Free-to-Play Playbook

You can get genuinely far without paying. One free account reached 30 million power in about two weeks using the approach below. What you cannot do is compete in the top leagues — that is a spending contest. Play for progression and alliance fights and the game is good; chase the leaderboard and it will not be.

The short version¶

Hoard gems for the Lucky Wheel and Hero Pass. Nothing else you do with gems comes close.
Build economy buildings first; put the right-side PvP buildings on a short exception list.
Use all your stamina, every day. The Bar refreshes at 00:00 and 12:00.
Build two same-faction queues. Never four.
Play every event as far as you can. Free rewards are the entire engine.
Focus gear material on purple and gold only. Scrap the rest.
Use the trade shop daily, including the free refreshes.
Use the Resolution Chamber. It is free production most players ignore.

Rule 1 — Gems are hero shards, and nothing else¶

The Lucky Wheel and the Hero Pass are how a free account gets legendary hero shards. Lucky Wheel spins cost 500 gems each, and a commonly quoted target is about 4,000 gems banked per wheel to secure a copy of each new legendary. Everything you spend gems on elsewhere is a spin you did not take.

Never spend gems on:

Finishing a building — use alliance help and speed-ups
Finishing research — same
Rushing troop training — same

A 1,200-gem instant-finish costs you two and a half spins at a legendary hero. Spending 50 gems on something small is fine. Spending over a thousand is not.

Hoard across the fortnight, dump into the wheel. This single habit is how the server's leading free-to-play player reports owning every S-tier hero in the game without spending. See Lucky Wheel.

Rule 2 — Build income before power¶

Resources are the foundation of everything: buildings, hero levels, research, troops. As a free player you have less margin for waste than anyone, so the discipline matters more.

Left-side production buildings first. Workers need houses, workplaces need workers, income needs high-level workplaces.

Right-side exceptions to upgrade alongside: Training Camps, Hospital, Research Lab, Alliance Hall, Rally Hall, Rally Center, Arsenal, Reserve Barracks.

Everything else waits, then comes up evenly later.

Push adventure stages as far as they go — deeper clears permanently raise offline gold and food income.

Details in Economy and Resolution Chamber.

Rule 3 — Extract every free daily reward¶

This is where free accounts actually get their resources.

Use all your stamina. The Bar refill refreshes at 00:00 and 12:00 daily, each lasting 12 hours, so check in twice. Split it between detection missions and rallying Crystal Giants and Armored Tortoises.

Kill the highest turtle and crystal giant you can beat. First kills on a new tier pay a bonus that never repeats — leaving a tier unattempted forfeits it permanently.

Push the detection boss high. One of the better hero shard sources available to you.

Do your daily tasks, every day. They pay resources and recruitment tickets, and they are the ticket supply for Carnival Night, the Hunting Festival, and Lucky Cards. Badly underrated.

Gather while offline. Whenever you know you will be away for hours, send every queue to gather. You lose auto-join on crystal giant rallies while gathering — early on, take that trade.

Use the trade shop daily and use the free refreshes. Discounted speed-ups, golden hero shards, and breakthrough blueprints. A genuine gold mine for non-paying players.

Buy the Arena shop's weekly orange gear piece. The only other free orange gear source is a 0.25% chest drop, which makes this the most dependable gear progression a free account has. See Arena and Champ Clash.

Clear Temple Challenges every day. The cumulative ladder never resets and pays breakthrough chests at the higher rungs — see Temple Challenges.

Use the Resolution Chamber. Up to five days of instant resource production, a 20% construction speed buff, and a 24-hour production buff — all free, all repeatable. Satisfaction Coins cap at 2,000,000, so spend before you cap.

Rule 4 — Heroes: concentrate ruthlessly¶

Levelling legendary heroes is the hardest part of free play. Purple and blue heroes come easily through free tasks; legendaries mostly do not.

Get Quanti early. He is fully free-to-play, through the Quanti Action event: defeat Crystal Giants or Tortoises for Explosive Arrows, summon a Goblin Warrior, collect his shards. He reduces stamina cost and raises damage against non-player enemies, which no other hero does. Explosive Arrows do not expire when the event ends — see Quanti Action for how to exploit that legitimately. For a free account he may be the most valuable hero in the game.

Bach is your free legendary. The only one obtainable without paying, through daily deals and recruitments, and he is easy to max as a free player.

Riders are the strongest faction, and a good free target once Scarlet is in the game. Build a same-faction team.

Do not waste skill books and tomatoes on heroes you will not field. Hoard them for your actual team. Heroes like Corvus and Rick are not worth a single book.

See Heroes, Factions and Queues.

Rule 5 — Two queues, not four¶

You will never have the gear for four. Build two strong same-faction queues and let the other two be functional queues for detection missions and occupation duty. This is not a compromise — it is the correct build even for players who spend.

Rule 6 — Gear: purple and gold only¶

Scrap or dismantle grey, green, and blue gear and feed the shards into your purple and gold pieces.

Do not spread energy cores. The most regretted mistake among experienced players is promoting many pieces to level 2 or 3 instead of finishing one. Finish a piece, then start the next. See Hero Gear.

Rule 7 — Play every event, and time your stockpile¶

Free rewards are your entire budget, so leave none of them.

Play everything: Abyss Adventure (reroll toward orange tasks), Executioner's Fall (every two days, no stamina cost), Fortune Mobilization, Earthcore Express, Temple Challenges, Carnival Night, Dragon's Treasure, the Ultimate Alliance Duel, Core Mining. And enter Champ Clash and the Arena — nothing dies there.

Hoard between events and spend during them. Most events score you for actions you were taking anyway. Bank your speed-ups, gear materials, upgrades, and training batches, then dump them on the alliance duel day whose theme matches. Same actions, several times the reward. See Events Overview and Priorities.

Do not burn your power early on a new server. Power-spend events arrive a few weeks in and reward exactly what you already gave away.

Rule 8 — Join a strong alliance immediately¶

Alliance help cuts your timers, alliance gifts are free resources, the alliance shop sells free weekly world passports, and a large fraction of the game's content is alliance-gated. Aim for a top-five alliance; if it contains spenders, their rally power benefits you directly.

Rule 9 — Troops: camps first¶

Do not train tier 1 to 3 troops early. Push your training camps as high as they go, then train from tier 4 or 5. Otherwise you spend the mid-game promoting tens of thousands of obsolete troops at around 12 hours per batch.

PvP barely exists in your first weeks. You do not need an army yet.

Rule 10 — Protect what you have¶

Keep resources packed. Only what sits in the Warehouse can be plundered. Unpack only what you are spending, and remember chests must be used to grant their contents.

Shield overnight. Five free per week. And bind your account to Google or Facebook — see Accounts, Servers and Support.

Compress your timers before logging off. If training finishes in an hour and you will be gone ten, speed it up and start a fresh batch.

The farm account technique¶

A known approach: create a second character on your server, gather with it around the clock, then attack it with your main to transfer the resources.

It works and it is widely used. It is also a per-server judgment call — some servers and alliances view it dimly, and it is worth knowing the local norms before you set one up.

Honest expectations¶

The game is pay-to-win, and the community says so plainly. Skins carry bonus stats and sit behind paid passes. New heroes are often released behind a hero pass whose free track pays no shards at all for that hero. The Lucky Wheel gives one free spin a day.

What that means practically: you can build a strong, capable account that wins fights and contributes to a serious alliance. You cannot win a top-ten power race. Set your goal at the first thing and the game is enjoyable. And if you are considering spending anyway, read Spending Guide first — most packs are not worth their price.