Things I Wish I Knew

At the time of this post I have played Whiteout Survival(WOS) for 73 days, currently in our first State of Power and SVS Prep. I was encouraged to post this on reddit. It is fully directed to someone just starting out in the game or thinking of playing it. But I have found that as an R4 in my second state, these tips have came in handy for copy/pastes to newer players to help. Alliance leaders feel free to share this with your newer players to assist you in teaching them.

You can find several videos on youtube or guides on the internet that explain certain aspects and strategies of the game; however, several of the videos come from well known streamers or content creators that "Whale" or spend a lot of money in the game and the guides online can confuse a newer player who doesn't understand the basic ideals yet. The videos can help you, but often times speak of spending money just a little too much for me. The purpose of this post is to provide some simple advice to a player who is considering the game or very new to WOS from a Free to Play (F2P) point of view.

I was just like several others and came across an ad for this survival game. One day I just happened to be bored enough to download the game and embark on what has become one of the most fun experiences I've had in gaming. I've met some really cool people, learned a lot about a genre I had never played before, and I did most of this with little to no money spent. I am currently top 50 In my state, top 20-25 in my alliance, depending on the day (hehe), and having lots of fun. For this write up I will focus on explaining the things that I believe you should know, before you even start the game. So let's dive in.

First off you will be taken through the tutorial. This will show you the general mechanics of the game and will teach you about the various buildings you have in your city. To help you fully understand the things you SHOULD KNOW, before you even play, you need to first understand that the Level of your Furnace and the Events are the most important aspects of the game. Whether this is a weekly event like Hall of Chiefs (HOC), starter events that give you Certain Heroes, or your daily missions that reset everyday. Everything you do should revolve around your Furnace Level and these events.

In no particular order: Things I wish I knew before I started playing:

Most states (servers) will adapt what are known as NAP Rules. These rules generally apply to top alliances within the state (Commonly the top 10 but it can be less) and protect members of those top alliances from being attacked. It can still happen, especially very early on in the state's timeline, or from new players like yourself that do not understand these rules yet. You generally want to understand your state's rules so that you do not waste your Gems or other in game currency to apply shields to your city, more often than needed. A good habit would be to ask your alliance leaders questions about this topic, especially once the State is 6-10 days old and these rules start to get established by the state's alliance leaders. Most of the time your alliance leaders will also announce these things in your alliance chat, as decisions are made. Be sure to teleport close to your alliance members and Alliance HQ, so that your alliance can assist in defending you with reinforcements, even if you are offline.

Build fast and push hard. Get your furnace as high as you can, as fast as you can. You can do this by only working to upgrade the furnace. When you click to upgrade, it will tell you what buildings you need to upgrade first. Use this function to only do what is needed to upgrade your furnace. Try to start a furnace upgrade or a long upgrade, prior to any extended time offline. You can upgrade other buildings that take much less time, while waiting on the furnace.

Save your Steel. You will unlock exploration quite early and it is the only way to obtain steel, other than purchasing packs from the shop. Some buildings require steel to upgrade parts of it. You can delay these items and still upgrade that building. Just pay attention to the tutorial and what you are spending to do upgrades. ONLY spend Steel early to upgrade Technology. It gets a bit easier to obtain later on in the game. Be sure to do exploration to gain steel and get through the levels. You can do a few of these while waiting on buildings to upgrade etc.

When spending that Steel, focus on the Growth tree in your Tech Building. These buffs apply a reduction to the time it takes to upgrade your buildings, train troops, increases the number of troops you can train, and allows you to send more troops on marches etc. Stick to upgrading the tree for the important things like building/troop training. If you find yourself waiting on enough steel to do a bigger upgrade in the growth tree, you can look to put some upgrades into the Economy tree, to assist with gathering resources.

Do not use any speed ups, gems, or items you obtain to upgrade Heroes. Remember those events I spoke about? The best way to score points in these events will revolve around using speed ups, gems and/or upgrading heroes. The events tab will show you the event and has clickable icons for each day with a list button to see what will score points on those days. If you use these items prior to the event or prior to the day it scores points, you will miss out on much needed items in the future. You will get your first HOC a few days after you start playing. It lasts 5 days and if you are able to finish in the top 10, you'll get a very nice Hero as your reward. You can also save for the second HOC as a F2P player, and really do well. Just focus on growth until your "big push".

Understand your heroes. You will only really need to level 5 of them. Typically 2 Infantry Heroes, 2 Marksman Heroes, and 1 Lancer. Depending on the order you get them you may need to switch some things up at later levels, but don't worry, if you make mistakes you will unlock the Drill Camp at later levels which will allow you to reset Heroes to Level 1, giving back 100% of the EXP you used on them, and allowing you to change who your top 5 Heroes are. You will also be able to add a few less common heroes to the camp, which will bring them to the level of your 5th best Hero. So usually a good 5 Hero team to focus on early are Molly (Lancer), Bahiti (Marksman), Cloris (Marksman), Sergey(Infantry), then any other infantry that you obtain early. Once you unlock Gina, she becomes a good replacement for Cloris as she is very easy to level up through her event. As you unlock more Heroes and improve them, this list can change but you will mostly focus on improving the Mythic (orange) and Epic (purple) heroes. The Rare (blue) Heroes do provide some very nice buffs to your gathering/resource generation so be sure to read the skills they have to understand them. The skills of a hero become super important but that can be a guide of its own.

As you unlock and obtain Hero gear, you only need 3 sets, one for each troop type. It is also generally acceptable to keep a little gear on your 5 best, as this will assist a little in the Arena, but you will only upgrade the gear on 3 Heroes. For infantry you will only want to upgrade the Belt and Gloves, as these provide health stats. For Marksman you will do Head and Boots, for the lethality and damage. For lancers you will also focus the Head and Boots but most higher level players will tell you to also upgrade the Belt and Gloves to provide a bit of defensive stats to your lancers.

If you do not wish to spend any money at all in this game, you can still enjoy it. However, if you have $20 you can purchase a few things that will make your life just a little easier. First, the extra March queue. This will allow you to send more troop marches out for gathering or killing beasts for items. Secondly, you can purchase the construction pack which will give you a second builder queue, so you can upgrade two things at once. Please note that the tutorial will offer a second construction queue for a short period of time for a small amount of gems. This is a worthy purchase with your gems early on but the offer will eventually stop. DO NOT spend money on packs that give you a hero, such as Natalia or Zinman, unless you plan on spending much more to improve them. The only exception to this rule would be to purchase the Daily Deals pack once to obtain Zinman, as one of his abilities is to provide a reduction time to all city construction. It really just comes down to how much you want or can spend. I spent the better part of my first 45 days spending $25 or less. I've since broken down and spent more but I also understand by now that I enjoy the game and a little investment felt right when I did it. I in no way was required to do this to be a meaningful member of my alliance or to enjoy the game. Just keep that in mind.

Speaking of alliances, join a top alliance as quickly as possible. These alliances will almost always have players that understand the game and they are starting their second, third, or tenth city for fun. These folks can assist you in learning the more intermediate ideals of the game, such as Rally joining with the correct heroes, fighting tactics for other events, and just general questions on how to improve. Not to mention the bigger the alliance, the more helps you get on your upgrades, which will greatly reduce the time it takes to upgrade some things. As a note here, I didn't talk about the Combat Tree of the Tech Building yet. The reason why is, once you are in an alliance you can catch that tab up quite quickly, using alliance helps. You will also have access to a bit more steel by this time after leveling up your exploration activity. But you need to get into a good alliance first and the best way to do that is to grow hard and fast at the start of the game. Most top alliances will look for members with a certain Furnace or power level to join their ranks. Don't forget to contribute to alliance Technology. Some alliances will watch that and remove you if you fail to help.

Use your Chief's House Buffs. Primarily the Double-Time buff. This will reduce the construction time of any buildings you queue to build for 5 Minutes and it has a cool down of 23 Hours. In other words in early stages if you plan to use speedups during an event, you can use this buff and speedup the construction of more buildings, for 5 minutes. Or once you get to a point the upgrades take greater than a day to do, you should be using this every single time you build something that takes 24 hours or more. I did not learn how to properly use this buff until way later, greatly delaying my growth, and causing me to use more speedups than I would have needed to with the buff. The currency used for these abilities is gained from doing daily missions and other events. You will have plenty of it, so Double Time away!! The other buffs will be used less often, but feel free to try them out as you grow.

Go in your Cookhouse and click on one of the stoves. Just above will be an orange button or "list". You can change the food that you prepare for your survivors here. Now when and why to do this can probably be studies or argued but, I would think that once you get to F10 or so you should just turn on the best food. This keeps your survivors full and happy.

You can turn your furnace up as well. Having several survivors get sick randomly and cant figure out why? This could be part of the problem. The same as with the cookhouse, go into the furnace, and click the sidebar in the bottom right to turn on "Max Power". Just do it, happier survivors means more rewards. The difference in Coal Usage is negligible.

The last bit of advice I will give is, ask questions. I got lucky. About a month into the game I had found a way to grow to a decent power while in a weaker and less active alliance. I was able to do this even though I was playing quite wrong. I got invited to a Top alliance where I was taken under the wings of a great Leader (R5) and several knowledgeable Officers (R4s) who have played the game for a long time. They did not seem bothered by the questions so I asked them..... A LOT of questions. You too can find a similar group and the right fit for you on almost any State. Especially if you do not make the same mistakes I did early on. If you cannot get into a top alliance right away, simply join one for some assistance in growing and look to move to a bigger alliance as quickly as possible. You can watch the world chat for the top alliances in your state to put out a recruiting message. Once you see one, jump on that chance and get in there :). You'll know it's a good alliance when you are online during your peak playing times and you can finish a 30-60 minute upgrade in a few seconds from getting helps. It's not just about their power early on, it's about ACTIVITY.

There are many other things to learn about this game but that was not the purpose of this post. I just want to help a few people make less mistakes than I did when starting out. So get out there, continue to grow, ask questions, and improve your strategies. Most importantly, please, please, please, do not send the wrong Hero's when joining Bear Trap Rallies, or your R5 will yell at you. There are some very nice videos out there about these things. One of my favorite WOS creators to watch is ChisguleWhitouteSurvival. His dedicated youtube for WOS has several videos and you can pick out where you are in your State's timeline to learn about things as they are about to happen. No I do not know him, just a creator I've found to be very helpful and there are several other's as well, on various WOS topics.

To wrap this up the most important thing about gaming is to have fun. This game can be enjoyed by everyone and within a few weeks you should know if its the right fit for you. I'll leave you with one last tip that comes with a bit of a funny story to it. In your world chat and alliance chat, anytime someone speaks another language there is a little blue back and forth arrow icon next to what they say. If you click it, it will translate to your language so you can communicate with anyone :). Yes that is right, I spent almost 2 weeks using google translate with a little copy/pasta to figure out what people were saying. Don't be me, be better, and have a great time playing WOS.

For those that may be wondering, I've since started a new account on a new state to "Practice what I am Preaching". For the most part it has worked out greatly with $20 spent. In the first 7 days I was able to maintain a top 10 City, just doing the things I've mentioned here, with near top 10 finishes in HOC. I have fallen off since then due to less activity in that state, no money spent past the $20, and focus on my main account, but I am still an R4 in the States strongest alliance, and teaching these very tips to all our members :).

I won't plug the link right now but I do stream Mythic World of Warcraft Raids most weeknights, but I am not looking for publicity with this post, only to share knowledge and advice to others. I plan to stream some WOS events in the future. If you're interested in an old small time streamer, just let me know. If this post turns out to be something people like, I will continue with a small series of "things you should learn in WOS", or something to that effect.

Until Next time,

BoomChicken

(ZOO) Animals

#3075

Change Log:

9/8/2025: Edited NAP portion to hopefully provide more clarity and protection to newer players. Thanks zzWoWzz for bringing it up in the comments.