How to sleep through a "kill event"

Three days long and everyone in the realm is out to get you. How can you sleep through an event like this?

First of all, what is a "kill event?"  This is the fifth and final phase of the 7 day long event known as "Strongest Lord."  This event takes place periodically with the first one in a new realm noticeably missing the "kill" phase.  The first 4 phases, "Power on," "Gather Resources," "Recruit Troops," and "Attack Monsters" are each one day long and with the exception of "Power On" are self-explanatory. Do what the title says as much as you can to earn points.  These 4 phases occur in random order, so it isn't possible to know which phase comes next (until the 4th one, when by process of elimination, you know which that is.)  The fifth and final phase is always "Kill Enemies" often referred to in-game as "KE."

This event is often associated with the realm's largest and strongest castles attacking anyone and everyone in sight.  Often teleporting to a smaller alliance's territory and systematically attacking everyone in the alliance.

This article is not about how to get a top score in this event.  I'm sure there are already plenty of articles with tips for that--pretty simple really--recruit a ton of troops and then kill them all.  I'm far more interested in how to get through the event as a defender and not lose a ton of battle power or have to start over.

So, other than the obvious, using up 3 day's worth of peace shields, how can you sleep peacefully during a kill event?

It is simple, really.  Those other players are attacking for 2 things: 1. kill points for the event and 2. resources needed to replace all the troops they're losing doing all of that attacking.

So if your castle has neither of these things available to them, why would they waste time and energy attacking you?

Follow this simple plan and you too can sleep through a kill event:

Monitor your troop levels.

You can only effectively use as many troops as will fit into your available army marches.  If you have 3 marches and each can hold 60,000 troops, then clearly you have no real use for any more than 180k troops at any given time.  However, even that may be too many. There are lots of good reasons to have a large number of troops. In an Elite War or Elite Adventure, you can have only one march in use, but having some extra troops in reserve will allow you to play longer and harder without having to use healing speed-ups or gems.  In Territory Defense, having 3 full marches can get you a top score.  However, during a Kill event, you will not want to have any more troops at your castle than your hospital can hold.  if you have low-level gatherers (I use tier 2 Dragon Riders for all gathering and "farming" activities, so I keep a sizable supply of them around,) these are the ones least likely to be attacked as they are not worth any points.  Troops of tier 4 and up are prime targets in a kill event, so these are the ones you need to keep safe.

"But what if I just have SO MANY troops that nobody would be stupid enough to attack me?"  Never going to happen.  That just means a neighboring alliance will send a timed attack with even more troops.  Your giant army will just look like a ripe plum ready for plucking.

Your hospital capacity is the measuring stick for how many troops you should have at home at any one time.  If you are sleeping and someone comes along and attacks you for some reason, you'll want all of your troops to be wounded and go to the hospital instead of being killed.  It is much faster and cheaper to heal wounded troops than to replace dead ones (and don't even get me started on "well, at least now I can make angels!")

Since you can't always control how long your gatherers are going to be out, consider them all to be "at home" and don't forget about your golems as well!  So if you have a hospital capacity of 60K and you have 180K troops, you'll need to figure out a place for those 120K troops to hide out during the KE.

Alliance Fort:  The alliance fort is the ideal place for troops to be if you don't want anyone attacking them. This is one of the only buildings that can not be attacked, but it can hold one full march from every single alliance member.

Allies' Castles:  If you have an ally who is going to use a 24 hour peace shield, ask if you can store a march in their embassy.  Just keep an eye on them because your ally could end their shield early or send your troops home at any time.

Mines and resource tiles: Many realms strongly discourage any attacking of mines and tiles.  If your realm is this way, your troops may be perfectly safe while gathering.  However, again you need to use caution because Elite mines can be harvested at different rates depending on how many lords gather at once, so if you are the 1st or 2nd lord in you might estimate 6 hours of gathering time, but if 3 more join in while you're asleep, those troops could be coming home early.  Resource tiles typically don't have enough resources to keep your troops busy all night, with the exception of gem mines.  One good way to hide troops is to turn on vip and search out high level gem mines to get a few hours of respite.

Other alliance buildings: You can reinforce your alliance castle, or any of the other buildings (except for the port tower) including any of the many flags you are likely to have scattered around.  These are especially bad places to store troops because an attack on these troops will result in less of the attacker's troops dying and more deaths on your own side.  You would be better off just leaving your troops at home and hoping you don't get hit with a giant rally while you're out.

My recommendation is this: 1. have only enough troops so that you can store one full march in the alliance fort containing all of your best fighters, while the rest can safely fit into your hospital.  Send these remaining troops out to gather during the KE.  If you have too many fighters to do this, either use peace shields, or find an ally who will and store troops with them.

Limit Resources

During a kill event you don't want to have enough resources available to be tempting.  Time your major upgrades to happen shortly before the KE.  Spend everything else you have on research, building upgrades, even troops.  Give them away to allies.  Whatever it takes to not have tons of resources tempting your neighbor to attack you.

Hopefully this advice will allow you to sleep peacefully even when your peace shield expires during your next kill event!

Happy Gaming!

Dweomr

Sending Flowers

OK, veteran players will think this is a very basic thing that doesn't need explanation, but the tutorial doesn't go over this and newer players may not even know it is a thing if someone doesn't tell them.  I've mentioned sending flowers in my various alliances and seem to get at least a few that say "what is that?"

First a little introduction to the WaO map:  Your map has several levels of depth: The one you are likely familiar and the one the tutorial introduces you to is the "world  map" which is somewhat of a misnomer because it doesn't show the whole world, only your realm, or the realm you happen to have selected.  You can switch between the world map and the interior of your castle with the icon in the bottom left corner of your screen.

Once you are in the world map, you can elevate to a higher level by tapping on the "map" icon in the lower left just above the castle/world toggle.

This brings you to a map that shows little detail, but can be very useful.  If you are a member of an alliance (which of course you are, right?) you'll see your alliance castle, your territory and a marker for each member of your alliance.  You will also see in the center of the map, the royal city.

You can expand even further by tapping on the globe icon to see other realms and even other globes, but for this activity, that is unnecessary.

While on the higher level map, tap on the royal city, or from the lower level of the world map, use the coordinate system to travel to 600,600.

This is the royal city.  Here you can see the King/Queen's castle and any appointments that have been made.  There are also three towers, one for each of the top 3 alliances in your realm.  If you tap on any one of these towers, you can see a flower icon.  Press that to send flowers to that alliance.

But which one should I choose?  You can ask your alliance leadership if there is one they would prefer, but in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter.  The flowers are counted and they can see who has the most, but other than that, they give anyone any benefit.

However, YOU benefit from sending them.  As soon as you do so, you'll see a reward of two randomly selected prizes.  These prizes are generally better than many of the prizes you receive from doing such a simple thing, so it is well worth spending the few seconds each day doing it.

In addition to the two prizes you receive immediately, you also get points towards your daily prize, which can mean even more prizes later in the day.

So don't forget to send flowers!