maxing out is an incredibly lengthy one, and getting there quicker than others doesn’t come without drawbacks. Yet while some players may wish to participate in PvP as they progress, they will inevitably find that very long road... even longer.


    The benefits of delaying entering the PvP realm are numerous, and it will save you loads of time and frustration. You have to take a step back and break down every aspect of the game to truly see how overarching the effects really are. Focusing on upgrading the various bonuses and unlocks via research while other players are rushing townhalls and focused on speeding up training troops that they’ll inevitably lose (and will be cheaper to speed up later) will ensure domination in the long-run.


    Some consideration of your long-term strategy can go a long way. I sincerely hope that this guide helps you get a little closer to where you want to be. Combine a few smart gameplay decisions with a little bit of patience, and you’ll be at the top of the leaderboards in no time.


    Best Wishes,

    ~Professor (Captain) Daddy 🔬
     
    #1 ProfessorDaddy, Aug 7, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  2. Onesy

    Onesy New Citizen

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2017
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    5
    I stopped reading when treasuries were listed as tier 1 upgrade, you sir are an idiot. This guide is not really a guide on doing anything right
     
  3. dlz9345X

    dlz9345X Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2018
    Messages:
    260
    Likes Received:
    87
    This is such a good and comprehensive guide. Amazing. You touch on many points that many people may not know or don’t have any strategy on.

    This is most definitely a personal take on it. If you are following his guide on PvE, treasuries are for sure a tier one. Staying under max cap is super important and each treasury (at my level) offers 230k more rss space, 230K!!! Not only that, but it also offers more ally rss percentage. I did read in your guide that monster rss not that valuable, but in the end, a good chunk of your rss will come from monster hunting. Being able to double that amount because of treasuries is for sure the way to go.

    I also understand if you are going PvP. Sure, build up your barracks and build up your embassies. Right when you reach th 18, it suuuucks if you don’t have your studies and barracks. Imagine having to train all the huntresses and do the research without them. What I believe ProfDad ;) is largely saying with the tiers is not how garbage they are, but really how useful they will be at your current level. Once you hit endgame, studies don’t really matter (although new content will hopefully come out). Embassies, barracks, and altars become the most important (maybe wards as well if you’re that PvP kid). However, during the “mid”game, for sure these buildings are what you need to grow as fast as possible.
     
    Rosy3ones and ProfessorDaddy like this.
  4. Onesy

    Onesy New Citizen

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2017
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    5
    You people do not get how long it takes to max research do you, this guide also says allies are for endgame players which is the most horribly wrong statement of the year
     
    Galarn, Dinkum, Possums and 2 others like this.
  5. Multiplat

    Multiplat Helpful Citizen

    Joined:
    Feb 11, 2018
    Messages:
    254
    Likes Received:
    171
    Ok so there are many things throughout this guide which are either wrong or could use reevaluation. Going to work my way down from the top of the guide.

    For starters, every single player should be prepared for PVP. Putting off "pvp" until th25 just leaves the majority of the realm weak and easy to farm. This does not mean you need to go around throwing troops at each other every day. Having an army and a big wall though is a deterrent which could save you.

    Section 1: Why state the only brackets to stop are th18, th22, and th24? This is completely based on the realm you are in and the competition at each tier. When I had an alt in r18, I kept that alt at th12 because there was little to no competition. A simple 3 stars in an event would leave me in the top ten. That made it extremely easy to amass gems and tokens before going to th15. At that point I did the same thing. This tactic will not however work in a brand new realm where there is a lot of competition.

    Having players rush to th18 to stop will only make the game far harder on themselves. That is why it is recommended for a player to stop at the end of each bracket to evaluate whether they are strong enough to continue moving up. The brackets are 1-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-22, 23-24, and 25. I'd personally ignore the 1-6 and 7-9 brackets though since you unlock guards at th10.

    Also in this section, you claim there are 74 unlockable buildings and 64 land spaces... This is quite wrong. There are 72 land spaces you can unlock and at this moment, 66 buildings. (10 studies / barracks / treasuries / embassies / temples / wards and 3 farms / quarries). Though I do agree that it is a horrid idea to build a 2nd or 3rd farm/quarry early game though. This takes away from the ability to construct more useful buildings.

    Talking about that, your tiering for buildings is slightly off in my opinion. When going to a new tier, it is important to focus on your studies first. This is a game of numbers and reducing the time it takes to complete your research will ultimately let you grow faster. Stating the studies are a "tier 2" building is setting people up for failure. If I was to use your "tier" system for buildings, my tier 1 would be studies / temples, tier 2 would be treasuries / wards, and tier 3 would be barracks and embassies. Some players would claim barracks as tier 2 since troops are important and having max barracks will let you rebuild rapidly. I personally prefer having max healing speed (Wards) and a higher rss cap. This is of course not something that you can dictate in a guide. This will come down to the player and his or her personal preference.

    Section 2: I had to laugh when you said to start saving your chow "from townhall 18 forward." Honestly, it is a poor decision to feed your dragons early game. Yes this can give you a temporary boost in strength but it would be wise to save your chow until your dragon experience is maxed at each tier. This means if you sit at th15, save your chow until all of your temples are at 15 and the top biome research is maxed. This will give you the most bang for your buck.

    You state max dragon xp bonus is 750%. A level 25 dragon spire gives 60% dragon xp bonus, and each of your temples will give 60%. That adds up to a max dragon xp bonus of 660%. Separately you also have your biome dragon xp bonus which maxed at 200%. This part needs to get fixed. :x

    Secondly, you state to "send out gathers are frequently as possible". There has been a trend going around recently where new players seem to think it is a fantastic idea to send their wall dragons out to gather rss... I have to assume it is because of guides like this. Before more players get zeroed following this kind of guidance, can you iterate that it is only a good idea to send out non-wall dragons to gather?

    Section 3: Allies... Yes allies can be a headache, but your ally bonus creates the base of your strength. Without focusing on growing your ally bonus throughout the game, you are setting yourself up for failure.

    Although the devs are "...looking into improving ally UX in general", this does not mean that ATA will change this system any time soon. The ally system is one of their "accomplishments" so they will maintain this in some form.

    As an example... a 50% ally bonus will boost your total attack an defense by at a bare minimal, 50%. More based on your research completed. So why neglect that when it is the easiest way to gain power?

    "ally ghosting" is explained quite wrong. This is not your fault though since I don't think many players realize why this happens. The ally system is designed in a way where if a players is hired, they are sent to the top of the ally list for their new price. For instance, if you hire an ally at 100 gold, they will be placed at the top of the list for their new value, 105 gold. This is why the "ally pools" work. Players went through and identified every price a player will be at if they are not dropped. This helps players identify who is still active and has a chance to grow.

    With this in mind, this is also why you are more likely to find better allies on page 10+ at lower values and worse allies at page 5+ for bigger values. At big values, the active players are hired more frequently so they normally fill the first few pages while players at lower values are bought faster so good allies are pushed down the list.

    As for why they cease to appear on the ally list... it isn't only because they quit. ATA's servers will only maintain so many allies within a certain price range. If your ally quits playing while they are still under 100m might and haven't spent a dime, they will disappear from the map but not the ally list. They disappear from the ally list when 10+ pages of allies are placed in front of them on the list.

    Lastly, per the allies section, it is a fantastic idea to look for active allies. Don't only buy inactives. Think of it like this. If you want to invest your hard earned gold into something, don't you want that something to become more valuable? Inactive players will not grow in stats. Therefor you are settling for whatever their current stats are. On the flip side, if you are hiring active players, they are going to keep growing which will either grant you higher stats or some extra gold when they are hired from you. Use this to your advantage to pay for some research.

    Section 4: Troops... It is a horrid idea to only train hunts. Hunts give you little to no defense so any player with even militia can walk all over you. Yes it is a great idea to train hunts first, but knights should be soon after. If you find yourself needing some extra pvp strength, then of course pugs should follow too. Having a high wall will deter players from wanting to attack you. You will not get a high wall with only hunts.

    Section 5: Research. Your pvp research is essential within a clan. Neglecting it is like neglecting your clan mates. The biggest problems I have with this section are how you depict the biome trees and realm mastery.

    You state the biome tree "upgrades are pretty steep, so you probably won't want to dive deep into them until around TH24." Why wait that long? At the top of each bracket, you will have plenty of time to focus on your biome trees so why put it off? I'd recommend focusing on the right side for the off-biome trees while focusing on the entire biome tree for your home biome (grasslands if you have captain sparkles, badlands for wrot, and swamp for rekker and bob). This will ensure your wall will be boosted high while ensuring your strength will not fall behind your peers within each bracket. This will also make it a lot easier to place in hourly/daily slay events.

    You hint that you only need th25 to unlock the realm mastery tree. Not once did you state that a player can only research realm mastery until they complete a biome mastery research. Biome mastery can actually be completed at th24 since the top of your biome tree only needs to be at level 19. However it will also cost you 911m gold, 270m food, and 270m ore to complete a biome mastery. This is why it is good to focus on biome mastery from early game so you are not playing late game catch up.

    Skipping section 6 since there was nothing important there.

    Section 7: You state that a player will "want to avoid putting a shield up outside of sleeping hours." Yet again this is based on the realm you are in and not personal preference. If someone sees your army home often, they are going to try to zero you. In many realms, it will take 5 minutes for a clan to zero you. Being shielded when asleep or hidden when awake won't always cut it either. If some clans see your city empty, they will take that as a chance to buy and destroy your ally gold. So the important part here is to understand your realm and how the other clans want to play.

    I guess my points with all of this is that every single player in every single realm will have a different experience in this game. There is no perfect guide but if you are going to try to push your strategy as being the "right" strategy, at least make sure the facts you use are correct.
     
    SirBeavers, BonBain, Galarn and 2 others like this.
  6. Tiashue

    Specialist

    Joined:
    Aug 31, 2017
    Messages:
    578
    Likes Received:
    158
    I'm glad you saw this thread before me, I would have been way more terse and less constructive.
     
  7. dlz9345X

    dlz9345X Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2018
    Messages:
    260
    Likes Received:
    87
    Well I can largely be classified as a noob, but I’ll still voice some of my opinions. I would love if you could correct me or help me in my evaluations.

    I’ll be making my comments in section order from Multiplat’s comment:

    Section 1)
    I don’t really know any of the technicals so I’ll just assume you are right (which you probably are).

    Section 2)
    I guess I just mistaked Prof’s statement as I thought he said to save your chow from the beginning until you get your greatest xp boost, but I think that’s what he originally intended it to mean.

    Totally agree, your wall dragons should not be marching for gathers as you should be using your 2 available PvE dragons to gather in every biome (or other PvP drags that are not wall for xp)

    Section 3)
    Yeah allies are important. I feel like most beginners have no clue how the system works so it would be great to link it to an ally guide or something. I remember totally neglecting it in the beginning, and I’m playing catch up now.

    Always buy people in clans, and it’s great to just search up random clans (that fit your price range) and hire from there in my opinion to find a much more valued and active ally.

    Section 4)
    Of course, you only need as many hunts as your max marches can send.

    I usually speed up my troop training regardless of time left when troop training is on, just because I might as well get some more troops and get on the LB (which is a easy top 10 in my realm) for just a little bit more rewards. And of course, train 1 extra troop if you join late in the troop training ;)

    Section 5)
    Don’t have many comments about this since I’m right now prioritizing finishing my troop research.

    Section 7)
    I rarely put up shields since I’m lazy and don’t want to play this game a lot. I know, I probably should set a schedule or something to make some time if I want to be serious. Since I’m often away for more than 12 hours at a time, getting only 8 hour shields is just bad news to me.
     
    ProfessorDaddy likes this.
  8. Bacon

    Bacon New Citizen

    Joined:
    Nov 30, 2017
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    3
    I have so many concerns about this guide. Multiplat said it all, but the op needs to change the actual original post ASAP. Especially about allies! That hurt me to read. You should be putting as much gold into allies as you possibly can from the absolute beginning. This is a must. And treasuries as tier one? Those were the second to last buildings I maxed. Temples (formerly known as altars) and studies should be first. If you don’t have enough protected cap to cover your resources needed then utilize your clan. Share your rss when they need it and they will share with you when you need it. But most upgrades on buildings will always require more ore than your protected cap will cover so to me the best way to save for this is with tokens. I’ll stop since Multiplat commented on the things I had issue with, but OP, please edit your post.
     
  9. ProfessorDaddy

    ProfessorDaddy Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    52
    Multiplat,


    Every single player does not need to be “prepared for PvP”. Being “prepared” for PvP means being able to get online and shield. Otherwise, some player (or combination of) can zero you. A higher wall will buy you (some, probably moot) time. Any sizable difference in deterrence comes from sizable upgrades in that category. This guide requires directing most RSS away from PvP initially.


    1: If your realm does not contain standard brackets, then obviously adjust for that. Since the stops at lower brackets take less time, I noted the brackets you would likely spend the *most* time at (based on max requirements). Didn’t add in that sort of , as my guide is targeted towards players who have played for a little while (TH 10/15 id estimate), so there is some assumed knowledge to help condense an already massive beast. Not saying rush to TH18, just that my guide “begins” there in a sense.


    I did find that studies were more important earlier in than treasuries. The “value” of the buildings changes a bit throughout the game based on what you choose to do, and what benefits the next upgrades give. It would have taken a lot more writing to discuss what is best at various points, so I did my best to give an overall look at the buildings’ impact on the game.


    2: Again, not saying feed before TH18, just that if you at least start by TH18, you can still amass plenty.


    The note about wall dragons is good!! I’ll be sure to put that in there! Thank you!


    3: I continue to disagree strongly with any assessment that allies need invested in. If you are doing PvP, invest in allies. If not, don’t. That remains my stance.


    I hope to see an improvement in our ability to find and hire decent allies, at which point I believe the discussion will be a moot point. I wish I could recommend that everyone get allies because... why not? It’s just that one of the goals of this guide is also time efficiency. If you follow this guide, you can complete your DQ, gather, and shield at night with less than 15/20 minutes of screen time each day. That’s an important goal within my guide, and allies involve serious time investment in addition to gold.


    If I could get a confirmation on your explanation of the ally system, I’d love to update my information.


    4: This breaks from one of the core necessities of the guide. If you want to go PvP earlier, then that’s good advice.


    5: My contributions to my clan excel in other areas. Like PvE events, for example. You’re still a huge asset if you’re a team player.


    Don’t wait until TH24 to invest in biome trees. It will probably just be around this time that you’re getting into lvl15+ upgrades.


    Yes, you can indeed achieve mastery at TH24.


    6: Savage :/


    7: Obviously shielding is relevant to your situational circumstances. As a general rule though, the less you use shields, the more you’ll have. The whole point is to have them when you need them, so if you need them, pop them!


    Absolutely every player will certainly have a different experience. And not everybody will want to follow my guide. If you want to PvP, do it. If you want to buy allies, do it. If you want to rush townhalls, do it. It’s just a game, and everyone can do whatever you want.
    (I’ll check on a couple of numbers you mentioned were off btw!)

    This guide isn’t “the only way to properly play Heckfire”. It’s just a strategy guide for maxing stats.
     
    #9 ProfessorDaddy, Aug 14, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  10. Tuor

    Tuor New Citizen

    Joined:
    Apr 30, 2019
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    1
    Tell us why you think what he said was wrong.
     
    ProfessorDaddy likes this.
  11. Ruqi

    Ruqi New Citizen

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2020
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    2
    This is an awesome guide. Best I’ve found. Thanks much!
     
    ProfessorDaddy likes this.
  12. DianaD

    DianaD New Citizen

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2021
    Messages:
    4
    Likes Received:
    5
    Thank you for the strategy and the guide!
    I am a TH14. I was on the right track but probably would have jumped ship sooner rather than later. Many tweeks in this guide will keep me playing longer.
    I understand your strategy layout and plan to follow it moving forward. :)
     
    ProfessorDaddy likes this.
  13. ProfessorDaddy

    ProfessorDaddy Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    52
    I appreciate the kind words! Please note the creation date, as some aspects of the game have been changed and new ones added in that may play a role in your decision making process!
     
  14. Revan92

    Revan92 New Citizen

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2021
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    If I build 4 studys do they all stack together to lower university research time
     
  15. ProfessorDaddy

    ProfessorDaddy Liked Citizen

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Messages:
    40
    Likes Received:
    52
    Yes. It’s additive, not multiplicative. Meaning they take the total percentage of all combined sources and then apply that to the base cost of the research.
     
  16. Drinkyjackson

    Drinkyjackson New Citizen

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2021
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    What are the results and/or affects of Captain sparkles curse effect, thank you kindly
     

Share This Page