Animal Warfare Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Cheats & Strategies to Build a Powerful Army and Complete More Levels

Animal Warfare is an excellent auto-battler where you collect and upgrade an army of animals, ranging from squirrels to elephants, as you progress through the game’s levels and take on its challenges.

The game is developed by PlaySide, a company’s that’s no stranger to animal-based mobile games as it is also the studio behind swinging platformer Monkey Ropes, arcade car drifter Drift It!, and underwater adventure Fishy Bits 2. Animal Warfare, however, focuses on a much wider range of creatures, all portrayed with adorable block-like graphics in stages with a similar design.

Auto-battler enthusiasts and animal lovers alike should definitely try out Animal Warfare, as it offers a huge library of creatures for you to collect and upgrade, each with unique skills that will help in battle as you face off against opposing teams. Beating levels and completing challenges will provide you with resources to further power up your army, so that you will be able to keep crashing through your enemies.

With that said, we have compiled an Animal Warfare beginner’s guide, including tips, cheats and strategies to help you to complete more levels and beat every challenge!

1. Get As Many Gold And Gems As You Can

In Animal Warfare, your progress will be directly depend on the power of your team. To upgrade your army, you will need to spend the in-game currencies of Gold and Gems.

When progressing through the game’s levels, you will see the type of reward that is waiting for you. You will receive Gold from most levels, but there are certain stages where you will get Gems, a treasure chest, a new unit, or some combination of these rewards.

Treasure chests, which may contain rewards such as Gold and Gems, are not immediately available though. Normal chests take an hour to open, while Epic chests take three hours. You should take note when the chests will open, especially if you have multiple of a kind, as the countdown for opening the next chest will not start until you open the current one.

Compared to Gold, Gems are much harder to come by in Animal Warfare. While progressing through the game’s levels is one of the more reliable ways of getting Gold, the best way to collect Gems is through the Challenges mode, which offers three maps with five levels each. You will only have a limited number of attempts at each map per day, but you should maximize these changes of obtaining the rewards of Gold and Gems daily.

The game also offers daily Missions for players to accomplish, which include winning battles, acquiring animals, and collecting Gold, among many other tasks. In addition to the Gold and Gems that you receive from completing these Missions, you will also be able to get new animals to add to your army.

Lastly, there is also an idle chest that automatically fills up every six hours for a maximum of 1,500 Gold and 30 Gems. You should collect the rewards whenever you can, as the chest will stop accumulating Gold and Gems once it reaches its maximum limit.

2. Build Up Your Animal Army

Now that you know how to get as much Gold and Gems as you can, what will you do with them?

Gold may be spent right before each level starts to acquire new animals, with the cost increasing over time to a maximum of 15,000 Gold. You should not spend Gold on this whenever you can though – only spend when you keep losing to a certain stage, and only enough to beat it.

You should be saving Gold for new animals that you will unlock as you progress through the stages. You don’t actually get the unit once you receive its card, but your next try at summoning will get you that new animal. Your army will only benefit from having multiple kinds of animals on the team, so you should definitely jump on the chance to get a new animal whenever you can.

Spending Gold before the start of each battle, however, only gets you animals that you have already unlocked. In addition to progressing through the levels, you have the chance of unlocking new units from acquiring card packs by completing all daily Missions, and by buying them at the Store. The Normal card pack, from which you can get Normal and Epic cards, costs 25,000 Gold, while the Super card pack, from which you can get Legendary cards, costs 250 Gems. Unlike unlocking new units from beating levels, opening card packs not only gets you the card, but also the unit.

Your priority for Gold should be buying Normal card packs, but don’t hold back on acquiring additional animals if you are struggling with a level but don’t have enough to buy a card pack.

Similarly, Gems should be saved up primarily to buy Legendary card packs, but you may also spend them on the specific units offered by the Store if you need or want those animals.

However, you should also be checking the Army screen to determine if you already have all the Normal and Epic cards that you can acquire from card packs. If all that remains unlocked are the cards that you get by reaching certain levels and the animals that you can only get from Legendary card packs (Goose, Hawk, Llama, Panther, and Peacock), then there is no longer a need to buy Normal card packs. You can spend your Gold on the cheaper animal recruitment button at the start of each battle.

3. Don’t Forget To Merge Animals

Upgrading your units in Animal Warfare doesn’t require Gold or Gems, but you need multiple copies of animals to merge them into more powerful versions of themselves.

A pair of 1-star animals can merge into a 2-star animal, and a pair of 2-star animals can merge into a 3-star animal, and so on and so forth, up to an 8-star animal.

To merge animals, at the screen right before a level starts, you will have to tap and hold on one of them, then drag and drop to another one. If your army is already pretty big, it might be hard to remember the levels of your animals and which ones may be merged. To help you out, you can tap and hold on an animal, and any possible mergers will be highlighted. Alternatively, you can also tap on the horseshoe icon to access your Stable, where the Merge All button will carry out all possible mergers with the animals that you have, including those that you don’t have placed in your team.

In addition to improved stats, merging animals unlocks skills that will make them even more useful in battle. There is no reason to hold back in merging your units, as a single 2-star animal is stronger than a pair of 1-star animals, without even considering the skills that you may unlock.

4. Place Units In Proper Positions

To make winning battles in Animal Warfare much easier, you will need to place your units in positions where you will be able to take advantage of their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses.

Your units with the highest health should be at the front and center, where they will be able to soak up the damage dealt by your opponents, while your high-attack units should be at the second row onwards, from where they can still reach your opponents to deal damage. Your long-range units should be at the back, where they will be safe from incoming attacks.

The enemies that you face in each level, however, are different, as is the requirement to win against them. Sometimes you will need to make certain adjustments to your team’s positions in order to win, such as placing all your units near the back of the field to keep them out of range of your opponent’s long-range units for a while. You may also place your animals on the left or right portion of the field so to focus on the enemy units on that side.

If you find yourself losing repeatedly in a certain level, before spending on new units, you may want to try repositioning your animals first. It may take a few tries, but new positions may be all that you need to beat a tough stage.

5. Normal And Epic Animals To Improve Your Team

The units in Animal Warfare are all useful in their own way, but some units stand out among other due to the unique skills that they bring to your army.

Legendary animals are the strongest units in the game, but they are very hard to acquire and upgrade compared to Normal and Epic animals. Fortunately, some Normal and Epic units will greatly improve your chances of breezing through the game’s levels.

Gorilla

The Gorilla is an Epic unit that hurls barrels as a long-range attack that deals damage to all enemies in an area. Upon reaching 3 stars, it gains Stun Blast, a skill that stuns opponents. Disabling enemies is very valuable in Animal Warfare, and the Gorilla is arguably the best unit for this because it can do this from afar, safe from enemy units as your other animals form a protective wall.

Fox

The Fox is an Epic unit that is a swift attacker. Its true value, however, is revealed once it acquires the Burrow ability after being upgraded to 3 stars. The skill allows the Fox to disappear underground and emerge behind your enemies. A Fox is capable of either decimating or at the very least distracting the entire long-range lineup of your opponents, and during boss fights, can completely immobilize the giant enemy if it appears underneath it.

Hippo

The Hippo is only a Normal unit, but it may very well be the best tank in the game. It will receive the life-stealing Chomp ability after being upgraded to 2 stars, making it very hard to kill in combination with its massive amount of health. The Hippo will soak up a lot of damage while your other animals chip away at your enemies, and its vulnerability of slow movement speed is mitigated by placing it front and center.

Dog

The Dog is also a Normal unit, but its Attack Bark, which is unlocked at 2 stars, is capable of making your whole team better. The skill increases the attack power of the Dog’s nearby allies, amplifying your team’s damage no matter their upgrades. The Dog should be placed at the middle of your team to maximize the reach of Attack Bark. If you have multiple 2-star Dogs, spread them around so that the skill will reach as many of your units as possible.

6. Take Time To Watch Ads

Animal Warfare is an ad-supported game, and while you will not be forced to watch ads, you will gain significant bonuses if you choose to do so.

You will most often see the offer to watch ads after a level. Whether you win or lose, you will be offered to triple the Gold that you are set to receive for that stage by watching an ad. You may also acquire 2,500 Gold from the Shop three times daily, decrease the waiting time for opening chests, and get additional attempts at Challenges by watching ads.

If you don’t have time or the patience to watch ads whenever there is the chance to do so, at the very least, you should consider watching ads for extra cracks at the Challenges, in order to farm Gems. Watching ads to triple your Gold at the end of each level is also recommended when you are starting out, but it becomes less lucrative at the later levels when the cost to add units has reached the maximum cost of 15,000 Gold.

7. Keep Trying When You’re Stuck

Every once in a while, there appears a level that defeats your team several times in a row, even after you try repositioning your animals and spending all your Gold and Gems on upgrades and additional units.

The idle chest will help in getting you more Gold and Gems, though only in limited quantities. You may also acquire more Gold and Gems from the Challenges, but you only have a limited number of attempts at them daily. What do you do when you’re stuck on a level?

If you’re stuck at a difficult level, there really is no better way aside from continuing your attempts at pushing through the stage. Repositioning animals will help, but the randomness of auto-battler games like Animal Warfare will sometimes work for you or against you.

Additionally, losing a stage will still get you Gold based on the number of enemy units you defeat. This means that you can still work towards the necessary amount to summon a new unit or buy a card pack. Since there is no limit to how many times you can attempt a level, just keep trying. If you stick to the best principles of where to place your units on the battlefield, you will surely eventually luck out into a win.

There you have it! This wraps up all the tips and tricks we have come up for Animal Warfare. If you have anything to add to the list of tips, feel free to drop us a line in the comments!