Puzzles & Survival Pit: How to Gather Rare Earth

What is the Pit?

The Pit is arguably the most efficient source of resources and other useful materials. A region teeming with coveted Rare Earth where players fight to secure a mining node and escape with as much as they can to trade for useful supplies.

The Pit is broken up into 9 different levels, each guarded by a massive beast. You can only enter a level once you’re strong enough to defeat its guard. Higher levels have faster gathering rates but also fewer spots with fiercer competition.

How to Gather Rare Earth in the Pit

Once you enter a level, you’ll see a bunch of mining nodes occupied by players. Your goal is to secure a node with your troops, so they can start gathering Rare Earth. You can do this by either finding an empty spot or defeating another player to take their spot.

Players that are too strong for you to possibly win against have a fancy menacing skull icon. Instead, look for players with a simple plain skull icon. You stand a chance against these players (in theory). If you happen to see a blue ribbon icon, that’s a fellow member of your alliance (don’t attack them).

Ideally, you want to steal a spot from another player, because you steal a portion of the Rare Earth that they’re currently mining. This tends to be about 15-20% of whatever they’ve mined so far. You’ll want to find a player that’s collected a lot of Rare Earth, so you can get a bigger haul.

However, you can only steal Rare Earth so many times in one day. In the top-right corner you’ll see your remaining raid attempts. If you run out, defeating another player will not give you a portion of their Rare Earth. You’ll still take the spot though. Your attempts will refresh with the daily reset.

Don’t worry, any Rare Earth you collect and leave the Pit with is immune to being stolen. You can stockpile huge amounts of Rare Earth without any fear. Speaking of which, we recommend recalling from the Pit as soon as you can. This will secure the Rare Earth you’ve collected so far, and will let you steal from another play again. You can recall your troops after 1 hour and 45 minutes pass.

What About the Troops?

Additionally, your troops do not die or get sent to the infirmary. However, you can only deploy healthy troops that you possess, so if your army is healing from another encounter in the world, they won’t be available for the Pit.

We recommend checking sections near the center of the level, as too many players start their search from the first or last section. For example, Floor 6 has 3843 sections, so start checking around 2768. You’re more likely to find someone who has accumulated a fair bit of Rare Earth that you can defeat.

If you’re struggling to find anyone you can beat or hold your spot for more than a few minutes, you may want to hit the exit button and reset the field. This will let you go back to previous levels until you feel you’re strong enough to hold your own in the higher level.

If you need to be away from the game for a while (sleeping, work, etc.), we also suggest going to a lower level. That way your troops can (hopefully) finish mining their node in peace (takes 7 hours) and get you more Rare Earth in comparison to getting kicked out within 2 hours on a higher level.

There is also a revenge list that shows who attacked and stole your pit, letting you try to get revenge and reclaim your stolen Rare Earth. However, if they beat you, you probably can’t beat them back. We find this function to be rather useless.

How to Spend Rare Earth

As for what to spend your Rare Earth on, you have a lot of really good options:

• 5-star McCarty hero frags – He reduces stamina and training costs.
• Any of the 4 primary resources (food/wood/steel/gas)
• Anything module related
• Marks of Glory (most consistent source of them in the game)
• Large chunks of Commander EXP
• Nova EXP and Economy Points

Regardless of what you choose, we recommend hoarding your Rare Earth and waiting for an event that you can earn massive points in. For example, wait until the “Gather Module material” event and cash in all your Rare Earth on module items. Might as well get double value on your Rare Earth.