Z Day: Hearts of Heroes Tips, Tricks & Hints to Survive as an Advanced Player

In the months since we last covered Z Day: Hearts of Heroes, the game finally arrived on iOS, courtesy of KingsGroup Holdings, the same company that gave you Dino War: Rise of Beasts. This previously Android-only title is a relatively new MMO game that puts you in control of an army during a future World War, where the “Invaders” eventually released a poisonous gas that resulted in living people, as well as the recently deceased, to turn into zombies. But it’s not just zombies that you need to deal with in this game, as you will also be playing against, and alongside other human players. As the game’s description states, you’ll need to form alliances and work with them to take out your common enemies, on top of building up your army, managing and fortifying your base, and upgrading whatever buildings you currently have within that base of yours.

Last time around, we shared with you our Z Day: Hearts of Heroes beginner’s guide that mainly focused on the fundamentals of the game and some tips that could help you make it through those first two days where your base is still protected from enemy attacks. Our brand new Z Day: Hearts of Heroes strategy guide, however, takes things a little further, as we’ll now be looking at other buildings and features that you’ll be encountering as an advanced player.

1. Everything You Need To Know About The Research Lab

The Research Lab will eventually be one of your most important buildings in your base, and this is where one of the tips in our beginner’s guide will come in especially handy. It requires a lot of food and oil to perform research — we guess, that’s because scientists need to be well fed to study hard and advance technology. And as you move further along in development, it will take more time and require more resources to complete the research.

There are six categories in the Research Lab, with each research endeavor designed to make your base more powerful and save you some valuable time — Development, Economy, Combat, Combat II (or Advanced Combat), Defense, and Supersoldier. At first, you won’t need to worry about the latter category, as you won’t have your Supersoldier ready just yet. The same applies to Combat II, as this will require your Research Lab to be at level 26. That leaves Development, Economy, Combat, and Defense, and while all four are important, we would prioritize each category in this particular order — Combat, Defense, Economy, and Development. Combat comes first because this is included among your Section IV missions — you need to start research on Threat March Speed I in order to complete the final mission. Defense comes next, because you want to keep your base’s safety a priority in the event of an enemy attack. Economy should be third, as this would improve your production of key resources at your base. Finally, we have Development, which eventually allows you to increase the number of troops, your hospital capacity, etc., and other “general skills and abilities.”

In any case, all four main areas are almost equally important, and you shouldn’t neglect any of them when it comes to your research.

2. Deposit Gold In Your Bank If You Can Afford It

Next to your Research Lab, you will find your Bank, which allows you to deposit your gold and leave it for a certain number of day so that it gains interest, thus giving you substantially more premium currency if you’re patient enough. The 1-Day and 7-Day Schemes will earn you 7 percent interest, the 15-Day Scheme 20 percent, and the 30-Day Scheme 50 percent. That may sound all fine and dandy, but there’s a bit of a caveat to depositing your gold in the bank — for the latter three schemes, there is a minimum deposit of 1,000 Gold, and a maximum of 1,500, while the first scheme would require you to buy any Bundle in the store, except for Deals of the Day, in order to unlock it. Still, if you’ve got some spare cash on hand, this is a good way to spend your real-life money — it’s not often when you’ll see a game that allows your premium currency to earn interest over time!

3. The Basics Of Maintaining Your Destroyer

Remember the introductory cutscene? That was where the game showed you how your Destroyer got, well, destroyed. This airship, despite its ostensible appearance, serves as a valuable source of buffs that could, for instance, make your troops stronger and improve your ability to farm for resources, and you might not be aware at first that it’s right next to your Headquarters on the base map; Z Day will probably guide you to the Destroyer for the first time when you’re starting out the Section V missions.

After tapping on the Destroyer, you’ll see several options, and the one you’ll want to tap on first is Assign Abilities. You’ll see that these are divided into Assault Abilities and Guardian Abilities, with the former pertaining to your military-related buffs, and the latter referring to those that can improve your farming. For example, March of Fury increases your march capacity, while Food Raider is designed to improve food gathering speed. You’ll unlock more abilities as you go along and upgrade your Destroyer, but for now, this should give you a good idea of how you can customize the ship to your liking.

Alternately, you can tap on Change Class if you have a certain focus in mind for your base. By default, your class is Balanced, which increases the amount of Assault and Guardian components you can collect after each battle. Progressive is a “pure growth” class that improves your gathering speed for both food and oil, while Militant increases the health of troops that attack in battle as your Destroyer flies over them. On the extreme left and right, you have Hostile and Evolved respectively. The Hostile class improves Attack, Defense, and Health stats of any troop with your Destroyer, while the Evolved class works on all resources when increasing gathering speed.

4. Visit The Event Center

Want more speed-ups, materials/material crates, EXP, and other goodies free of charge? It will all depend on your performance, but the Event Center has various events which you can take part in, such as a Headquarters Event, which will gauge how far you can upgrade your Headquarters before the event wraps up. These are all limited-time affairs, but if you’re able to get far with your endeavors, may they be building upgrades or attacks against certain structures/enemies, you could win the rewards we mentioned above and then some — again, this will all depend on the event, but if you’re looking for extra freebies, the Event Center is where you want to go.

5. Make Sure You Contribute To Your Alliance

We cannot understate the social element of Z Day. Like most base management games, this game is more than just about getting your base up to speed and making sure everything is in order; social interactions matter big-time in this title! You probably joined an alliance the moment you were prompted to, and there’s a chance you may have asked favors from your fellow members without you knowing it. (This usually happens when you’re researching new technology and need to have the work sped up.) But the moment you join an alliance, you should be absolutely sure to tap on the Alliance button on the bottom right of your screen, see if anyone needs help, and help someone out the moment you see an opportunity. It doesn’t hurt either to be active in the alliance chat — alliance leaders see that as a sign that you’re committed to their cause.

As you can see in the image we included, it’s very easy to get kicked out of an alliance for contributing “nothing” to the team. It’s not uncommon for leaders to cull their ranks and kick members out en masse, so if you want to maintain your membership in an alliance and have the backup you need in case someone attacks your base, don’t be a stranger. This is something we cannot stress enough.

6. Spend Those Skill Points

By clicking on your avatar on the upper left of your screen, you can access your Commander Profile, which allows you to change your Commander Name and allocate Skill Points. The latter can be done by tapping on Skill Points, which will direct you to a skill tree menu with three separate categories — War, Economy, and Balance. These are self-explanatory for the most part, but by allocating Skill Points and following the tree, you will activate yet even more buffs for your base; for example, using one Skill Point for Infantry Attack I will “increase the attack of your infantry,” while doing the same for Construction I will result in speed boosts for building construction and upgrade speed. Threat Hunter I under Balanced will increase your march speed when you’re out there hunting threats. Again, all three categories are almost equally (if not completely equally) important, so if you earn some Skill Points during those battles, be sure to use them and allocate them.

7. Upgrade Your Warehouse And Hospital

You can win resources by attacking bases of other human players, but likewise, they can do the same to you and you may not even know it — they could strike while you’re sleeping, working, studying, or doing any other task that could take you away from Z Day. But you can always protect those resources by making sure your Warehouse is constructed, and by upgrading it whenever you could. The higher your Warehouse’s level is, the more food and oil you can keep safe in the event of an enemy attack. Be prepared and keep that Warehouse upgraded, because you’ll never know if another human player has some designs on you and the resources you’ve worked long and hard to gather.

You’ll also need to upgrade your Hospitals when you could, as that’s where any injured troop will have to stay and heal up. These things can happen, so upgrade those Hospitals like you upgrade the Warehouse, and practically every other building within your base.

8. The Exchange

See that “Bargains Galore” sign in the building just south of your Airbase and Headquarters? That’s the Exchange building, and there are three different types of exchanges you can complete in here. The Goods Hall allows you to exchange one type of resource for another, for the most part — for example, you can swap 1,500 Oil for 3,000 Food. You can also pay gold to boost production for a certain amount of time — how about 57 bars of Gold for a 24-hour Food Factory Boost? We probably won’t do that if we were you, however, as it’s always best to have a generous amount of Gold saved up at all times.

Next to the Goods House is the Auction House, where you can bid on Destroyer parts, Design Fragments, and complete designs, all of which can be worked on in your Equipment Workshop. This is something you’ll probably want to save your gold for, but you’ll also have to take note that the items in the Auction House are on the expensive side! (A Dealmaker Watch Design Fragment has a starting bid of 5,000 Gold, with a minimum increase of 10 Gold per bid.) Special Auction works in a similar way, but comes with a nonrefundable 10 Gold entrance fee per bid; in both cases, any losing bids will be returned to the players, but just to reinforce the point we just made, the entrance fee is gone forever once you spend it.

Thanks for reading our Z Day: Hearts of Heroes strategy guide! We hope you’ve enjoyed this one and if you know additional tips for the game, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!