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The Wolf (Mobile Game) Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Become the Alpha of the Pack

Welcome to our guide for The Wolf! This mobile RPG from Swift Apps is exactly what it says on the tin: A game where you play as a wolf. You run around, eat things, form into a pack with your other wolf buddies, and eat a lot of bigger, more dangerous things as a team.

The gameplay of The Wolf is fairly simple: You have an attack button, the ability to run, and you eventually unlock 4 skill slots, each having their own skill tree. You use your skills and your stat build to eat ever bigger, deadlier, and tastier animals. Simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy.

One thing The Wolf will drill into even the thickest of gamers’ skulls is the importance of teamwork: Go in alone even against a crowd of scared plant-eaters who were just now running away from you, and you’ll come out looking like roadkill, even early on.

the wolf tips

Thankfully, even in PVP, you are always in a room with several friendly player Wolves, and if you want to have a lunchtime rampage across the map, sticking with other players like glue is extremely important. You’ll find yourself diving to the rescue of silly loners in rough battles. You’ll wind up running desperately from bigger animals if you notice you’ve strayed from the pack.

You’ll either be joining with the room’s Alpha in a glorious charge against monstrosities like Tigers, Bison, and eventually the horrifically strong Champion animals (Few things are more terrifying than getting instantly bodied by an angry Goat Champion, which is just a Goat but on illegal steroids), or becoming the room Alpha yourself and leading such a charge… provided the other players in your room aren’t busy finishing their three quests for the day!

With that said, we present to you our The Wolf beginner’s guide that comes with some tips, tricks and strategies to get you started in the wilderness!

LUNCHTIME TIPS: STUFF USEFUL TO KEEP IN MIND IN COOP

the wolf casually approach breakfast

Coop mode is where you’ll spend most of your time. You grind there for levels, you eat animals, and try to gun after Champion creatures later on, which have a chance to drop Gems (used to upgrade and unlock skills) when killed. A lot of the game essentially boils down to “Gang up on animals with your buddies”, but here are some tips discussing that note in greater detail.

Strike The Loners

the wolf easy meat

In real life, most predators typically keep an eye on whoever splits from their herd, so they can easily single them out as a snack. This is also true in The Wolf: If you run after an herd of animals, be it sheep, deer, or foxes or anything else that isn’t immediately hostile upon seeing you, watch them run first.

Then whoever splits from the main group, pick them off for an easy kill, then keep doing it until the entire group is dead. While most prey animals like sheep, doe and skunks will run at the sight of you and leave their friend to die if they lag too far behind, they WILL turn right around and gang up on you if you mindlessly rush them down and try to eat one of them while they’re still within aggro range.

Strike As A Pack

the wolf gang up

Some enemies are just too dangerous to fight even if they’re alone. While wolves are a deadly predator in their own right, they’re on the smaller end of the scale when it comes to murdery flesh-eaters.

Sadly, they tend to be no match for things like bears, bulls, tigers and other animals so large that even men with rifles would have trouble dealing with them. At least, if the wolf fights alone. As a pack animal, you can either teleport to your room’s Alpha when they howl (which they usually do if they spot something big, dangerous and very much edible), or if you’re the room’s top-scorer yourself, howl and set up a teleportation circle other players can easily reach you with.

Don’t be a lone wolf if you can help it: Come to the aid of your fellow wolves, or lead them into battle so they can aid you. You won’t just be helping yourself, you’ll be helping your fellows too with the shared EXP and stat point drops!

Take Turns With Aggro, Learn When To Back Off

the wolf time to run

So now you’ve got a bunch of you assaulting a bull several times your size.  Then you get thrashed anyway, or at least kill the bull but not after sending one of your buddies (or yourself) to a respawn point.

Since giving out commands mid-battle is nigh impossible on a smartphone (Heck, even on an emulator with a keyboard it’s painful), next time you might want to tell anyone teleporting in before the fight proper to take turns with enemy aggro and run if their HP is getting too low, at least if you’re the Alpha and the room happens to be a bit chattier than usual, or if you’re playing with friends. That way, the pack’s damage is maintained and everyone gets to partake of the EXP when the bull/tiger/bear/thing bigger than you goes down.

This goes for you too! If your HP is low, run away in a loose circle until your future dinner points their horns at someone whose insides aren’t currently dangling outside, then attack from the rear. On the other hand, if you’ve got HP to spare and your nearly dead buddy backs off, stay there and fight to give your wounded ally time to circle around and continue attacking. All this is twice as important if your group is small, as a single death can mean severely lowered DPS.

Big Food, Big Radar Signature

the wolf scent of dinner

As a wolf, you have far better senses than any normal human (except maybe your monochrome vision, which thankfully is not simulated ingame), and this is shown via the game’s radar. Always use your radar to determine where to have lunch, since it does a very good job of determining the threat level of an area: The bigger the radar blip, the deadlier your food order is, and more blips mean more animals. If there’s a lot of large blips on the radar, it might be a good idea to back off if you don’t have any friends around.

On the other hand, if you see a bunch of large blips and you’re with a huge crowd yourself, it’s time for a brawl! This is important to help you more carefully prepare an attack, or to find easier targets to farm out if you’re stuck on your lonesome.

You can also use this to learn about new animals you’ve spotted: There is a reason the Goat only has about 200 HP at the same level you have about 900, and yet have such a large radar blip: Their horns might as well be swords with how hard they hit!

If All Else Fails, Don’t Give Up!

the wolf easy death

Death is very, very cheap in The Wolf, at least in Coop. Often, it isn’t even worth teleporting back to the Den to heal, since you respawn very quickly, with full HP, and rather near the place you died. And you don’t lose any EXP, unlike in a lot of other games. Add the ability to set up a portal as an Alpha, and you have even less to worry about.

Knowing this, you can even fritter away at certain Champion animals (Specifically, glass cannons like Champion Goats, since lower HP means slower self-healing out of combat) alone if you have the sheer mountain-like patience and bullheadedness to do it. And if you have even one friendly Wolf willing to do the same nearby, even the tougher champion animals can be dealt with this way, World War 1 style.

Again, rolling in with a huge team is always vastly preferable, but keep your easy respawns in mind when you’re planning any attack. Just don’t do this in PVP, since you get tossed all the way back to the Den instead. Unless of course, your team Alpha set up a portal near the battle zone.

Skill Loadouts

the wolf new button

Later on, you will unlock the ability to swap between skill loadouts mid-battle. This is very useful especially for someone with a generalist statbuild, since it allows them to more easily swap roles. You can perhaps have a skill loadout built for running after fast enemies in PVP, with a jump attack to get to the enemy, a damage-boosting aura, followed by any of the quicker-activating skills from the Special tree to follow up on the jump attack.

Maybe you can take Fire Spin along with your Special, so you can dive into a crowd of snakes and kill all of them (A one-two punch of an AOE Special followed by Fire Spin or any similar skills often sorts out groups of glass cannons easily) before they can kill you with their high damage power.

If you’ve grinded hard into the game as a dedicated support, you can bring Aura Health Regeneration to keep your team alive longer, or at least let them jump into a new fight faster. Maybe you want to tank, so you bring some self healing skills instead. Or you could simply have a favorite loadout you use, and another loadout with Speed Boost so you can travel places faster.

As a sidenote, even before you unlock the loadout swap ability, you can still go to your skill tab (The lightning bolt button) while playing and swap skills the hard way. This is still useful, and you might do this even after unlocking loadout swapping, since you might want to change one of your loadouts mid-game.

ALL NATURAL BUFFET BRAWL: WHAT TO EXPECT IN PVP

the wolf no regrets

Thankfully, PVP is not a massive free-for-all. Instead, you are divided into two teams, Blue and Red. There is really no objective other than racking up kills and bragging about it, though enemy Wolves are worth quite a lot of EXP, at least if they’re evenly matched with you in terms of player level, or stronger.

While we do have some tips specifically for PVP, it once again boils down to “Gang up on the enemy”. You must remember that Wolves are pack animals, and the easiest targets are greedy, aggressive players who stray from their team.

Once you have two roughly evenly matched teams in both brains and brawn though, it will invariably all devolve into a hilarious, no-holds-barred bar brawl! Of course, if matchmaking hates you, there is nothing you can do about getting dumped in a room against a full enemy team 10 levels higher than you, but even this can at least be partially avoided with some grinding.

Never Spawn Camp, Ever

the wolf staring contest

The Den rapidly heals any wolf of the same team inside it. This mechanic ensures a tug of war during battles, where wolves push harder into enemy territory until they get pushed back by the recently respawned enemy team.

Standing in front of an enemy Den is not only boring (Generally, a weaker enemy defending team might be too scared to walk out of the Den, and the stronger attacking team is DEFINITELY going to be too scared to go in, resulting in an awkward, unproductive staring contest) and potentially considered rude, it’s also impractical! You’re just begging to get swarmed if you attempt spawncamping against an evenly-matched enemy team who have even half a brain cell to share with each other.

Injured Friend? More Like An Opportunity

the wolf suspiciously still ally

Speaking of using injured friends as bait, coming to the aid of a friendly wolf, whether they’re winning or losing, is often one of the best ways to get a kill or two. While your friend might be dying, the guys he just fought usually won’t be in the best of shape either. And with you at full HP, you will hopefully be coming in from a position of advantage, provided all your skills are ready.

You can attack head on in full view of your target if you want to prioritize saving your friend (Best done if you’re running a tanky build), or attack from behind if you want to surprise your foe or to check if the enemy has their team nearby(Best done if you have a speedier build, chasing and escaping wolves is much harder than doing the same to other animals). Either way, both you and the guy you either saved or used as bait get EXP.

To make this easier, keep an eye on  your radar or map: If you see an ally stop moving, that likely means they are either engaged in combat, or preparing to enter combat.

Travel Together

the wolf gang

Now that you know those tactics, expect that a smart player (or worse, a smart, coordinated enemy team) will attempt to use them against you. As a precaution, always travel as a pack if you can help it. At the very least, follow a teammate at all times, even if you’re a rather tough wolf yourself. Not only does this make it harder for enemies to ambush you, shadowing a teammate will let you or your friend do the same to the enemy!

New Map? Grind First

the wolf map unlock

Once you unlock a new PVP map, this means you just reached a level threshold which sends you against higher level players within your bracket. Having just unlocked said map, that means you’re at the rock bottom of said new level bracket, which is going to be painful once you get a room with wolves 10 levels higher than you. Which is about as bad as having to fight a Champion enemy, except with brains and there’s four of them chasing you all at once.

Before jumping into PVP if you’ve just gotten a new map, grind a few levels in PVE first, preferably about halfway into unlocking the next map or so. That way, you’re better able to keep up with the ones you’re fighting with and against.

SKILL TREES

the wolf oh no

There are 4 skill trees in the game, each corresponding to a single skill slot on your wolf. Picking four of them for a task you want is typically the way to go. Unlocking new skills is generally easier than upgrading old ones, so make sure you get the ones you want before you start upgrading. This may take longer than expected since some skills might take roughly a few weeks to unlock.

Basic

the wolf basic

The Basic skill tree is exactly that: Your basic, bread and butter special attacks. This usually determines whether or not you’re a sniper or an AOE guy. Some skills hit in an area, some skills hit a single target really hard, and nearly all of them except for the earliest ones you unlock inflict some kind of debuff. Either way, most of your attacks consist of this and your Special being chained together in rapid succession, followed by biting as you wait for the cooldown to finish.

Basic Skills Of Note: Any of the elemental jump attack skills, or any of the AOE skills. The AOE skills (like Fire Spin) work great in conjunction with Special Skills (which are also mostly AOE attacks) for killing glass cannons that come in groups, or finishing off an injured PVP team who thinks they already won the fight, but didn’t see you coming a bit late.

As for the jump attacks, they often hit extremely hard while having dual use for sniping anything from PVP runners, lone glass cannons and contributing damage to a big hunt, or running away from something too big for you to chew.

Aura

the wolf aura

The Aura tree is normally what you would use before jumping into battle: They give you or the teammates around you some form of buff, with the first Aura skill being a simple 30% movement speed booster, the Speed Aura. Often, you pop one, then start using your skills to make the most of them, unless it’s a self-healing spell.

Aura Skills of note: Damage Boost is typically considered by the playerbase as the best all-around aura skill, because it is consistent, simple and rather powerful. It raises your attack stat by roughly 40% before any upgrades. Most skills use a percentage based on your attack stat to determine their damage, making this commonly used to open a fight along with offensive skills. Rage has more self-buffs, but the attack buff it comes with is weaker, while buffing HP and Speed relatively weakly too.

Unfortunately for new wannabe helper-types, the support auras, Battle Orders and Aura Life Regeneration, are fairly weak when you get them: Aura Life Regeneration doesn’t heal very much at first, and Battle Orders only raises HP for nearby teammates. You’ll need to be an absolutely dedicated, patient support if you want the most of them, since they’ll need their upgrades to be good.

That being said, since they heal or buff by a percentage of their target’s stats, you have no worries about them falling off in effectiveness as you progress.

Special

the wolf special

The Special tree mostly contains the big guns: Large magical AOE attacks that have slightly longer cooldowns than usual and high damage: great for opening fights and big ambushes since they can be used on the move, or just deleting a crowd of squirrels for a good laugh. Even the starter Special skill is pretty powerful for when you unlock it: An AOE flame attack that deals 300% of your damage to an area, popping so fast you can immediately follow it up with any one of your other skills.

Special Skills Of Note: Ice and Lightning skills are both very dangerous, in particular Electroshock. Most of the Ice skills, while they won’t be that powerful compared to their contemporaries in PVE (enemies will never run away from you unless they’re weak enough that you can just kill them outright, usually timid animals like doe and squirrels), they’re going to be nasty to deal with in PVP, preventing wounded enemy Wolves from escaping you and your team.

As for Electroshock, it just straight up carries 720% damage without any upgrades, and without the fuss of using a Totem trap. Its cooldown isn’t half bad either, at a measely 27 seconds, beating out most jump attack-type basic skills. Oh, and it carries a 50% shock chance, assuming it didn’t kill your victim outright. The downside? It takes a while to unlock, only available at level 43.

Totems

the wolf totems

If the Special tab is the Basic tab’s bigger brother, then the Totems tab is the Aura tab’s estranged sister. Totems can either be traps that deal extreme damage to a single target, or structures that generate some form of aura around them, whether one that debuffs the enemy or buffs allies.

They typically deal a lot of damage in an AOE, except the first Totem unlock which is a single target freeze trap. Keep in mind that Totems take a long time to deploy, so they’re best used either in preparation of a fight, or if in a group hunt, as extra damage when you don’t have aggro.

Totems Of Note: The entire top half of the Totem tree are extremely high damage traps, with the Electric Trap dealing 1000% damage in an area without upgrades. They also have very quick cooldowns, typically around 20 seconds, for the amount of damage they can put out.

the wolf fight

Sadly, the supportive totems have extremely long cooldowns considering their short durations (A whopping 80 second cooldown for an effect duration of 10 seconds for the Healing Totem and 5.5 seconds for the Shield Totem, before upgrades), which means you might not be getting the most bang for your buck with them. It seems this game doesn’t like supports very much, which is weird considering the heavy emphasis this game has on teamwork.

And this is the end of our beginner’s guide for playing The Wolf. If you get only one thing out of this guide at all, let it be the absolute importance of sticking with your fellow wolves, whether that be in PVP, or PVE. We cannot stress this enough. If you have your own tips, don’t hesitate to share them in the comment section below!

Michael Csaszar

Thursday 2nd of November 2023

You should be able to drop items for others to pick up, or be able to trade items.

Night XD

Friday 6th of October 2023

Being a player for years myself I have a couple of comments -

•Don’t get me wrong THIS guide is great but learning is part of the process in the wolf

•I myself did not use any guides starting off and exploring new things and creatures create a sense of adventure

•I don’t say these comments while being a beginner, I myself is a level 52 wolf ( not a champion but definitely not a beginner)

Lunaris

Tuesday 20th of December 2022

This is a very nice guide, though I’d like to see more skill suggestions as I’m trying to find the best skills to use. I want to be a tank that can still do loads of damage (hint hint in attributes I’m upgrading attack and defense hint hint) and I want to know a good skill for the basic tree.

Alyssa

Sunday 30th of October 2022

As it says in the guide, healing skills aren't as good as I expected. Being someone who plans to become a healing tank, the skills seem to have very long cool downs and are only useful if almost all of your teammates are dying (otherwise you've wasted it and have to wait a bunch). I've almost given up on this dream, but for people out there who are also dreaming of becoming a healer/support, don't. Although it may take time, boosting those skills are going to finally give you the result you wanted, and since not many have tried to do so, you'll actually be one of the best healers out there.

The Wolf

Monday 27th of February 2023

Yes, I haven't unlocked any healing skills as of now in totems.

Sheldon

Monday 25th of April 2022

I like the dark wolf skin and the game