Whiteout Survival — hero tier list and free-to-play guide

Century Games publishes the combat rules in its own English help centre, and almost none of it is on the tier-list sites. The parts that change how you play:

1. Rows are fixed

Infantry are the primary damage takers and sit in the front row. Lancers are the mobile units and sit in the middle. Marksmen deal the highest single-target damage and sit at the back. Units normally attack the enemy front row first and move to the next row only when the front is gone — which is exactly why troop ratio beats raw power. If you bring too few Infantry, your Marksmen are exposed on turn two.

2. Lancers can skip the queue

Lancers sometimes activate skills that attack enemy Marksmen in the back row directly. That is the counter to a glass-cannon defence, and the reason a pure Marksman stack loses to a balanced squad of the same power.

3. Casualty rates differ by battle type

In player City battles, 35% of the attacker's casualties die outright. In Sunfire Castle battles, casualties go to the Infirmary until it is full, and only then start dying. This is the whole argument for upgrading the Infirmary before a big event rather than after it.

4. Rally and garrison stack differently

In a rally, the initiator contributes 9 hero skills. Everyone who joins contributes 4 primary skills — the first skill of each hero. In a garrison, the defender with the highest stat bonuses supplies the defence bonuses, and 4 primary skills from the other garrison members are added on top.

Two practical consequences. First, if you mostly join rallies rather than lead them, only your heroes' first skills matter — so a cheap hero with a strong first skill is worth nearly as much as an expensive one. Second, if you are the one leading, your full 9 skills are what the rally is built on, and it is worth being the strongest chief online before you press Rally.

5. Hero skills are invisible in the report

Battle reports list buffs, penalties, Position Perks, Pet Skill bonuses, Chief Gear, Hero Gear, Tech Research, Alliance Territory buffs, castle skin bonuses, Hero Exclusive Gear and Hero Talent bonuses. Hero skill bonuses are calculated during the fight and never appear. So a report that looks like it should have been a win, and was not, is usually skills — not a bug.

Source: Century Games official English help centre, Combat FAQ. We quote it because it is the publisher's own wording, not a community reconstruction.

The Furnace is the building every other building is capped by, so the only real question in this game's mid-game is how far away the next Furnace level is. Two things change once you reach Lv 30:

• Levels stop being numbered and become Lv 30-1 to 30-4, then restart as Fire Crystal 1 to 10, each with four sub-steps of its own.
• From Lv 30-1 on, Fire Crystal is the hard bottleneck — not Meat or Wood. You can have every resource capped and still be stuck.

Build time below is the raw value with no construction speed bonus and no speedups applied. Treat it as a ceiling, not a forecast.

Fire Crystal tiers

Read this table as bands of five, not as single levels. Lv 30-1, 30-2, 30-3, 30-4 and FC 1 all cost exactly the same; the price only steps up when you start FC 1-1. Same again from FC 1-1 through FC 2, and so on. So the moment your Fire Crystal income clears one band, it clears the next four levels too — which is why people who plan by band finish a whole tier while people who plan level-by-level stall.

Two things worth knowing before you get there. Refined Fire Crystal first appears at FC 5-1, not earlier — everything below that is plain Fire Crystal, and plenty of guides get this wrong. And at each whole tier from FC 6 on, the plain Fire Crystal cost roughly halves while Refined doubles: FC 6 wants 100 plain and 20 Refined where FC 5-4 wanted 200 plain and 10. The whole-number levels are the cheap ones.

These figures are not published by Century Games. We compiled them by cross-checking independent reference tables and kept only values that agreed. Where you find a mismatch against your own client, tell us and we will re-check that row.

The mistake almost everyone makes in week one is spreading resources across buildings that do not gate anything. Here is the order that does not waste anything.

Day 1

• Join an alliance immediately. Alliance Help cuts construction timers, and it is free. Playing solo for a week costs you more than any purchase would give back.
• Push the Furnace as far as the tutorial resources allow. Every other building is capped by it, so a Furnace level is never wasted.
• Do not spend speedups on anything under 8 hours. You will want them later.

Days 2–7

• Furnace → the building that is now blocking Furnace → back to Furnace. Repeat.
• Star up Jessie and Molly only. Both are free, and both stay useful long after the early generations are replaced.
• Run Beast Hunting every time it is up. It is the cheapest hero shard source in the game and costs stamina you cannot bank anyway.
• Keep your shield up. A single dawn raid in week one can undo four days.

Days 8–14

• Now find out which hero generation your State can actually pull. Investing in a generation your State has not unlocked is the single most common way new chiefs waste resources.
• Start banking speedups for the next State of Power preparation week. Spending them on a Tuesday earns nothing; spending the same speedups during the prep phase earns points that convert into rewards.
• Get the Furnace to Lv 10 — that is the entry requirement for Alliance Championship, and it is stated by Century Games directly.

The single biggest free-to-play multiplier in this game is not what you spend, it is when. Construction and research you were going to do anyway becomes event points if you hold it until the right day.

The rule

Hold anything longer than 8 hours. Do the short stuff live. When a scored preparation phase opens, dump everything you have been holding into whichever category is being scored that day.

What to hold for

• State of Power preparation phase — the highest-value window in the month. Construction, research, training and hero development are each scored on their own day.
• Alliance Mobilization — runs Monday to Saturday over roughly a month, with a base allowance of missions. Speedup-consuming missions are the easy points.
• Alliance Championship — needs Furnace Lv 10 and at least 10 registered alliance members, both stated by Century Games.

What not to do

• Do not speed a build just because the timer annoys you. The timer is free; the speedup is not.
• Do not hold everything forever either — a Furnace level that unlocks the next tier of everything is worth finishing now, because the compounding starts immediately.

Use the speedup total at the bottom of this page before a prep phase opens. Chiefs consistently underestimate what they are holding.

Century Games calls this event State of Power; most English-speaking players call it SvS. It is the same event, and it is the one that decides whether your State's month was worth anything.

Shape of the week

Preparation opens Monday 00:00 UTC and runs roughly five and a half days. The cross-State fighting phase is Saturday, 10:00–22:00 UTC. Start times can drift by State, so check the in-game notice as well.

What to bank beforehand

• Speedups, sorted by what each prep day scores. Construction day and research day are the two most people under-prepare for.
• Hero shards and gear materials — hero development day is usually the easiest day to top your alliance if you have held anything back.
• Troops you have not trained yet. Training day rewards the queue, not the army, so an empty queue on that morning is a wasted day.

During the fight phase

• Remember the casualty rule: in City battles 35% of the attacker's casualties die outright. Attacking into a full garrison you cannot break is not a draw — it is a permanent loss.
• Joining rallies contributes only your heroes' first skills, so you do not need a deep roster to be useful. You need to be online.
• Shield before you log off. Every time.

Four reasons, in the order they actually cost people fights.

1. Your troop ratio is wrong

Units attack the front row first. Too few Infantry means your Lancers and Marksmen are being hit on turn two instead of turn five. Power does not model this; the fight does.

2. Hero skills are not in the report

Century Games states plainly that hero skill bonuses are calculated only during battle and are not shown in battle reports. So a report where every listed number favoured you, and you still lost, is usually a skill you could not see.

3. You joined a rally and brought the wrong first skill

Rally members contribute the first skill of each hero, not the whole kit. A hero you invested heavily in for their third skill adds nothing when you are joining rather than leading.

4. You attacked a garrison, not a player

In garrison defence the highest-bonus defender supplies the bonuses for everyone, and four more primary skills stack on top. The city you scouted an hour ago is not the city you are hitting now.

Points 2, 3 and 4 are taken from Century Games' own English Combat FAQ. Point 1 follows directly from the row order the same document describes.