Undead Scourge — a guide for newcomers

What this is. The Undead come in waves and attack the castles of alliance members. We defend — this is not a march onto the map like Alliance Defense.

There are 20 waves. You get 5 minutes to prepare after the start. The event can be launched by the Leader, Recruiter or Diplomat.

1. The main thing: this is a team event

The rewards go to the whole alliance and depend on the collective result. The simplest way to remember it: the fewer of our castles burn, the more everybody gets.

Which leads to a conclusion many people get wrong:

Do not chase the difficulty level

You can take first place in the Realm on a low difficulty level — as long as fewer of our castles burn than of those who picked a higher one.

High difficulty with burning castles loses to low difficulty with castles intact. What counts is the result, not the heroism.

How many times you may burn

Burning once is acceptable — especially on wave 17, which is the hardest one.

Burning twice is not. After the second time your castle counts as defeated, the Undead stop attacking it, and for the alliance that is a straight loss. We need as few defeated castles as possible.

2. How the event runs

20 waves in total. The scariest one is wave 17, the rest are weaker.
On waves 10 and 20 the Undead attack the Alliance Fortress. Those two waves need the Fortress defended — see the separate section below.

From the official rules, worth knowing up front:

You lose no resources. The rules say most wounded troops will be healed — but do not count on it, see the box below.
The Arcane Barrier (the shield, "umbrella" in our chat) will not protect you from the Undead. That is written in the event rules: do not waste your shields here, they simply do not work.
The more waves you defeat, the more rewards you earn.

Troops do not heal themselves

Despite the wording in the rules, troops are not restored automatically. You have to heal your wounded while the event is running, not afterwards.

The higher the difficulty level, the more this matters: on the higher levels a castle that is not healed between waves simply stops holding.

3. What to do BEFORE the event starts

Reinforce the small castles and the abandoned ones in advance, before the start. Once the event is running there is no time to sort it out.
Switch on the Troop DEF buff («Защита отряда» in the Russian client). It comes in +10 %, +20 % and +25 % versions.
Always keep at least 1.5 full squads at home. That is what guarantees your own castle does not burn.

But we are still small

The "1.5 squads at home" rule is correct, but for us it is barely doable right now: hardly anyone has even one full squad. So nobody yet knows for certain who can reinforce whom, or how many troops they can afford to send.

That is exactly why we play the first event as reconnaissance — see section 7.

4. How to reinforce

The rule

Reinforce only with your strongest troops and with heroes. It is highly desirable to include a hero matching that troop type in every reinforcement march — several of them, ideally.

Why this is not nitpicking:

You earn points for reinforcing. But if the castle you reinforced burns down — you get nothing at all.
So no Vehicles and no low tiers — only your best troops with heroes. Why Vehicles are especially harmful in a march is covered in a separate guide.
A weak reinforcement means the castle you were covering burns — and you have let down the whole alliance, because the event is collective and that castle counts for all of us.

Sending no reinforcement at all is better than sending a weak one. A weak reinforcement actively harms the alliance.

And never at your own expense: first make sure your own castle will hold (section 3), and only then reinforce others.

Put your own oxygen mask on first

Reinforcing others is a decent thing to do, and it earns you points. But if your own castle burns, you get nothing at all.

So it works like on a plane: your own mask first, the child's second — the child here being the people you reinforce.

Check your mail reports after every wave

Look at the reports for the castles you are reinforcing. The benchmark is simple:

If their Undead kill rate drops below 70 % and this happens before wave 17 — recall your troops.

That castle is going to burn anyway. Better to get your troops back than to burn with it and get nothing.

Heal after every wave

Wounded troops do not recover on their own (see the box above), and the next wave hits whatever is left. Heal after each wave, not at the end of the event.

5. Abandoned castles

An abandoned castle belongs to a lord who quit the game. Those castles burn and drag down the result of the whole alliance.

The cheapest solution is to kick them out of the alliance before the event.
If they cannot be removed for political reasons, then they have to be reinforced just like the small players. They will not survive for free.

6. The Alliance Fortress: waves 10 and 20

The classic mistake

Everybody tries to grab a slot in the Fortress. That is foolish and wrong.

The Fortress should hold the strongest players, at full strength — otherwise there is a real chance of losing the Fortress defense, and then the whole alliance loses.

The Fortress leader must kick out anyone who joined the wrong way:

anyone showing up with catapults — the reasoning is spelled out in the Vehicles guide;
anyone joining with low-tier troops;
sometimes even those bringing troops that do not match the leader's own type. If the leader is an Archer player and Infantry joins him, Archers and Infantry do not mix — kick them too.

Two more tricks for the Fortress:

The strongest player can spend 2,000 diamonds to apply their own buffs to the entire garrison in the Fortress. On waves 10 and 20 that pays for itself.
If you have the Recall skill active, then after wave 19 you can recall all your reinforcements and send your strongest squad to the Alliance Fortress — right in time for wave 20.

7. The goal of our first run: reconnaissance

We are going for information, not for victory. We take difficulty level 2 and watch.

What we need to find out:

At which wave castles start burning.
How many castles, and whose, do not survive wave 17.
What garrison inside your own castle is enough to hold it.
From that the key answer follows: who burns and who does not — and therefore how many troops each of us can send out as reinforcements without exposing our own castle.

There will probably be a barbecue made of our castles today. That is fine — we are learning.

8. The official event rules

Taking part will not cause resource losses, and most wounded troops will be healed.
The Arcane Barrier cannot protect you from the Undead.
The more enemy waves you defeat, the more rewards you earn.
If you fail to defend your Castle twice, the Undead will stop attacking you, but you can still earn points by reinforcing your allies.
The event ends once you and all your allies have failed to defend your Castles twice.
If you leave the alliance during the reward distribution period, you get no rewards.
The event can be started by the Leader, Recruiter or Diplomat.
If you change alliance after the event has started, you will earn no points and no rewards for reinforcing, but you can still send reinforcements to allies.
After the event starts you have 5 minutes to prepare. Members who join the alliance after the start receive neither points nor rewards.

9. Do not mix it up

This is not Alliance Defense. There we attack monster points with personal attacks and troops are never lost. Here we defend our own castles, you have to heal your wounded yourself, and the shield does not work.

That event is covered in the Alliance Defense guide.

Short version, if you have no time to read

20 waves, 5 minutes to prepare. Wave 17 is the hardest. Waves 10 and 20 hit the Alliance Fortress.
Team event: the fewer castles burn, the more everybody gets. Do not chase difficulty.
Burning once is fine, twice is not — the castle counts as defeated.
Before the start: reinforce small and abandoned castles, switch on Troop DEF, keep 1.5 squads at home.
Reinforce only with strong troops and matching heroes. If the castle you covered burns, you get no points at all. A weak reinforcement is worse than none.
Shields do not work — do not waste them. No resource loss, but troops do not heal themselves — heal after every wave.
After every wave check your mail reports: if someone you reinforce drops below a 70 % kill rate before wave 17 — recall your troops, that castle is lost.
Your own castle first, other people's second: burn yourself and you get nothing.
The Fortress takes the strongest players only, at full strength. Catapults, low tiers and mismatched troop types get kicked.
After wave 19, with Recall, pull your reinforcements and move your strongest squad into the Fortress.
Today we play for reconnaissance: who burns, at which wave, what garrison holds. A barbecue is fine.

Get in touch

Found a mistake? Got a question about the mechanics? Want a guide on a topic that is not here yet?

Write to pnc.wiki.101@gmail.com — I will fix it, answer it, or write it.

One request in particular: if something in the game does not match what is written here, send a screenshot from the client. A screenshot settles the question faster than any argument, and in these guides it outranks any outside source.