Advice for New Players, or "All the things I wish someone had told me when I first started."

I see lots of posts here from newer players expressing many of the same frustrations I felt when I first started playing. After nearly a year, I’ve learned a few things, and I’d like to pass them on to hopefully save others from these frustrations.

  1. Progress is designed to be slow whether you spend money or not. You can buy gems to summon every hero in the game, but you can’t buy enough ascension materials to level them all up. You have to earn those through game play, for the most part.
  2. You don’t have to rush to finish the map. You’ll be replaying certain levels over and over to gather the resources you need anyway, so take your time. There is a reward for completing it, but there’s no time limit.
  3. Level up your stronghold, training camps, 1 forge, and your storehouses as rapidly as possible. You’ll be able to train 3* heroes at level 10 training camp, 4* at level 13, and 5* at level 20.
  4. Even if you are able to pull a bunch of 4* and 5* heroes early, you won’t have the materials to ascend them for a long time. Focus first on building a solid 3* team that will allow you to complete the rare quests. These are your best source of the elusive non-farmable ascension items. A 3* at level 3/50 is going to be more effective than a 4* at 2/50. Once you have a solid 3* team or two, then work on your 4*
  5. Work on no more than 1 hero of each color at a time. If you spread your feeders out among all your heroes, you will slow your progress to a crawl.
  6. Cups don’t really matter, so don’t sweat it if you lose a raid.
  7. DON’T FEED AWAY YOUR FIRST BANE!!!
  8. Join a good, active alliance. If you click on the names in the member list, it will tell you when they last logged in. If it’s longer than a few days, find another alliance. If your alliance isn’t helping you get stronger and enjoy the game, leave and find another that will.
  9. There is almost nothing in this game that you cannot get for free with time and effort. Spending money will speed up the process, but it isn’t necessary.
  10. The forum is full of good advice, information, tips, ideas, and great people. Use it.
481 Likes

Excellent post. Invaluable advice. Thank you.

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Level 10 Training Camp is problematic, since it can produce 1* and 2* as well. Just go straight to level 13 TC since it will produce just 3* and 4* (you’ll get the needed 3*'s from it while trying to get some 4*'s).

Essential TC levels are 1 2 4 11 13 20 and late game 19. TC11 is especially nice to “bank” ham and recruits (since you can dequeue production back to storage.)

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I used 10 for a while while I was building up to 13. It was a good stopgap.

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it is just not worth the development time wasted, and upgrade time wasted, for some 1*-3*. maybe only if you have really messed up your iron production and storage required for stronghold 13 and TC 13, but in that case you have far bigger delays ahead due to bad production facility setup. just go straight to 11 TC to manage continuous 24/7 1*/2* production, then 13 TC.

but as you said, the things one should have known earlier (i wasted some time thinking that TC 3 would have been useful).

the 3*'s you just get with time from event coins etc. or from TC13. too low chance in TC10.

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There was no wasted time. Stronghold to 10
TC#1 to 10
SH to 11 while researching TC10
Start training TC 10 in #1 and level the other to 11
SH to 12
TC#2 to 12
SH to 13
TC#2 to 13
Research TC13 in #2
Pull stored recruits and food out of TC#1 and dump into #2 at 13
TC #1 to 11
Research TC11 in #1
Start storing recruits in #1

I think I ran TC10 for maybe a week or 10 days and pulled 5 or 6 3* heroes. For someone F2P, that’s big.

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Thanks @NPNKY!
May I add that I learned quite late that ghost gems will bring me double mana. Can be important tactic in raids and battles…

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You can Autoplay through levels on the maps. Took me some months to notice this :see_no_evil:

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Ghosting.

Also the banking recruits thing Derpatron mentioned. I think it’s one of the most important thing to start doing as early as possible.

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Maybe also worth mentioning:

  • VIP … i don’t like spending money on games but VIP really is super helpful
  • push for TCs… ignore farms, houses, forge… etc. I mean bring them to a reasonable levels just don’t overdo it
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This is brilliant advice - I wish I’d seen it earlier! I’m at level 22 but still don’t have a fully ascended 3* team. I got so excited when I got 3 4* hereos that I started putting all my effort into them - and as 2 of them are the same colour I see your point about it taking forever to get anywhere. So now I’m going back work on getting Bane, Balthazar and the Wolf one (haha can’t remember his name) up to Level 50 and work on just one of those 2 4* star reds for now.
Thank you!

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Thank you for these great tips! I’m VERY new to E&P, so trying to gather as much information as I can!

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Also perhaps don’t be in too much of a hurry to upgrade your watchtower while you’re learning how your heroes work together.

Also also, when raiding, if you hit (for example) a yellow hero with yellow tiles, you’re essentially giving it free mana. Hit vertically (instead of horizontally) to avoid this.
Cheers!

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Could you elaborate more? What exactly is the difference Vertical/Horizontal and why yellow/yellow gives mana and green/yellow does not?

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Hitting a hero with same colour gives less damage but double mana for the other. If you have to hit with same colour try it horizontally in order to spread the tiles to more (other coloured) heroes.
This is especially applicable for yellow and purple heroes…

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Darn… Thanks!

20 chars.

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Hitting green red or blue with the same color does not deal any less damage.

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Also are you sure about the mana thing? Because I think it does not work that way.
Tests are inconclusive at the moment.

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The mana increase does not change based on tile color, just on the number of tiles that hit. However, since raiding (and war) are based on wiping out an opposing team before they can wipe you out, tile color does still matter. The idea is to do more damage to the opponent than you give them mana. Strong color does double damage, weak color does half.

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Thank you, NPNKY (and everyone else), for clarifying. I should probably have waited until after I slept to type!

As a new player, I have found the raids matchmaking system to be confusing. I learned not to consider trophies (cups) at all in evaluating a match. I also learned that a hero’s number of chevrons are as/more important than its number of stars and definitely more important than the actual level number.

How these coefficients work together in creating the power score, I have not found yet, but I am devouring these forums as quickly as I can because I am sure that if the answer is to be found, it will be here. And that’s the only other advice I have for new players.

Which leads me to my final comment before I retreat back to my comfy shadow. I also have learned that this is a pretty amazing community. I sit in Peer Support and read everything written, mostly without comment. I tend to come here when I have questions first and have found almost all of them already answered, because there is a surprising number of very generous players in this community who give a lot of time and attention to the data through meticulous recording and rigorous analysis. And the professional statisticians even remember to explain P() to their audience. :smile:

But also, there are so many players from guilds whose names I recognize (from videos and posts here and other games), who sit in the Peer Support channel and patiently, courteously, help very new players with the same questions over and over without ever telling them to RTFM or responding with a link to here. They protect it from becoming a recruiting channel so that new players don’t feel overwhelmed by the barrage of adverts. They give build advice and team synergy advice and commiserate over unfavorable RNG. In short, they are supportive peers.

I have been online for a very long time and this is my first “phone” game so perhaps that’s the difference, but the people who sit in this channel provide the community with a valuable resource, and that’s something worth recognizing and celebrating.

Regards!

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