Rally to Defeat The Raging Bear!
The Bear Trap is an Alliance event that is one of the best sources of free Hero Essence Stones and resources. Your rewards depend on how much damage you can do in 30 minutes, with maximum rewards over 1.2 billion damage. As such, we would like to find ways to maximize our damage.
Bonuses to Attack, Lethality, and Damage:
The following guidelines are specific to the Bear, and mostly written for newer (pre-Gen 4) players/servers. The Bear is a great way to learn the basics behind rally mechanics, but the glass cannon build promoted here will lose you troops in PvP.
- Lethality and damage bonuses are the most important. They seem to function similarly, but damage is a hidden stat.
- Bear combat is short, which makes % chance skills less reliable.
- Bonuses from Expedition skills are additive; Exclusive Skills from the widgets are additive and multiplicative.
- Attack bonuses from skills are quickly outpaced by the higher max stat cap in later Gens. Don’t rely on them much.
The Trap:
You can run the Bear every 2 days. Between spawns, Explosive Arrowheads can be gathered from hunting beasts and used to upgrade the trap up to level 5, giving everyone +5% Attack per level. This is a good, cheap bonus.
Placement:
You should figure out who has the highest rally troop deployment cap and assign spaces around the trap accordingly; this will minimize their travel time and allow >12 people to run 5 rallies per event. (1)
Members:
In your city:
- Research +Lethality% and deployment capacity bonuses
- Refine your pets, or Upgrade your Command Center (+deployment capacity), goggles/boots hero gear, or Chief Charms (+unit Lethality)
- And of course, your heroes matter as well
Rally Captains:
Whoever starts the rally is the Rally Captain; all of the Expedition skills from all 3 heroes the Rally Captain sends are applied to every troop in the rally. The people who join can also contribute up to 4 skills.
Here are the best heroes for starting bear rallies:
- Lancer: Molly is a powerhouse, with a great fixed % damage bonus, and an okay % chance skill. She is easy to upgrade even for free players, and should carry you until after Gen 3.
- Marksman: Zinman is the first Lucky Wheel prize, and one of the only marksmen with a fixed % damage bonus skill. Bahiti is an okay second pick for his % chance damage skill. In Gen 3, Alonso’s Rally Troop Lethality exclusive skill will crush Zinman if you can level the widget.
- Infantry: If you can afford her, Natalia has a fixed % bonus skill as well as a Rally Troop Lethality exclusive skill. Otherwise, the second Lucky Wheel hero is Flint, whose % chance skills are better than nothing.
Around Gen 4, the higher max stats will eventually make a set of those heroes do more damage overall, and you will need to make your own choices on when to replace them.
Hero Captains:
Each rally can gain up to 4 skills from the Chiefs who join. The best person to send is Jessie or Jasser, as each gives a +25% damage buff if their first Expedition skill is level 5 and they are sent first. They must be first in the joiners’ formation, and one of the first 4 sent to join; otherwise, other skills will override it.
Higher-level skills will take priority and replace lower-level skills. However, once any level 5 skill is listed, you are stuck with it unless it is removed from the rally.
You can verify this by tapping the yellow flag icon on the rally page, then scrolling down.
If someone sends Smith before four Jessies/Jassers, the rally will get +25% city coal output instead of +25% damage. This is useless; please don’t do it.
- If the rally you’re joining has fewer than 4 Jessie/Jassers, you should send Jessie/Jasser as your FIRST hero.
- If the rally you’re joining has 4 or more Jessie/Jassers, you should send a blue hero as your FIRST hero.
Jessie/Jasser MUST be the FIRST hero in the formation, or the bonus will not work.
Running the Bear in a perfect world: Using the placement guide above, you should easily be able to run 5 rallies from your highest 12 deployment capacities each event. Presuming a free-player alliance, another 12 players are needed to maximize the damage bonus in those rallies with Jessie/Jasser. A 24-person team is a big ask for an event so frequent, but it’s what you need to go Plus Ultra.