15 Empires and Puzzles Tips / Life Hacks to help you get better fast

0:10 [Music] hey how's it going everybody so I wanted to make this video as a way to combine a lot of the things I wish I had known when I started with all the things that I think are essential to know when playing this game this game does not allow fast progress so these are all things you want to make sure you know to allow yourself to progress as quickly as possible without wasting your time this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide so if you have any other good tips add them to the comment section below some of these topics are also quite deep and I will be making separate guides for them in the future so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything lastly making quality videos like this one takes a long time and for that reason I've created a patreon account as an option for people who would enjoy the

0:56 opportunity to support me and continuing to make great videos there is no expectation whatsoever but if you would like to donate just click the link in the video description and now let's get into the tips this game really revolves around mana which is that bar beneath your health you live and die by your special skills and your mana is the key to using those skills so a thorough understanding of mana is definitely something you want to have mastered simply put you gain mana by matching tiles in the color of Heroes you have on your team however if your troops little guides that come out of the matched tiles across the battlefield without striking an opponent you gain double the mana you normally would this is called

1:42 ghosting and it was a very important strategic tactic in the game as an example my grave maker here charges with six tiles normally as you can see however when I match those tiles and they don't hit an enemy they count for double use this to your advantage there will be times that you want to hit opponents with tiles and times that you want to intentionally miss lastly I want to show you this chart come back to this whenever you need it until you have it memorized basically there are five possible model speeds for all heroes and they each require a different number of tiles to charge knowing how many tiles are matches you need to charge your depending on the speed of a particular hero is a really important part of this game you want to know that if you match a three match in 2 tiles hit an opponent

2:28 and one is ghosted that it will be enough to charge your healer so you can survive the enemy sniper that is almost fully charged by practicing and eventually mastering the information here you will become a much more effective killer on the battlefield when you first start playing the game you get five team slots and I suggest you use them all you can also use gems to purchase additional slots which is what I did to make things a bit more convenient but this is not necessary when viewing your hero inventory in either element or power mode the team in slot 1 will always be shown at the top I think by default slot 1 is used for defense but I've used slot 1 to put my leveling projects and so they're always easy to find outside of that I recommend

3:14 having a team for your Titan attacks in your farming team your raiding team and lastly your defense team placing your defense team in the final slot makes it less likely that you will accidentally mess with it thus weakening your defense clicking the buttons shown at the bottom of the screen here is how to tell the game which team is intended to be your raid defense team the last point to make here is that you can name these teams whatever you want and I suggest utilizing this feature to keep things clear within my own roster I have chosen to have my first two teams and therefore my first two rows as leveling projects but I'll talk more in detail about leveling later on in the video [Music] I can recall the sobering moment when I

4:00 realized that to progress in this game I would have to replay some levels on occasion which turned out to be an understatement when you start season one it's like any other match three game where you display through levels of increasing difficulty however since this game is all about leveling your heroes you will need a steady supply of resources if your to do this with any speed or efficiency that answers the why so let's look at the how farming is simply replaying levels you have already completed in the interest of acquiring the resources they provide this is about maximizing the amount of resources gained per world energy at the end of the section I'll show you where to farm with some of my favorite spots and most important thing when it comes to farming is using autoplay discovering autoplay was life-changing and makes farming so

4:46 much easier so when should you farm short answer is always in fact I'm farming right now while I record this video the more resources you can get the faster you can progress hands-down the best place to farm currently in the game is the monthly event Atlantis Rises so I recommend saving all of your world energy flasks for this event during this time world energy costs for the season two levels are lower while the resources gained are higher you do have to complete season 1 to have access to season 2 so if you haven't done this make it your immediate priority so where should you farm the rest of the time the place I farm most often is season 1 Province 12 stage 9 this gives decent

5:32 resources and lots of XP compared to other common farming levels like season 1 province 8 stage 7 XP is great because as you level up it increases your world energy cap which makes your future farming even more efficient the other consistent thing you'll want to spend world energy on is quests always complete rare quests and class quests as the ascension items and emblems are very valuable depending on your strengths these could also be good places to use battle items to make sure you are able to fully complete them [Music] each time you level up all of your energies or flags are refilled the two exclusions are war flags and tournament

6:19 flags if you plan carefully this can allow you extra hits on the Titan extra rate attacks to fill your hero chest and more world energy for farming so make sure you keep an eye on the XP bar by your avatar so that before you cross into the next level you first use all of your remaining flags world energy flags are the only ones that provide XP so you'll want to use your Titan flags and red flags before your world energy if you're close to leveling up to see exactly how much XP you have remaining simply click on your avatar in the top left corner of the screen to put it bluntly good heroes are hard to come by in this game and when you do finally get one there would be fewer things more

7:05 upsetting than accidentally feeding them away so when you do get a new hero that you know you want to keep make sure to click on the lock icon in the upper left corner of the hero card the same tip goes for troops as well getting four-star troops or even three-star troops can be something that really ups your game so you want to make sure that you save those important troops too to save your troops open up the inventory go to troops click on the troop you want to save and you'll see the lock icon appear above it lastly with tournaments in this game you will need to have two star 3 star and 4 star troops so be sure to save enough of your lower-level troops so you don't accidentally feed them away and have none left for your tournament team

7:52 [Music] filling these wanted mission chests as they're called is an important part of your daily gameplay they can be a good source of important resources and you'll want to fill as many of these as you can however something that I don't think many of you knew is that when opening a hero chest full from rating it doesn't matter what arena you filled the chest in but only what arena you open the chest in the higher you cup count the higher the corresponding raid arena you will be in and the better the rewards can be so if you're in gold when you fill your Rach esthe and you're right on the verge of going into platinum it could be worth waiting to open the chest if you only need one more raid wind to push into platinum however I wouldn't

8:37 advise waiting more than like an hour before opening the chest because you want to make sure that you reset that timer so you can get on to the next chest and perhaps even get one of those very rare elemental chests which generally give even better loot occasionally I will use gems to skip the wait time on the hero chest when there isn't much time left in the gem cast to do so is therefore reduced the cost will vary between 1 and 20 gems depending on how much time is left on the timer I find the typical loot in the monster chest to not be worth the gem expense of skipping the timer but depending on the arena you are in skipping hero chest wait times can be worthwhile with a game built on so much random chance or RNG as

9:24 it's often called you want to make sure that you're doubling down and capitalizing on the areas of gameplay that can give you the biggest advantage personally I feel there is no better thing to focus on than tile play or how you move the tiles on the screen to your advantage being able to see in your mind what will happen after making certain matches can not only help you charge your heroes as efficiently as possible but it could cause some deadly combos to destroy your enemies even faster if this is something you want to get better at which I strongly encourage be sure to check out this video also linked in the video description or I explain this concept in detail with helpful examples [Music] this is gonna change as you progress

10:10 through the game so I'm gonna focus on considerations for the earlier points in the game food and iron are essential resources for as long as you play so I recommend maxing your farms and mines as quickly as possible to ensure you're producing as much as possible another thing is don't prioritize leveling up your houses very much because you can store infinite recruits in your training camps I recommend putting all excess recruits in a training camp level 11 often called TC 11 it's pretty easy to bank a lot of recruits in here which you can easily pull out to put into other training camps if you feel the need but it will also cheaply produce a steady stream of one star and two star feeders don't worry about buildings like the Hunter's Lodge or alchemy lab until you're much

10:57 further in the game and don't need your fruit and iron as much for leveling heroes or other critical buildings I'm also someone who doesn't use many battle items so you can determine how far you want to push your forges based on the items you like having available to you my focus was on leveling as many heroes as quickly as possible since that is what I think makes the game fun in terms of the stronghold that you're gonna want to consistently level this up until you can at least unlock all the plots of land in your base giving you more opportunities for more farms and mines the watchtower will be the highest yielding building you can have when compared to a single farm or mine so make this somewhat of a priority however I've been playing every day for about 10 months and still only have my watchtower at level 17 with regard to your food and

11:45 iron storages if you aren't finding your food and iron maxed too often then the upgrades for these buildings will be strictly related to meeting the thresholds for high cost upgrades for higher levels of your buildings or expensive research costs in training camps I only recommend leveling these as much as you need to to achieve the more important upgrades [Music] leveling Heroes should be a blend of speed and efficiency on one hand you want access to that new hero as quickly as possible but on the other hand you need to balance the use of various limited resources for these reasons I recommend leveling one of each color hero at a time or two of each once you're further into the game after I

12:31 explain a few more things I will show you how I personally level heroes based on where I'm at in the game I always recommend feeding on color heroes 10 at a time until you get this special scale to level eight out of eight once the special skill is that little eight out of eight then you can feed as many or as few as you want at a time the benefit to feeding same killer heroes is you get 20% more XP and you get a higher chance of increasing this special skill 20% more XP means leveling your hero 20% faster which is a big deal you'll also want to start with your one star feeders first to be more food efficient and then eventually move on to two star feeders you pay food on a per feeder basis so when you get to the later stages of leveling the food cost is prohibitively

13:17 high for how little XP you will get for a one-star feeder so here's my approach to leveling primarily I will always advise leveling the heroes you think are fun to use on offense there can be a perceived pressure to have the toughest defense team possible but if they aren't heroes you think will be fun to use when you actually play the game then I wouldn't advise it other than that I always level two heroes of one color at a time top row that you see here which I have in my first team slot are the heroes that are further along in the leveling process and I'm only giving two star feeders to them the row beneath are my secondary leveling projects and these get all the one-star feeders typically by the time the secondary level heroes are ready to get to star feeders the top row hero of that color is done and I can

14:03 move the secondary hero up to the primary spot and bring in a new secondary hero of that color this is by no means the only way to do it but it's my preference [Music] my advice is to join an alliance early killing Titans is the most reliable source of rare essential materials in the entire game so you'll want to kill as many Titans as possible which you can only do in an alliance finding a good group of people can even make the game more fun to play to so you want to make sure to find a group that matches your level of commitment to the game as alliances can range from very casual to very competitive there's nothing wrong with changing alliances as your level of progress and commitment in the game fluctuates but I recommend from personal

14:49 experience to try to find the best match you can and then stick with it to finding the line so you can either click on the Alliance button at the bottom of the screen to browse alliances or you can look into some of the recruitment threads on the empires and puzzles forum to see if you can find something suited to your level in the game [Music] at a certain point emblems become one of the most valuable resources in the game for this reason I don't recommend giving them to just any heroes basically they allow you the opportunity to boost the stats of a fully maxed and ascended hero and give them a talent which is predetermined by the class of the hero what heroes you choose to put them on will vary depending on how you intend to play the game so let's talk about that

15:36 the idealistic approach is that you will save them for the best five-star hero you get in each class but it can take a long time to get to this point meaning that they will sit on the shelf for a while the other end of the spectrum would be that you put them on your best three star Garros the problem with the latter is that you will ultimately outgrow these three-star heroes so while putting emblems on three-star heroes will give you an earlier advantage it can hurt you in the long run and while waiting to put them on only your best 5 stars will get you off to a slow start it can ultimately help you in the long run the exceptions to this rule are tournaments and challenge events emblems on heroes will give you a big advantage in tournaments but in my opinion that is a fairly niche aspect of the game to dedicate such a valuable resource to

16:23 even though tournaments are weekly only 1/3 of the time will they be a three star four star or five star tournament in particular with challenge events people will emblem very specific heroes to compete with but competing in the challenge event is a pretty advanced style of gameplay and I wouldn't recommend taking that decision lightly unless you're an experienced player so with that in mind what should you do well there is no right answer personally I've chosen to emblem some very specific 4 star heroes but I'm slowly removing them in favor of newly acquired 5 stars some excellent 4 star heroes though like costume regard and Proteus to name a few our deserving of emblems even in the more advanced stages of the game I wish

17:08 I could tell you what to choose here but you will have to let this information sink in and ultimately determine what is right for you the final thing to consider is that you can remove emblems from heroes but there will always be a cost you can either pay gems and forfeit 5% of the emblems you used which I don't recommend doing or you can use a reset emblem to return 100% of spent emblems but these reset emblems are rare and should not be used frequently even if you do use a reset emblem you won't get back all the food and iron you spend so don't be in a hurry to use your emblems but continue to learn about the game and you will ultimately decide what to do to fit your play style if you have different thoughts about this let me know in the comments as that can help other people watching too synergy is the

17:59 most important thing to consider when putting a team together whether it be offensive or defensive I've seen many people try to beat challenging levels just by throwing their strongest heroes at it and this is a fundamentally flawed approach one of the most basic and best synergies is to combine a hero that lowers the defense of all enemies with a hero that boosts the attack power of your team there are many other possible synergies outside of this but the one I mentioned still remains one of the most effective in general you always want to have one healer on your team or sometimes two depending on how challenging your opponent is next you'll ideally want to stack at least two or three of the strong color against the opponent's tank or central hero in their defense then you can make decisions based on the special skills of your

18:45 opponent like whether you will need a hero to cleanse ailments from your team or a hero that can remove buffs from the opponent etc make sure to read every hero card you have access to so you can develop a strong working knowledge of what heroes are out there and experiment with ways of combining them until you find a few synergies that you like a final note is to think carefully about the order you fire your specials in firing a hero that boosts attack is going to be best before using your sniper as is firing a hero that cleanses intact buff before firing that same sniper and when thinking about this on defense the AI will always fire from left to right so keep this in mind when structuring your defense defense is its own thing but for starters you'll always

19:30 want to have your toughest hero in the center position and typically to use one hero of each color so your opponent stack a strong color against you you can look at the teams on the leaderboard to get a good idea about some of the best defensive team synergies here's a quick example of a team synergy I really like on this three to yellow purple team I have two snipers at very fast speed that apply a defense down against yellow then I have gazelle who can cleanse ailments from me boost my attack and limit incoming damage to that I add the uncustomed version of regard who can heal and also cleanse and then Proteus to block enemy mana generation which is one of the most powerful effects in the game here's how this team works okay so

20:16 once I have enough tiles to get all my yellows charged which will happen right here this is where the synergy comes in so jackal is very hijack damage deals 270 270 percent damage to the target target gets minus 50 for defense against holy for 4 turns so what the synergy is here is that I have this slightly weaker jackal only a 918 but he gives the same ailment so I boost the attack with gazelle I use the weaker jackal to hit them for a little bit of damage and then also to apply the negative defense against negative defense against yellow

21:01 and then I can pretty much kill any hero with the follow-up shot so we have a shot over here with 1500 health she's a little bit weaker actually let's see what's his defense so he isn't 836 she has a 778 so let's show that we can kill a full strength hero with this combo so we'll use gazelle first remember the order is very important we'll use the weaker jackal so that the stronger one can use his follow-up shot on the you can see now he has minus 50 for defense against holy so this thing should hit about 50% harder so we used the second one and dead so the first one was 541 the second one was a thousand and ten and you can see he's got 1070 damage

21:46 plus another 1070 because gazelle gives a 100% attack and then see if this team survives long enough for us to use our other videos okay so regard can then heal everyone back up Proteus can stop their mana and now I can hit them with tiles and their mana is gonna stay frozen there they can still hit me with their slosh attacks but you can see they're both about to do on the very next turn and then they're also taking 128 poisoned damage per turn for two more turns which is gonna actually kill them so these Reds will do almost no damage he's going to die next turn but we'll just finish them off with our

22:32 yellow tiles so that's an example of synergy that I really like and you can see from that clip how they work together to be able to take out an even pretty tough team so remember to experiment with your own heroes to find good synergies and then don't be afraid to stick with those tried-and-true combinations if you've been playing for a while then this is an obvious one but if you're a newer player or didn't know about this then it's super important tapping once on an enemy allows you to target them this means when you fire a special skill you will hit that particular enemy being selective about who to target based on the function of your special skill can allow you a lot more strategic control over the game and it's something you should take into account at all times perhaps there's a

23:19 weakened enemy about to hit you but instead you can target them and kill them first additionally if you press and hold on an enemy you can see a lot of information about them use this both for strategy as well as to learn about various heroes and build up a base of knowledge about how to more effectively fight them [Music] this game can get expensive very quickly so it is important to decide if you are comfortable or even interested in spending any money on it if you do want to spend money on it then I highly recommend setting a budget of what you can comfortably afford or want to spend on entertainment and then stick to it this can allow you to purchase only the best deals as they come up instead of spending on demand it can be very

24:04 tempting to want to summon until you get a good hero or in other words spend more than you ideally should however if you set a budget and stick to it combined with the understanding that more often than not you will not get what you're after then you can avoid the heartache of overspending there are no guarantees in this game so to play responsibly means to approach it much like gambling and to be okay with losing more often than not never chase specific heroes because 99.99% of the time you will just be left disappointed even if you do have the remarkably good luck to pull an event hero or something of the like there's a high chance it will not even be the one that you really wanted for this reason I really recommend keeping your spending low as I mentioned before it can be very tempting to spend a lot

24:50 but remember that it is just a mobile game and there are probably other things you can spend that money on that will make you much happier in the long run [Music] this seems almost too obvious to mention but I think this is the most important tip this is a game to play for enjoyment so make sure to keep this in mind it's easy to get frustrated if you set your expectations too high so I recommend expecting the bare minimum and trying to be happy and find enjoyment in the heroes you do have or better yet make your opportunity for improvement be the things you can control like finding good synergies with your heroes or getting really good at playing the board in other words double down on the things in your control even with the most insane

25:35 roster that could cost thousands upon thousands of dollars there will still be heroes that you don't have and will still want even with the best heroes it can still take ages and ages to level them so getting good heroes is only half the process to being able to use them the lesson in there is to not get caught up in the chase and instead enjoy the game as a nice fun break from reality so hopefully this video has helped you improve your understanding of what is a really fun game and giving you some useful tips to keep in mind as you progress my closing reminders are that this game is a slow grind if you want to have success in this game then you can't expect progress to quickly and secondly don't chase heroes it is just not worth it let the game be a source of fun instead of a source of stress thank you

26:22 so much for watching if you enjoyed the video be sure to LIKE comment and subscribe I cover all sorts of information and strategy related to empires and puzzles on this channel so make sure you don't miss out if you have any questions or suggestions be sure to leave them in the comments below I try to respond to as many comments as I can but we also have a wonderful supportive community here on the channel of people that would be happy to help thanks for watching guys I'll see you in the next video