Have you been looking for a game that has, well, everything? A game that’s so versatile that it has multiple different tags to it such as mix and match and strategy? Well, then might we introduce to you Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble by XIPU.Games.
Available for both the Google Play Store and App Store, Animal Lords is one of the most popular games right now. While the game does demand some higher specs from your device, it’s all worth it in the end.
With its beautiful animation, breathtaking cutscenes, and engaging gameplay, it’s sure to keep you hooked for weeks to come.
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To make the process of starting your Animal Lords journey easier, we’re here to help. Here’s a complete walkthrough and guide for the game that includes the gist of the story and the basics of gameplay. This way, you’ll know what you can expect from the game.
Before Animal Lords Starts
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As soon as you launch the game on your mobile device after downloading and installing Animal Lords, you’ll be shown a cutscene. We highly recommend you don’t skip the cutscenes as they artfully explain the storyline all while being fully narrated.
The cutscene starts by introducing you to Minos, the island under the Tree of Life. While everyone on the island used to live in peace and harmony, everything changed when the ancient and vicious dragon awakened.
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Aiming to control the world, the dragon summoned his followers, the Fallen Legion. While they were all attacking the Tree of Life, the legendary tree reincarnated itself into a sage’s body and fought the dragon.
While the tree was successfully able to repel the dragon for the time, it was significantly damaged in the battle too.
To escape the dragon’s army, it converted the remains of the tree into a seed and planted it, the sage then ran into the forest to escape, and that’s exactly where our story begins.
The Start of A Grand Adventure
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The sage meets up with Porter, Felix, and Volier, the starting heroes of Animal Lords. That’s where we start our adventure. There are bound to be ups and downs as our animal heroes band together to defeat the Dragons and the Fallen Legion.
Fortunately, while the Fallen Legion does indeed outnumber you by a lot, you aren’t alone.
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Summon new heroes and free your troops while leveling everyone up to prepare the perfect army of animals.
Make smart decisions and reclaim the land brimming with Dark Legion troops. After all, it’s your land, and there’s no way you’ll be letting these outsiders drive you out without a fight.
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Animal Lords has a grand campaign already set out for you to follow. Every chapter has a set amount of missions you have to complete, and at the end of every chapter, you go up against a boss. Clear every mission and defeat the Fallen Legion once and for all.
Learning the Battle System
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The most important thing you have to master in Animal Lords as soon as you can is the battle system. While it might seem simple at first, it’s a little bit more complicated than it seems.
Mixing and Matching
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At its core, the battle system consists of you dragging and dropping troops to make even stronger troops that fight for you. The good thing is that it doesn’t matter where you move the troops.
As long as you’re making a sequence of at least three matching troops in the same tiles, you’ll be able to drag and drop a troop from anywhere on the screen.
With that being said, sequences can be made either vertically, diagonally, or even horizontally. This means you have a lot of freedom in terms of making matching sequences.
However, the more you mix, the more difficult matching subsequent sequences will be. How? Well, every time you match troops of the same type, they get upgraded to a different color.
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We’re sure most of you get where we’re going with this, right? If you match three white tile troops to make a green tile troop, you’ll then have to mix green tile troops to upgrade them to the next level.
When you get the highest level troop, which is blue tile, you can drag it to the battlefield to gain another troop.
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Fortunately, if you’re unsure of what to do, you can just stay idle for a couple of seconds and the game will tell you what the most ideal move is.
There are no negative consequences of using this tip/hint in Animal Lords, so use it as many times as you want to make matching a breeze!
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You don’t have an unlimited number of moves in Animal Lords. Most battles give you a set amount of moves, which is usually three, and after those moves are done, your troops and heroes march to battle.
Fighting on the Battlefield
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With the given number of moves done, the troops you have gathered march into battle against the enemy’s troops alongside your heroes. Now, the thing about this part of the game is that you have absolutely zero control over what happens.
That’s right, unlike similar games, in Animal Lords you don’t have control over anything. You don’t control where your troops go and you can’t target specific enemies to battle with them first. Your troops automatically target their nearest enemies and attack them.
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Similarly, you can’t control your heroes in Animal Lords either. While every hero has a specific skill they can use that can turn the tide of battle in your favor, you don’t choose when the ability is used. As soon as the skill becomes available your hero will automatically use it.
Therefore, the true gameplay begins before the battle even starts. It is up to you to make your troops as strong as possible before the battle so you’re able to easily win in this section of the game.
Regaining Your Land
A large part of Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble is reclaiming your lost land from the army of the dragons.
The more you reclaim and the more missions you complete, the more you’ll level up. Leveling up increases your power and talent level while giving you some goodies.
Fortunately, this is pretty straightforward as there are only a couple of things you have to do.
Clearing and Building
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Firstly, you have to clear any debris that might be on your land. To do so, you simply have to tap the debris and then tap clear. In addition to clearing debris, you also have to build some mandatory things.
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These things include berry farms that you can harvest for food as well as the summoning portal which we’ll get into later.
Once any area is completely cleared, you’ll be able to tap on the area right next to it to start clearing that as well.
Driving Off the Fallen Legion in Animal Lords
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As we mentioned before, the Fallen Legion has taken over a majority of your land. Therefore, it’s up to you to drive them off. You can do this in three ways when on the map. These ways include:
Defeating Enemies
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The first way you can drive the Fallen Legion off is by defeating their troops in battle by tapping them on the world map and then battling them using already prepared troops.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t have the mixing and matching gameplay element that you might be used to by this point.
Instead, you go into the battle using troops that you already have. Before the battle starts, you get the option to select what and how many troops you use in the battle.
To make things easier, we suggest you just tap the yellow ‘quick select’ option at the bottom of the screen to have the game automatically go for the most ideal number and types of troops.
Freeing Refugees
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Many of your brothers and sisters in arms are being held hostage by the Fallen Legion. Fortunately, by tapping on them on the world map and then selecting the ‘free’ option, you can free them by taking out their captors in a short battle.
The biggest advantage of freeing hostages is that the troops are added to your party. You can then use these troops to battle the Fallen Legion and make your army stronger.
Opening Treasure Chests
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Finally, the Fallen Legion has placed a lot of their loot in boxes scattered on your land. Well, we say finders, keepers. Tap on any treasure chests you find and open them to take advantage of the loot inside.
One thing to note is that the treasure chests aren’t unlocked. Instead, you have to play a short mini-game to unlock them. Just tap the screen at the right time and the box will unlock. Easy but pretty fun.
Strengthening Your Army
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The Fallen Legion army is large and strong, we agree. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t strengthen our army to combat them, right? The best way to strengthen your army, in addition to freeing hostages and leveling up your mixing and matching skills, is unlocking and upgrading your heroes.
Heroes are special troops that are extremely strong. In addition to them having skills that they use automatically in battle, you can level them up and enhance them to make them even more powerful on the battlefield.
You can have a total of five heroes in your army at any given time, so we highly recommend you go with some diverse heroes that are well-leveled.
Unlocking New Heroes
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Ah yes, the gacha system. It’s as if some of the best mobile games have it. May it be Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, Code Geass: Lost Stories, or even Metal Slug: Awakening.
Well, Animal Lords has it too, though it’s much more forgiving than some other games.
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Pretty soon into the game, you’ll rebuild the summoning portal. By tapping the portal and then selecting the summon option, you’ll get the option to use collected crystal chunks to perform summonings.
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While not every summon will give you something good, as most of them will most likely give you useless shards or troops, you can potentially get lucky and unlock a new hero. That’s right, a completely new hero to add to your party.
If you ever run out of summoning shards then you can always use the free summoning feature the game has. Every few minutes you’re able to use a free single summon, which is pretty cool.
Enhancing Your Heroes
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Remember when we said you level your troops up too? Well, by tapping the ‘heroes’ option near the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a collection of all of your obtained heroes.
You can tap on any of them to level them up using a specific amount of potions. Oh, you’re running low on potions? Just use the potions lab!
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In addition to leveling your heroes up, it’s also possible to enhance them in Animal Lords. Not only does enhancing your heroes make them significantly stronger, but it also increases the maximum level of that hero to ensure you can level them up even more.
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If you find yourself summoning the same hero multiple times, then you’ll be reimbursed with shards of that hero. Using those shards, you can promote your hero to level up all of that hero’s skills at once. Talk about useful!
Learning the Diversity of Heroes
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Finally, it isn’t as if all the heroes are the same. Some heroes specialize in doing damage, while others are healers who will heal your troops when on the battlefield.
Therefore, you must make a well-balanced team. Remember to level up heroes that you know will be useful as your resources are scarce.
Additionally, try to see that there are all sorts of heroes on your team at all times to ensure you can be prepared for anything the Fallen Legion throws at you.
Conclusion
This is everything you need to know before starting your Animal Lords journey. As we mentioned above, this is a super versatile game with a bunch of different gameplay mechanics.
If you enjoy these types of strategy games then we recommend you give Eternal Three Kingdom a shot too. Who knows, it might be just what the doctor ordered!
