Monster Wars Strategy Guide
Everything you need to know to build your base, crush your enemies, and climb the seasonal ladder.
Contents
1. Getting Started
When you first join Monster Wars, you'll pick a faction: Vampires, Werewolves, or Zombies. This choice determines your resource types, troop abilities, and combat bonuses during certain time phases.
If you let the game auto-select your faction, you get double starting resources and a 7-day VIP Bronze trial. The game places you in whichever faction has the fewest players to keep the war balanced.
After choosing your faction, you'll start with a base containing a few level-1 buildings and a small garrison of troops. Your first priority is upgrading your resource generators to establish a steady income.
First 30 Minutes Checklist
- Upgrade all three resource generators to level 2
- Build your first Melee training ground and start training troops
- Tap the engagement button a few times to start filling your daily engagement bar
- Explore the world map and identify nearby territory to claim
- Join an alliance for protection and bonuses
2. Faction Guide
Each faction plays differently. Understanding your faction's strengths — and your opponents' weaknesses — is key to winning battles.
🧛 Vampires — Masters of the Night
Vampires excel during nighttime phases, gaining significant combat bonuses when the sun goes down. Their special troop, the Vampire Lord, drains health from enemies during combat, making them durable in extended battles.
Strengths
- Strongest faction during Night and Blood Moon phases
- Life-drain mechanic on Special troops sustains them in prolonged fights
- Blood Moon phase grants a massive faction-wide combat bonus
Weaknesses
- Reduced effectiveness during Day phase
- Relies heavily on timing attacks around night cycles
- Special units are expensive to train
🐺 Werewolves — The Pack Hunts Together
Werewolves thrive when fighting together. Their pack bonus mechanic means bringing more troops yields disproportionately stronger results. They peak during Full Moon, when their transformation grants powerful combat buffs.
Strengths
- Pack bonus rewards bringing larger armies to battle
- Full Moon phase grants the strongest single-phase combat bonus in the game
- Melee troops are tanky and cost-effective
Weaknesses
- Full Moon is the rarest time phase, so peak power is infrequent
- Weaker in small skirmishes without pack bonus
- Resource generation is slower early game
🧟 Zombies — The Swarm Consumes All
Zombies play the long game. Their infection mechanic lets them spread influence across the map over time, and their troops are cheap to produce in large numbers. They're the most beginner-friendly faction.
Strengths
- Cheapest troops to train — quantity over quality
- Infection mechanic passively spreads territory influence
- Strong during Day phase when other factions are weaker
- Easiest faction for new players
Weaknesses
- Individual troops are weaker than other factions
- Relies on numerical superiority, which takes time to build
- Vulnerable to concentrated attacks from Vampire burst damage
3. Base Building Strategy
Your base has 9 building slots, each with a specific function. Every building can be upgraded to increase its output or unlock new capabilities.
Recommended Build Order
| Priority | Building | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Resource Generator 1 | Primary resource income — upgrade this first for compound growth |
| 2nd | Resource Generator 2 | Secondary resource needed for troop training |
| 3rd | Melee Training Ground | Start producing troops for defense and early expansion |
| 4th | Resource Generator 3 | Tertiary resource for advanced buildings and troops |
| 5th | Walls | Defensive multiplier protects against raids |
| 6th | Ranged Training Ground | Ranged troops deal damage before melee combat begins |
| 7th | Tank Training Ground | Tanks absorb damage and protect your ranged units |
| 8th | Hero Hall | Unlock and level up heroes for passive bonuses |
| 9th | Special Training Ground | Special faction troops are powerful but expensive |
Don't neglect walls. A high-level wall can make the difference between losing 10% of your resources in a raid versus 50%. Upgrade walls whenever you have spare resources.
4. Troop Types & Tactics
Every faction has four troop types. Understanding how they interact in combat is essential.
Melee Troops
The backbone of your army. Melee troops are cheap, train quickly, and form the front line of every engagement. They take and deal damage in close combat and are essential for holding territory.
Ranged Troops
Ranged troops deal damage before melee combat starts. They're fragile but deadly — a good ranged force behind a wall of melee troops can shred an attacking army before it reaches your front line.
Tank Troops
Tanks have high health and act as damage sponges. They protect your more fragile ranged and special units. Every well-composed army needs at least some tanks.
Special Troops
Each faction's special troop has a unique ability tied to their faction identity. These are expensive but powerful. They can turn the tide of close battles.
Army Composition
A balanced army generally follows this ratio:
- 40% Melee — Front line damage and absorption
- 25% Ranged — Pre-combat damage advantage
- 20% Tank — Protect your ranged and special units
- 15% Special — Faction-specific combat abilities
Troops lost in combat are gone permanently. Unlike some strategy games, there's no way to recover destroyed units. Train replacements before launching your next attack.
5. Map & Territory Control
The world map is a shared hex-grid where all players compete for territory. Controlling territory earns resource bonuses and contributes to your faction's overall score.
How Territory Works
- Deploy an army to a map tile to begin claiming it
- Armies travel in real time — further tiles take longer to reach
- If an enemy army occupies the tile, combat happens automatically
- Controlled tiles generate a small passive resource bonus
- Encircling enemy tiles (surrounding them) can cut off their supply lines
Map Strategy
Don't spread yourself too thin. It's better to control a compact cluster of tiles near your base than to have scattered territories across the map. Concentrated territory is easier to defend and generates bonuses from adjacency.
Before deploying, check the time phase. Your faction might have combat bonuses during certain phases that make attacks much more effective. Timing your strikes is half the battle.
6. Raiding Strategy
Raids are quick attacks on enemy bases to steal resources. They're separate from territory battles — a raid targets a player's base directly.
How Raids Work
- Select an enemy player to raid
- Send troops from your base to theirs
- If your army overcomes their defenses (walls + garrison), you steal a percentage of their stored resources
- There's a 25% chance of a surprise attack bonus that increases your loot
- The defender receives a battle report with details of the raid
Raid Tips
- Scout before you raid — players with high-level walls are harder to crack
- Raid during time phases that favor your faction for combat bonuses
- Don't raid alliance members of players much stronger than you — they may retaliate
- Spend your resources before going offline to reduce what raiders can steal from you
- Shields prevent raids entirely while active — use them when you have large resource stockpiles
7. Time Phases & Combat Bonuses
Monster Wars features a dynamic day/night cycle with six distinct phases. Each phase modifies combat bonuses for different factions.
Time phases cycle on a real-time schedule. Check the current phase before launching attacks. A well-timed assault during your faction's peak phase can overcome numerically superior defenders.
8. Alliances & Rallies
Alliances are groups of players within the same faction who team up for mutual protection and coordinated attacks.
Benefits of Joining an Alliance
- Alliance chat for coordinating strategies and sharing intel
- Rally attacks that combine multiple players' armies into a single devastating force
- Defensive pacts — alliance members can reinforce each other's bases
- Shared territory control bonuses on the map
Rally Attacks
A rally is a coordinated attack where multiple alliance members send troops to a single target. The combined army arrives together for maximum impact. Rallies are the most effective way to take heavily defended positions or attack strong players.
Alliance Names
Alliance types match your faction identity:
- Vampires form Covens
- Werewolves form Packs
- Zombies form Hordes
9. Seasonal Ladder
Monster Wars uses a seasonal ladder system where players compete in tiers with periodic resets and promotions.
Tutorial Tier
New players start here. Arenas hold 30 players and seasons last 2 weeks. The focus is on learning game mechanics with a protected environment and guided objectives.
Challenger Tier
Promoted from Tutorial. Arenas hold 20 players with 3-week seasons. Competition increases as players fight for promotion to Champion tier. Top performers at the end of each season advance.
Champion Tier
The elite tier. Only 15 players per arena with 4-week seasons. This is where the best players compete for the top rankings and exclusive rewards.
Focus on your seasonal objectives, not just combat. The ladder rewards well-rounded play including base development, territory control, and alliance participation — not just winning battles.
10. Resource Economy
Managing resources is as important as managing troops. Every faction has three unique resource types, but the economy works the same way.
Earning Resources
- Resource generators — Primary income. Upgrade these for compound growth.
- Territory control — Controlled map tiles produce small passive income.
- Raids — Steal from other players (with risk).
- Engagement rewards — Tap the engagement button and fill your daily bar for tiered bonuses.
- Daily check-ins — Log in each day for escalating rewards.
Spending Wisely
Resources are consumed by building upgrades and troop training. In the early game, prioritize resource generator upgrades — the earlier you invest, the more you earn over the season. Only start heavy troop production after your generators are at a reasonable level.
Stored resources can be raided. If you're going offline for a while, spend your resources on upgrades or troops first, or activate a shield to protect your stockpile.
11. Heroes
Heroes are powerful characters recruited through the Hero Hall building. Each hero provides passive bonuses to your base, troops, or resource generation.
How Heroes Work
- Build and upgrade the Hero Hall to unlock hero slots
- Recruit heroes from a faction-themed roster
- Level up heroes to increase the strength of their passive abilities
- Heroes are not deployed to battle — they provide permanent base-wide bonuses
Choosing the right heroes depends on your playstyle. Aggressive players benefit from combat-boosting heroes, while economic players prefer resource generation bonuses. Balanced heroes that boost training speed are universally useful.
12. Pro Tips
General
- Check the game at least twice a day to collect engagement rewards and start building/training queues
- Join an active alliance early — solo play is viable but alliance play is stronger
- Read your battle reports to understand why you won or lost
- Don't waste shields on low-resource periods — save them for when you have a stockpile worth protecting
Combat
- Always time attacks to your faction's favorable time phase
- Send scouts (small armies) to test defenses before committing your main force
- A balanced army beats a one-dimensional army of the same size
- Rally attacks with alliance members for targets you can't solo
Economy
- Upgrade resource generators before training grounds in the early game
- Spend resources before going offline to minimize raid losses
- Territory tiles adjacent to each other provide adjacency bonuses
- Daily engagement taps are free resources — don't skip them
Ladder Climbing
- The ladder rewards consistency over single big plays
- Diversify your scoring — base building, territory, and combat all contribute
- Study the top players in your arena to learn from their strategies
- End-of-season pushes can make or break your promotion chances
Ready to play? Launch Monster Wars in your browser, or download it on iOS or Android.