Alliance Showdown — a guide for newcomers
Русская версияWhat it is. A week-long event where the whole alliance earns shared points by completing quests. There is no fighting involved: points come from ordinary actions — helping alliance mates, Arena battles, rallies on Monster Dens, gathering, spending and upgrading.
Why read it in advance. We have not had this event yet. It arrives when the Realm is around seven weeks old, and on day one you are looking at an unfamiliar grid of quests and timers. It is easy to get it wrong, and the number of attempts is limited — a wasted one is gone for good.
1. The whole thing in two paragraphs
This is a team event. Everyone's points add up into one alliance total, and that total unlocks "phases" — reward tiers. Rewards go to everyone who reached their personal minimum, and they are the same for everybody: the top scorer and the person who did two easy quests take home the same set.
Hence the point of it all: what matters is not how much the best player scores, but how many people show up and do anything at all.
You do. The two easiest quests — helping alliance mates and Arena battles — need no troops, no resources and no diamonds. They give the alliance close to three hundred points and fully cover your personal threshold, after which you are entitled to every reward for every phase the alliance opens.
The only real limit is a Level 15 Citadel. Below that you cannot accept quests at all, and nobody should expect anything from such a player.
2. When it comes and how long it runs
- It runs for one week. It starts at the reset from Sunday into Monday and ends exactly seven days later, at the same reset.
- It shows up irregularly. The gap between events is two to four weeks — it varies. There is no fixed schedule, so you cannot plan spending "for the next Showdown" from a calendar: watch for the sign-up in the game.
- Sign-up closes 10 minutes before the start. The alliance registers as a whole, and only if it has at least 20 members.
- Late joiners are out. Join a different alliance after the event has started and you most likely will not be able to accept quests.
Bear in mind that this game is built for two kinds of player — the rich and the thrifty. Both work, but it is always better to hoard than to spend the moment you receive something.
The Showdown is where thrift pays best. The event turns up without warning: whoever saved up already has the means to close quests, while whoever spent it all can only watch other people's points.
3. Who we are up against
The group is cross-realm. Our opponents are alliances from Realms we have never seen. On the Alliance Rank tab their names carry Realm numbers: K119, K153, K190, K58, K67 and so on.
So the usual "we know everyone strong in our Realm" counts for nothing here. You cannot negotiate and you cannot size anyone up in advance — all you see is the score.
4. Leagues: we start at the bottom
Participants are split into four leagues: Novice's → Adept's → Master's → Legend's. First-time alliances start in the Novice's League — which is where we will start.
| League | Quests per member, up to | Phase rewards, up to |
|---|---|---|
| Novice's — ours | 8 | 15 |
| Adept's | 9 | 20 |
| Master's | 10 | 25 |
| Legend's | 11 | 30 |
"Up to" matters here:
- You get as many rewards as the alliance actually opens phases. Fifteen is a ceiling, not a promise — fall short on points and you get fewer.
- You do not have to take every quest. Eight attempts is your limit, not a quota to fill.
- You can also buy more. An extra slot costs 1,000 diamonds. The number you may buy is capped and depends on the alliance's rank.
- The top 5 alliances in the group that reached phase 8 or higher move up a league next time.
- The bottom 5 in the group move down.
5. The event screen
At the top is the alliance bar: current phase, points earned, points to the next tier, time left and the number of participants. There is also an "Available" counter — that is your personal remaining attempts, not anything shared. Take six quests out of eight and it reads "Available: 2".
- Quest — the quest grid, this is where you work.
- Ally Contribution — who scored what. The "Contribution" column shows completed / accepted: "11 / 12" means twelve taken, eleven handed in. The twelfth was lost.
- Alliance Rank — our standing in the group.
Two separate quest pools
| Shared quests | Personal (star) quests | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | the whole grid | the middle cell of the top row, marked with a star |
| The list | one for the entire alliance — what you see, everyone sees | yours alone |
| Who refreshes it | R4+ officers only | you do, with the red button on the cell |
| New one arrives in | 30 minutes | 10 minutes |
| Limit | — | no more than 5 per day |
The personal quest cell shows a counter like "★ 0/5" — how many star quests you have used today. Empty cells with a timer read "Preparing quest…": that is the cooldown.
6. Attempts — the thing you will run out of
A quest you accepted and then cancelled or failed to hand in on time still takes up your quota. The event rules say so outright. Eight attempts become seven, and nothing brings it back.
So before you accept, weigh up what you have: resources, speedups, time left on the timer. The whole event boils down to one line — only take what you are certain to finish.
You hold one quest at a time, and only that quest gets credited. Take the diamond consumption quest and it will not also count towards buying 15 packs. Take the speedup quest and it will not also count towards troop power from training. No other pairing works either.
Finish a quest and only that quest is credited, even if a single action ticked off several goals at once.
Do not confuse this with taking quests alongside the day's event: combining with other events — Arms Race, Tundra Ruins, your own progress — works fine. Inside the Showdown itself there is nothing to combine: one action, one quest.
Every quest has its own deadline, from four hours to four days. It is written under the description — read it before you press Accept, not after.
The event runs a week, and attempts do not expire daily. Quests are worth taking alongside whatever event phase is running that day — see the next section.
And be ready for the annoying part: you can churn quests all day and never see the one you want. That happens.
7. Which quests to take
- You have the stockpile — spend it. Speedups, Alliance Coins, hero cards: the very things you were hoarding pay off twice here.
- You have no stockpile — do not even think about taking the quest. You will not build one up during the event week, and the attempt will burn.
- You understand why you want it and you are sure you can finish it — take it.
- You do not understand why you want it, or you are not sure you can finish it — leave it. Both conditions matter: "I can manage it" is not enough if the quest pulls you away from your own goals.
In your first event you have no feel for what the numbers mean. Example: a personal quest for 3,250,000 power from training troops reads like any other line, and in fact it is an enormous amount. For scale, a quest not far off half that — 1,950,000 power — works out at roughly 78,000 trained T7 units.
Until you can convert numbers like that into your own speedups and resources, simply do not take such quests. Eight attempts are worth more than one ambitious failure.
Free ones — always take them
| Quest | What it takes | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Rally on Monster Dens | 6 rallies | 184 |
| Help Allies | 100 helps | 164 |
| Arena Challenge | 12 battles | 133 |
These quests come with different requirements and different point values. Monster Dens can ask for 1, 2, 4 or 6 rallies, the Arena for 2, 5, 10 or 12 battles, Help Allies for 35, 55 or 100 helps. The table shows the most valuable versions.
What yours asks for, and what it pays — read it on the quest itself, before you press Accept.
Monster Dens — level 7 only
If you take the Monster Den quest, rally level 7 dens. No higher, no lower. That way you spend less stamina and you are certain to take the den.
There is no need to team up. Two people holding the same quest at the same time is rare, and not worth waiting for. Nor is there any point: anyone can take a level 7 den on their own.
Helps — how to collect them
Once you take the Help Allies quest, say so in alliance chat straight away and ask people to send you helps. They will not appear on their own.
The easiest way is healing. Alliance mates put a single wounded unit into healing at a time, and you press Help. Sit with the help tab open and tap the moment one appears — healing one unit takes seconds. Yes, it is tedious; it is also simple and free.
The common mistake for the person sending helps is to accidentally send the entire hospital into healing instead of one unit. Then the help goes in one lump instead of dozens.
It happens, and it is no disaster: somebody else will top up your helps.
Arena — losing counts too
The Arena quest asks you to take part, not to win: a lost battle counts exactly like a won one.
Hence the trick: look for your own alliance mates on the Arena, challenge them and quit the fight, taking the loss. Do this on the Royal Arena only.
Every loss drops your rating — but it lifts your mate's, and once your rating is low the system starts matching you against weaker opponents.
Say the quest asks for 14 battles. The first seven you deliberately throw to your own people. The remaining seven you play for real, to win — against the weaker opponents the system now offers you — and you climb back to your old place in the rating.
Note that 100 helps at 164 points beat the quest for spending 25,000 diamonds, which pays 132. It is the best value in the event, and it is free.
Also simple: Alliance Coins, Black Market, heroes
These three are harder than the free ones only in that they cost you something. There is nothing tricky about them, and if you have the stock, take them without hesitation.
- Spending Alliance Coins. Closed out by buying things in the alliance shop.
- Black Market. The most expensive of the simple ones — but there is nothing to it: you just buy resources, speedups and whatever else, and that is that.
- Hero upgrades. Everybody levels heroes anyway, so the cards are going to be spent regardless. Spend them on Monday, during the Showdown: that is the hero day in the parallel event, so one spend closes both at once.
If you have no stock, do not even think about it: it is too late to start hoarding, you will not make it inside the event week, and the attempt will burn.
Alongside the day's event — the important rule
Arms Race or Ace Lord always runs in parallel, and each day has its own phase: Monday heroes, Thursday army expansion, Saturday and Sunday diamond spending, and so on.
Take the quest that matches today's phase. Then one and the same spend counts three times: Showdown points, the Arms Race phase, and your own progress.
The best attempt is not the most expensive quest, but the most expensive one you would have done anyway.
If you are spending diamonds on Saturday regardless, then 100,000 diamonds for 240 points beats 25,000 for 132: the spend was already planned and you get twice the points. If you were not going to spend at all, take neither.
The speedup quest
Any speedups count. Building, healing, research, training — they all go into the same total. That is why many players deliberately get troops killed and then heal them with speedups: healing speedups count just like the rest.
Past castle level 30 you can demolish your own economy buildings — the food, lumber, stone and iron ones — but only those that have themselves reached level 30. Rebuilding then costs nothing but speedups: knock it down, put it straight back up with speedups, and those speedups count towards the quest.
This does not apply to us yet: we have no level 30 castles, and at that level there is always something new to build anyway.
For the attentive — gathering
Gathering quests take planning: send a squad to a resource tile or an alliance resource building in advance, check how much it will bring in, and accept the quest so that the gathering finishes in time.
Transport — only with a farm
Take resource transport quests only if you have a farm account and an upgraded Posthouse — or if you lost a bet and owe someone the resources anyway.
No sending it back. One direction only. Agreeing to ship resources to each other for the sake of a quest means paying the transport tax twice.
Everything else
Do not take it. Not because the points are poor, but because the attempt goes on a spend you had not planned.
8. Quests marked "?"
A cell with a question mark is a hidden quest from the shared pool. You find out what is inside only after you accept it. It pays 150 points and up.
Do not take them. We are not playing roulette: we want points, not risk. Accept one, find something you cannot do, and the attempt is gone.
A player cannot delete such a quest from the shared pool — only an R4+ officer can. If one is sitting there, ask in alliance chat for a refresh.
9. Why turnout matters more than quest quality
The Novice's League ceiling is 15 phases, i.e. 30,000 alliance points. Anything beyond that is wasted. How much that is per person:
| Active players | Points needed each | Quests out of eight |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | 750 | 4–5 average ones |
| 30 | 1,000 | 6 average ones |
| 20 | 1,500 | all eight, expensive ones |
Forty people with eight attempts each can produce up to 76,800 points — more than twice the ceiling. It is not about taking expensive quests. It is about everyone showing up.
With twenty active out of forty, fifteen phases are out of reach; with forty, they come comfortably, cheap quests and all.
10. What R4s and R5s do
- Delete the "?" quests. Always, immediately, so nobody gambles.
- Refresh the shared list on request. A slot takes 30 minutes to come back, so clear the pool early, not on the last evening.
- Do not bin cheap quests in our first events. See below.
A new R4 sometimes assumes the quest list is his own and deletes whatever does not suit him personally. In fact the list is shared by the whole alliance: deleting a quest removes it for everybody at once.
Before you hit delete, remember that somebody else may have wanted that quest — and it is your click that costs them an attempt.
Officers like to delete anything under 100 points, and quests worth 133 in particular. The 133 one is Arena, 12 battles, and below a hundred sit Arena at 2 and 5 battles, Monster Dens at 1 and 2 rallies, the quiz and small stone gathering. In other words, nearly everything free — exactly what the weakest players can do.
In an old Realm that cleanup is correct. There the alliance sits in the Legend's League, where the ceiling of 30 phases means 150,000 points while the per-player maximum is 11 × 240 = 2,640. Even forty-odd people playing perfectly reach about 116,000 and never touch the ceiling. There, every cheap attempt is a direct loss.
In a young Realm it is the other way round. Our ceiling is reachable with more than double the margin, and what limits us is turnout, not quest value. A deleted cheap quest does not turn into an expensive one — it turns into a player who did not take part.
So: hands off cheap quests for the first few events, and once we are in Master's and Legend's, start cutting.
If you need a quest — however rubbish it may look to everyone else — say so. Write in alliance chat: "please do not delete the Arena quest, I am taking it."
Communication is what an alliance runs on. People will understand and do as you ask. Stay quiet and the quest gets binned by officers who had no idea anyone wanted it.
11. Phases, the threshold and rewards
Everyone’s points add up into one total, and that total carries the alliance through the phases. The first is 1,000 points, the eighth 10,000, the fifteenth 30,000.
| Phase | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points | 1,000 | 2,000 | 3,000 | 4,000 | 5,000 | 6,000 | 8,000 | 10,000 |
| Phase | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | |
| Points | 12,000 | 14,000 | 16,000 | 18,000 | 20,000 | 25,000 | 30,000 |
- Each phase gives a choice of three chests — everyone picks what they need most.
- The rewards are the same for everyone who passed the minimum personal score. Scoring beyond the threshold adds nothing: the alliance's top scorer gets exactly what the person doing the bare minimum gets. Below the threshold you get nothing at all.
- We probably will not take all fifteen phases at once, and that is fine. Whatever the alliance opens, everyone collects.
- Rank rewards go to the top 3 alliances in the group — but only if they cleared at least eight phases.
Phase rewards must be claimed by hand within three days of the event ending. Miss that and they are gone.
12. Common mistakes
- Accepting a quest without checking the timer and your own stock. Fail it and the attempt is burned.
- Taking a "?" out of curiosity. Curiosity costs one attempt out of eight.
- Burning every attempt on Monday. Saturday brings the diamond quest for diamonds you were spending anyway, and you have nothing left to take it with.
- Taking a quest for a spend you had not planned. Points for the alliance, yes — out of your pocket and away from your own goals.
- Agreeing to ship resources both ways. You pay the tax twice. Only one side ships.
- Deciding you are too small to matter and not showing up. That is the real loss — not a weak quest, but one nobody did.
- As an officer, deleting quests that do not suit you personally. The list is shared: you are removing it from the whole alliance, not from yourself.
- As an officer, purging the whole cheap pool in the very first event. In our league that pushes half the alliance out of the event for points we do not need.
13. In short
- Runs one week, comes round every two to four weeks, needs an alliance of 20+, quests need a Citadel 15+.
- We start in the Novice's League: 8 attempts each, 15 phases of rewards.
- Accept and fail, and the attempt is gone. Only take what you will certainly finish.
- Always take the free ones: Monster Dens (level 7 only), Help Allies (ask in chat at once), Arena. Two or three of those cover your threshold and earn you every reward.
- Simple if you have the stock: Alliance Coins, Black Market, hero upgrades — spend hero cards on Monday.
- Take paid ones only alongside the day's event and only for spending you had planned. Then take the most expensive one available.
- No stockpile — no quest. Do not understand why you want it, or not sure you can finish it — no quest. In your first event steer clear of things like 3,250,000 power: it is far more than it looks.
- Need a particular quest? Say so in chat. An alliance runs on communication; people will understand.
- No combos. One quest at a time and only it gets credited — combine with other events, never inside the Showdown.
- Never take "?". Ask an R4 to delete it.
- R4s: do not cut cheap quests in our first events. Turnout limits us, not quest value.
- Phase rewards must be claimed by hand within three days.
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.