A very beginner guide to starting out right for long-term play

**For more up-to-date tips, announcements and communication with other players, and possibly sometimes codes for in-game gifts, join the official Iron Rage Discord.**

1. **Why play (and for longer than just to get the badges the quick and dirty way)?** I have played many badged MMOs and idle games on Kongregate, and found that this game has an unusually high ratio of fun and gratification vs. frustrating or pay-to-win features. A plenty of purchases are available, but they aren't constantly showed in one's face and the impact of most of them is relatively minor - it is also possible to play, progress and enjoy with no or small expense, progress scales well also with investment of time, communication and thinking. (Up to player level 30, mid-tier pvp ranking, and 6 months of daily playing I only spent 9 kreds for Captain Walker skin deal, and could have done without that too, just wanted to progress a few days faster and support the game with what I could; afterwards I spent 99 or 199 kreds for Battle Pass or event pass several times, which has been the way to access some top-tier heroes and their skins earlier and a few at all, some of which are useful for completing content faster and more easily but none are necessary for completing any content.) Also, a nice, helpful community with people willing to answer questions in discord, an active wiki, and active clans - by "mid game" (around player level 25) everyone who plays daily or at least weekly can find their place in a suitable clan (even if unfortunately after the removal of Kongregate chat and forums joining Discord is necessary for joining an active clan which can really be helpful to a new player who plays daily / most days and wants to progress at a good pace). No attacks on the base - what you have built is yours forever. No direct energy system, but usually can't lose whole day playing (except late-game with pvp) and most of the game is suitable for playing as short breaks every few hours or 1-2 times a day (though possible to progress faster by playing more). There are many events occurring once or several times per year, and experiencing them at different stages of progression is different, so the game has content for about 1-3 years of playing (depending on individual progression pace) even if further updates don't resume.
2. **How to start?** As soon as you can remove or add troops on the Preparation screen (as soon as the tutorial lets you change troops freely, which should be after about 3 battles, if I remember correctly), remove all the troops and try to win just with **Captain Walker** so that he gets more experience. If you can't (or aren't patient enough for that), add Infantrymen (but only regular infantry, called just **Infantryman**), Stormtroopers (but only regular stormtroopers, called just **Stormtrooper**) and **Artillery Bombardment** in all the spaces available to them. You will have some empty spaces (which can be filled only with different types of units, such as heavy infantry) but that's ok. These 3 are the only troops and support you can build (in Barracks and Artilllery Factory) for a long time, that is the only reliably renewable units. They are also quite cheap and usually abundant, so you don't need to worry about spending them. Namely, if you win you lose all the troops you played to the field (even if they survived), and if you lose you lose all the troops you even added in the Preparation screen (except the hero, such as Captain Walker - you never lose him, but you lose the battle when his health is depleted). Usually the more fuel the mission takes (shown in the bottom of the Preparation screen), the harder it is. This is all valid both for the Storyline (at least up to winning all the battles with "recommended level 3") and World map. First try to win a mission just with those troops, and only if you can't, use something (slightly) stronger if it's a mission/event which will notably help you progress - or wait until you upgrade those troops further. The "premium troops" - troops and supports which you can't hire/produce yourself - are sufficiently abundant from chests and rewards, especially later on if you start doing convoys and events and participating in an active clan, so no need to be afraid to use them when needed to accomplish an useful goal, but in the very beginning (such as before player lvl 18-20) it's best to be careful to not waste them too much.
3. On the **World** map, use influence to open the territories **in the order of their influence cost from lowest to highest** (e.g., all the territories which cost 10 before all the territories which cost 15...), because that is also the order of difficulty. If you open a too difficult (too costly) territory, you won't be able to beat anything on it so you won't be able to get more influence and will get stuck for a long time. Eventually you'll want to leave some very late territories to conquer only during the yearly Knowledge day event as there's a mission to do it every year but total number of territories is limited, but that's already very late game, only after you have unlocked everything useful on the map such as Ardheim and all campaings.
4. In one of the banners on top of the screen, there are one-time bonuses after the first 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 h of gameplay, make sure to collect them some time. The 14-day daily login track which appears the first time you login in the day after 10 am CET is very generous and infinitely repeatable - getting the skins 2nd and subsequent times instead gives gold which can be used to upgrade skins and for many other purposes - so the best way to progress is to play consistently a little every day.
5. For most other things, the in-game day starts at midnight Central European Time (UTC+1), or 11 pm during summer time. There are several daily bonuses and tasks you should collect and do when you can: A. The aforementioned Daily login. Just click on Take. B. **Calendar** (top-right). C. **Military Bonds** - the 3 skulls top-middle. Always do the first free click. Sometimes when you see nearly all the rewards are particularly valuable (for your situation), it may be worth also spending 10 gold for the next click. D. Once you start seeing other players in Discord, or in pvp ratings and world map convoys, you can add them as friends. If they add you back, you can go to **Friendly Assistance** (third circle from the top on the right), pick the largest signal you can send (e.g., +5 or +10) and click Send (Send to everybody). Also in the same place Accept the signals they send to you, until you can Collect the crate in the top. Only works if your Kongregate profile isn't private, and only works with first 500 Kongregate friends, so you may need to remove some older friends. F. **Tax Collection** (Command Center - Taxes) - after you have enough friends - you need to fill the whole set of slots with friends in order to collect daily resources there. G. **Daily tasks** (third circle from the top on the left). Don't forget to click Take also on the additional reward if you complete all 3 of them. H. When you can, join a faction (on the banner on your Command Center) and do the faction daily tasks (**Reputation** on the same banner). Unavailable for a couple of days once a month (between faction seasons). I. **Rating** in the bottom of the screen - then the highlighted chest in the top right. Available from when you start doing pvp battles or reach level 20. Also unavailable for a couple of days once a month. J. Often there is also some other active **event** which gives daily rewards after having made some progress in it, such as World Rating. Found in the left part of the main base screen or somewhere on the world map.
6. Do the **Additional missions** (2nd circle from the top on the left), especially when their rewards help you do the daily tasks and daily faction tasks. You won't be able to do the mission "Build the Arsenal" there for a long time, but it doesn't matter, other missions should also show up.
7. Open the **chests** quite frequently, as they take time to open and can amass into a very long queue. At the very beginning you may not want to always open all of them, as a bit later on you get Additional missions and Daily tasks to open them, which may be a problem if you can't earn new ones right then and didn't spare any, but if you play actively you'll soon be able to earn a plenty of chests almost whenever (and probably amass a large excess of them if you don't buy chests slots, but that's also fine).
8. You can (and should, when you can't win with them) **Train** Infantrymen and Stormtroopers in the Barracks to improve their stats. Similarly, you can (and should) do **Calibration** of supports in Artillery Factory - you can give some upgrades to artillery bombardment and discharge to make it easier for yourself early on, and to healing as it gets too small to be useful to your troops and heroes, but long-term you'll mainly want to unlock and upgrade Dark ritual as that's the strongest offensive support (but usually takes about half a year to unlock and be able to upgrade and produce in good quantities). Upgrading strategic points, especially machine guns and mortars, in Design bureau is also very useful once you start producing flywheels and resonators so you can. There are also researches in the **Academy** which improve the stats of Infantrymen, Stormtroopers and Captain Walker, and upgrades to improve their **Skills** in the **Training grounds**.
9. You can at the same time with the same actions fulfill several missions - and should time it to do so when not too inconvenient. E.g., you can at the same time have a Daily mission to gain 5 influence, an Additional mission to gain 5 influence, and an Additional mission to conquer 3 territories - if you then conquer 2 territories which give 2 influence each and a territory which gives 1 influence, that will fulfill all these 3 missions at the same time. Very early on it may be the best to usually conquer territories only when you have a daily mission to fulfill with that, until such missions stop appearing.
10. You can upgrade buildings and troops, complete storyline missions, research technologies and do other non-repeatable tasks in the order missions ask for them or in another order - you will still get the reward when you get to that mission if you had already done it before. But repeatable tasks - such as collecting resources, gaining research points, exchanging collections or recruiting troops - need to be done after that mission appears; thus very early on you may want to exchange collections only when you have a mission to do so or need these resources for a daily mission or useful upgrade. It isn't crucial, as these additional missions aren't infinite so if you stick to the game for months you'll get to do all of them either way, but completing them earlier can give you some extra resources and troops.
11. It is occasionally worth spending small amounts of gold to fulfill daily missions or to open a day in the calendar you missed but learned it provides a very valuable reward; sometimes you can even get more gold than you spent. Possibly even to speed up some things and get some stuff from Black Market on the world map. If you are consistently getting gold from skin repeats in the 14-day daily login track, gold isn't anywhere near as scarce as similar "premium currencies" in most other games. But the priority for gold are the permanent upgrades which can be obtained only with gold - best skins for Infantrymen and Stormtroopers and their upgrades, upgrades for supports and fortifications, and equipment upgrades for heroes once you obtain good heroes (it's ok to invest some in Captain Walker too as he has also his endgame use, mostly in the yearly heroes-only pvp event/mode, and fully upgraded is an overall decent hero, but if you will be able to actively play events and/or convoys you'll get/earn also much better heroes).
12. Currently the game no longer favors staying below player level 20 even for pvp (last I heard below-20 pvp is either deserted or infested by players who have been there for years mostly matching themselves from multiple accounts), so do the storyline missions as soon as you reasonably can (with your regular troops you can build and slightly stronger, abundant troops which you can't) to level up above 18 so that you can join a clan, and above 20 so that you can run expeditions, participate in convoys, and participate in most events - and further, as the contents of all chests get better with each level. Especially, progress in the Overthrow campaign as quickly as you reasonably can, so that you can build and upgrade Tower of Alchemy and thus gain more research points.
13. The order in which to build/upgrade the buildings... Before building anything else not enforced by the tutorial, have at least one each of all 5 types of resource buildings (Armory for ammunition, Foundry for steel, Oil rig for fuel, Ionite mine for ionites, and a quarter for recruits) - if you e.g. run out of steel needed to build a Foundry without building one, you'll get stuck for a long time. Each time after you upgrade the Command center, upgrade the Warehouse, then all or most of the resource buildings (until lvl 10, or possibly less for 2nd and 3rd Oil rigs if you find that you don't need so much fuel; further only once you have abundant resources to upgrade them and know what you are doing), but always prioritize the Foundries (steel) the most as that's usually the limiting resource for a very long time. Note: before upgrading a resource building, collect the resources from it, otherwise those resources are lost. In Ardheim (quite a while later), the first 3 buildings to build are Control center, Production warehouse and Turret factory.

**FAQ**:

* **Combat tactics? How to "get good"?** Obviously, upgrade your troops - especially Infantrymen and Stormtroopers, as they are cheapest to build and can be taken in largest numbers to most battles - not only by regular upgrades in Barracks and maxing the best skin obtainable with gold, but also by researches in the Academy. You don't need to (and at least later on shouldn't) upgrade all their stats evenly. The most important stats are armor and health for Stormtroopers (you will want to reach maximum armor as soon as reasonably possible), and evasion, health and damage for Infantrymen (accuracy is also important for both early on, but getting to 100 accuracy - total, counting in also skin and research - is enough overall or for a long time). Keep in mind that you don't need to take a maximum possible set of troops to battle; it is often better to take a smaller number of strongest troops so that you can reliably deploy them quickly - for example, to take only the hero, infantry and stormtroopers (and maybe up to 2-3 other units) to most campaign missions. In all types of battle, the crucial skill is to play (deploy) the troops at the right time and in the right direction - don't just deploy everything one-by-one as soon as you can - it'll take some practice to master. Most importantly, Stormtroopers are both faster and (when properly upgraded) bulkier than Infantrymen and many other units and heroes, so you usually should to try to get them to be in the front - but not too far in the front - by the time they reach the opposing troops; but that doesn't mean always deploy them first, as they also have higher movement speed. Keep watching your spawn point so that something doesn't get around to it, usually from a landing. After you upgrade your fortifications (mainly machine guns and mortars) a bit, capturing and keeping them becomes more and more important. Build Training Grounds and test any scarce non-hireable troops in training battles there to learn their "hidden" characteristics before using them in real battles. In pvp, watch and learn from what your opponents are doing, especially those who beat you without having overwhelmingly stronger troops. An important pvp skill is keeping track of what the opponent already deployed, so that you know what they may (not) have left - especially support (everyone can take just up to 2 supports, so if they already played 2, they can't surprise you with a landing). In pvp and some events (heroic mode, Superiority), you can control the hero by clicking on the hero and then on the place where you want him/her to go - this is an important part of the strategy (especially with some heroes), and can also be used to unstuck a hero who stopped moving/shooting.
* **How to get victory tape?** Victory tape is the reward for winning battles in the Superiority event (the skull-and-sword on the world map), which happens for a couple of weeks every 2-3 months. If the Superiority event "isn't available at the moment", just ignore that additional mission until it is.
* **How to get into a good / suitable clan?** Some clans are advertising in the clan-advertiser channel of the the Iron Rage Discord. You can also write in Discord that you are looking for a clan. If you are playing very casually and want 0 commitment, you can just apply to the clans with open admission in-game and use any inactive or barely-active clan for clan quests, clan troops and clan research bonuses to your troops, but if you are playing every day or at least several times most weeks, you'll have a much better experience and faster progress if you look for an active clan in Discord and communicate your expectations - active clans do also clan convoys and expeditions and score well in clan rating, which are major sources of useful resources, and contain experienced players who can provide game advice and help.
* **How to convoy? (convoys on the world map)** You can do recruit difficulty convoys quite soon solo or if you find other newer players to do them with, but most players nowadays are doing veteran difficulty and many are happy to carry, but you should communicate, you should ask in the convoy chat - or in Discord, or in your clan (active clans often also do world map convoys among their members or/and take care of new members there). Then you can just do any damage and leave it alone until you can collect rewards (you always needs to collect them before the convoy's timer runs out). If your troops can't even reach the convoy to do damage, just an artillery bombarment (recruit) or a carbonite bomb (fighter and higher) on the convoy once. If you don't have carbonite bombs, mustard gas can also do it but may require several tries. Once your troops are strong enough to do such fair share of damage, to a convoy fight you typically want to take a full or almost-full setup (you can leave out heavy machinery for a while until you amass something as "Jericho"s or upgrade Korunds as the machines with AOE combined with troops without +range equipment often end up doing more damage to your troops than to the enemies), including the clan troop if you have one (usually the best Tesla, or with melee hero for some convoys Morgan). After you have the possibility to build turrets in Ardheim, you can take a Turret and use it to protect your spawn point (after deploying all or most other troops); the other most useful convoy support is usually a shield - try to get it on your hero and more than 1 set of useful troops at the same time - or once you don't need a shield, a landing for more stormtroopers = more damage. After you are regularly getting Scouts and Medics/Sergeants/Imperial warriors from chests or have built the Academy of Officers and can afford to hire them, you should take them - Scouts are typically the most useful "special troops" for convoys after you learn when to deploy and how to protect them, until you get the Mech lupus skin for lycanthropes (then take a Scout + a lycanthrope or a wolf pack with that skin). The most useful hireable "heavy infantry" for convoys (without equipment) are the red faction ones, but many 3-person and 2-person non-hireable ones are also good and altogether abundant enough (and so are crusaders later on with a lot of upgrades and equipment). Most importantly, don't finish the convoy too early - if someone finishes it before everyone has done some damage, those who did no damage will get no rewards, so it's polite to wait while you reasonably can, while you will still be able to collect your loot within the convoy's timer later. The convoy team may also want to arrange (in the convoy chat or in Discord) the "killshot" time when all its members can try to do the final hit to kill the convoy at the same time, so that everyone gets a bonus loot for killing it. If someone wrote in the convoy chat "trimming", it means they are attacking it to reduce its health to very low for killshot, so you shouldn't attack it further at the same time.
* **Expeditions? When to start doing them, what troops to use...?** The bulikest, highest armor and health troops, which thus have highest survivability - in (non-event) world map expeditions only, as long as no member of the squad dies and you win the battle, you won't lose that squad, so feel free to use strongest premium troops here. Reliable troops for all expeditions are Silent Sentries, "Rage of the Dominion" Deserters, "Lightning" troop defectors, AM-24d walking machines... essentially anything with 2000+ health and 85+ armor/ 90+ evasion. Lower level expeditions (minimum player level less than 20) can be beaten so reliably also with weaker troops. If you misestimate and a valuable troop still dies, you can revive them by using First Aid Kits - but only before the end of the expedition (before you click Result). You only need 3-5 such very strong troops per expedition - fill the rest of the spaces with whichever troops give high enough % so that you have total % of success over 100% (faction infantry and stormtroopers tend to be good for that). When you get ambushed, take only those 3-5 strong troops to battle.
* **Which faction?** Check which faction's stuff you like the most on the wiki - especially the heroes and the research for regular troops. In principle red is supposed to be the most offensive, blue the most defensive, and yellow the middle ground. For a new player blue faction is typically the weakest (worst troops, first hero, research), but thus also has least players so easier to rank well in pvp within the faction and thus get better end-of-faction-season rewards. Red faction heroes, troops and research are overall typically the most helpful to new and pvp-active players and thus it usually has the most players. Red faction infantry are most helpful to defeat first marauders (clear some parts of the main base) sooner than with regular infantry. Yellow faction special units are most helpful later on in beating "special units only" missions at the end of the Revival campaign, and yellow faction's first hero (Mona Rice) is the strongest once upgraded through the artifact in Monolith event. But you can play whatever you like or have the faction convoymates for, no faction is so good or so bad that it'd make or break the game experience long-term - just best stick to one faction until you get both its heroes and their skins (which can take 1-2 years of veteran faction convoys).
* **Which hero is better / the best?** The maximum stats of most heroes can be found here. Costs of most hero upgrades can be found on the wiki. Some heroes are worse than Captain Walker.
* **What are the best things to buy with kreds?** 9 kreds - Captain Walker skin, especially when it is available as a special offer together with some other stuff (but not crucial as there are also better skins for him now, obtainable in events, it's just a good boost for very early game). 99 kreds - Battle Pass, when that event is active and when your regular troops are strong enough to easily beat the invaders (similar strength as the repeatable world map missions costing 50 fuel) AND your fuel production is enough - this is also typically the best offer overall (but some Battle Pass heroes and skins are better than the other, some may not even be good at all, especially now that Battle Pass event is active about once a month). 199 kreds - Event pass for Knowledge day in September (if you are in an active and well-organized clan so you can fully complete it early on), or for Labyrinth in November once you are strong enough to beat it (may take about a year of playing first). Even more kreds - if you intend to play for a long time and very actively, Extra slot(s) for chest opening, they come on sale (offer) for 299 kreds per slot sometimes.
* **Referrals?!** It's one of the banners hanging from the top of the screen, the one with 3 human silhuettes. There, on clicking Invite, you'll get your referrer link, and a space to paste someone else's. It is a Facebook link, but having Facebook isn't necessary, as far as we have been able to determine it doesn't actually link to your Facebook account in any way. Everyone can paste just one link there (so careful whom you honor with it...), but of course everyone's link can be used by many people - if the specified number of people use your link, you get the rewards listed there. But that doesn't mean you should spam your link in the game chat (or anywhere) and beg for referrals - please don't, that's annoying and unlikely to be effective. Instead, try to first "earn" your referrals by being helpful and welcoming to new players in the game chat, and/or creating useful content. For example, if I have been most helpful with this guide, you are welcome to use my link: https://apps.facebook.com/iron\_rage?referrer\_id=21299647 (but you don't have to :) those rewards are minor at my stage, and I may even have stopped playing the game by the time you read this, so if you are helped also by a player newer than me, by someone to whom they mean a lot, you are welcome to use theirs). Note: this system may or may not work any more after all the game and Kongregate updates.