Bear Trap Basics

Breaking down the Bear Trap for New Players Hello again! You may have seen my previous post “Things I wish I knew before I started Playing”. It seemed to do pretty well and I received several messages from players in my alliance as well as a few from other states expressing their thanks for the information. With this I have decided to move forward with a series of posts that will help newer players or possibly players around my experience who are just looking to understand certain things in the game better. Additionally, I will specifically target the Free to Play (F2P) player, with the possibility of certain things to consider spending on for the  “low spender” accounts.

If you have not seen my previous post, please check it out at the link below, as anything in this post will be done under the assumption that you have read through these: Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing

The next topic I would like to talk about is one of my favorites, the Bear Trap. Having created another account in a new state to have some fun with my “tips” I have noticed that, just like me, many people really struggle with the Bear Trap early on. I’ll also not name any names but some players just struggle to maximize their damage on the Bear and hopefully this post can assist you with improving your personal best, or just sharing all or portions of this post with your Alliance members to improve your Bear Traps as a whole.  Fair disclaimer here, this will be a long post.

General Information 

Let’s go over a few things before we move into actually participating in the Bear Trap event, some of which are based on the ability and knowledge of your alliance leaders.  

First, you should understand the rewards you can obtain from the Bear Trap and why they are important. This is especially true for the F2P player as it will be one of the only ways to easily obtain the needed materials to upgrade Hero Gear. 

There are two sets of rewards. The first is just based on the damage you do to the Bear during that event. The rewards will scale based on the amount of damage that you do to the bear from 2.5K Damage up to 38.4B damage*. These rewards include Essence Stones, Sergey Shards, Enhancement Components, Alliance Tokens, and a good amount of Resources (RSS). The essence stones are super important for the F2P player as this will be your primary source of that material, which is used to upgrade your hero gear through mastery forging.   

The second set of rewards are based on your personal best and can only be obtained once, as you do more damage to the bear. You will receive the rewards listed above, plus a certain number of Lucky Hero Gear Chests, which grants a Rare or higher piece of hero gear and a chance at Mythic Gear. 

Next, your alliance should look to optimize the layout of your “Hive” to assist with calling and/or joining rallies for the Bear Trap time that you chose. For those who are very new to the game, your alliance will be able to build a Bear Trap pretty early on and will have the ability to add a second Bear Trap shortly after. Typically the alliance will hold votes to determine the best times (two of them) to hold the Bear Trap event, and then organize their players around each trap based on several factors such as, activity, alliance involvement, power, and most importantly, furnace AND command center levels. There are online “Hive Builders” to assist with this if you are a new R4 or R5 looking to learn about optimizing your hive.  Please note that your alliance will typically move the Hive into the Tundra about a week after you have built your Bear trap, so this is a good time to reorganize. You will once again move to Fertile land at a later date. 

Trap time that you chose. For those who are very new to the game, your alliance will be able to build a Bear Trap pretty early on and will have the ability to add a second Bear Trap shortly after. Typically the alliance will hold votes to determine the best times (two of them) to hold the Bear Trap event, and then organize their players around each trap based on several factors such as, activity, alliance involvement, power, and most importantly, furnace AND command center levels. There are online “Hive Builders” to assist with this if you are a new R4 or R5 looking to learn about optimizing your hive.  Please note that your alliance will typically move the Hive into the Tundra about a week after you have built your Bear trap, so this is a good time to reorganize. You will once again move to Fertile land at a later date. Additionally, Rally callers can change from time to time just based on player activity or time changes affecting who can attend what Bear Trap. Mostly you will just want to be sure to participate and begin learning the rather small ways of optimizing your damage.  

Let’s move on to maximizing your damage on the bear

In the early stages of the game  you will have several different levels of troops. Using percentages of those troops is fairly difficult; however you should understand that to fully optimize damage to the bear you would want to have even marches of marksman, with some infantry and lancers. Most optimized setups will be anywhere from a 5%/5%/90% (Infantry/Lancers/Marksman), 10%/10%/80%, or 20%/20%/60%, it really depends on how many marksman you have vs how many marches you can fill.  

You see the Bear Trap is unique, it does not hit back; however, it does simulate a real fight, which requires all troop types for full effects. So there is no need for Infantry or lancers other than to buff your marksman. Now I am not telling you to send all marksmen and keep all your infantry or lancers at home. For the most part it will be a very long time before you can fill six full marches with perfect troop allocation anyways, if ever. So you will look to evenly spread your troops into the number of marches you have unlocked to join and/or call rallies. Then a bit later you will look to optimize your marches for joining certain rally callers or calling, which can be based on a few different factors. I’ll show you some examples and the marches I use a bit later in this post. Pro Tip: Even if you have only unlocked four marches, you can still join four Rallies, and Call one (so technically a fifth march).

The most important aspect of the bear trap is the heroes that you use and why. When you are a Rally Caller or a Rally Joiner, you really need to understand what you are contributing to the Rally as a whole so that you can use the heroes that apply damage buffs to the group. 

Let’s talk about a Rally Caller

As a Rally Caller you will contribute all Hero Abilities and Stats for each hero you use, one of each Troop Type. This will include the gear they are wearing, your chief gear (when obtained), and any Tech or Island upgrades that provide stats.  So ideally, you will call Rallies with your three best heroes, with your three best Hero Gearsets, and be one of the stronger people in your alliance so that you contribute more stats from other areas. You are also responsible for checking that all Joiners join correctly with the right heroes. You will have the ability to remove anyone who joins with the incorrect heroes or incorrect troop count (if your alliance applies troop count rules for certain callers). We will cover hero abilities later.  

As your alliance becomes stronger and improves at bear, you will also want to have Rally groups. Your strongest Rally callers would call as soon as the bear trap opens. The number of callers needed will be solely dependent upon how many members are attending the trap, size of rallies (command center dependent), etc. Next you would have a second set of Rally callers who call a rally 90 seconds after the Bear Trap opens. This will allow everyone to join multiple rallies and increase the number of hits on the Bear. More rallies means more damage. 

An example of this may look like this:  

Rally group 1 (Bear start) +Animal1. +Animal2. +Animal3, +Animal4 +Animal5 +Animal6 

Rally group 2 (90 Seconds After group ) +Animal1. +Animal2. +Animal3, +Animal4 +Animal5 +Animal6 

Last tip for rally calling is, when the bear has 5:45-6:30 remaining, EVERYONE should call a rally. Use their 3 best heroes (with gear), and any number of troops. This wave of rallies isn't particularly set up to be a perfect march or for the rally leader to do damage, it is just simply to allow everyone to get in a few final waves of attacks to optimize damage, just as the bear trap expires. If 25 people have attacked the bear today then at 6:00 on the timer there should be 25 Rallies open. Trust me, this could be the difference in breaking that personal best barrier, or not.

Rally Calling Heroes 

I happen to be a mostly F2P Rally Caller for my alliance’s bear trap. At the time of this post, my march size is just over 120k and my Rally size is right around 847k. I just hit F30 today and my command center is still 29, so these numbers will change within the next few weeks. There are many info graphics and guides on the internet that will show which heroes are best for what functions and for each Generation release. We are currently a few weeks away from Gen3 in our State. As a F2P, I do not have the desired Infantry Hero for calling, but I have a very solid one. Here is a list of Heroes for each troop type that you can prioritize in the early stages, in order of preference:  

$$$= Need to spend to obtain or make them worth using 

F2P= Easily obtainable and upgraded for a F2P or Low spender 

Infantry

1. Jeronimo - $$$

2. Natialia - $$$

3. Flint(Gen2) -F2P(wheel spins with gems you should be saving based on my first post)

4. Sergey - F2P

Note that if you did not spend to obtain Natalia or Jeronimo and also spend to buff them up, Sergey is really your only choice here. His skills do not provide any damage buffs to the rally; however, he will be a higher level, which will add stats to the damage your infantry does, at a higher level then the other two options if they are not ascended to the same level as Sergey. 

Lancers 

The only option here is Molly. Her abilities buff the Rally quite well and she’s not very hard to level up, even as F2P. Additionally, as a Mythic hero, she provides more buffs, and a Widget to the Rally and also provides better stat increases to Lancers than any other Lancer Hero, until Mia(Gen3). 

Marksmen

1. Zinman - $$$

2. Bahiti - F2P

3. Alonso(Gen2) - $$$

Never use a blue (rare) hero to call a rally and NEVER, ever, ever, ever, use Gina as your #1 Marksman. Regardless of how high you level her. She is good for saving stamina on Polar rallies and speeding up march times. She is absolutely useless in all other aspects of the game. It does not cost stamina to call or join a bear rally, so just ignore her completely for bear :)

Currently, 80 days into our state and my Rally calling heroes are: Flint, Molly, Bahiti. 

All three provide damage increases to the Rally from multiple abilities. Please see the skills page of each hero to view the abilities they provide. Additionally on the main page of the Hero you can see a little list button on the right, which will show their stats and buffs to that troop type. Remember that over time, we will unlock future Generations on our state. You may already have some so the Heroes I am speaking of may vary. Please reference online guides or your alliance leaders for the optional heroes from each generation. The important thing to remember is, a hero is only great, if you are leveling them up. 

Rally Joining

We will now move on to the part that most new players really struggle with when learning the bear trap. Not only do new players struggle with this, veteran players or players that have studied the inner workings of the game, get very frustrated when new players join incorrectly. If you have made it this far into the post, I thank you, but new players, you really need to pay attention here. 

The Rally Joiner will only contribute one buff to the rally. This buff is from the top right of that hero’s skill page. Or the “first” expedition skill. Only the first Hero listed (on the left) when joining the rally, can contribute the buff. If ten people join the rally, it will select the four highest buffs from that slot of those who joined the rally.  

The best offensive hero to join a rally with is Jessie. Seen below, notice her top right ability provides an increase to damage dealt, scaled from 5% to 25%, based on level. 

Your hero gear and chief gear will not apply anything to the rally either. With this knowledge you should be joining rallies with those three heroes in the first slot. If you have joined three rallies, one with each of those heroes, and you still need to join more rallies, then use no heroes at all. That is fine, just remove all the heroes for any additional marches and allow other joiners to apply the correct buffs, just to make sure that you do not override a damage buff, with a defensive or another type of buff. 

Rally Joiner Example:

I called a rally and ten people joined. Three people join with Jessie in the first slot and she has a rank 5 ability of 25% damage increase.  Two people join with Jasser, both only have a rank 4 ability for 20% damage increase. Five join with no heroes. 

These are the buffs that will apply to the Rally. 

Jessie +25% Damage 

Jessie +25% Damage 

Jessie +25% Damage 

Jasser +20% Damage

Notice that one of the Jassar buffs was not applied. This is because the Rally will only apply four joiner abilities. It uses a system to determine which ones. First it will look for the four HIGHEST Ranked abilities and use those. If all of the abilities are ranked the same, it will use the four who joined first, with the exception that sometimes an equal level Mythic Hero can override one of the first four joiners if it is at equal level. So let’s change the Example above just a bit, and we’ll add a joiner that has a Molly, with a Rank 5 ability 

First and Second place, are the Whale and Dolphin I’ll speak about below. In other words, “Chicken go Boom”. 

My alliance implements troop limits on a few of our rally callers to allow for 15/15 to join, obtain damage from the stronger players, and be fair to everyone. Our main whale has a 75k Troop Limit (when he participates in our bear trap) and our second best caller (a dolphin) has a 62k troop limit. I am arguably the 3rd best caller on our Bear trap but, this could be a bit biased, so lets just say, BoomChicken is a strong Chimken {Go Team}. 

OK, enough egotistical jabbering, just having a bit of fun. If I am being 100% truthful, there are about 3-5 of us that are fairly equal, and it is the joiners who determine who is the stronger caller that day. The list below will give you who I am joining, the Hero and march size I use, the troop allotments I am currently using Infantry/Lancers/Marksmen, and the average damage I do in that rally. 

• Whale: Jassar with 75K March with 20k/25k/30k, 20 Million

• Dolphin: Jessie with 62K March with 20k/15k/27k, 7-8 Million

• I call with Flint/Molly/Bahiti 120,190 March with 55k/30k/35,190, 5-6 Million

• Random: Seo with 62K March with 20k/15k/27k 2.5-3.5 Million

• Random: No Hero with whatever is left of my marksman (until I can do the march above again) 2.5-3.5 Million

• Random: No hero if needed to get all my troops out. Will usually only have Infantry and Lancers, if this rally is needed at all. Damage is super random and hard to average.

I play with these numbers quite often. Different marches and troop allocations. It’s a bit of trial and error on my side for testing purposes. You can find march calculators all over the internet to assist with this. But the best method I have found is just using simple math to get a good number of marksmen into the stronger rallies. Then getting troops out as fillers into any other rally you can jump in.