Puzzles & Survival Alliance Guide

Puzzles & Survival Alliance: What is It?

As soon as you finish the first chapter of quests, you’ll be prompted to create or join an alliance. Alliances are basically the guilds/clans/etc. of this game. You’re not going to get anywhere without an alliance and won’t even be able to participate in most aspects of the game without one.

We strongly recommend joining an alliance instead of making one. Unless you’re an established name in the state and have multiple friends, you’re extremely unlikely to successfully get an alliance up and running from scratch.

Most major alliances will have a minimum Might requirement to apply, but you can try to bypass this by messaging their leader directly. Most alliances are willing to accept a new player, as long as you’re an active player committed to learning and engaging with the rest of the alliance.

Why Join an Alliance?

Like we said above, there’s a lot of features you’re missing out on if you’re not in an alliance. We’ll be going through all the major ones.

Event Participation

A lot of events require being in an alliance to even participate in them.

Given that events are your main method of obtaining rare materials, items, and upgrades, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you can’t participate. Note – You typically have to be in an alliance for 3 days before you can participate in most major alliance events.

Additionally, some events are a group effort by your alliance. It’s impossible to reach goal milestones by yourself, and everyone has to contribute. Naturally the larger and more active your alliance is, the easier this becomes, and you can get some really nice rewards at the higher tiers.

War Rallies

You can launch and join war rallies.

Rallies are a way for multiple players to combine their troops together into a single joint attack. All rallies have to wait a set amount of time before they can launch, giving other players a chance to send their troops to join.

You’ll most commonly see rallies on Zombie Lairs, as defeating a lair gives much better rewards than killing a solitary zombie. A rally needs 2 players at minimum to launch. Technically, you can launch a rally on your own, but only against level 10 and lower lairs or against other players.

You’ll win the fight if you rally can defeat at least 50% of the lair’s forces. If you fail the fight or cancel the rally, your stamina will be refunded.

The size of the rally is primarily determined by the host’s Hall of War level. Rallies typically can only host 6 players total. Before the rally sets off, the host can cancel it or send any player’s troops back by tapping on their name and hitting the return button. This is normally done when a player sent the wrong formation or if they want to give up their spot to another player.

IMPORTANT: When a rally is launched, note if the host mentions test, full, or 1. If they say test, send only a single troop with no heroes, as they’re seeing if they can effectively solo the lair.

If they say full, they’re requesting you to send a full march of your strongest troops with heroes, as they need help to win. Note – If your troops are more than 3 tiers below the host’s troops, just send a single troop. Otherwise, you’ll actually bring down the strength of the rally.

If they say 1 (or don’t say anything at all), they’re probably strong enough to effectively solo the rally and don’t need you to send more than a single troop (with no heroes). Though you can also send a full march of just vehicles, as the vehicles will reduce the number of casualties the host suffers. We recommend using tier 1 taxis for this, due to their low healing cost.

Getting Help

You can send out help requests to reduce timers.

Whenever you start a research project, build/upgrade a building, or heal your troops, you can send out a call for help to your alliance. A handshake icon will appear in the bottom right corner, and anyone who responds to it will reduce your timers’ duration.

Do note that the number of times people can help you with a timer is governed by the level of your Alliance Hall building in your Sanctuary. The higher it is, the more people can help you and the more the timer is reduced with each help.

Alliance Research Tree

You gain the benefits of the alliance research tree.

Every alliance has their own research tree that applies to all of its members (in addition to your own personal research tree). All members can donate resources to help unlock additional research. We strongly recommend only donating to a research marked as Hot, as each donation will contribute more progress.

Do note you are limited by your donation attempts. You gain one donation attempt every 30 minutes and can have up to 20 attempts at once. Typically, we recommend using up all your donation attempts before you jump off the game.

Alliance Shop

You can earn alliance coins and spend them in the alliance shop.

Every time you donate to alliance research or respond to a request for help, you gain alliance coins. These coins can be spent in the alliance shop to purchase multiple useful items. Most notably, you can obtain war gear for your Sanctuary’s Gear Factory, as well as items like resource boosters and speed ups.

If an item you want isn’t in stock in the alliance shop, you can request an alliance officer/leader to restock the shop. In nearly all cases, your alliance will have the resources to do so (unless it’s horrendously mismanaged).

Alliance Buildings

You can take advantage of alliance-specific buildings.

Each alliance can build an alliance warehouse, hospital, and gathering point in their territory.

The alliance warehouse allows you to safely store resources in it. Every day you can transfer a set amount to the warehouse. If you’re attacked, you won’t lose anything in it. You can retrieve all your stored resources at any time.

The alliance hospital will take in any additional troops you lose if your infirmaries are at max capacity. You can spend alliance coins to heal those troops. While you probably won’t have an army large enough to warrant this for a while, when you do reach that point, you’ll be glad it exists.

The alliance gathering point can be any one of the four primary resources (determined by your alliance’s leadership) and lets you safely gather at an increased rate. Unless it’s very close to running out, you can easily leave a full march in there for an entire day, making it ideal for when you can’t play the game for a while.

Send & Receive Gifts

You can receive and send alliance gifts.

Whenever someone purchases something from the cash shop, it’ll often include an alliance gift. This random present will be sent to everyone in the alliance, and they’ll have 24 hours to open it. Depending on what was purchased, the gift will typically be a similar item.

Protection

You won’t be attacked by other players/alliances in the state.

This one is a very situational clause. Typically, the strongest alliances in each state agree to a NAP (non-aggression pact) with each other to prevent unnecessary bloodshed and chaos. If you happen to be apart of one of those alliances, you don’t have to constantly worry about a high level player kicking down your Sanctuary’s doors, killing all your troops, and taking your resources.

If your alliance is not a part of the NAP, you’re still subject to attacks. However, your leader can try and negotiate their way into a separate NAP with alliances individually through diplomacy. If this fails, you’re in constant danger and should shield up if you have a lot of resources on-hand.

Community Building

You’ll have a community.

We’ll be frank. Without friends in this game, it gets depressing/boring really quickly. Talk to your fellow members in alliance chat, crack jokes, get to know them. They can help answer any question you have, send resources if you need some, etc.

This is ultimately a social game and politics will rear its head between alliances. It’s important to have people you can count on and trust to get anywhere in this game.

Your Alliance’s Fort and Territory

Every alliance wants to stake a claim to land to grow their territory. Ideally, it will be near the center of the map, so you’ll be closer to where higher level resource nodes spawn and certain events take place.

The Alliance Fort serves as the heart of your alliance’s territory and establishes your alliance’s initial territory borders (indicated by green lines). Your alliance can expand its territory by building up to 5 Alliance Outpost towers.

While your Sanctuary is physically stationed within your alliance’s territory, you’ll receive the benefits of any boosts applied to your alliance (such as faster troop training and resource gathering). You’ll count as being inside your alliance’s territory as long as part of your Sanctuary is within the green lines signaling your territory’s borders.

Defending Your Alliance Fort

Notably, your Alliance Fort/Outposts can be attacked by other players. If they’re destroyed, your alliance will lose its territory and access to any of the alliance buildings/benefits within it. Thankfully, this is a very unlikely occurrence, unless you’re playing in a state dominated by incredibly aggressive alliances.

However just in case, you can choose to send out a march and station troops at the Alliance Fort/Outposts to defend them. The first player to arrive at the building will lead the defense and determine how many troops can reinforce the building. It’s best to let your highest level player arrive first as they typically have the largest rally size. Otherwise, you can have the defense leader recall their troops to transfer leadership to the next player on the list.

The only time you’ll really need to reinforce your Alliance Fort is during the Alliance event Dead Rising. Waves 10 and 20 of the event will send a regiment of elite zombies to attack your Alliance Fort.

Don’t worry, losing the fight will not damage your Alliance Fort. However, if your alliance can successfully repel the attack, you’ll all gain a lot of points, so it’s in your best interest to station as many of your strongest troops there for when those waves arrive.

How to Leave an Alliance in Puzzles & Survival

Sometimes an alliance just falls apart. Whether it be due to inactivity, drama between players, or merging with another alliance, it happens. Sometimes players need to temporarily quit an alliance in order to band together under a different banner for a state versus state event.

Whatever the reason is, go into the Alliance tab, tap on Operations in the bottom right corner, and hit Quit.

You’ll immediately lose any benefits from your former’s alliance research tree, all unclaimed alliance gifts, and won’t be able to access any alliance related events.

However, you will retain all your alliance coins and any resources stored in the alliance warehouse will be returned to you.