“Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever?!”
Anyone who’s watched the 1997 movie Starship Troopers is sure to remember this iconic line. But even if you haven’t seen the movie (which you definitely should if you’re a fan of some good ol’ sci-fi action), apes living forever takes on a rather literal meaning in Age of Apes, an MMO strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic world where monkeys rule and have overcome the odds of total annihilation.
In Tap4Fun’s strategy game, Age of Apes, humans have become extinct and apes are, as the title of the game suggests, the dominant species on earth. As their civilization grew and progressed, they were able to develop their own technology and thrive in the harsh ruins of the old world. However, a constant threat looms: apes can transform into rabid mutants unless they take hold of Spectrometers, devices that can keep apes from going, well, bananas.
In the game, you follow the conquests of Captain Scott the Stonebreaker and his ragtag band of loyal soldiers trying to make their way through the dangerous ruins running rampant with mutants and other perils. Deputy Roger acts as his second-in-command and the player’s guide for what can be considered the early tutorial stages. As the game progresses, you will discover many other interesting facets of the world, which, in turn, slowly reveal how things came to be.
In terms of gameplay, Age of Apes immediately begins with a battle against a mutant lair, which you will repeatedly encounter in succeeding chapters.
The mechanics are simple enough: there are around 3 rounds and you can win by taking over every building in the current battle map. You can do this by connecting pathways between your buildings and other buildings. Other buildings can be enemy buildings or neutral ones.
As seen in the image below, you begin with the blue building and red enemy building facing each other. Any building with a designated color is considered an enemy, while gray buildings are neutral. The red enemy building has connected a pathway to your building, which will allow enemy soldiers to try and take over it.
To protect your building and fulfill your objective, you can stage a counterattack by swiping a pathway from your building to the enemy’s, as seen in the image below.
The numbers displayed beneath buildings represent the number of soldiers that can be deployed from that building. The number may increase over time if the building undergoes an eventual upgrade, or if another ally building builds a path toward it to bolster your forces.
Otherwise, the number may decrease depending on how well the building holds up against the enemy’s attack. Once the number is 0, that building can be taken over. The dots represent how many pathways you can create.
We’ll cover a more detailed discussion about this specific gameplay mechanic in the Mutant Lairs and Fortress Takeover section as this is just one of the many ways you can advance through Age of Apes. The game actually has a ton of different features, challenges, and avenues with which you can achieve rewards.
Thus, our beginner’s guide for Age of Apes will outline how you can build your city, strengthen your troops and fighters, triumph in battle, explore the foggy territories, and amass as many resources and spoils of war as you can!
To make this guide more organized, we have divided it into five major categories, namely:
- City Building: This section focuses on how you can fortify your city and what buildings can help you gain a formidable edge against enemies. Additionally, this section also discusses the advantages you can gain from joining a gang.
- Troops and Fighters: This section focuses on your troops and fighters, which are your main offensive units. Troops are basic units that can be upgraded into higher tiers, while fighters can be considered heroes that have talent trees you can advance. This part discusses how you can make troops and fighters work hand in hand to win every fight.
- Battles and Challenges: This section is all about the different types of battles and challenges you may encounter in the game. As mentioned, conquering Mutant Lairs and playing through the Fortress Takeover mode is just one of the many ways you can experience battle in this game. This part lets you in on other battle or challenge modes, as well as the viable strategies that you can consider implementing.
- Exploration: Building your city is one thing, but exploring what’s outside of it is quite another. In this section, we discuss some of the ways you can explore the map and what you may gain from them.
- Free Rewards: This section is pretty self-explanatory. Who doesn’t want to know how to get free rewards?
With that out of the way, let’s dive into the tips and tricks our beginner’s guide for Age of Apes has in store for you!
City Building
Follow the Main Story
Once you’ve successfully taken over the first mutant lairs you encounter, you will be able to begin building your own city. This will serve as your headquarters for the remainder of the game. Building your city is an integral part of the survival and progression of your troops. It will also serve as a gateway for you to connect with other similar ape communities across the land (more about this in the Gang Up! section).
With your own city, you will also encounter other survivors along the way, who you can rescue and recruit into your company. With your city as a base of operations, you can also start researching about boosts, improvements, enemies, and even rewards.
While this sounds like a lot to take in, the game, fortunately, eases you into its myriad features when you follow the main storyline. In following each chapter, you will be asked to complete a series of tasks that will help you unlock new buildings, troops, and fighters.
Completing missions and objectives that follow the main storyline will also let you earn rewards, accomplish upgrades, investigate territories, and participate in challenges, which have their own individual gameplay mechanics (more on these in the Battles and Challenges section).
Usually, the title of a chapter provides a hint for what the focus is for that chapter or what aspect of the game you’ll be discovering along the way. For instance, Chapter 1 focuses on your troops establishing your base.
At the same time, following the main storyline will let you know which buildings to put up and upgrade, thus allowing you to unlock necessary features.
Speaking of buildings…
Upgrade Buildings
As with every game with a city building feature, upgrading buildings is a must! As you progress through each chapter of the main storyline, you may be introduced to at least 1 or 2 new buildings that will solidify both your offensive and defensive position.
While it’s important to regularly upgrade all your existing buildings as much as possible, this may take a while as the higher a building’s level, the longer it takes to upgrade it. You will also need to spend more resources, which generally consist of food and iron.
The good news is that Age of Apes can be rather generous about acquiring resources and rewards so upgrading buildings won’t be a big issue resource-wise, at least. However, waiting times for upgrades can take long and speed-ups, which can be bought in exchange for CDs (aka the premium currency in-game) or tickets, don’t come cheap. Moreover, unless you buy additional builders, you may only upgrade one building at a time as you have one builder by default.
In upgrading buildings, you may choose to follow the main storyline as your set of tasks for each chapter will tell you which buildings need upgrades. On the other hand, you may also upgrade some buildings in advance when the opportunity presents itself. Since you will eventually have quite a number of buildings created the more you progress into the story, here’s a short list of buildings that you can try to upgrade in advance should you have the time and resources:
- City Hall: This is perhaps one of the most important buildings and you’ll be required to upgrade the City Hall in almost every chapter (or every other chapter). Many other buildings, challenges, features, and quests typically require your City Hall to be at a certain level so try to upgrade this building as much as you can for continuous progress.
In some cases, you might be barred access to a challenge or a feature if your City Hall is below the required level. Upgrading this building in advance will essentially let you skip some of the waiting time when you finally need to access a certain aspect of the game.
- Medical Station: This building is where you can heal your troops after each battle. As you increase your level, you will be allowed to build multiple Medical Stations, which we recommend. Try to upgrade your medical stations in advance so you can heal more troops after each encounter. Being unable to accommodate seriously injured troops in Medical Stations may cause permanent casualties.
- Intel Station: Compared to the City Hall and the Medical Station, you will encounter the Intel Station much later. Even in the beginning of the game, you will notice that a thick fog surrounds your city.
With the Intel Station, you can send out a scout that will allow you to uncover and explore the foggy areas outside of your city. Upgrade this building so you can conduct more scouting missions, which can let you fight more enemies or discover rewards.
- Defense Walls: You might not immediately notice that you actually have Defense Walls in your city, but once you do, continuously upgrade this building to keep your base safe from enemy attacks. When you let the game idle for a long while, you may get a notification that rubble mutants have attacked your base while you were out. You may minimize the damage to your defenses by upgrading these walls.
- Sentry Towers: Similar to Defense Walls, Sentry Towers help protect your base from attackers so continuously upgrade this building as well.
Gain Knowledge Through Research
Aside from the buildings mentioned above, your Research Lab is also an integral part of your headquarters. This particular structure is where you can upgrade available technologies, as well as troop and fighter skills.
As seen in the image above, research methods will branch out into different aspects you can choose to pursue. This will help you in terms of searching for and gathering resources, as well as increasing your troop stats or their tier levels.
Research actually goes hand in hand with troop training (more on this later) since having a massive army of basic-level troops may let you survive a few more battles, but it’s inevitable that you have to augment troop skills if you want to triumph over stronger enemies in the long run.
Thus, visit your Research Lab diligently to upskill your forces for battle and resource-gathering. It’s one way you can increase your overall militaristic and economic power.
Gang Up!
Like their distant human cousins, no ape is an island. With more apes falling prey to the mutation, it pays to join forces with gangs so you’ll have allies who can give you a boost.
When joining a gang, you can connect with a community of other players that will help you get a variety of perks, such as:
- Speed-ups for buildings and research.
- Added skill trees that can only be unlocked by joining a gang.
- Extra resources and gifts.
- Additional troops when rallying against other gangs.
- Defensive boost when you teleport your city within the area close to other gang members. This lets you minimize damage from attacking mutants or other gangs.
In turn, you can also help other gang members with their defensive, offensive, and economic position. To access more gang-related features, be sure to build and regularly upgrade your Gang Embassy Building.
Troops and Fighters
Keep Training Troops
As we mentioned previously, troops are your basic units. Initially, you’ll be able to rescue troops when fighting against Mutant Lairs or conducting rescue missions, which will be part of the early main quests. However, once you gain access to troop-related buildings, you’ll be able to train more troops without having to acquire them from quests.
There are four main troops in Age of Apes, namely:
Pilots
Pilots don’t necessarily mean they’re driving planes, however, they do pilot a vehicle that allows them to shoot and move at high speed.
- Good against: Shooters
- Bad against: Hitters
- Trained at: Pilots’ Camp
Hitters
These are melee units that are useful against close combat. However, they do have a disadvantage against ranged enemies.
- Good against: Pilots
- Bad against: Shooters
- Trained at: Hitters’ Camp
Shooters
As suggested by their name, shooters, well, shoot things. These ranged units can prove to be useful against distant enemies. The downside is that they can be overcome by high-speed units.
- Good against: Hitters
- Bad against: Pilots
- Trained at: Shooters’ Camp
Wall Breakers
If you’re going against towers and defensive buildings, wall breakers should be in your marching party. However, these siege units won’t give you advantages against any other moving units.
- Good against: Towers and defenses
- Bad against: Pilots, hitters, shooters
- Trained at: Wall Breakers’ Camp
Now that you know the four types of troops and where to train them, we highly recommend continuously training each unit in their respective buildings. Using the Train option in these troop buildings will allow you to gain more units, thus increasing your offensive power.
By constantly training troops of every kind, you will be ready to rally against enemies, especially if you’re out exploring the foggy areas or are playing through challenge modes that require you to march out your troops.
Aside from continuously training troops, don’t forget to upgrade their respective buildings so you can increase the amount of units that can be trained per session. Similarly, visit your Research Lab so you can increase troop tiers, which are capped at Tier 5. Leveling up troop tiers will give your units higher stats.
As a caveat, though, the more troops you train and the higher their tier, the longer it takes for their training to complete. Thus, keep those buildings busy so you’ll return to a new batch of troops even if you let the game idle.
Don’t Rain on Your Parade Ground
With more troops in your city, you’re going to need a space to accommodate all of them. This is where the Parade Ground comes in handy.
What this building does is let you know how many troops you can deploy and how many marching queues you can have. This goes hand in hand with your troop training efforts as troops can fill up the Parade Grounds, thus maximizing your marching capacity. Having a higher troop capacity means having a bigger chance of defeating enemies when you encounter them in battle, especially if you’re exploring the map or are in challenges that require you to rally your troops.
In most cases, these battles are structured in a way where you’ll be fighting against enemy troops in an open area as opposed to the gameplay mechanics of Fortress Takeovers, where you have to connect buildings.
In training more toops, you need to constantly upgrade your Parade Ground by using Spectrum Chips.
You can get these chips as rewards for finishing tasks or quests, winning battles, or as free gifts when offered by the game. Regularly check if your Parade Ground can be upgraded so you can bring more troops to battle and maximize your power level.
Boost Your Fighter
Unlike troops, which are basic units that come in droves, fighters are individual elite heroes that take charge of your troops whenever they sortie. Consider fighters as commanders whose unique skills can very well turn the tide of battle.
Every fighter has 4 skills that can be useful in different scenarios, with each skill unlocked in a sequence. Upgrades will occur when you increase a fighter’s Star Levels, which can be done by collecting as many medals of that specific fighter as you can. Fighters also have 3 specializations directly related to their ability to command troops. For instance, Scott the Stonebreaker, your very first fighter by default, has the Hitter, Hunter, and Skill specializations.
On the other hand, Sir Francis, who you may encounter later, has the Leader, Gatherer, and Support specializations.
Whenever you march out with your troops, you may adjust your troop and fighter configuration to fit your current situation. For example, if you’re going to attack mutants out in the open, it’s a good idea to bring an offensive fighter like Scott to lead your troops. Conversely, if you’re going resource-gathering, a fighter like Sir Francis would prove to be useful since he has the Gatherer specialization.
Basically, choosing the appropriate fighter to lead specific situations should also complement your troop configuration to bring out the best in both units. If you let Scott lead an offensive contingent, consider having lots of hitters on your team. On the other hand, if you let Darcy take charge, make sure you’re deploying lots of pilots since she has the Pilot and Mobility specializations.
If you’re faced with multiple fighters that seem to have the same attributes (there are many fighters you can get as a reward or purchase for real money), you can also compare fighters to check out which one has better stats or has the stats you’re looking for.
As fighters are crucial members of your team, make every effort to give them a boost by upgrading and unlocking their skills.
Battles and Challenges
If there’s one thing that makes Age of Apes memorable as a game apart from the design and storyline, it’s that it’ll definitely keep you busy. This game has a variety of content that have their own set of gameplay mechanics that will keep you playing, especially if you’re passing the time while a building undergoes upgrades or while troops are training.
That said, this guide will be discussing 4 types of battles and challenges you will face as a beginner. You may encounter more as you progress past Chapter 10, but we’ll leave you to discover those on your own so we don’t spoil your enjoyment.
Additionally, some of the battles and challenges discussed in this section may be similar to smaller-scale battles that you will encounter in earlier chapters. For instance, raiding Mutant Lairs and the Fortress Takeover have similar gameplay mechanics and objectives.
The difference is that you will only occasionally encounter Mutant Lairs when you advance through the foggy area in your city proper while Fortress Takeover is a series of similar battles that you can advance through continuously or at your leisure.
Below are the 4 types of battle modes or challenges you’ll encounter as a beginner:
Mutant Lairs and Fortress Takeover
In the earlier part of this guide, we’ve already given you a quick overview of what happens in this type of battle scenario. Instead of commanding a contingent of apes, you will instead have to fight using buildings wherein the objective is to take over every structure in the map.
Mutant Lairs are encountered within the area near your city (the open map is a different playing field altogether).
On the other hand, Fortress Takeover is a challenge that you can access in the Challenges tab.
Rewards for both may vary, though Fortress Takeover will sometimes let you double, triple, or even quadruple your rewards if you manage to land on any of these multipliers.
At first glance, the gameplay is simple and applies a “connect the dots” principle as buildings can forge pathways to other buildings. If you create a path to an enemy building, your enemies can do the same as a countermove as both of you attempt to take over each other’s buildings. The more buildings under your control, the more troops you can gain to take over other buildings until you have solely and completely monopolized the map.
As you play more of both these modes, you will discover that the map in which it’s played, as well as the positioning of each building, which are generated at random and will change every round, prove to be challenges that require a strategic approach. Regardless of the odds, here are 5 general strategies you may want to consider when raiding Mutant Lairs or doing the Fortress Takeover challenge:
Think Fast!
You might not notice it immediately, but when a round of this battle type begins, it will take enemy buildings about 2 to 5 seconds before making their first move. Those handful of seconds are crucial to your success! By quickly creating pathways to other buildings, you will instantly have at least 3 troops more than your enemies by the time they start to create their own paths because of the delay.
For this simple but vital strategy to become more effective, take advantage of the preview screen just before the battle begins (see image above). Here, you can check out where ally and enemy buildings are positioned. While the preview won’t reveal the number of paths each building can create, this should give you some leverage since you can decide on your first few moves without delay.
In some cases, especially when you’re at a disadvantage, acting quickly can turn the odds in your favor. Occasionally, you will encounter boss fights wherein the main enemy building begins at an already maxed out level with 3 paths and double-digit or even triple-digit troops for deployment.
However, if you’re quick enough, you can take over multiple buildings before the enemy even begins to deploy its troops. Though your buildings might not be as upgraded, you can beat them in the numbers game simply by acting quickly.
Lose no time to create paths to take over buildings, as well as to counter paths heading to your buildings, especially if your buildings are capable of creating multiple pathways. You may even create a pathway connecting to your own building to increase the number of troops that it can deploy.
Work Around Obstacles
Sometimes, you will encounter a map that has obstacles, mainly trees. The thing about trees is that they block your path, as well as the enemy’s. When utilized properly, obstacles can keep enemies from taking over a building, as seen in the image above. However, obstacles can also be double-edged swords that can make it hard for you to eliminate an enemy building once they use trees to block your path.
Thus, find the best way to work around obstacles. We’re giving this as general advice since, as mentioned, the map will change its layout every round. But, basically, if there are trees in the way, you can use these to block out the enemy’s path, thus securing at least one building for your team.
Close the Distance
Whatever the layout of the map, always consider the distance between buildings. In the beginning, we recommend forging pathways to the closest neutral buildings so you can quickly secure them and add to your forces. The closer the building, the less the travel time for your troops to take over. This may also keep enemy troops at bay, preventing them from taking over these buildings before you can.
When you’ve managed to secure multiple buildings within a proximate distance, this is when you can consider creating pathways to buildings that are farther away, as seen in the image at the start of this section. We generally don’t recommend doing this at the beginning of the match as the travel time would be to your troops’ disadvantage and may even put your building at higher risk of being taken over by an enemy that’s much closer.
Instead, create pathways to distant buildings when you’ve already secured at least half the map. You may also apply this strategy when the distant building you’re looking to take over has a lower troop number than your building.
It’s a Numbers Game
Aside from the distance between buildings, also take into account the number being displayed under each one. We’ve previously mentioned that this number may increase or decrease depending on the building’s offensive and defensive capabilities. It goes without saying that a building with a low number is easier to take over than a building with a larger one. If a building already belongs to an enemy, try to avoid creating paths to those that have a larger number than your building. However, you may do this if that enemy building has created a path elsewhere and can’t counter your path.
Further to numbers, let’s take the image above for example: you can actually choose from 4 possible paths. Since there are two dots under the highlighted building, this means you can choose 2 out of those 4 possible paths. Taking the numbers into account, we recommend creating paths to the buildings with the numbers 3 and 11. Building 8 may have a lower number than 11 but the former is already an ally so we can leave it at that.
Although neutral building 3 is almost taken over by the enemy, you can put a monkey wrench in their plan if you counter their takeover attempt. Of course, this leaves neutral building 20 open to the enemy’s second path.
However, if you connect a path to enemy building 11, you effectively cut off the enemy’s chance of taking over neutral building 20 since they will have no choice but to counter you since your building has a greater number than 11 and 3 combined, as seen in the image below.
With a little bit of basic math, you can definitely take over all the buildings in the map in no time. Of course, this becomes a little more complicated the more buildings there are and the more paths you can make. But generally speaking, this tactic can help you decide which buildings to take over or counter, alongside considerations of distance and present obstacles.
Avoid Dead-Ends
In the image above, our enemies have, fortunately, made one fatal mistake (and so early in the game too!): they’ve all locked themselves in a dead-end.
What do we mean?
To truly understand this, let’s first have a quick summary of the 4 types of buildings we’ll encounter in this mode:
- Shooter Building: This stationary building can’t deploy troops but can shoot incoming enemies, but that’s about it.
- Wall Breaker Building: Like their unit counterpart, Wall Breaker Buildings deal double damage against enemy buildings, making them a much-coveted structure in this mode.
- Outpost: This type of building is akin to a surprise since its transformation into another building will be decided by the game at random.
- Iron Pile: Iron Piles aren’t buildings but are instead resource piles that can help you upgrade the specific building connected to them. To gather Iron Piles faster, and to keep the enemy from getting any!, make it a point to connect multiple buildings to them.
Now that you know the 4 types of buildings, you will notice that in the first image of this section, our enemies have all connected their buildings to the Shooter Building, thus effectively locking themselves in a dead-end. As mentioned, Shooter Buildings can’t create paths to other buildings.
Don’t make this mistake! Unless you have more than 1 starter building, never connect it to a Shooter Building as a first move. Remember, the objective of this mode is to take over every building on the map. You won’t be able to do that when you can’t spread your paths.
Use Fighter Skills
Fighters aren’t only useful when leading troops in combat. They can also give you a boost when fighting enemy buildings in this mode. Skills will naturally depend on the fighters available in your roster.
By default, you will have Scott, who can attack one enemy building, thus damaging its structural integrity and reducing the number of troops it can deploy or paths it can create. On the other hand, having a fighter like Dacry will allow you to buff your ally building.
However, keep in mind that you may be able to use fighter skills only once per round. If you have a fighter with offensive skills, you can use that to attack the strongest enemy building. On the other hand, if you have a fighter that can use buffs, you may choose to either buff your strongest building or strengthen the weakest one.
Timing the use of these skills will also depend on the situation. Using these at the start of a match may be the most effective if you want to gain a speedy advantage in taking over other buildings. On the other hand, you may also decide to wait until mid-match before using fighter skills to either secure an already strong position or weaken a relentless enemy offensive.
Alvin’s Treasure Hunt
Alvin’s Treasure Hunt can be accessed via the Challenges tab. This mode is a little more casual than Fortress Takeover since it doesn’t have a time limit. However, it can get challenging the higher your level as each one is essentially a puzzle you have to untangle, literally.
In this mode, your objective is to untangle the knots created by 3 monkeys standing on 5 boxes. You have a limited number of moves before the guard wakes up. Naturally, you fail the challenge if you run out of moves and fail to get all the knots untangled. The less moves you make, the more points you acquire, which will determine the number of stars you get for completing the level.
The gameplay for Alvin’s Treasure Hunt is easy enough to understand, and the early stages will ease you in on its basic mechanics. Eventually, though, you will be faced with more complicated knots and limited moves. Here are a few helpful tips to get through each level regardless of the difficulty:
- Figure out which is the frontmost rope and try to untangle that one first. You can tell which is the frontmost knot by checking the three rings at the top of the screen and determining which rope color overlaps with all the others behind it.
- As much as possible, try to leave the boxes on either side free. By moving around the 3 middle boxes first, you will always have an empty box upon which you can make your untangling move and you won’t get caught in a dead-end.
- The reset button won’t have penalties so when the going gets tough, try and try again! The rewards are worth chasing those 3 stars for (and that undeniably snug completionist feeling).
Impasse Trials
The Impasse Trials mode in the Challenge tab is similar to when your troops encounter a mutant or a group of mutants within the foggy area of your city or outside of it. You can beat mutants by rallying your troops in what will be a skirmish between ally and enemy units.
In these battle modes, you can control your units and even specify which enemies your fighter should attack, while the rest of your toops charge in the direction you point them to. Here, choosing an appropriate leader and having a good troop configuration that complements your leader will increase your chances of winning.
What differentiates Impasse Trials from mutants encountered in open areas is the location: Impasse Trials are played within what appears to be some kind of arena. With Impasse Trials, you’re given a chance to put up blockades that can control enemy routes.
Blockades can be absolutely useful when utilized properly. The overall objective of using a blockade is to force enemy units to enter the battle arena from a single path, or at least reduce the paths enemy troops can rush into.
By getting them to cramp a single or a small number of choke points, you effectively reduce the enemy’s chance of overwhelming you since it can slow down their forces during the encounter.
Thus, take advantage of blockades and actively command your troops to quickly whittle down enemy forces with minimal damage to your own contingent.
The Great Train Race
The Great Train Race is another Challenge mode that applies almost the same gameplay mechanics as the Impasse Trials, except the battle is divided in two objectives: one is to defend and escort your ally train, while the other is to attack and weaken an enemy train.
Each mode is time-limited and you will be fighting alongside other heroes and troops. The gameplay may sound simple since you only have to command your own hero and troops, but it can be pretty intense. Thus, we’ve outlined a few tips for each mode, which can help you achieve both objectives:
Tips for Protecting Ally Train
- Pick a hero with offensive skills and quick speed! Bring troops that complement your hero’s skills. This mode requires a lot of moving around for your units so choose wisely.
- Waylay the enemy before they even reach your train. Redirect your hero to attack them while they’re en route to your ally train.
- When you see an ally hero attacking a specific enemy hero, join in the fight! You can click the enemy hero’s icon to direct your attack efforts toward that specific individual.
- If possible, try to lure your enemy away from your ally train.
- You may position your hero anywhere near the train but the rear and its side are the most likely to be attacked, especially if enemy heroes are respawning and en route from their base.
Tips for Attacking Enemy Train
- Again, quick and offensive troops and heroes will give you an edge. In this second half of the battle, you’ll be the one chasing the enemy train around so be heavy-handed but light on your feet.
- Focus on the train! Ignore the attacks of enemy heroes or, better yet, move quickly enough to dodge them. You can try attacking the train, moving away from an enemy attack, then hitting the train again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- Don’t be held up by enemy troops trying to block your path, specifically when you’re respawning from your base. Make a beeline for the train and hit hard.
Exploration
Colin’s Exploration
Later down the line, you will discover Colin, a mechanical penguin that appears to be a relic of the old world, when humans still existed. It is revealed that Colin was created by a certain Dr. Eden as a scout. The doctor chose the form of a penguin for his creation as a sort of tribute to the species that had already become extinct by that time.
By working together with Colin, you get to explore the foggy area outside of the city. In return, you will have to help restore his memories, which you can do by accomplishing his exploration quests.
As seen from the image above, Colin can instantly point you toward areas where you can attack mutants, find resources, or investigate spots that can lead to rewards or discovery. Complete Colin’s exploration quests as much as you can so you can earn pieces to his memory puzzle and find out more about the lore of the world. At the same time, upgrade Colin so you can have access to more areas you can explore through his detection skills.
Explore the Map
If Colin is fresh out of quests for you but you still want to explore more of the “outside world,” then you can head to the map, the icon of which is found at the lower leftmost part of your screen. If you activate this perspective, you will see a view not only of your city but also other cities surrounding it, as well as an open area with a scattering of mutants, resources, and other things you can encounter.
When exploring the map, we don’t only encourage you to check out the immediate area or simply collect resources. We also recommend attacking mutant groups within your level as these can lead to more rewards when successful. It’s also practice for Challenge modes like Impasse Trials and The Great Train Race since they all share similar gameplay mechanics.
Additionally, attacking mutant groups is also a secondary quest that can lead to more rewards when completed, not to mention it can also help level up other fighters when you use them to lead offensives.
Similarly, hunting for resources this way can help level up fighters that specialize in gathering, such as Sir Francis.
When attacking mutants, be sure to do this during daytime in Age of Apes as mutants are more aggressive at night. You may choose to redirect your troops to another group of mutants instead of immediately returning to your camp, but make sure the next group you attack is within your level and your hero has more than enough health to weather the skirmish.
Free Rewards
Low on resources, CDs, and speed-up tickets? Or maybe you have more but just can’t get enough? Don’t fret, these are a few ways you can get free rewards without breaking a sweat!
- City Hall Development: Upgrading your City Hall can take a while but keep at it! Aside from being a requirement for many features of the game, regularly upgrading this building will also let you gain free rewards.
- Tavern Sign-In Rewards: As you play, one of the buildings you will encounter is the Tavern, which is where you can summon heroes or get perks in exchange for banquet tickets. This is also where you get your free daily rewards just by logging in regularly to the game.
- Unlocking Safes: From time to time, you will encounter safes when you clear away patches of the fog surrounding your city. Don’t ignore the presence of safes and unlock them! You can do this by matching the moving line to the white area within the bar.
The number of circles on the right side of the safe indicate how many times you need to match the line with the white bar. In the image above, the safe has 3 circles you need to unlock before you can successfully open it.
- City Development Fund: Remember how we talked about being diligent in building your city and upgrading your buildings? Doing so will get you free resources so keep building and upgrading!
- VIP Rewards: VIP rewards are a bit easy to miss because the VIP button is quite small, but you can find this beside the icon of your profile. If a red dot is displayed on the VIP button, this means you can claim 2 free rewards. One is from a free daily chest and one is from gathering VIP points, which will let you open another chest at the top right corner of the screen.
- Quests: Apart from the main quests, completing secondary quests will also reward your efforts with additional resources and other perks.
- Achievements: Aside from having that self-satisfying feeling of reaching amazing feats, getting achievements will also reward you with free gifts.
With these rewards to cap off our guide, you now have ample knowledge to advance economically and militaristically in Age of Apes! With its plethora of content, we encourage you to share more tips and tricks by writing them down in our comment section below. You’re now ready to be the biggest, baddest, bananaiest ape in town!