Puzzles & Survival guide, tips and tricks

As I mentioned in the introduction, the match-three aspect of the game plays an important role. Each attacking zombie horde or zombie boss will require a certain tactic in order to be defeated. You will have a few rows of blocks underneath each encounter, and you can deal damage to the enemy right on top by matching at least 3 blocks situated underneath them.

Usually, all you need is 3 blocks of the same colour to deal damage, but it's better if you do 4 or more, because that will also grant you an additional combo booster. For instance, if you match four blocks you'll get a special tile that you can tap on in order to detonate the ones around it.

Take advantage of the element bonus

Not many similar games feature this since it's mostly an RPG element, but in Puzzles & Survival, you also have element bonuses that can help you defeat enemies faster. Elements work like this:

• Purple and Yellow counter each other
• Green is strong against Blue and weak against Red
• Red is strong against Green and weak against Blue
• Blue is strong against Red and weak against Green

You won't think that it has such a great impact, but it does, and it mostly shows at the boss zombie stages. So, try to do your best to form counterattacks with the right colours.

While it is pretty self-explanatory, I can't stress enough how good the main chapter missions are - they give you rewards for basically progressing in the game, among which are characters, resources and speedups. It's good to try and complete them as soon as you can because the EXP you get from each one is also incredibly good.

If you want the best way to progress fast from the very start, try to do these because you won't regret it. Some of the tasks include joining an Alliance or upgrading a certain building, so they are also fairly simple. Later on, they'll require a bit more work towards completion, but it's good to keep them as a beacon to guide you through the game.

That's right, you can get free loot and possibly heroes every single day. Check out Noah's Tavern every single day, even multiple times. The Basic Recruit gives you 5 free summons every day, and from that, you can get a ton of rewards among which 2-3* heroes. The Intermediate Recruit works in a similar way, and you can summon once for free every 24h - it can also grant you 2-4* heroes. As for the Advanced Recruit, you can get heroes between 3-5*, and it's free every 2 days.

Of course, you can also choose to spend your Diamonds on the summons, but that's something you should worry about later on.

Save your summon tokens for when you have 9

From the main story missions you'll get several tokens to summon for free, so make sure you save these for when you have 9. It's not worth spending them one by one, because once you have 9 of them you can go for the 10x summon, so basically you'll get one free summon. That amounts to 500 Diamonds if you go for the better summon, so it's definitely worth the wait.

What I found to be extremely useful is to keep all the buildings maxed out at all times. Sure, it'll take a lot of time to do from the start, but it's something that'll help in the long run. For each HQ level, you have a level cap of the other buildings, so you should try to reach that cap before you upgrade the HQ.

First, you should try to upgrade every building that takes the least time, and leave the ones that take the most time for last. That way you will never keep your building queue busy for too long while you're actively playing the game. After you reach the point where each upgrade takes considerable time, you will progress a little slower.

Also read:

• F1 Clash guide
• LOTR Rise to War guide

Second, you should try to make your resource facilities a priority. Upgrading these and their storage will make it so that you can get more even while you're not playing the game. Resource facilities keep producing resources even while you're offline, so increasing their productivity will only turn your idle time into time well spent.

An Alliance is extremely helpful because it will give you a much-needed helping hand in terms of building. Ally members can send you help towards upgrading your facilities for free, and that's something that cannot go overlooked.

I suggest that you take your time to join an active Alliance, but if you cannot seem to get accepted into any of the bigger and active ones, you can always just join any other one and switch after you've increased your power. You also get some bonuses for joining an Alliance for the very first time, so it's just a win-win situation.

Don't forget to ask for help whenever you build, train or research something, and offer your help in return as well. It's free speedups for everyone, and what is there not to love about that?

In your Bag, you can find all the resources you've collected thus far, as well as a number of other items that might seem like they won't be of interest - yet.

One such item is the protection shield, which will keep the other players from attacking your base from the world map. You don't have to use a shield the moment you start the game, since you will have one (the beginner shield). However, after it expires, if you've advanced and collected a number of resources, make sure to activate a shield because it'll keep you from losing those hard-earned resources to other players that attack you.

Ideally, you should keep a shield on at all times, since getting your base looted and destroyed is not fun. I also suggest that you buy one if you don't have one yet, so make sure you save up enough Diamonds.

Check your bag regularly

In your inventory, you will often find items that you even forgot existed. Some of these items can be Antiserum, resources, and much more. I prefer to check it every single day to make sure that I don't miss anything, and you should do the same. Sometimes you can forget that you've just read an official email that contains some rewards, and by checking it you can find some much-needed items.

The Research queue is probably one of the easiest to keep busy (and my personal favourite), since researching something usually takes a lot of time. You should always produce something or keep your queues busy because there is always something to work on.

If you forget to research something, that's basically time wasted. You should also try to keep your builders busy with upgrades, especially if you chose to hire additional builders.

Before you close the game, you should start working on the most time-consuming upgrades/research/production, especially if you go to bed or close the game for several hours at a time. Never close the game without delegating some tasks beforehand.

Since resources are rather scarce, you should never waste them on weak heroes. You start the game with a handful of characters, but that doesn't mean that you should upgrade each one of them. Instead, focus on one at a time, usually the strongest one. I would also advise against upgrading the 2* heroes since they won't bring much to the table and eventually you'll get someone better.

A rule of thumb when upgrading heroes is to always prioritise the ones with the most stars. Start by upgrading one hero belonging to each colour, to help you counter any type of enemy. After you obtain a good 4* or 5* hero you can then dump all your resources into upgrading that one, but until then you should stick to the ones that you've got.

During the match-three battles, you will notice that by matching tiles of specific colours, you will fill the gauge of the heroes' skills. I suggest that you save their skills for when you're about to encounter a boss because they need a lot more damage in order to be defeated.

Most simple enemies will die relatively quickly, especially if you match tiles of countering elements. Therefore, it's best to save the hero skills for the bosses only.