Last Stand (Gamemode)

## Last Stand

Last Stand is a game mode in which you fight endless waves of walkers and the objective is to score as many points as possible.

The battle will end either when **all** of your survivors are dead, when you flee, or when your map becomes overrun with walkers.

You use Tickets to Hell to enter a Last Stand battle. You receive three free tickets every Monday (it's not possible to save unused tickets). In addition to this, you can also play up to 15 extra attempts with gold (with each ticket costing 100 gold).

The mode runs in 1-week cycles—every week the scores are reset and the map is changed. The composition of enemies throughout waves may change every week as well.

Last Stand unlocks at Council level ? . When it unlocks you don't get any Tickets to Hell, so you will need to wait for new tickets to refresh to be aböe to play without spending the 100 gold per ticket.

Check out the Last Stand maps on this page.

## Normal and Expert Mode

### **Overview**

Before starting a Last Stand mission, you get to choose between playing in Normal or Expert mode. The difficulty is only decided for that specific mission, which means you are not committing to one or the other for the whole Last Stand cycle.

Expert mode features all regular survivors, and a pool of 10 Heroes from which you need to select your team members. The pool of Heroes is the same for all players, and refreshes weekly. Some heroes, notably Sasha, never appear in Expert mode. Also note that the Heroes are not randomized, but instead the developers have created a set of Hero pools, one of which is selected weekly.

Expert mode starts from a +10 offset level of your three highest level survivors in your roster, or your highest equipment level minus 3—whichever is higher.

### **Scores, Rewards & Leaderboard**

Playing Expert mode automatically gives you a multiplier of x35 to your total score, and since you start a Last Stand mission at a higher level, the wave rewards are also increased.

The same leaderboard is shared by all players, but if any of your top 3 scores are obtained from Expert mode, you will have an equivalent number of Expert badges attached to your leaderboard position and score.

E.g. If all 3 of your top scores are done in Expert mode, you will see three Expert badges together with your name and score. However, a player having played 1 round of Expert and 2 rounds of Normal will on the leaderboard appear exactly the same as a player only having played one Expert ticket.

## Inside the Mission

Upon entering the battle, you have a few turns with no enemies to position your survivors.

Throughout the battle, there are red arrows on the map, which indicate the direction from which the upcoming wave of walkers will spawn. Walkers don't generally spawn from the same direction on two consecutive waves, but from wave 40 the spawns will come from all four sides of the map. On some maps, the spawns from the top and bottom will always be on the left/middle part of the edge. Otherwise the spawn will come anywhere along the edge, usually with a few always spawning right next to your survivors.

At the bottom of the screen, you can see the amount and types of walkers that will spawn in the upcoming wave.

Note: Unlike other game modes, Last Stand doesn't have threat mechanics, meaning that your survivors cannot generate nor reduce threat. Rufus LT still works, and he gets a charge point every time a spawn happens.

Some maps will have barrels that can be exploded by activating a trigger.

Last Stand is the only game mode where supports can be used several times. When a support is used, a cool down time (10 rounds or less, depending on Support level) starts, after which the support can be used again.

## Scoring System

The total score in the Last Stand is calculated based on two scores:

### **Wave Score**

This is the score that you receive for every wave you reach. You do not need to kill all the walkers from that wave to receive the Wave Points.

### **Kill Score**

This is the score that you receive for killing walkers. The number of points obtained from a walker will depend on its type and difficulty level—special walkers yield more points than normal ones, and the higher the difficulty, the higher the score.

#### The Multiplier

As you kill walkers in the Last Stand, you build up a multiplier (displayed in UI) that further boosts the score of your kills. The multiplies increases by 0.25 for each walker killed (walkers dying of fire are included and give points normally), while it decreases by 1.0 if no walkers are killed during the round. If the map has been cleared completely of walkers the multiplier will not go down while you wait for the next spawn. The maximum multiplier is 10, so a high multiplier will have a huge effect on your total score. Try to make sure at least one walker dies every round to keep the multiplier up.

#### Kill Point Formula

The formula used to calculate Kill Points is: (WALKER SCORE + (WALKER LEVEL / ENEMY CONSTANT)). This formula is summed for each Walker killed simultaneously, and at the end, is multiplied by the Final Multiplier and then rounded up. In the case of Expert Mode, the final result is then multiplied by 35.

While the formula looks very complicated, every score \* constant actually has the result 100 (for example 30 \* 3.33 = 100, 210 \* 0.47 = 100 and 10 \* 10 = 100). This means that actually all scores are linear and slowly increase as the walker level increases. So for example a normal walker will give 525 points when killed in Expert mode at multiplier 1 (10+(50/10)) = 15\*35 = 525 \* 1 = 525, while it will give double that at lvl 200 (10+(200/10)) = 30 \* 35 = 1050. This same goes for all types of walkers. In the chart below you can see a comparison of points by walker type, assuming they are lvl 50. A Elite Spiked will give 21 times more points than a normal walker (or perhaps more accurately, 7 times more than a Elite Normal walker):

## Special Rules in Last Stand

* The difference between the highest and lowest level walker in Last Stand can no longer exceed 30. Once that threshold is exceeded, the lowest level walker will die at the start of the player turn without contributing towards the total score or multiplier. For example, if a fresh spawn brings in lvl 100 walkers, all walkers of lvl 69 will be removed from the map.
	+ This rule was introduced to make the "Tara strategy" less viable and it is not used anymore.
* If the map contains more than 50 walkers, the mission will end immediately. Note that the previous rule means that this problem disappears when you get into the higher waves, as walkers will start be removed, ensuring the 50 limit is never reached.
* Injuries caused to survivors inside battle do not last, so even if all of your survivors died in Last Stand, you can still play them immediately again in a new Last Stand run or in other game modes. However, survivors in the Hospital must be fully healed to enter a Last Stand battle. Also note that like other game modes, survivors defending the Outpost will have to be taken out from the Outpost before being available for a Last Stand mission.

## Rewards

There are two categories of rewards in Last Stand:

### **Wave completion**

The first type of reward is based on the number of waves that you completed in battle. You earn these after each Last Stand attempt.

## **Leaderboard**

The leaderboard of the Last Stand ranks players based on their top 3 scores of the week, and gets reset every time a new cycle starts. The scores of each Last Stand attempt is calculated based on Kills and Waves reached.

The second type is based on the position or percentile that you reach in the leaderboard. The better your position/percentile on the leaderboard, the higher the rewards. These rewards will be distributed at the end of every Last Stand cycle (every week).

Overall, rewards include Hero, Survivor, and **Support tokens;** Reroll and Reinforcement tokens, Radios, Tools, Badge components and fragments. Support tokens can not be obtained in any other game mode.

## Farming in Last Stand

Some players use the extra tickets (that cost 100 gold each) to farm in Last Stand. This is done mainly to collect support tokens, which are not available in any other game mode. For this purpose, it's worthwhile to note that you only receive support tokens on wave 5, 10, 15 and 20, with a higher amount received in Expert Mode.

Also, worth noting is that no rewards are awarded after wave 80 in expert mode and wave 100 in normal mode. Playing further than that is only useful for getting a higher place on the Leaderboard.

This table shows total rewards in average for 4 runs on Expert Mode in Last Stand to wave 30, compared to boosting the Nightmare Distance (each of which will cost 400 gold).