Welcome to the tips and tricks guide for Last Fortress: Underground! In this guide, I will go over some general tips and tricks (in no particular order) that will help you get started in the game’s post-apocalyptic world, as well as some specific strategies for each of the game’s stages.
I wrote separate extensive guides regarding hero lineups, gear, and other aspects of the game. So if you are interested in exploring one particular aspect in depth, check these guides (links in the menu or on the homepage).
Also, I assume you have already dug out all the dirt, unlocked every facility at the start, and are going through Season 0-1.
Tip #1: Focus on maxing your first APC and lineup
Four APCs are currently available in Last Fortress, with the fourth unlocked at the VIP 10 level (spoiler alert, that required a lot of $ to invest). Having all your APCs maxed in slots and upgrades is definitely nice, but if you’re not pouring some serious cash into the game, it will take some time before you get there.
So, get your first APC fully upgraded before upgrading your other APCs. That way, you will have at least one strong truck to fight on the map and other activities. “Fully upgraded” means it should always be upgraded to the current maximum level and that you should focus on leveling up and ascending primarily the heroes you use in your main lineup.
After all your first-APC heroes reach at least level 70, you can start thinking about your second lineup to comfortably deal with the highest-level mutated zombies and bots.
And do not forget – you can save your main lineup in each APC and use it if your first APC runs out of durability.
You can read more about hero lineups in my Lineup Guide.
Tip #2: Do not upgrade your Solari heroes right away
Your Solari (production) heroes are the worker heroes you assign to the different facilities in your base.
Yes, upgrading them will add a small bonus to the facility they work at, but that bonus is so little at the beginning that you won’t notice any difference.
I recommend upgrading Solari heroes and gearing them up when you have a decent amount of memento coins pouring in (at least 5,000 a day) and your facilities are at least at level 16-20.
Even then, getting them higher than level 50 is not worth it, except for Wolowitz, Pearson, Christine, and McKinley (more about that in the production hero guide).
Tip #3: Join an alliance as soon as you can
If you’re not planning on playing the Last Fortress solo (a bad idea), you should definitely consider joining an alliance on your server.
Joining an alliance comes with quite a lot of benefits:
- You can capture cities and get various bonuses and rewards.
- You can use the alliance contribution shop and buy valuable resources and bonuses.
- You will be assisted if attacked or when you rally a mutant zombie.
- You can make friends and socialize.
- You will get bonus crates when someone in the alliance buys something in the game and when your allies rally mutants.
As you can see, joining an alliance has many advantages. However, you will have to contribute to your alliance, but it is not hard and does not take a lot of time.
Tip #4: Don’t get stuck in an inactive alliance
Okay, this might sound a bit harsh, but it might happen that the alliance you joined becomes “dead,” meaning the number of active players drops a lot.
In such a case, if you are an active player and would like to continue playing Last Fortress, you might find it harder to do the daily tasks you did before, like finding someone to rally a mutant zombie, etc.
You might have already made some friends within that alliance, which can make you unwilling to seek a new one, and that’s understandable.
But if you decide to join a new alliance, you can:
- Reach out to some of the alliance members on the map and ask if they are looking for new members.
- Monitor World Chat to see if any alliances are recruiting members.
- Ask your friends if they want to change the alliance if you want to keep in touch.
- Try to merge with another alliance that struggles with active members.
- Transfer to a different zone with more active alliances.
Tip #5: Focus on getting to tier-5 units ASAP
When just starting the game, you will have a lot of facilities to level up, which can be overwhelming. I recommend you try getting to tier-5 units (T5) immediately.
Higher-tier units will allow you to:
- Attack stronger bases and mutant zombies of higher levels.
- Make your combat power (CP) number higher, which is handy if you want to join a stronger alliance with a higher CP threshold.
- Make your load number higher, enabling you to plunder more resources and gather more from mines.
- Also, the difference between T9 and T10 units is immense. So once you see a lot of players get their T10s, you should start doing that too.
Tip #6: Use gathering heroes to … gather
Gathering heroes are the heroes that have a “Gather” trait or a skill that boosts gathering. If a hero has a “Gather” trait under their name when you view them, they add 100 to the lineup’s load.
Make sure you create separate lineups for gathering to maximize gathering effectiveness.
Here’s a list of gathering heroes, starting from the better ones:
- David (Watchers) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 12.5%/15%/17.5%/20%/25% when gathering
- AND When Gathering, Troop Load + 10%/12%/14%/16%/20%.
- Park Ji-Mi (Watchers) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 10%/12%/14%/16%/20% when gathering.
- Irma (Wildlings) – When Gathering, Troop Load + 10%/12%/14%/16%/20%.
- Matthew (Vindicators) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 10%/12%/14%/16%/20% when gathering.
- Ivan (Vindicators) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 7.5%/9%/10.5%/12%/15% when gathering.
- Brom (Minutemen) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 7.5%/9%/10.5%/12%/15% when gathering.
- Cindy (Minutemen) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 7.5%/9%/10.5%/12%/15% when gathering.
- Dean (Wildlings) – Lineup Gathering Speed + 7.5%/9%/10.5%/12%/15% when gathering.
The first four heroes are the core gathering heroes that you’d want to have. Also, evolve them to orange to unlock their 3rd skill.
Tip #7: Perform regular tasks as often as you can
There are a lot of things you can do in Last Fortress to get various resources. Doing them regularly allows you to progress at a decent pace, even without buying anything. Maxing everything will take you from an hour to two hours a day.
Here’s a list of things you can do regularly in Last Fortress Underground:
- Use the turret (around 20 times a day is possible).
- Trade (you can easily trade at least three times a day for free and at least eight times a day if you Replenish with diamonds).
- Rally five mutated zombies and four special ones (like Kaya or Bifrons).
- Spend spare gas on regular zombies with the mop-up feature.
- Do daily and main quests.
- Fight six battles at the arena daily for dog tags (collect 280 tags for the Selectable Elite Hero Card).
- Fight five battles as many battles as you can at the Infinity Arena to get APC parts.
- Fight five battles at the Summit Arena to collect Medals (exchange 33,600 for the Selectable Elite Hero Card)
- Complete one expedition a day to get and improve hero gear.
- Produce gear material constantly.
- Progress as far as you can in Exploration for more m-coins.
- Send idle troops to gather resources (make sure you save five gas after mopping up or rallying zombies).
- Donate to the alliance and do alliance missions and assist alliance members.
- Radar missions on the world map (you can do them at least twice a day).
- Attack Zombie Legion zombies found on the radar.
- Complete special events
- Hero duels
- Personal armaments race
- Hero growth
- Crystal wheels (and similar ones)
- Holiday events (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.)
The list might seem lengthy, but it is possible to complete all of these in about an hour or even faster.
Tip #8: Save up for alliance duels
An alliance duel in Last Fortress is an event active throughout the week and has a different stage every day. The rival alliance is picked randomly among a dozen other serves based on the overall CP of the alliance. But you would have to save up various buffs and items for a specific day to get the most points.
Alliance Duel Guide – if you want, you can read this more extensive guide explaining alliance duels, but here we will just list the main points to keep in mind.
It consists of six stages:
- Day 1 – Resource gathering: the alliance that gathers more resources gets 1 point.
- Save your gathering boosts for this day.
- You can start gathering resources in advance so that your trucks return on this day.
- Day 2 – Construction: the alliance that upgrades more buildings and uses more construction time speed-ups gets 2 points.
- Save your stone, iron, and construction speed-ups for this day.
- You can start building in advance and “pop” the buildings on the duel day. But make sure you upgrade buildings that don’t require your interaction (quarters, barracks, etc.)
- Day 3 – Research: the alliance that researches more and uses research speed-ups gets 2 points.
- Save your energy, z-coins, and research lab speed-ups for this day.
- You can start researching something big in advance so that it finishes on this day.
- Trade stone for coal and coal for energy boxes at the trade center. Ideally, do it during the Trade phase of the Personal Armaments Race.
- Day 4 – Recruitment: the alliance that does more combat and faction recruitments gets 2 points.
- Save your combat hero recruitment tokens and faction recruitment cards for this day.
- Day 5 – Soldier training: the alliance that trains more soldiers gets 2 points.
- Save your training speed-ups for this day.
- You can start recruiting just before the days change so that you get ready soldiers on this day.
- You can keep your un-upgraded soldiers for this day as they require less time to be trained.
- Day 6 – Elimination: on this final day, you are allowed to invade the rival alliance’s server and capture their cities.
- Soldier training counts here too.
- But if you won the previous days, you can turtle up if the opponent is strong or get to their server to plunder and capture cities. In the latter case, save Bulletproof Carports for this day and stock some medicine.
- Look for bots on the map if you don’t want to attack real players. You can tell a base is a bot by a missing Zone number when tapping them.
Tip #9: Don’t use the resource boxes if you don’t need them
You can get resource boxes from various sources in Last Fortress. But don’t rush to use them right away. You can be plundered if you are not in the strongest alliance on the server, you don’t have strong allies, or the dueling rival alliance is much stronger.
If you need some additional resources to build or research something, just use the minimum number of resource boxes you need just to get the right amount of the stuff you need. They can’t plunder your boxes.
I also do not use Resource and Mutated Zombie chests until I have 45 elite gear chests from the Expedition (basically once every three days). Just to have the dopamine released less frequently, lowering the dopamine baseline.
Tip #10: Aid your allies during the Zombie Raid event, BUT
There is an event in the game called Zombie Raid. An R4 alliance member can start it during the particular period indicated in the event. Once launched, you will see a countdown until the 30 zombie waves start coming.
Players get points for successfully defending these waves, but you also get points for aiding your fellow alliance members.
However, check combat logs to see if any of your soldiers in the aiding lineup start dying. Once a couple of dozen of them die (KIA), pull them back to your base so as not to lose too much.
Also, if you know you can’t go through a specific wave, just empty your cars to avoid troop casualties or ask a stronger player to assist you starting from that wave.
But, at later stages, you do not want to aid anyone unless asked. When you get more points by aiding, the player you aid gets fewer points than if they defended themselves, preventing them from reaching the last reward. Hence, ask first if the player needs help with any waves starting from S3-S4.
Tips for spending $$$ in the game
Okay, you have decided to spend some of your hard-earned cash in Last Fortress. In this case, you would have plenty of options, but if you want to be efficient with your money, there are some tips you would like to follow. If you have heaps of money and you don’t care how much you spend, just get everything.
If you are planning to be thrifty, here’s what you can consider buying:
- $1 – First Top-Up: Gives you Quinn, 30 medals for her, 10 elite medals, 1 uncommon combat selection card, 50 VIP points, portrait, 50k exp, 50 m-coins, 100 diamonds
- $5 – Daily supplies: Choose what you need (resources, speed-ups, z-coins, level-ups) and get a weekly supply of that. Once you tap to buy a daily, it will offer you a discount for a 7-day purchase of that pack. So, for a week, you would get 12 hours of EXP time, 12 hours of m-coins, 50 VIP points, and 50 diamonds. That totals to 84 hours of EXP and m-coins time, 350 VIP points, and 350 diamonds per week. Plus, you can get two bronze vouchers on Saturday and two on Sunday during the Enemy Elimination phase of the Personal Armaments Race. With these, you can get weekly supplies at a considerably lower price.
- $10 – N.A.T.E.: Okay, just hear me out. N.A.T.E. will take off a lot of routine tasks, such as resource gathering from mines and resupplying coal and water. Also, you won’t care about any resource cap upgrades or carrying capacity upgrades – they become obsolete. And it comes with 1,000 diamonds.
- Total $ spent: $11 once and $5 weekly.
If you are planning to spend more than $30 a month but not more than, let’s say, $100 a month, here’s what you wanna do:
- $1 – First Top-Up
- $5 – Daily supplies
- $5 – Extra Workstation with Mauer: Gives you a 4th workstation and a builder hero, some stone, and 250 VIP points.
- $10 – N.A.T.E
- $25 – Development Fund (Growth Funds): it’s a hefty purchase, and you have to get to VIP level 4, but if you are planning on spending, it will help you save quite a lot of money. It provides you vouchers that you can use as in-game purchase discounts:
- 2 gold vouchers at control center level 2 and level 20 that provide a $30 discount each.2 silver vouchers at levels 10 and 15 that provide a $15 discount each.9 bronze vouchers at other levels that provide a $3 discount each.
- $6 (-$15 with a silver voucher) – 5th workstation
- $5 (-$15 with a silver voucher) – Pearson: This is probably one of the most important purchases. Pearson allows you to assign multiple heroes, thus decreasing the construction time tremendously. Also, the indicated price is true if you buy him through the Portraits (aka Compendium) in the Heroes menu.
- $20 (-$30 with a golden voucher) – The Bar: The Bar is also quite important as it will supply you with quite the amount of m-coins. At level 20, with the worker’s first skill maxed, it will generate around 3,000 m-coins a day. The earlier you get it, the earlier you will start to grow faster.
- $50 – 2nd Development Fund: After Season 0 (S0) ends, you will unlock the next dev fund. It provides 50 faction recruitment cards, 5,000 diamonds, and 2 bronze, 2 silver, and 1 gold vouchers. It is worse compared to the first one and cannot be purchased using vouchers, but still can be considered if you have some money to spend.
- Total $ spent: $122 once and $5 weekly.
- Left with: If you don’t go for the second Fund, you will spend $73 and have 1 golden voucher and 9 bronze vouchers, all adding up to $57 in discounts to spend on whatever else you want. If you do buy the second one, you will spend $122 and have 2 golden, 2 silver, and 11 bronze vouchers, all adding up to $123 in discounts to spend.
For those who can spend even more but not an unlimited amount, here’s a list of purchases that are worth the money:
- Other heroes (not mentioned above):
- Laura Chen (gives you a van that can gather resources)
- Quinn (from the VIP boxes)
- Christine (but only if you can buy a couple to get to her last skill)
- Helen (for faster troop healing)
- Fiona
- Tikka
- Luke
- Growth ladder: Makes sense if you buy it every day of your playing. So that would be around $30 a month. After the seventh purchase, it will give a decent amount of everything per day: 50 diamonds, 800k EXP, 800 m-coins, 950 stone, 600 iron, 300 z-coins, and 50 VIP points. After two months of playing, it won’t be as much, so you can as well stop buying these.
- Supply station packs: These are worth purchasing if bought for seven days at once. I’d say go only for the m-coin and speed-up ones.
- Doomsday Premium: When subscribed, gives you 360 diamonds a day (around 10,800 a month), +50% to exploration output, +2 free APC repairs, an additional reward chest for every world map radar mission (that’s roughly 12 a day if done twice), and the ability to buy something in the trade center for 1 diamond.
- Crystal Treasure (the $10 ones): I think they are worth purchasing as they provide heroes and 500 VIP points. And you get five chances to get something from the wheel.
In my humble opinion, many of other things not worth the money spent if you don’t have an unlimited budget. You should consider other options if you need something urgently (like medicine or fuel).
Final Last Fortress Underground Tips
Some things do not require an entire paragraph, so I collected them in this list of small tips below:
- Use rapid on generator and mints daily (six times daily).
- Use speed-ups wisely to get the right personal race bonuses.
- Get Quinn for the m-coin buff skill, especially for mutant zombies.
- You can contract her if you do not want to spend money.
- Lower your CP before the alliance duel starts to get a weaker opponent. (not confirmed)
- Buy 2,500 coal for 2,500 stone in the trade center whenever you see it and exchange coal for power.
- Always ask yourself, when considering upgrading or researching something, do I need to do this (now)?
- Check the mail icon regularly for alliance mail and updates.
- When mopping up zombies, leave five spare gas to send troops gathering.
- A HELP sign on the outside of your base, near the first APC, opens up the support window of the game with a search function.
- Press that assist icon whenever you can to help your mates and earn contribution points.
- Always spend recruitment tokens and faction tickets in batches of 10.
- Produce gear materials continuously.
- Do not use elite hero shards to upgrade other heroes. Either recycle them or use to upgrade that same hero.
That’s all for tips and tricks. Hope these will help you get better at the game and consider all your options.