State of Survival – A Comprehensive Guide to Gameplay, Heroes, Alliances and More
Table of Contents
- SoS on BlueStacks
- Getting Started in SoS
- The Variety of Troop Types
- Base Development
- Alliances in SoS
- Farming Resources
- Heroes and the Explorer Trail
- The Best Tips and Guides for SoS
The mobile strategy game genre is one of the most prevalent in the Android marketplace, with many high profile titles such as Rise of Kingdoms, Guns of Glory, and King of Avalon. The zombie apocalypse genre on films and TV is also among some of the most popular, full of gratuitous violence and hordes of zombies getting mowed down with heavy gunfire and weaponry—awesome! Now, what do you get when you combine these two renowned genres and create a strategy game from the resulting mix? If you answered State of Survival, you’re absolutely correct.
State of Survival is an online mobile strategy game, which also happens to be one of the most popular titles in the genre. It combines the features we’ve seen from the other heavy-hitters in the genre and places them within the setting of a zombie apocalypse while introducing us to a narrative filled with great characters and events. In this sense, you’ll be fighting against other players while surviving the zombie hordes and developing your base and characters, and eventually, if you’re diligent and lucky enough, you will rise to be amongst the strongest players in your server.
State of Survival combines both singleplayer and multiplayer elements to create a truly unique experience. On the one hand, you will play this game just like you would any other mobile strategy game, developing your base, training troops, and fighting monsters and players on the world map. And on the other hand, you will also have access to the Explorer Trail, a singleplayer game mode where you must control your hero characters and complete stages with real-time combat. Both game modes are exciting and make State of Survival better than most games out there. At the very least, there’s much more to do here than in other mobile strategy games.
However, the fact that this game has two distinct game modes means that there’s more to it than meets the eye. And as you make your way through the story and develop your base, you will unlock many different aspects that further increase its complexity. State of Survival might be a mobile strategy game, but it has plenty of diversity to keep you hooked at all times.
Nevertheless, there’s quite a lot to learn and discover about this game, which is why we’ve covered it extensively in our blog. This article is meant to serve as a comprehensive index for all the guides that we’ve written about it, so far. In the following paragraphs, you will find some of the most important State of Survival tips, as well as links to guides with content that explore each of its aspects in further detail. Feel free to click on any these of links whenever you want to learn more about a specific topic.
1. How To Play State of Survival on BlueStacks
As we mentioned just now, State of Survival is a mobile strategy game designed to be played on your phone. And while it’s comfortable enough to play it on any mobile device, this configuration is far from optimal, especially since touchscreen controls are very cumbersome and, unless you invest heavily on a good phone, odds are that you won’t be able to enjoy the best performance when playing. However, if instead of playing it on your phone, you install it on BlueStacks, you will be able to enjoy the game not only with vastly-improved controls and performance but also on your large monitor as opposed to your cramped phone screen.
Playing State of Survival on PC with BlueStacks is not only possible, but also quite simple thanks to how easy it is to install our emulator and download this, and any other game, from our App Center. With BlueStacks, you can enjoy your favorite mobile games with much better performance and graphics than with even the most expensive phones on the market.
However, performance and visuals aside, BlueStacks has a lot to offer when it comes to improving your experience in State of Survival. Like with many other mobile strategy games in the market, there’s quite a lot of building, upgrading, and grinding to be had in this game, which means that the brunt of the gameplay is limited to issuing construction and research projects, and waiting until the timers count down before doing the process all over again. The farming aspect of this game is also quite repetitive as you’ll need to constantly send out troops to the map to gather the resources necessary for developing your base.
The tedium of these monotonous tasks can be significantly reduced with the BlueStacks Macro Recorder. With a good macro, you can automate most of the repetitiveness in State of Survival with just a few clicks. Moreover, through the Keymapping Tool, you can create intuitive control schemes bound to the buttons in your mouse and keyboard, and which allow you to manage every aspect of your base using your custom shortcuts.
With BlueStacks, you can not only enjoy State of Survival on PC, but you can also do so with benefits that you would never have when playing on your phone.
2. Getting Started in State of Survival
As a mobile strategy game, the objective in State of Survival is to build and develop your base in order to grow your armies and increase your power, with the purpose of defeating other players and establishing dominance in your server. However, developing your base requires both time and resources, and while the former is entirely up to you, the latter depends also on your town and troops.
In essence, the standard gameplay loop in this title consists of spending resources so you can produce more resources, which you can then spend on upgrading your production, and so on. Meanwhile, you must also divert some of these funds to building and upgrading military and research buildings through which you can train troops for your army and develop new technologies to improve every aspect of your base, respectively.
3. The Variety of Troop Types
There are three main military buildings in State of Survival, the Barracks, the Range, and the Garage, used for training shotgunners and shield troops, snipers and bowmen, and ATVs and bikers, respectively. Every unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, which are important to consider when it comes to attacking other players as certain types of troops are strong against some soldiers and weak against others. Some units even have special properties and function differently than others.
Here’s a quick rundown of what each unit type can do:
1. Infantry
- Shotguns: Increased damage against Rider heroes.
- Shields: Increased defense against bow troops.
2. Ranged
- Bows: Increased damage against infantry troops.
- Snipers: Increased damage against Rider heroes and a chance of bypassing infantry and dealing damage directly to the heroes.
3. Vehicles
- ATVs: Increased damage against infantry troops.
- Bikers: Increased damage against Hunter heroes and a chance of bypassing infantry and dealing damage directly to the heroes.
As you can see, some units are better suited for engaging other troops on the map, while others are ideal for fighting other players in PvP. For instance, shotgunners are strong against rider heroes, while bikers deal increased damage to hunter-type heroes and have a chance to ignore other troops and damage these heroes directly. Other troops, like ATVs, are more straightforward in their purpose as they simply deal increased damage against infantry-type units, making them ideal for open combat.
Play State of Survival on PC
It’s important to learn the strengths and weaknesses of every unit type in State of Survival as this will be paramount to your success in battle.
4. Base Development
While there are different units for every occasion, their availability is often tied to the development and level of your buildings. In other words, the higher level your military buildings, you’ll have access to stronger troops. However, the max level of every other structure is directly tied to that of your Headquarters. None of your buildings can ever be of a higher level than your HQ, which makes developing this structure one of the best State of Survival tips for beginners. In other words, focus on your HQ, and the rest will follow.
Of course, in order to build and upgrade your facilities, you’ll need plenty of resources like metal and wood. We’ll get into farming these resources in a bit, but it’s important to know that you can generate a decent amount through production buildings such as the Farms, the Lumberyards, and the Furnaces. The higher the level of these structures, the more resources they’ll generate every hour. And while you won’t rely too much on them for procuring all the resources that are necessary for developing your base, they can still produce a decent chunk of them every day.
Building and upgrading your structures in State of Survival takes time, and the higher the level of your buildings, the longer it will for the projects to complete—some of them can take days to finish. These timers can be reduced by researching the corresponding technologies in the Research Lab, but also by receiving assistance from your Alliance.
5. Alliances in State of Survival
Players in this game can either create an alliance or join an existing one and collaborate with other gamers around the world to achieve a common goal. There are quite a few benefits to joining an active alliance in State of Survival, not least of which is the aforementioned help in speeding up research and construction projects.
As a member of an alliance in this strategy game, you can obtain access to a new store with useful items, which are purchased using the honor points that you receive from donating resources to the alliance. Among some of these items, you can find Peace Flares, production boosters, and other useful doodads, which encourages players to actively donate and participate in alliance activities.
At its core, the point of being in an alliance is so that you can meet like-minded players and keep each other safe from enemy attacks. In fact, most players in State of Survival will think twice before attacking you if you belong to a big and active alliance.
6. Farming Resources
If you can gather anything from what we’ve been writing about so far, it’s that you’ll need lots of farming and grinding in order to produce enough resources to fund the development of your base and army. Sadly, your production buildings will seldom suffice when it comes to generating sufficient resources.
The best method for farming resources in State of Survival is by constantly sending your troops out to gather from the world map. There are gathering points strewn throughout the map in which your soldiers can load up and bring the resources back to your base. Being diligent in sending out troops is important if for collecting enough resources for purchasing the most expensive upgrades, without having to wait for days until your production buildings passively generate enough of them.
Alternatively, you can also attack other weaker players and pillage their resources. However, the weaker players will seldom have much in the way of materials you can steal from them, while the stronger adversaries will obviously be tougher to defeat in combat. In some cases, it might not even be worth picking a fight with a strong player if it means losing your troops, when you could just send out your armies and have them farm resources for you.
7. Heroes and the Explorer Trail
One of the aspects that helps State of Survival distinguish itself from other mobile strategy games is the fact that, aside from the standard multiplayer and base-building aspects, it also has a singleplayer game mode using special hero characters that you can unlock through various means.
Your heroes in State of Survival are essentially the commanders of your troops. You can assign several of them to lead your troops in combat, and they will support them by bestowing special abilities that vary depending on the hero in question. For instance, your starter character, Sarge, increases troop damage by 10%, gives them a 12% chance of dealing critical damage, and can increase his troops’ HP by 5%.
Like Sarge, every other character in State of Survival has his or her own set of military skills. However, these special units truly shine in the Explorer Trail mode, which is the singleplayer aspect in the game.
The Explorer Trail consists of several chapters with numerous stages within each one, in which your characters have to explore and reach the goal while fending off hordes of the undead. In some cases, you even need to defeat a special boss enemy that is significantly stronger than other mobs.
Like with their military skills, your heroes in State of Survival each have unique abilities for use during Explorer Trail stages. These skills range from dealing damage directly, to supporting allies and disrupting the enemy’s movements. In order to win in these missions, you’ll have to assemble squads of up to 3 heroes that synergize well and that can overcome any obstacles in their way.
Some of the best hero compositions in State of Survival include:
- Sarge, Rusty, and Ghost: Specialists at blocking the enemy’s path and whittling down their health with sheer endurance.
- Miho, Mike, and Wolfe: A setup that excels at blocking bosses and dealing absurd amounts of single-target damage.
- Trish, Zoe, and Ray & Rolex: Well-rounded composition with healing, CC, and damage.
To unlock more heroes, you must summon them using the search function in your Hero Precinct building, in what is the State of Survival equivalent of a gacha system.
8. The Best Tips and Guides for State of Survival
Throughout this guide, we have shared numerous links to guides in our blog where we talk in detail about some of the most important aspects of this mobile strategy game. However, in case you missed them, here’s a list of all the resources about this game that are available in our blog:
- Beginner’s Guide: A guide detailing some tips on how to get started in State of Survival.
- BlueStacks Usage Guide: How to use our emulator to your advantage in this game.
- Tips and Tricks: A guide with useful tidbits of information to help you out.
- Army Building Basics: Information on the different troop types and how to build powerful armies in State of Survival.
- Base Building Guide: A guide on how to go about building and developing your base in an efficient manner.
- How to Increase Your Power: A guide on the best methods through which you can increase your power in this game.
- Guide to the Explorer Trail: An article with useful information on how to complete the singleplayer missions in State of Survival.
- Best Heroes: Learn about the strongest team compositions and individual heroes that you can unlock in this game.
If you have any other questions or suggestions about content that we haven’t covered here, feel free to leave us a comment in the section below.