Z-Xer Beginner Guide

## The Newcomers Guide

This guide is written to help those who are just starting out.

## Part 0: The TL:DR Summary

This guide will give you everything you need to get the best possible start to the game. There is, however, a bit of ground to cover, so it might be wise to digest it in parts over the first few weeks of your gameplay. So here's the TL:DR so you don't do anything you might regret later:

1. Don't unlock any heroes except some very few key ones.
2. Don't buy things with money or gold.
3. Prioritize levelling up and upgrading the buildings in your camp.
4. When you can, join a good guild.
5. Always play Last Stand and the Distance to get support tokens and badge components.
6. Read up on walker movement mechanics to avoid unnecessary hospital time.

## **Part 1: From Zero to Hero**

### 0. How much does this game cost?

A free-to-play game obviously always wants you to spend as much real money as possible, and everyone is free to decide how much they want to spend. But unless you are in a hurry you can manage with a quite low investment of real money, or even none.
There are basically three things you can spend real money on.

1. The survival pass. There are two kinds of survival passes. One low-price, short-duration, pass for new players, focused on building your base, and the "real" survival pass, aimed at veteran players. Both passes are good value for money, and it's definitely worth while buying it, especially if it has particularly good gear as reward. Check out the discord server to get the community consensus when a new survival pass season starts.
2. Bundle weapons. There will always be a selection of special weapons available for sale. You should really only start looking at these when you are close to max level, as a paid weapon needs to be upgraded with a huge amount of XP and reinforcement tokens, if you buy it at a low level. Check out the Best Weapons Right Now page to know which ones are the "must buys".
3. Speeding up your progress. This is the part you can spend most money on; buying full supplies & XP, buying gas boosters, buying radio bundles, tools, gold, reroll tokens and badge components. This is purely optional, and all of these resources you can also get for free simply by playing - but obviously it will take a lot more time. Remember that this game is 8 years old, and many players have been playing since the start, so it's completely fine to see this as a long haul and not expect to be in the top 100 in the first year. Or put in the money and catch up on all those old-timers.

**0.1 What Bugs Do I Need to Know About?**

The ever developing game always suffer from various bugs. Most of them are small ones, but there's a few ones you need to be aware of as a starting player.

* Don't join guilds that only have very few members, unless you know it's an active guild. There is a bug that some guilds with only inactive players will be without a guild Leader completely. This makes it impossible for you to leave the guild, as every guild must have a leader, and if you end up in such a guild the only way to leave it is to contact in-game support. If you get auto-promoted to leader, you can first promote someone else to leader and then leave.
* In some rare cases, mainly in Last Stand, you can end up in a endless loop of the game immediately reloading after starting the game. In this case you can try to really quickly click on the Flee button and then also quickly Confirm to leave the mission and quit the reloading loop. This might require several reloads. If this doesn't work, contact support by email or by posting a bug report on the Discord server.

**1. Do not unlock too many heroes.**

* ***Reason 1:*** Heroes are unlocked at the highest level of ***any*** one of your survivors, regardless of the survivor class. Example: You have Assault level 20 but your highest level survivor (hero or non-hero) is Scout level 25. You want to unlock Mercer (Assault)—he will unlock at level 25 (credit FuriousMoldovan). **So if you unlock a hero when you are pretty advanced in the game, the better**.
* ***Reason 2:*** **The fewer you unlock, the fewer XP you need to train / upgrade later on.** Note that **XP will get much more scarce later** on. Even with only 6 heroes unlocked, it can take longer to go from survivor level 25 to 27 than it does to go from 1 to 25. This game is really designed to keep you busy for years, not days.
* ***Reason 3:*** At mid and high levels, badges, supports and traits will become far more important than anything else. Badge components and reroll tokens are the rarest and most expensive resources in the game. Survivors without proper badges and proper traits will be practically useless anyhow, so it is pointless to unlock more heroes than what you can supply with good badges and reroll tokens.

***Also note:*** Gear from the Shops unlocks at the highest level of any survivor of this class, that the gear belongs to. So, whenever there are special weapons from campaign / Guild Wars (GW) you want to claim, it is best to get at least one survivor from that class to the highest level possible before you claim it. Also, it may be possible to unlock a new survivor (which will unlock at the same level as your highest level survivor) in the same class of the gear you want to claim—just before claiming the gear.

* **What if you are reading this guide and—oops—you have already unlocked numerous heroes?** Basically, it's judgment call. If you are only at survivor level 15, starting a new account is always an option. It might be easier and faster long term. If you are at survivor level 21 and have 10 heroes unlocked—no sweat. Keep on reading. If you have, say 20 heroes unlocked, and you're at survivor level 18—that will be judgment call.

***Note that there are “heroes” and there are “regular survivors”.*** You are welcome to unlock, train, and dump regular survivors all the time. “Heroes” once unlocked, stay with you, and you are going to have to train them with XP eventually.

**So this is the current recommendation.** You can probably unlock a few more if you notice your XP fills up faster than you can use it (depending on how quickly you can farm tomatoes):

* Unlock Pizza Guy Glenn, Governor & Hunter Maggie as a farming team as soon as possible. Note, however, that you shouldn't spend radios on calling these, just buy their tokens in the Trade Goods shop, play the Story and Season missions, and do other game modes and tasks which give Hero tokens.
* Unlock Connie/Mercer/Yumiko at lvl 18 for Guild Wars. Use your radios to make calls for these, when there are 40/55 radio calls available.
* Unlock everyone else at lvl 31.

**2. Hoard everything: gold, tools, weapons, tokens, radios, everything.**

Never buy anything until much later. Not for gold, not for $. You can buy a few survivor slots, but stop at the latest when they cost 150 gold. At higher levels it might also make sense to buy a "Full supplies" bundle on the Tomato Monday event, to speed up your building upgrades.

Don't ever scrap any gear. The game will automatically scrap all gear of common, uncommon and rare rarity (grey, brown, green) if you have more than 300 items, but there is no limit to how many epic and legendary (blue and gold) items you can have, so keep everything. Note! Upgrade one armor with gold training gear of the lowest possible level for your farming team. This will give a nice boost to the XP you earn from kills, without costing a lot of XP. Do not upgrade these armors later, just keep them at their low levels as the trait works just as well.

**3. Prioritize upgrading the buildings in your camp**

If you play all game modes casually, it should be enough to level up quickly. Only when there is a **Tomato Monday** event, it could be valuable to prioritize playing Scavenge Missions. During Tomato Monday all supplied rewards are doubled. It might be worthwhile to buy a gas booster at this time to run a lot of supplies missions with the Governor.

* ***But also do your math—calculate the lowest tomato-to-building-point ratios.*** These are the “cheapest buildings” that you should prioritize, so you can level up quickly. Also consider prioritizing tomato farms, although when they become “expensive”, you should still prioritize other “cheaper” buildings.

* ***Besides the “cheapest buildings”, you should also upgrade your council and then your training ground as soon as they are available.*** Because as you level up your survivors, the Scavenge Mission rewards will go up with it.

* ***Weapon Workshop is one of the “most expensive buildings”.*** Okay, this is one of the most contentious points in this guide, but upgrading your workshop quickly will set you back few weeks or even months. Therefore, I'd still recommend that you prioritize cheaper buildings over upgrading your workshop.

But what about the Outpost? Well, what about it? The answer is that the Outpost and the Walker Pit are the least important buildings and game mode in the game. You need to eventually build them to be able to level up, but there is absolutely no need to spend any more resources than the minimum possible on them.

**4. Prioritize XP for training up your favorite heroes before anything else.**

***Use Governor—XP Maggie—PGG for Scavenging missions.*** Do this quickly like 3–4 times a day until you run out of gas. There are other more optimized farming methods, but trust me, this method is the most time-efficient.

Use your XP to upgrade your heroes. When you have more XP than you need, only then you should use them for upgrading gear. Gear needs to be upgraded 3 times to unlock all their traits. It is also possible to keep upgrading the gear to higher levels using Reinforcement tokens, but this should only be done to premium gear, which you really shouldn't have too many of yet. Note that the 3 traits (and possible special functionality) is the most important part of a piece of gear! The level of the gear only increased damage / health so good gear will be quite useful even if not at max level. Avoid upgrading regular survivors or using reroll tokens on them.

Note that **Season Mission 11A1** is perfect for XP farming. It spawns a few armored walkers every round, so you can quickly rack up a lot of XP (as Armored walkers give much more XP than regular walkers). So be sure to never fully complete this season mission (as it will then close permanently)! Play it until you reach the fifth and final mission, but then always flee after killing 100 walkers in the mission (you only get XP for the first 100 kills). You can then repeat it indefinitely. If possible, use XP Maggie, Pizza Glenn and a pawn (which you sacrifice when Fleeing the mission) using Training Gear to maximize the points you get. If needed you can scrap the pawn and call for a new one using the free 1 star call.

Save a low level blue or gold armor with the training gear trait and upgrade it so you get the XP bonus, without using a lot of XP to upgrade it. Also, don't manually scrap any gear. You can scrap them when you are on a 2 x XP booster to get more XP.

**5. Do not unlock weapons from campaign or GW until the very last moment. Do not spend any reroll or reinforcement tokens either, not yet. Hoard them up.**

**6. Occasionally, there are special radio calls, costs 40/55 radios, which will give you the best heroes.**

OK, so the best heroes are: Mercer, Connie, Sasha, Yumiko, Princess, Ezekiel, Tyreese, Guardian Carol. When they put these heroes together on those 40/55 radios call plus no more than 2-3 other junk (those not mentioned here), you can start spending your radios.

**7. Start making good badges when you get Craftsman level 2**

Badges will significantly improve a Hero's base traits like Damage or Health and are essential to beat high level walkers. Badges are created by merging badge components and fragments, which can be found randomly in post-mission crates, as challenge rewards, and most importantly as rewards in the Distance. Badges can be of five rarities (similarly to equipment), and eventually you will only make gold badges.

The Craftsman is a building which allows you to make badges. It unlocks at lvl 1 and can later be upgraded to level 2. Store all of your gold components and most of your blue components until you reach ***Craftsman Level 2***. Also hoard all your level 1 components—they are useless now but will be very useful later.  If you follow this guide, you should reach Craftsman level 1 in 4–6 weeks and then Craftsman Level 2 in another 4–6 weeks. Craftsman level 1 allows you to begin crafting badges—which will help you punch enemies at 3–4 levels above your survivors. Craftsman level 2 allows you to craft far better badges than Craftsman level 1 and allows you to punch enemies at 4–5 levels above your survivors. Craftsman level 2 will render all badges you crafted earlier pretty much obsolete.At this point you have everything you need to start playing properly so at this point you can start unlocking heroes and buying stuff. However, if you can hold off until you reach the max level (31 currently) you will get maxed the fastest so it's recommended to only start "for real" when reaching level 31.

**8. Once you decide you want to properly “play” the game, you can start building up your heroes and weapons, beginning with the so-called CMY (Connie Mercer Yumiko) or SMY (Sasha Mercer Yumiko).**

Check out the Hero section of this wiki to find the best heroes and their recommended traits and how to use them.

**9. Always Play Distance and Last Stand**

As soon as you can, you should always play the Distance and Last Stand. Start with Normal mode and change to a higher difficulty when you can reach half-way through in the harder Distance and Wave 20 in Last Stand's Expert Mode. The rewards in these game modes are very good.

**10. What About the Challenge?**

The Challenge is the most important game mode for high level players, and will give a large amount of radios. When still in the building phase, play the challenge as far as you get, but don't spend money healing your team or retrying the same mission over and over. Note that at high difficulty challenge will give you better rewards than Scavenge, so you can also farm challenge missions.

## **Part 2: Guilds, Family, and Guild Families**

Some players stay with their guild for years; even those who don't (like myself), stay in the guild chat and stay friends.

You have 2 main reasons to stay with a guild: resources and chemistry.

Resources such as Trade Goods and Radios are vital to your development. All guild members will can get a lot of Trade Goods and Radios as guild rewards from the Challenge, and being in a good guild will also unlock all Guild War Shop items. And chemistry is significant; many players gel with their guilds like a second family. You should balance both.

Then there are the guild families. For new starters, these families are better than standalone guilds for the simple reasons: there are more people who will support you.

***Check out the TWD NML Discord's Guild Recruitment channel, and join a guild that suits you!***

As you grow, you can move into guilds within the same family, or you can always try out other guilds too. Generally speaking, there are more guilds with incomplete members than there are players looking for guilds, so don't be afraid to ask around. Check out the officiall Discord server (link to it can be found in-game), it has a channel called Guild-recruiting, with guilds marketing themselves.

Remember, as you grow you can and should move to better and better guilds. Don't stick around in a guild where you give much more than what you receive. As a new player you should not be afraid to shop around to see which guild suits you best at any given time.

## **Part 3: “Crate” Weapons and Armors**

In the current meta, there are a huge amount of special weapons, and new ones are introduced in Season Token campaigns regularly, and as Guild Wars rewards. Additionally there will always be bundles with special weapons available for real money. The Survival Pass will often be the best investment for real money, but it's always good to check out the community consensus about the Survival Pass on the Discord server before investing.

Special Weapons are usually far better than any weapon you can find from crates, and you will notice rather quickly that all the normal weapons just aren't up to par with the special weapons. For armor it's slightly different, and it makes sense to upgrade good crate armors. Without special weapons it is basically impossible to get the max score or be in the top of any game mode, so if you want to be competitive you will eventually have to buy a few weapons.

Note that similarly to heroes, weapons will unlock at the level of the highest survivor of that class, so weapons that you unlocked before reaching max level will require a lot of XP (and Reinforcement tokens) to upgrade, if you unlock them at lower levels.

There is no limit to how many blue and gold weapons and armor you can have (the 300 limit is for 1-3 star gear only) so do save all of them and consider upgrading them if they do have unicorn traits.

**For ranged classes (Assaults, Hunters & Shooters), you want**

**Ranged classes (armor)**

* Unicorn: silver tactical + gold primed + gold ruthless
* Some weapons have tactical, in this case the third trait can be anything
* Remember to save one low-level armor with gold training gear for your farming runs

**Melee classes (armors)**

* You want Gold Primed, Ruthless and Hazard Suit, and silver tactical. For bruisers replace Ruthless with Dodge.
	+ Hazard Suit is needed if you are going to hit burning enemies, as this will always cause you some fire damage, and without hazard suit this will be significant. If there aren't burning walkers, prioritize Ruthless.
* Remember to save one low-level armor with gold training gear for your farming runs

Note that all unicorn armors are useful at any level. Generally speaking, never spend reinforcement tokens on armors, except maybe on truly unicorn bruiser armors. The reason for this is that at missions of higher difficulty any hit will lead to instant struggle regardless of armor level, so it's not worth spending a lot of resources upgrading an armor when the health bonus will be of little practical help.

**Unicorn Ranged Weapon**

* silver / gold lucky + gold cripple, third trait can be piercing, incendiary or extended range

Cripple is the best trait for shooter weapon, but it shouldn't be combined with piercing. Gold cripple should be the 1st priority, with lucky the 2nd priority. You will not have any difficulties at all clearing out enemies up to level +5 with proper badges. So, the "real game" begins at level +5 when all your attacks are body shots. But this also means that a gold cripple gun will almost always result in crippled enemy. A gun with gold cripple and at least 2x lucky traits (this can be on the weapon, on the armor, or on the survivor) will always result in a crippled enemy (note: if your lucky trait level is still too low it might not be 100%, but should be 99% or so). Any enemy that is hit by a crippling overwatch will not attack. This is another reason why crippling shooter weapon is critical, and with Primed on your armor you are able to both shoot in your turn and have a good chance of still getting an additional overwatch attack during the walker turn.

**Unicorn Bruiser Weapon**

* silver / gold concussion + silver / gold lucky + gold razor

Another useful trait for bruisers is interrupt, so perhaps a combination of concussion, razor, and lucky or interrupt is also good. However, soon enough you'd want to buy a Morgan Staff or Hockey Stick at the Black Market, which would have all these traits (but better because they make 3-space arc). The unicorn trait I mentioned above would be priceless later on, so keep looking. Note that razor is crucial for bruisers as a body shot hit will not stun the enemy.

**Unicorn Scout / Warrior Weapon**

* silver / gold lucky + silver / gold razor + gold interrupt,
* gold wide arc for warriors
* gold threat reduction for scouts

Generally speaking, never spend reinforcement tokens on these weapons either, though in some cases it might not be a terrible bad idea (but still a bad idea).

***Unicorns are pretty rare***, so at the beginning you will have to make do with something almost a unicorn, but not quite.

## **Part 4: Badges**

I will not talk at length about how to craft badges as the best, most complete, and most up-to-date instruction and map on how to craft badges is available on the community discord server, having been perfected for years by paste and NatsuDark and few others at the community. But here is the gist.

Badges are made in the craftsman building by spending components and fragments. By using a special recipe (shown on the crafting screen) you can try to make a badge of a certain type (for example an extra Damage badge), with the chance being 100% if using gold components. Otherwise you will get a random badge.

The bonus and the slot of the badge is not completely random, but depends on where on the *crafting map* you are. This is not shown in any way in-game, but by crafting at certain locations you can increase your chances of getting a badge with a good bonus and being in a wanted slot. It makes a lot of sense to understand how this works, but requires some dedication so better to postpone this until you have a good stash of gold components. Check out the badges section for more info.

**1. In the early game, badges are the most important thing that helps you stay alive and punch (kill) above your level.** Craft as many badge as you can as soon as you have Craftsman Level 1, but save all your gold components until you have Craftsman Level 2. When you ***start to get close*** to Craftsman Level 2 (say 2–3 levels below), start saving your blue components as well.

Generally speaking, an assault with 3x green-blue damage badges can mop down +1 level enemies without upgraded weapons. Combining two such assaults can help you mop down +3 level enemies = by having one hits after the other. So with reasonably good badges, you can use 2 assaults to do quick tomato scavenging. And if your badges are borderline, you can also combine one assault with one hunter (say, Governor-Daryl-PGG team on scavenging missions).

**2. Generally speaking, each survivor should be badged either:**

Defensively = 3x Damage Reduction (DR) badges + 3x Health (H) badges

or

Offensively = 3x Damage (D) badges + 3x Critical Damage (CD) badges

Avoid mixing badges when you can. I'll talk about this in much later time. In the early game, mixing badges is generally bad because it will result in survivors that can neither kill nor take hits.

Also, you've noticed that the 5th kind of badges: Critical Chance (CC) is rarely useful. Why? In short, because once you have guaranteed body shots (at level +5 approximately), you'd also have 0% critical chance. At higher level it could be strategic for some heroes to use razor / piercing weapons or weakening traits to reduce body shots and therefore can use CC badges, but this is discussion for much later time.

**3. In the early game, Damage badges are most important.** It will help you clear maps up to 3 levels above your survivor level with little efforts. I did say that mixing badges is generally bad, but in the ***early game*** (when you just unlocked Craftsman Level 1), I would recommend you to put 3x D badges on everyone. The other 3 can be any other combination. Don't worry, NG usually gives out free badge removal event every other month, so you can fix and redo everyone's badge every other month.

**4. At mid-level, the DR badges are the most important.** I would recommend that you use a good portion of your gold components to craft DR badges with the right trait bonus (usually dodge or retaliate). Again, I will not talk in depth about badge crafting as the best and most up-to-date guide is available on the community discord channel.

**5. Generally speaking, everyone except bruisers should always be offensive**

Exceptions: Governor can be mixed so he can take the odd hit when scavenging without needing hospital time. Princess can be defensive in the mid-game to be able to take hits as needed, if you like to play with the Sasha - Princess - Yumiko combo. At some point you will also want to create a few defensive Heroes for PvP duty in GW and the Outpost. Heroes like Carl, Dwight and Abraham work well for defensive purposes, but this is fine-tuning when you already are at max level.

**6. In mid-level game, best to have at least 1 offensive survivor and 1 defensive survivor in a team.** Defensively badged hero / survivor can take hits while the offensive ones can kill. In the SPY team, Sasha is usually the offensive one, Princess defensive, while Yumiko can be either. Sasha stays back, away from danger, while Princess goes more forward and takes hits (either accidental or incidental) to protect Sasha and offensive Yumiko. Similarly, in melee teams, bruisers move forward while scouts can hide behind the bruisers.

**7. Never reroll badge trait bonus**, and in general do not reroll your badges at all. Reroll tokens in early games are far too valuable for this.

## **Part 5: Survivor Traits**

In the current meta it's all about the Heroes. The regular survivors that you get from radio calls and as rewards from the chapter missions will eventually be of no use at all, so don't spend resources on them. Use the free calls that you get to pick up survivors, and save any good ones you get, but your focus should be on the heroes.

After a survivor (with survivor meaning either a regular suvivor or a Hero) reaches legendary status, all their traits will have been unlocked. At this point it's possible to reroll any undesired trait to a better one (Leader Traits can't be rerolled). Rerolling traits will be important; ***but also the most expensive,*** because reroll tokens will end up to be the rarest commodity, and you really need a lot of it.

Therefore, for new players like myself, it is not about getting the "perfect traits". But rather, what is a set of “good enough” traits?

Which gets us to the following table.

For new players, the so-called CMY/SPY/SMY team (Sasha-Princess/Mercer-Yumiko, or Connie instead of Sasha) will be your most important team. Thereafter, you can add a melee team centered around Ezekiel and Tyreese. You should spend all your reroll tokens to get at least the “must have” in the table below. ***As example: “Lucky” is a must-have trait for all in SPY/SMY team.***

The most important trait for all melee heroes is Weakening. Start off by rerolling that trait onto all your key melee heroes.

After that focus on gettuing Lucky to your team working with Sasha/Connie. This trait combined with a lucky-crippling shooter weapon will provide guaranteed cripple against high-level enemies. On Assaults, lucky trait combined with lucky armor and lucky weapon will provide a 95-98% chance of concussions. On Sasha, lucky improves the chance her traits activate (although it is a lot less important now that she could use a lucky-primed armor).

Subsequently, get the “priority”. Everything else can wait. Then you can go improving the traits of the other heroes. In any case, don't get hung up on a "perfect" set of traits. It's more important to get the “must have” on all your most favorite heroes before getting the next line items: the priority and the nice-to-haves.

The Radio Tent gives us free calls to get new survivors, and unlike reroll tokens, these calls are relatively "cheap". That means you can keep calling new survivors, upgrade them if they have good traits, then trash them again if the traits are bad. You can keep doing this, and once in a blue moon you'll end up with some “unicorn” survivors. These unicorn survivors might perform better than some heroes, and they cost zero reroll tokens!

Examples of unicorn / semi unicorn survivors (traits in brackets are nice to have):

Bruisers = Punish + Weakening + Perseverance (+ Lucky + Dodge or Power Strike)

Warriors = Weakening + Power Strike + Ruthless (+ 2 out of 3 of Lucky / Perseverance / Strong). Or replace weakening with perseverance as a semi-unicorn

Hunters = Lucky + Critical Aim (+ Sure Shot + Marksman + Ruthless) = often useful in Last Stand

For defensive or mixed-defensive survivors, Iron Skin (IS) can be a great addition at mid-level when you don't yet have enough badges to create 80% DR with badges alone. I won't discuss this in depth because eventually, you should be able to "grow out" of IS dependence, and use your trait slot for something more useful. And therefore- I also would not purposefully use my scarce reroll tokens just to get IS traits. But if it is already there, or if somehow it is offered while you were rerolling for some other traits—you could definitely consider it for temporary use.

## **Part 6: Radio Calls**

Many Heroes start off being just average, and only when you upgrade their Leader Trait to level 7 or higher they really start to shine. To do that you need to use a huge amount of radios, so be sure to spend them in the most optimal way possible. Many players will wait for months for a good call before burning all their radios. Check out the entry on Radios to see the return on the different types of calls.

**Generally speaking, the 40/55 radio calls are the best deals.** Next best are the 25 radio calls. But obviously, they all depend on ***who are in the calls—**whether* you need them or not. It largely depends on your preference and how you play, but here are the most important heroes for n00bs—in order of importance

But before we get started, let's distinguish 2 key points here. The best heroes for the class are not necessarily the same heroes you want to prioritize your radios on. For example, Yumiko, by far the best hero in the shooter class, but is probably the one you should not be prioritizing your radios on. Why? Because her LT just works no matter the level.

So, how will we discuss these 2 issues? First let's discuss which heroes are the best, then we will put asterisks on which heroes arguably don't need to be the top priority for leveling up with radios.

On a side tangent. In any case, to level up your heroes you need radios, and to get radios you need good guilds.

**ASSAULT CLASS**

1. Mercer (should be quite the consensus here). Probably hands down, with no controversy, the one hero needs to be leveled up as fast as you can. This should be #1 on the overall list too.
2. Princess. I find her to work well enough already at LT 7, and at LT 8 that is just an icing on the cake. But for those who haven't gotten her that high, she should be the priority; perhaps even competing with Mercer between #1 and #2 on the overall list, depending on how low her LT is.
3. Rosita \*\*\*—but I give her 3 asterisks as she really needs no leveling up. You might need to reroll lucky trait on her though (to get guaranteed cripple on RAR).

**SHOOTER CLASS**

1. Yumiko \*\*\*. Need we say more? However, with 3 asterisks just like Rosita.
2. Quinn. Very good damage dealer.
3. Hilltop Maggie (HMaggie). Sometimes useful in maps with many specials (including Exploder Walkers).

**HUNTER CLASS**

1. Sasha \*. However, with 1 asterisk as I find her LT is good enough to make good out of bad at LT 7. And with as many calls we have involving Sasha, even new players will get to LT 7 fairly quickly.
2. Guardian Carol. With the Star Hero meta, she's far more useful than Sasha in challenge. So normally, I would even put her at no. 1 for hunters, but, to be fair to those who don't yet have Sasha at LT 7, probably Sasha should be the priority here.

**WARRIOR CLASS**

1. Ezekiel \*\*. Even with Tyreese, I should think that Ezekiel is still going to be the no. 1 warrior but with 2 asterisks. His LT is useful as it allows you to thwart at least 1 extra attack (could be 2 if you position him to stun 2 enemies in line), and is probably the preferred warrior once you reach round 60+ in challenge. However, I have found myself that these days almost all warriors work quite well, and you can cycle through pretty much through all of them. I gave Ezekiel 2 asterisks as his LT does not need to be leveled up, but his other traits do (such as perseverance, lucky)
2. Tyreese. The circles work great on lots of maps so he's a contender for the no 1 place. Make sure though to read up on the circles bug in order to not get any nasty surprises.
3. Magna. Magna is similar to Tyreese but needs to be about 3 pink stars or better to really shine, while Tyreese is good from the get-go.

**BRUISER CLASS**

1. Fighter Rosita. Need we say more?
2. There is no number 2 as the Bruiser class currently is quite underwhelming. Eugene and Negan both work well for PvP and Riot Gear Glenn can be useful to get your team charged at the start of the mission, but each of these require a lot of pink stars to really shine, and shouldn't be your priority at the building stage.

**SCOUT CLASS**

1. Connie. Connie is the best scout thanks to her fantastic LT trait.
2. Outlaw Negan. His LT is also great through its ability to generate charge points as well as adding a lot of damage.
3. Special mention: Pizza Guy Glenn \*\*\*. Because he can open boxes. But again here 3 asterisks, as his box opening trait works the same regardless of level. For farming supplies it obviously helps a little if his LT is of a higher level, but this shoud definitely not be a priority.

## **Part 7: Special Weapons and Armors**

**1. Gear from Guild Shop, BM, TG store, etc. unlocks at the highest level of any survivor of this class, which gear belongs to.** For this reason, it would be wise to train up or unlock at least one survivor from the same class as the gear class you want to claim—just before claiming it. For the same reason, it would be wise to wait until the last possible moment to claim special weapons from GW or campaigns (but don't forget to claim it).

**2. It will require reinforcement tokens to upgrade gears past the +3 level (1 level for each trait).** So, only use reinforcement tokens for special gears.

Generally speaking, armors for scout and shooter class will not be necessary to be upgraded using reinforcement tokens. On the other hand, armors for bruiser class will probably worth the upgrade using reinforcement tokens. Armors for other classes and all weapons are not-so-simple judgment call.

Check out this page to see which weapons are considered best for each class currently.

## **Part 8: Key concepts**

**1. Lucky**

Lucky traits can be equipped in (1) survivor, (2) weapon, (3) special armors. All these lucky traits “stack”: you just add them up then multiply with the trait. Lucky traits are often significant because often there is a huge difference between having certain traits to activate 100% of the time, or 99% of the time, or 97% of the time.

***Example:***

Gold cripple has 75% chance of activation on body shots. You have a Silver lucky weapon (15%) and Lucky trait at lvl 5 (18%).

***Chance for Cripple = 75% x (1+0.15+0.18) = 75% x 1.33 = 99.75%. This is not enough to guarantee cripple every single time.***

**2. Cripple**

Gold cripple + 2 x lucky with pink stars = guaranteed cripple on body shots. This is why the lucky trait is significant in all shooters and assaults (see above discussion on survivor traits). Exact amount of lucky traits you must compute yourself—it is right around 34% (silver lucky + 18-20% survivor lucky trait)

Note that the “piercing” weapon trait will negate the guarantee crippling so avoid weapons with piercing if you want guarantee cripple (or Alpha as leader).

**3. Cripple—interrupt**

This sounds like a bug, it probably is a bug, but probably won't get "fixed" anytime soon = crippling shots on overwatch / primed / pretaliate will result in interrupt. Note that primed / overwatch requires at least one-step movement, but pretaliate not.

On assaults' cripple, all enemies sprayed by crippling shots will be interrupted (no movement). In other words, one enemy will make 1 move and the rest will be "frozen".

This also works with Rooting, although there are much less chances of a guaranteed root.

**4. "Fire-bug”**

If you shoot a raider / PVP humans and burn them leaving them with 1 HP, they will die at the end of the turn (won't be able to further attack).

For this to happen, fire burn must be inflicted on the shot that brings down the raider / humans to 1 HP, not the previous shot. Therefore, this is more likely to happen on charged attack, although a normal attack can also do the same if it inflicts enough damage to bring the raider / human to 1 HP.

**5. Concussion**

In many maps on star hero-Yumiko-Princess team, you must control 2 sides of walkers. This is only possible when you inflict concussion stuns (2 turns). Lucky Decimator + lucky armor + lucky survivor trait allows you to get to 97-98% concussion rate.

**6. You can target an exact certain walker on your overwatch / primed / pretaliate**

To complete this, one must fully understand the walker movement mechanic posted in my next chapter.

## **Part 9: Movement Mechanics**

I try to (over) simplify the description here based on the text already written by Jubjab. Check this link for the exact description. Mastering walker movement is the key to mastering this game.

1. Unaware walkers will not move. If alerted by sound, they will wander.

2. Unaware and wandering walkers will not attack. However, if a wandering walker ends up next to your Hero, and your hero attacks it with an overwatch attack, it WILL attack. So if you use an armor with the Primed trait, it is a good idea to use a weapon with guaranteed interrupt (like the Skeggox, Mercer's Axe or Pouvoir Flag).

3. Walkers move one-by-one , with the walker closest to any human moving first. This includes survivors on camouflage such as with gore or Walker Mike. The table below shows the distance calculation, with the target survivor being in the middle (X). So a walker 4 steps directly to the side of a survivor will be at distance 9, while a survivor being 3 steps away in a straight diagonal line will be at distance 11 - meaning that the walker will move towards the survior to the side, and not being able to reach it.

4. If one walker has equal distance to multiple survivors, the walker will prioritize on portrait order (the order you put your survivors on mission selection, so the leader is priority one).

5. Once a walker is about to move, it will lock in to a "chosen survivor" based on the distance and portrait order. Then it will move towards that chosen survivor, preferring straight line over diagonal.

6. If that walker reaches a tile next to its chosen survivor, it will attack. Note that if that tile is also adjacent to another survivor which is higher on portrait order, it will attack the survivor that is higher on portrait order.

7. If the walker doesn't reach a tile next to its chosen survivor, it will not attack, even if it ends its move on a tile next to another one of your survivors or raiders that is not its chosen one. This can often happen if the front tiles of a survivor are already occupied by other walkers.

8. If the walker cannot possibly reach the target due to a blocking obstacle (for example the survivor being behind a closed fence), it will move around randomly. Other walkers are not considered "blocking" obstacles and generally means that walkers will tend to form a queue towards target. There are some exceptions to this, but generally this is the case.

Therefore, some tricks that you can play:

1. You can position your survivors to induce the next walker to move according to these rules, and use it to your advantage (such inducing a 2 walkers stun using a morning star on overwatch when one walker makes movement)

2. Position a survivor next to a walker but separated by a wall = this walker will never reach that closest survivor due to the wall, and will not attack other survivors when in range. If that survivor is completely blocked by blocking obstacles, the walkers will wander.

3. You can induce all walkers to queue in one direction, leaving a clear path to dash through a different alley.

## **Part 10: Guild Wars**

Read up on Guild Wars strategy here. As a new player pay particular attention to the difference in pink stars when playing against human enemies, and don't be afraid to ask to switch missions if you notice a particularly strong PvP defender team. Remember that you can click on the defending player's name to see the exact details of the defending team.

## Credits

This Guide was originally written by *Z-Xer* and has received adjustments after that by *Jubjab*.