After leaving its closed Alpha phase, Wild Forest is now in its public Beta stage, complete with many of its in-game features and systems in place!
Offering a free-to-play experience designed to integrate players into its web3 economy, you’ll find the game quite addictive and enjoyable. Alas, the game’s learning curve might need getting used to, so here’s a useful beginner’s guide to help you familiarise yourself with the game directly from the start.
Lead Your Kingdom To Victory!
Photo: Zillion Whales
As soon as you boot up Wild Forest, you immediately take control of a small band of units. In due time, after countless battles and numerous victories, your company will eventually expand into a united kingdom, similar to the likes of Clash of Clans.
It’s a long road ahead to achieve such splendor, requiring you to carefully manage your unit selections and level enhancements. That being said, the playing field is vast, so you’ll have plenty of room to grow against other developing players around the world.
Innumerable challenges await you, especially in the form of other incredible players who’ve invested both time and money to build their most powerful armies. Defeat them all to secure your name amongst the best Wild Forest players in the region!
In-Game Currencies & NFTs
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Essentially, Wild Forest is a competitive PvP mobile game that’s built around a combination of free-to-play (F2P) elements with tradable non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As such, a few different in-game currencies exist, each playing different roles to facilitate players’ growth in the game. Here’s a quick overview of them:
- Currencies
- Forest Gold ($FGLD)
- Forest Gold is the most basic currency utilized for common gameplay aspects such as unit card leveling.
- Unit Shards
- Unit Shards – duplicate cards of the same units – are the other currency needed to level up the respective units.
- Forest Gold ($FGLD)
Photo: Zillion Whales
- NFTs
- Wild Forest Tokens ($WF)
- Wild Forest Tokens are the first blockchain item acting as the premium currency consumed for ranking up units’ card grades (different than leveling up) and Battle Pass unlocks, among other things.
- Unit Cards
- Every unit’s card is also an NFT usable for building card decks, trading for different ones with other players, or merging to create higher-tiered versions.
- Lords (Profile Pictures)
- Lords are the special tokens granted to exclusive members receiving rights to playtest new units, receive immediate castle upgrades, and tons more.
- Unit Skins
- Various unit skins will also be available for ownership under Wild Forest‘s web3 infrastructure.
- Zeppelins (Clan Wars)
- Zeppelins are the primary requirement for a clan to participate in Clan Wars.
- Other potential additions (Emojis, Medals, etc.)
- Wild Forest Tokens ($WF)
While Wild Forest intends to keep its F2P incentives indefinitely, the developers have stated that their main goal is to slowly consolidate mainstream gamers toward embracing blockchain, which is something that’s still controversial for many individuals worldwide.
Real-Time Strategy & Combat
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Now, onto the good stuff: actual gameplay and combat!
Wild Forest adopts a real-time, arena-esque approach to its PvP battles. Every match pits two players of similar matchmaking ratings against each other, and engagements are direct and fast-paced.
You begin a match with a stronghold (a.k.a. Base), a Swordsman, and an empty building slot for you to build a new structure (preferably a Barracks). You need to take control of other areas of the map to build more buildings, contesting the opponent for full-map dominance.
To win, you simply need to destroy the enemy’s stronghold first. However, it’s easier said than done if your foe is quick and smart about their building orders and attacking strategies, both of which come naturally to you through actual in-game experiences.
Photo: Zillion Whales
So, the best way to become better at the game is to play it repeatedly, acquiring more unit cards to your deck for you to eventually find the respective army composition fitting your playstyle.
Every battle lasts for a maximum of 5 minutes, and both players’ Bases begin losing HP if the match continues in a stalemate, with the first to be destroyed considered the loser. Hence, it’s recommended for players to engage and end battles as swiftly as they can, resulting in high-octane action for a seemingly cartoonish mobile game!
In terms of core mechanics, these are what you need to know:
Anima
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Anima is the blue resource automatically generated every second in Wild Forest. It’s represented by a large blue icon found at the bottom-left corner of the screen during battles.
Anima is consumed for the production of units and buildings, so you need to consider what’s best created during crucial moments because you only have a limited amount of it at any given time.
To increase Anima accumulation per second, you need to build Mines that add more Anima to the cue. It’s a risk-versus-reward situation, so you must know when and where to build a Mine according to the map and battle in question.
Production buildings
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In Wild Forest, there are four types of buildings/ structures, each being:
- Base (unbuildable)
- The Base is your most important structure; it’s the stronghold/ keep that your opponent needs to destroy to win a match.
- The Base has a high HP count but is extremely weak at defending itself from enemies.
- Barracks
- The Barracks are responsible for producing units to be fielded onto the battlefield.
- The Barracks can be leveled up three times, each corresponding to the relevant tiers of units it can produce (Level 1 for Tier I units, Level 2 for Tier II units, etc.).
- Each Barracks can only train one unit at a time, and there will be a cooldown timer before you can train another unit afterward. Aim to build multiple Barracks on the map if possible.
- Mine
- A Mine supplements the passive Anima generation on the map.
- More Mines helps you accumulate more Anima faster at the cost of occupying building slots.
- Tower
- A Tower is a defensive structure that helps repel enemy attacks.
- It can be leveled up to become more powerful and durable.
- Occupies a land slot.
Depending on the randomly generated map, you need to adapt quickly to identify the most efficient layout for your buildings.
Units
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While base-building is important, army management is crucial as well. Every player has the freedom to pick their personal unit card decks, and everyone can come up with some crazy combos to surprise opponents in-game.
That being said, every unit has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, mid-game Knights are fearsome fighters when called upon, but they’re useless against airborne units like cheap Squirelcopters.
Understanding every unit’s combat roles will let you gauge your army’s overall pros and cons, letting you adjust your deck before entering a match.
Take note that every unit has a maximum count to be deployed, denoted by the number of yellow marks on their unit portraits. Normally, fewer higher-tier units can be called upon over the lower-tier ones, but their combat prowess justifies this.
Unit Cards Breakdown & Deck-Building
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When it comes to unit micromanagement, you can dive into each card’s stats and details, leveling them up when sufficient corresponding Unit Shards are collected from in-game rewards.
There are more than 20 unit types currently available for recruitment into your deck, each falling into different tiers and combat effectiveness. Bearing resemblances to Clash Royale, a simple level-up instantly boosts the unit’s stats to improve their combat proficiencies.
If you’re really into bolstering your units, though, then upgrading their card grade is far more useful than leveling them up because the grade changes impact stats significantly more.
Photo: Zillion Whales
Plus, when you manage to evolve your units to either Epic or Legendary grades, they receive unique perks that’ll make them even deadlier for engagements, which are likely to be prominent for the top percentages of the player base.
Regardless, checking the synergies between all the units you currently have and choosing the best ones to apply to your deck will mean a lot to your long-term account growth.
Game Modes To Conquer in Wild Forest
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So far, Wild Forest boasts surprisingly deep game designs, showcasing its immense replayability. Still, what kind of game modes does it offer?
At the moment, there is only the PvP battles, to which it is further divided into two stages:
- Trophy Road
- The Trophy Road is the introductory program that sets milestones for you to achieve to prepare you for the game’s true competitive rankings later.
- Championship
- The Championship is where you’re ranked against countless others around the world, vying for a spot on the leadership boards.
Of course, when you rank higher, you’ll get better chances of receiving even more glorious rewards or NFT items.
Nevertheless, you might encounter actual paying players higher up the ranks as well, so be prepared to hit some hard walls in terms of power gaps if your deck and skills aren’t unmatched enough.
Tips & Tricks
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Wild Forest seems to have been designed for esports and regional tournaments in mind due to its high skill ceiling and countless deck possibilities.
Being as competitive as it is, you would surely welcome any helpful advice or tips on how to fare better. Well, here are a few useful things to take note of, particularly for new players:
Multiple selections
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If you didn’t know, you can actually select multiple units at once and control them simultaneously, just like a normal RTS game.
On mobile, this can be a bit tricky because it doesn’t seem to work all the time, but try pressing and holding a finger on the screen before scrolling over a group of units to select a few that you’re interested in.
If everything fails, you can still double-tap on any enemy unit or structure to automatically force ALL your units to attack it instead.
Play Wild Forest on PC
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This might be a wild one, but consider playing Wild Forest on a computer via emulators instead. Truthfully, the mouse helps tremendously in setting up your forces and giving prompt instructions to your troops.
It does somewhat feel like an unfair advantage against dedicated mobile players, but nothing’s stopping them from doing it too, so there’s that.
Reorder cards
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While organizing your card deck in Wild Forest, you don’t necessarily have to follow the game’s pre-structured categories of Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III slots.
If you have a familiar build in mind that prompts a Tier III unit out quickly, put it under the Tier I bracket to let you pump it out faster considering the game can get hectic in just a few minutes, avoiding misclicks or miscues.
Prepare ambushes
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Wild Forest is one of the few mobile RTS games implementing a day-night cycle, and it adds to the layer of strategies that you can use to outplay your opponents during a match.
Depending on the map control during nighttime, you can sometimes hide units around the edges of the map behind the fog of war, carefully setting up surprise attacks against the enemy Base when they least expect it.
Prioritize Tier II units
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Although Tier I units are considerably cheaper, Tier II troops, like the Knight, are drastically more powerful and tankier. In fact, different Tier II units can single-handedly take out 2-3 basic soldiers with relative ease.
Ideally, you’ll still need to have a few Tier I units during the early game for scouting and map control. As soon as your buildings are in place, transition to Tier II or Tier III production to immediately pressure your opponent, using Tier 1 troops as support instead.
Photo: Zillion Whales
Conclusion
The developer of Wild Forest, Zillion Whales, has done a spectacular job at creating one of the most promising web3 mobile games in the form of Wild Forest.
While it may face competition against other RTS titles, such as Nexus War Civilization, many firmly believe the game has a bright future ahead. Tell us what you think about Wild Forest in the comment section below!
