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Castle Burn Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies Every Player Should Know

Castle Burn is a recently released mobile real-time strategy game from Bluehole PNIX. The developers mixed elements of various games together to make it harder for anyone to truly categorize this iOS and Android game. The elements include: the layout from Clash Royale, the fog of war, army building and resource mining from games like Warcraft, the need to collect cards like in Yu-Gi-Oh, and a tower defense setup. What this amounts to is a pretty good setup of “The Blend”. The Blend is a mixture found in certain games. This means that when you lose, it’s annoying and you’ll most likely get very upset. At the same time, when you win, you’ll most likely want to give it the finger and blurt out “You thought you could defeat me? You wish you were me!” Most devs simply label this as “the game is addictive”. Call it whatever you like!

With such a mixture of elements, there will naturally be a lot to do and a lot to consider before doing it. And yes, those are usually the first questions. What to do and when to do so? Castle Burn starts you out with a few units, a hero, and a tutorial. If you weren’t paying attention to the tutorial or managed to skip it, you’re still ok because the game mechanics will be included in this Castle Burn beginner’s guide. With that said, let’s go and check out our Castle Burn tips, tricks and strategies!

1. Getting To Know The Main Screen

The main screen in the game is the Castle screen. You can see the name of the section you’re in on the bottom of the screen after you tap on it.

how to get started in castle burn

Across the top, from left to right, you have the account info as well as the resources (gold and rubies). Tap on the castle icon in the upper left corner to see various stats and info about your Castle Burn career so far. Going down the left side is your cards collection, all rankings, records, stories, and trophies. The cards collection is pretty much the most important part here. Use that to upgrade your cards and check affinities. Affinities of each card help you decide which cards you want to set while playing in the ranked games.

The rankings section is pretty self-explanatory! The records section however is needed. Those are various game recordings of the matches you’ve been in. The point is not to sit around and be oh so proud while watching your wins. The point is to try to find out what went wrong when you lost a match. The stories are there entirely as the name implies and you can read them all you like. The trophies section is for collecting rewards for completing specific tasks.

In the middle section of the Castle screen, you’ll see the heroes you’ve collected so far. You’ll also see other units in the middle section. If you see any character with an exclamation point or a question mark, tap on it to see what needs to be done or what needs to be collected. Those are the quests in Castle Burn. When you’re done with most battles, you’ll be able to collect rewards either from here or from the battle screen. Don’t forget to collect your rewards!

Going down the right side of the castle screen, you have the notices, mail, settings, login rewards, events, and achievements. There’re a variety of “goodies” in the settings menu including changing your name and linking your account. Yes, you can still play with a guest login (basically, no login) but you might end up losing your game info that you’ve built up. There’d be no backup of it whatsoever. Don’t say you were not warned. Like so many other games, Castle Burn can’t be designed to work flawlessly on every possible device.

At the bottom of the screen are the main sections of the game. From left to right you have the castle, shop, adventure, social, and the battle sections. Each section is labeled when you tap on it. The use of the social screen is entirely up to you. Of course Castle Burn recommends lots of use of the social section but it’s always up to you! The shop is not just the place where you can spend some of your gold and all of your rubies. You can gain quite nicely from the roulette game in there as well.

2. The Very Tempting Shop And What Not To Buy

The shop in Castle Burn is just like any other in-game shop found in so many other games. The real trick is to not spend too much or at all here. Yes, it can be tempting but try not to spend! That’s right, salvage as much of your in-game resources as you can. They’re better used for the card upgrades. Besides, many or all of the cards can be gained after winning battles or using the roulette game. But every so often, there’s a card in the shop that you don’t have. Considering you will need gold for the upgrades, decide whether or not to buy a card(s) from the shop if you have enough extra gold. Of course, you can always buy things with rubies. But for free players, base that on how fast or slow you’ve been gaining rubies.

3. The Roulette Game – Your Daily Source Of Free Stuff

The roulette game in Castle Burn can be found in the shop. The first spin of the roulette wheel is free each day. Afterwards, you can spin the wheel for free up to 20 times. The catch, as showing below, is that you have to first watch an advertisement for each additional free spin. The bad news is that you will have to “waste” up to 30 seconds of your time 20 times per day. The good news is that you get free stuff 21 times per day in total (first spin is free). The other good news is that there’s always a chance you end up watching an ad that shows you a game or app that you might want to try. So, there’s all that and you help out the devs since it’s one of the ways they get paid so they can continue developing things.

how to get rubies in castle burn

Once you complete 10 spins of the roulette wheel, you’ll gain 5 rubies. This is no matter what prizes you win from the roulette game. The ruby prize increases to 10 for completing another 10 spins. In total, you’ll gain 15 rubies for 20 spins of the wheel. Castle Burn does not count the daily free spin towards this. At first glance it doesn’t seem like much, right?! But when you consider that each spin has at least 1 ruby prize, it starts to add up! Now consider the other prizes. They all change for each spin. All things considered, you do stand more to gain by playing the built-in roulette game as much as possible each day. It only costs your time!

4. The Adventure Section And Avoiding Certain Doom

The adventure section of Castle Burn has a couple nifty parts to it. The recommended replays section is as the name implies. The practice battle is also as the name implies. It lets you practice various unit setups to try out your tactics.

castle burn best tactics

The path of the adventurer section is a type of tower defense setup. The aim is to survive the waves of mobs to gain a star. The stars (up to 3) are gained depending on which difficulty you select and defeat. The first star difficulty gives info for defeating the oncoming mobs. Castle Burn shows you what to use to counter enemies with. The second star difficulty is pretty much the same but they mix up the mobs to attack you better. The third star difficulty is much of the same as the second star difficulty but your mana supply can drain quickly. There’re more mobs in the third star difficulty. You have to choose your units and how many to send out very carefully.

Again, this is a tower defense setup. Despite the game being named “Castle Burn”, don’t send your units to a certain doom by trying to attack the opponent’s castle! It’s heavily defended and it’s an AI opponent! Instead, always let the incoming mobs get a little close, but not to your castle (more than half way) before sending units to defend. Once they’re all dead, click the return button found in the bottom right corner. Instead of sending your troops to a certain doom, they’ll go back to your castle and you’ll get the mana to use again. The trick here is that you don’t have to wait for your units to come back before sending out more units.

The mist rock campaign section is another tower defense just like the path of the adventurer section. The difference is that this is a survival mode. The longer you last, the better your score will be. The other difference is that you CAN select what you’ll take into battle. What you take into battle is the tricky part. You start out by selecting a hero to use. Next you’ll be given a series of units to choose from. So if you haven’t been reading up on the cards of Castle Burn, you’ll have a harder time. The typical result is that guessing games make for fast ending rounds and you only get 3!

Your best bet in the mist rock campaign is to have a mix of units with high and low mana requirements. You don’t want to be stuck with lots of low mana cost cards that’ll get hammered on almost instantly. You also don’t want to be stuck with lots of high mana cost cards. The mana regeneration you’re given won’t be able to keep you in the fight. You won’t always know what’s going to come at you next. So knowing which units counter which units in the game is the other reason you should have been reading up on the cards!

5. It Is All In The Cards You Gained

Everything in Castle Burn depends on the cards you have and the knowledge you have of them. The cards you’ve collected can be looked through and upgraded from the upper left area of the castle section.

castle burn cards

There are 3 card tiers (3 being the highest) in the game. You can check the details about each card in the game even if you don’t have the card. While you’re checking the details about any card, be sure to check the affinities of the card (if any). This will let you know which cards the selected card is strong against. This will certainly be your best bet at gaining help to survive and win. So now it’s just a matter of how good your memory is. You’re not going to be able to stop mid-fight and recheck the info!

The main question in Castle Burn is “Which cards should be focused on for upgrading or gaining in general”? Without doubt and without question, the answer is all of them. You’d want to have as many cards available to you as you can get your fingertips on. At the same time, you’d also want to upgrade them all as much as possible. Not only does this give you an advantage in battle, upgrading the cards also gives you EXP to level up with. So don’t start thinking you’ll skip out on any card upgrading!

6. The All Too Important Battles And Some Tips

Castle Burn wouldn’t be much of a strategy game without a battle! Before you start, you can choose either a casual match or a ranked match. Most of the time, you’d want to be in a ranked match. The difference is that levels are supposed to be on equal terms in the ranked matches. So it’s really a matter of getting lots of cards. In casual matches, it’s pretty much anything goes! To mix things up nicely, you can choose to fight with a random hero. This helps keep you on your toes!

castle burn battle tips

Of high importance are the pings. Yours is showing in the lower left corner. Your opponent’s ping is showing as bars under hero icon. This determines if you’re staying connected to the match you’re in. If you or your opponent is disconnected, one of you has a nice advantage! But don’t rely on that too much!

Like many RTS games, you have to build up your side of the map, gather resources, and destroy your opponent’s side. Specifically, aim as much as possible for your opponent’s castle. This is all going to depend on your speed. Not just your speed to attack, but also your speed in building up defenses. Sure, it’s great to send a set of troops to go destroy your opponent with little difficulty. It’d be equally great if your opponent didn’t just waltz into your base and turn it into a crater without a problem!

To build up your side of the map, you need to take over the mana pools found in random locations. In order to do that, you need to own that section of the map by building camps there. Once you’ve started building, you need to add units to your side which can be deployed. That’s done in the lower part of the screen. You get up to 6 units to deploy per battle only. Be sure to choose your cards carefully. You can’t replace them once they’re set. If at any time you don’t want to continue a particular attack, click the return button in the bottom right corner of the screen. You’ll get the mana back from any troops that make it back to your castle.

7. Strategies You Can Use Right From The Start

What’s a Castle Burn strategy guide without some strategies?! This is the hard part to the game. Trying to create a strategy that can win more often than not is nearly impossible. So in other words, the devs built the game right! However, here are some strategies you can try out at random, right from the start. When it comes to your rewards, make sure you collect them is the typical situation.

castle burn strategies

Of course, if you run out of keys, you can either watch some ads or use rubies. The recommendation is to watch the ads. But if you have other things to do, leave the rewards so the keys can regenerate over time. It takes under 3 hours for 1 key to regenerate.

Since you really won’t know what you’re up against until it’s too late, keep trying different things after 2 rounds or less. The assumption is that you’re not psychic. So do yourself a favor and don’t become predictable! Do recall that it says “at random” at the beginning of this section!

The first strategy is the most obvious. Use the practice mode on its highest settings right from the start. The Castle Burn devs gave it to you and there’s good reason in doing so! Practicing things on anything less is exactly that; less for you. It just ends up making a lazy player out of you. You won’t gain any EXP or rewards while playing in the practice mode. It does however give you a good idea as to what’s going to work and how well it’ll work.

The speed attack strategy is as the name implies. Use tier 1 troops that don’t cost much at all to deploy. When you start the match, get up enough mana to deploy a large amount of goblins and your hero. Build up camps so you can deploy more goblins while you’re attacking and just keep pouring it on with the goblins. This strategy also relies on you building up defenses quickly in case your opponent has spells (note the “s”) or is using the same strategy. If that’s the case, it’s a matter of who’s attacking faster.

The spying strategy is as the name implies. It starts out like the speed attack strategy but you only send 1 goblin in each of the 3 lanes. The idea is to give yourself a little insight into your opponent’s setup and see if there’re any holes in their defense you can quickly exploit. So if you find a lane that is or seems empty, let the troops loose in full force there!

The spread strategy used in Castle Burn takes longer compared to the speed attack strategy. However, it’s awfully difficult to defend against once you get it going. The idea is to setup cards from tier 1 and 2 but use no spell cards. When you go to attack, be sure you can drop units into all 3 lanes at the same time. The real spread to this is not just attacking in all lanes. It’s a matter of mixing the troop types in all 3 lanes at the same time. Send a bunch of goblins in one lane. Send your hero with a tank n bomb strategy in another. Send a bunch of riflemen in the last lane. The idea is to mix n match as much as possible but have useful attacks. You can also mix in the speed attack strategy by deploying goblins in all 3 lanes.

The tank n bomb strategy is as the name implies. You deploy tanker type troops and after 1 or 2 seconds, you deploy ranged attackers in the same lane. For example, it won’t take long before you gain a hero that can tank quite well. After 1 or 2 seconds, deploy 5 or more riflemen right behind him. You want the ranged attackers, whoever you like using, to keep that range for as long as possible. At the same time, you want your setup to stay together. Variations to this include using ogres and/or shield mice as the tankers. That’s either instead of or along with that mentioned hero. The simplest version of this is a group of Vikings and archers. But do note the mana cost for the Vikings. This strategy was never meant to qualify as a speed attack strategy. So expect to spend time setting it up and setting up defenses. Do note that the spying strategy certainly helps here!

There you have it! This wraps up our exclusive Castle Burn beginner’s guide. Do you know additional tips, tricks or strategies? Feel free to share your thoughts about the game in the comment section below!