Introduction

Survival of the Fittest is a recurring weeklong event that consists of different stages. The second stage is called Heroic Development. This guide contains some tips on how to do well.

Important Notice: This is based on the stages and the order as it is currently in my state. This might not be the same for all states, I know from experience in my state that early on we had a different survival of the fittest event with 5 stages ending in a 2 day kill stage.

How to get Points

You not only get points for using Hero Fragments (4,000 points for Elite, 14,000 for Epic and 35,000 for Legendary), but also for gathering resources (3 points for every 50 Food, 50 Wood, 10 Metal or 2 Gas) and making a spin in Ray's Place.

Preparing

You could decide to save up your Hero Fragments for two weeks and only use them to level up your heroes once this event comes along. I did this early on, but not sure it was the right move, early on in your account development one week worth of Hero Fragments can make quite an impact and it has some drawbacks to wait, you are weaker and cannot do as well in various events. Still, you might rank in the top 100 of this event stage if you do, for what that is worth.

Not only for this event, but in general it is important you do well in gathering. Doing well in the gathering stage requires you to have high gathering boosts, many march slots, and many troops to fill those march slots (unless you plan to be online all the time).

Gathering Speed can be increased with research, chief talent points, heroes, and settlement buff.

You can get extra March Slots from the 4 Leadership projects in the Development category, and from activating VIP 8.

Just keep training troops so that you can gathering for long periods while you are offline.

At this moment Ray's Place is a good way to get Ash fragments. I tend to do the free spin and purchase another 12 spins if I have enough Biocaps, together with the two free spins in the remaining days of Ray's Place event, this will give me 15 spins giving me the two chests, giving a guaranteed 9 Ash fragments. It is not a huge amount of points, but is some extra for this stage as well.

Resources not Equal

Looking at lvl 8 tiles there surprisingly seems to be a difference between the amount of points you can get for depleting a full tile. For Food, Wood and Metal, it is the same, for Gas significantly higher. This seems to be the case because the points you get uses a factor 25 between Gas and Food/Wood, instead of the common factor 20 used throughout the game. It would line up if they would have said 3 points for every 2.5 Gas, or better 6 points for every 100 Food or Wood, 20 Metal or 5 Gas.

Note: I have not yet confirmed I actually get the 1 million points for Gas, in theory it could be a display thing, that the calculation is still done with 2.5 gas, but it is just displayed as 2, but I doubt that.

Tips

It is tempting to upgrade all your heroes as much as you can, but do realize stage VII Hero Upgrade will be about upgrading heroes as well. If you are easily getting all rewards for this stage by gathering and using spins in Ray's Place, you might hold on to your Hero Fragments untl the Hero Upgrade stage.

Depending on the research you have done and talent points you have assigned, one or some of the resources might have a significant higher gathering rate than others. If your current planning allows it, focus more on gathering the resource with the highest gathering rate. Of course taking the above info on Gas into consideration.

Make sure you assign your heroes to the right resource tiles, Mike for Food, Chef for Wood, Rusty for Metal and Ghost for Gas.

Time your gathering before this stage starts, so that shortly after the stage starts your marches already come home with a full load, preferably from a lvl 8 tile.

Do not forget to activate the Mega Gathering Boost from your Settlement Buffs. I tend to have it active whenever I gather, but for sure you need to make sure to have it active during this event.

Competing with Big Spenders

It is possible to compete with big spenders for leaderboard on this stage, not for rank 1, but if you both maximize your gathering and are willing to spend all your hero fragments, you should be able to get into top 100.

Conclusion

I hope these tips make it easy to do well in the Heroic Development stage of the Survival of the Fittest event. If you have questions or want to share more tips, please use the comment section below.