Village Building

How to Avoid Really Screwing Up Making a Village¹

How to Avoid Really Screwing Up Making a Village

Initial Checklist

If you don't have these, don't start a village. Got it memorized?

• Ascension. It's not as absolutely required as some people make it out to be, but being a kage without making use of it is simply needlessly penalizing your village's growth.
• All minorkaiju drops. You should have Terry3'd them back in season 3, so that any new ones you get can be given to villagers as rewards.
• Ancestor Spirit, Loyal Sacrifice, Eclipsed. Ancestor Spirit triples chakra costs on bingo attempts against you and is the only way that you'll ever approach a viable bingo defense, Loyal Sacrifice lets you splatter on bingo defenses as many times as you need to beat them, Eclipsed lets you do both of the above without having to bother with your moon level.
• Season 5+. The reasoning for this is pretty simple; by then you should have pretty much everything important, through Monochrome, done. Wasteland and all runic items, Monochrome x4 for Eclipsed, Halloween items, a full set of Golden items via 2 B A Master/A Brand New Story, the works. Especially later on in village growth you'll need to deal with some fairly high invasion difficulties or have someone else do it, and that just doesn't work out unless you have the muscle to actually do it.
• Seasons Don't Fear (+100% bingo HP) and My Name Is (Immune to Notepages) are both obscenely useful. Seasons Don't Fear lets you bingo people you have no business bingoing, and My Name Is denies anyone the ability to get an easy bingo on you, not to mention negating the Tote bonus. Seasons Don't Fear is more useful and will be used more often, but My Name Is can be useful if you don't want to (or can't) blow ryo on Tools of the Trade
• Regalia, for 2x invasions. Your main invader(s) had better have one too.
• Shady Dealings lvl3. It's a discount of immense worth, and if you don't have it, someone else in your village damn well better.
• The ability to use English with some modicum of competence. There are already enough villages with poorly spelled names, incoherent recruitment apps, and illiterate kages. Don't add to that horrible number.
• Get another player, of at least your level of competence, to act as an invader. Ascension will end up being used a fair bit to protect resources, and without an invader, you won't be able to use it. Even when you're not Ascended, it helps to have a few backup invaders for maximum invasions per day.
• Spend those five+ seasons in a decent village and strongly consider staying there permanently rather than starting a new village. It's much better for character growth, and a [NOUN] of a lot less frustrating. Besides, there are already too many villages. 402² at last count, enough for 20,100 players - and Billy vs SNAKEMAN only has like, 6902 characters³, so that's a lot of empty failvillages.-_-

Preparations

• First off, you need to line up villagers. Even if you have everything in Season 1, starting a village will be atrociously difficult unless you have at least the starting 5 villager to unlock wandering genin, and you should do your best to be sure that you have 10+ people ready to hop in immediately. This can be accomplished via contacts in your former village (hey guys, can you send a couple alts to help my new village?), relentless bribing, referrals, dragging friends into the game, mugging them and carrying their lifeless corpses to the village to act as temporary villagers… etc etc. Ideally, several of them can consume one or more SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites
• Seriously, don't start a new village. There are too freaking many of them, it cripples character growth for months, and starting a village just to get kaiju drops is freaking stupid. If you want kaiju drops? Use Terry3. Do you want The Touch? Get it through HQ. From a pure gameplay standpoint, starting and running a village is a colossal waste of time. Only do it if you really hate yourself or REALLY want to run a village until the end of time.
• If you absolutely MUST ignore my advice, load up on Major Village Contracts first. Even a S1 Whiteye can get ~10 Major Contracts a day via Burgerninja missions, so since you're going to be Season 5+, you should be able to get more. Aim for a good 500,000+ village-ryo minimum, millions if you have the patience; you can always Raid to get ryo once you get NRF and have decent villages to hit, but you need a good nest egg. Note that you can donate personal Ryo at a low percentage loss early on, so millions of personal Ryo will help.
• Consider using an English name, rather than, say, a horrible mockery of the Japanese language by crushing two Japanese words together. If you absolutely must use a Japanese (or any other language) name, at least be sure it's a real word. Even if you are using an English word, make sure it's a real one and that you spelled it right. Your village's name will be a deciding factor in what kind of people apply, though not the only one, so spend some time thinking about it.
• Get as many Rotating Timespheres, Reversing Hourglasses, and Tsukiball tickets as humanly possible. For major upgrades you'll need to be able to set up two, even three or more invasions in a day, and you'll need a major stock of Rotating Timespheres to do that. Reversing Hourglasses double Ascension's effectiveness since many people don't bother checking for them, and Tsukiball tickets are an extremely cost-effective way to unbingo yourself if you have tsuki lvl 50+. Finally, Ashen War Paints will save. your. [noun]. That extra 10 range will help you hit a lot of villages that would otherwise be lolworthily impossible if you aren't near the endgame.
• Get a lot of SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites. Considering that these days Tier 1 is nearly empty (empty for part of late 2012) and (as of early 2013) Tier 2 has a limited number of villages to invade, you'll need to do a lot of SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lite consumption to get your village through the early stages quickly. By the time you create your village, it's possible that the "early stages" will include all of Tier 2 - although at least once you have Marketplace in Tier 2, you'll be able to try to buy some..
• Make certain that you, and some of your villagers, can consume/Cipher Lvl. 2 SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites.

General Tactics

• Never ever end a day of invasions with resources left over, or if you must, have as few as possible, and preferably only of one type. Having one of everything may get you invaded, particuarly if you have this status around dayroll. Buy crappy upgrades, blow them summoning a monster, whatever - just DON'T KEEP HUGE FREAKING STOCKS OF RESOURCES.
• Try not to mouth off in Kage Council or on the forums. When you're a kaijukage of a 50 man IR with five Sho'Nuff Elixirs, a Claymore, thirty of every Lost Weapon, and half your villagers are bloodthirsty bingoing machines, then maybe you can start declaring war on people and calling people [insert various bad words here]. Until then, either keep your head down or expect to get invaded. That doesn't mean you can't stick up for yourself if necessary or that you have to be a total pushover, but if you're going to start crap, be sure that you're going to be the only one still standing at the end. Declaring war on ScarletP? Not a good idea. Declaring war on Fail McKaiju because he was mean to you? Not a good idea. Insulting any major group (TFF, Colbert Nation, IRC group, etc)? Figure that one out on your own.
• Ascension is useful, but not always your best option. Especially early on, you'll usually be able to spend most of your resources as soon as you get them - Ascension is only really useful when you're saving up for something and can't get it within two invasions, a la Wheel of Kaiju, Elemental Beacon, Epic Monument, etc.
• Kaiju drops are great ways to motivate people to do things. Abuse that.
• If you get extra Halloween items from spamming Sugary Candy, consider donating them to the village storehouse or using them as incentive. The bonuses are extremely useful for weaker villagers. Note, however, that typically using TACO is more efficient than Sugary Candy.
• Only run Eye of the Storm allies if you actively want to be hard bingo'd on a regular basis. Many people, myself included, Hard Bingo anyone they see running one; a kage running it just makes them waste stamina changing to a team that CAN bingo that ally, and villagers have no business bothering with bingo defenses anyways except in a time of war. It can be useful to run Eye of the Storm allies while you're getting huge upgrades (Epic comes to mind), but normally, avoid them like the plague.
• Most people in Tier 1 don't even bother checking for Ascension. In Tier 2+, though, pretty much everyone does. In other words, don't worry too much about bingo defenses until your village has Natural Research Facility; until then, you can probably get away with a dayroll team. If you're paranoid about resources though, Tier 1 is probably about the only time it's safe to run an Eye of the Storm ally; most Tier 1 failvillages don't have anyone competent enough to break through that, and nearly everyone who Hardbingos for that are the tier 3 kaijukage and megaplayers.
• Don't start drama.
• Don't be a fail.
• DON'T START DRAMA.
• This won't work most of the time, but it might be worth a shot in really bad situations. Basically, if you're almost done with a really difficult to obtain upgrade and see that someone dropped Invasion preparations on you, message them. Be polite and pleasant, but explain the situation and ask them if they'd be willing to switch Invasion preparations. If they refuse, bribe them; a TACO or ten will likely change most people's minds. Worst case scenario, they invade anyways. As I said, it won't work all the time, but… hey, at least you tried, and it actually does work occasionally so long as you don't abuse it - try to only do it while getting Chakra Filtering and Epic Monument, and even then I'd strongly consider just sucking up and taking the invasion.
• Ironically, this is flat-out one of the dumbest things you can do on the Kage Council. There are enough [insert unflattering word for unpleasant people] on the Kage Council than announcing you have resources and are aiming for Epic Monument is liable to get a few invasion preps set on you very quickly.
• Consider raiding when you need money, particuarly in Tier 3. In Tier 1 and Tier 2, raiding may reduce your opportunities for invasion, which makes raiding more questionable. It's far more efficient than farming contracts; 20 stamina to bingo a kage with The Tote and 55 stamina to Raid for 150,000 Vryo is a lot more efficient than spending 600+ stamina farming major contracts for a puny 50,000k Vryo. Note, however, that it can annoy some villages, and that a character near the present (early 2013) end-game should easily be able to make low 7 figures/day.
• To get more VRyo, consider running missions at very high tax rates (then decreasing the taxes back down). This is more efficient than donating Ryo to the village.
• Patrol versus Collect versus Paperwork:
  • It depends on tier, but generally:
  • Tier 1, Collect. You have nonjas for collecting basic resources, but if you slam down SNAKE Oil Lites as fast as possible, this whole tier may not matter.
  • Tier 2, Collect for Advanced Resources. Patrol is primarily useful if you have a lot of villagers all Patrolling - otherwise, it's just a waste of a fraction of a resource.
  • Tier 3, Paperwork/Collect. Patrolling, and defenses in general, are all amusingly useless.

• If you have like 50 people in the village, try a "collect until there's a 100% chance for a basic resource, then patrol" message in village announcements in Tier 1-Tier 2. I've had dubious success with it myself, since there always seem to be a few people who collect after that, but if you're a pretty active village, you can spare ~10 people collecting and still have a 30+ patrol bonus. If you're smaller though, it's probably safer to focus on only one village action.
• Kick people who have been inactive for 14+ days; they're just dead weight. I'd recommend sending a nice message alongside the kick, though; I tend to use something like "blabla 14 days inactive, not cool, but when you get back, feel free to rejoin - we'd love to have you back!" The efficacy of the tactic is dubious, but I've gotten a few people back from doing that, and even a 10% return rate is better than none.
• Recruitment text: be positive, be upbeat, DON'T FREAKING SAY YOUR VILLAGE SUCKS. It's supposed to help RECRUIT people, not drive them away. Mention how much stamina your awesome village gives, talk about how nice people are, blather on about all the new game areas it unlocks, talk about how you give Regalia for invading twice, whatever. Just don't say anything to convince people to avoid it.

Vicekage and Permissions

• One of the best things you can do for your village is to appoint people to help keep the village running whether or not you're around. Without them, you pretty much need to be on 24/7 to handle everything; by keeping a few vicekage and the like around, you can drastically lessen your own workload.
• However, tossing all kinds of permissions at the first x people to join your village is stupid. "First x people to join get y" is a terrible ploy in general, but it's even worse in this scenario because fully-permission'd vicekage can quite literally tear apart your village. It's a lot of power, second only to the kage, so it really should only go to people you trust. Warnings aside, let's look at the various permission sets and who to give them to.
  • Dumpster - Some people use it to store perms for newbies, some people just use it for kunai. Others use it as a high-security storehouse, only available to a few players (or possibly only on a need-only basis). If you use it, give permissions appropriately; if you don't, don't bother. Not complicated. -_-
  • Spy - Everyone should have spy permissions, and it should be a default permission. Spying is obscenely useful, and most players in the Season 1 Jonin+ range can do it with a Counterfeit Permit. Even if it fails, there's no real village-based penalty; only the one who failed gets temp-bingo'd if the target had Creepy Traps. If for some reason you want to build peacetime, though, turn this off. Failed spies break peacetime, and that can be annoying.
  • Attack - Attack permissions, on the other hand, are Srs [verb]ing Bizness: a failed attack wastes the invasion prep time, destroys the spy, and leads to a 24hour bingo. Only give this to people who can handle it, which generally means Season 3+ with 100+ perms. You may also wish to require people to PM you to get attack permissions to minimize the number of possible misfires.
  • Vice-Leader - Set Invasion Prep, Get Spy Reports, Interrogate, Science!, Taxes, Entice Kaiju. Vice Leaders are ridiculously important, but before you promote anyone here, make sure they know to NOT use Interrogation. It's a complete waste of resources -most- of the time, and daily usage isn't viable until you've completed village growth. Similarly, make sure that they know to not fudge with Taxes, not waste Spy Reports, not waste Invasion Preparations, only not waste SCIENCE!. Essentially, this is the set of permissions you give to people you've known for way too long, trust fully, and know at least as much about the game as you do. If you borrowed high-end villagers from your previous village(s), they'd be excellent targets for this permission set.
  • Items - This? This is bad. It should never be a default permission, and other than VERY short periods of time (namely, storehouse trades with dozens/hundreds of items - 30 essences, for example), you won't use this. If you 100% trust someone you can give this to them, but otherwise, avoid it like the plague.
  • Partial Items - This is what you use for everyone else. Some people require villagers to register on a village forum to get this permission, be in the village a certain amount of time (a week or two seems to be pretty common), or do something for the village; sink a certain number of spies, etc. I'm too lazy to keep track of all that so I just set it as a default @ 10 items a day.
  • Permanent Items - Much like partial, some people require villagers to be there a certain amount of time or do something for the village; others, like me, only keep the newbie perm items in their storehouse and leave it open to anyone so newbies can suit up quickly. Just don't keep Over 11000 or similarly difficult to obtain perms in the storehouse if you give this as a default permission. -_-
  • Messages - This allows villagers to leave messages on the board. It's a default permission, and I see no reason to fiddle with it. However, if someone is spamming the board, you can use this to shut them up and settle the issue via PMs. Still, rarely used.
  • Permissions - this is the most dangerous set of permissions to give out, but also one of the most useful. Essentially, someone with this set can do anything you can save disband the village, start Zombjas, or give Gate/Nuke permission; they can accept people, kick them out, give anyone else any other permissions they want, etc. Several villages have been destroyed by failkages giving people this permission, so only give it to people you absolutely trust. We're talking "spent months on end with you, you know them in real life/from elsewhere/have a way to beat the crap out of them if they abuse it" kind of trust, not just "they were good at invading for a few weeks." Used well, this set will drastically lessen your workload. Used poorly, it can annihilate your village. Literally. Just don't be a fail about giving it out, and you'll be fine.
  • Announcements - this lets the villager change the village announcement. It's… honestly mostly useless, since it doesn't change that often in most villages, but you could use it to alert villagers to which kaiju you're currently fighting or whatever floats your boat.
  • Upgrades - this lets people buy upgrades. It's probably not really important; I gave it to half my villagers and let them buy crap when I didn't feel like it, and it worked out well enough. NOT a good idea during an Epic Monument run, though; some fail might decide to waste resources on a Sabotage Facility or something midway through the Epic Monument run, so if you do toss this permission around, be sure to take it off during important multi-invasion upgrade runs.

TL;DR GIVE LIKE TWO PEOPLE YOU TRUST "PERMISSIONS" PERMISSIONS AND FORGET ABOUT THIS SECTION

Bingoing and Invasions

This is by far one of the most important parts of building a village, because, well, let's be blunt here: a passive approach sucks. Hard. You want to beat the crap out of other villages as much as humanly possible, three or more times a day, and you want to do it as painlessly (for you) and effectively as possible, preferably wasting as little stamina as possible. On the other hand, you don't want to get invaded - that makes you lose resources, which makes you a sad little ball of seething barely-controlled rage and means that you have to Hard Bingo everyone in their village five times before you can calm down.

First off, bingoing. This is the easy part, if you're competent. If not, it's a nightmare - hence much of the BAWWW you can see bandied around occasionally in the Suggestions section.

First of all, let me let you in on a little secret: most people run either notepage protection or HP boost (My Name Is/Seasons Don't Fear), not both of them. It's not a guarantee, and Tools of the Trade is cheap enough that a lot of people DO run both, but if you run into a kaiju with more HP than you can handle, more than you expected? Drop a notepage. So what if it negates your first turn of damage? You're going to die either way, unless of course the notepage goes off. This doesn't work as well on weaker opponents, where you might have a chance anyways but a failed NP will ruin it for you, but if you're already screwed, give it a shot. It works embarassingly often, I'm told.

But hey, bingoing isn't supposed to be an exercise in futility and guesswork. If you want to be any good at it, you gotta do it right. What is right, you ask? Well, there area few ways to go about it, depending on the target. I personally prefer a team of Right lvl 2/Lisalisa lvl 2/Bones as an all-round team, but if you think they might have Seasons Don't Fear, use Doughman/Bones/Right lvl 2 - it's more specialized, but if they have Seasons Don't Fear, they die in a round. On the other hand, if you have Seasons Don't Fear, Doughman also boosts YOUR vulnerability - only use him if you've got Archer Style:Fire and Flames to keep you safe. That, or don't run Seasons Don't Fear and hope that your low HP can handle the 400+ that even a halfway decent kaiju can throw at you before bothering with defenses, 600+ that a higher-end kaiju can muster effortlessly.

Of course, bloodline matters. Redeye is great, with Archer Style:Fire and Flames giving you two guaranteed turns of total invincibility to pile on damage and the ability to combo Seasons Don't Fear+Doughman with no downsides. If you also want to go through r00t this season, aim for Legacy, instead - it's a little riskier since you can get OHKO'd by a lucky dual Risky Badge activation, but you can pull off a Sand Coffin and still have enough chakra left over for a couple weaker jutsu; anything that adds 4-8 levels comes to mind.

Additionally, there are three permanent items that can help: Risky Badge, Bingo Armor, and Z-virus. Risky Badges gives you a chance to double the levels-based damage you do - great if one or both of the combatants' activates, though it also doubles the damage YOU take, but doesn't apply to 'set' damage, such as Sand Coffin's +100, Right lvl 2's +10, etc. Bingo Armor as a perm is somewhat of a misnomer; it only works for a certain number of hits, but it also works on offense. If you're going to take on someone with a crapload of HP, buy a bingo armor - it'll reduce the damage you take in a round to 40 max, which hurts, but is much better than the 80+ that even a crappy kaiju can throw at you. Higher-end players can pass 90 without any real effort, and that's enough to OHKO you easily if even just one Risky Badge kicks in. Z-virus is finicky; it's a 50% chance for a Archer Style:Fire and Flames-style, first-round invincibility… for free. Makes bingoing a much less risky proposition for Legacy nin, and for Redeye, can give you an extra round of invulnerability for a total of three.

Finally: levels. Get more. The higher season you are the more base levels you can get in a stat and the more damage you do, and the more +levels perms you have, the faster you can trash people. You want as many levels as possible - you can never have "too many levels," much as you can't have too much overkill.

…Oh, and theoretically it helps if you have The Tote for the invade bonus, but let's be serious here. Tote is garbage these days. It's great in theory, but there are so many people running note protection that it just doesn't do anything on the invasions where you need it most.

Also, this isn't really a bingo 'tactic' per se, but you may need to use Grim Prediction to track extremely low-level kage. It's taught by Hyuk, costs 100 stamina a pop, and is generally a complete waste of space unless you really REALLY want to invade that particular village. You can check levels of anyone, even kaiju, by visiting the bingo menu and looking for their name - you don't have to start the bingo or spend any stamina. Don't ever get blindsided by the opponent's level.

Finally, note that a maxed-out (in levels) Kage can make themselves effectively impossible to bingo - in that they gain more HP per round than they loose, given an effectively limitless supply of Bingo Armors. Either R00t themes (to ignore bingoing the Kage) or a Mister T autograph (to sometimes ignore Bingo Armor) can help, though.

---

Now that we know how to bingo people, let's try putting it to the test in the only arena your bingo ability really matters; invasions. Bingoing for invasions is much different than doing it for The Tote or just to send a message to someone you don't like. For starters, it's a much more involved process; you have to follow a set of steps to ensure VICTOLY, rather than just lolbingo. The checklist is pretty simple, fortunately, but absolute law if you want to avoid misfires and failed invasions.

1. Bingo the target. Do not invade, even if it says you broke Ascension.
2. Check the target's status via Juicy Apples. If they're not Bingo'd? They had a Reversing Hourglass. Bingo them again, and do a hard bingo this time - you can only get stamina back via Note/Tote bonus once per person in a day, so whether you hard or soft bingo them, it's still going to cost 50 stamina. Might as well send a message, especially if that message is "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE." A message via HBing, that is - don't actually antagonize the target with a PM.
3. Check target's status via Juicy Apples. Yes, again. If the kage was online, they may have turned on ANOTHER Reversing Hourglass, or they might just have used a Cure Right Wounds. Either way, better safe than sorry.
4. Switch to the The A-Team. It is the only team in the game that helps with invasions and raids (+2 strength on invasions, t be precise), and it will save your derriere.
5. …If you want to be on the safe side, Juicy Apple again. I never bother, but if you're doing an Epic Monument run, it's worth it just to be absolutely sure.
6. ????
7. PROFIT!!!!

Seven steps to a better village, at the cost of the life and belongings of whatever poor sods you beat the bejeebus out of!

Generally speaking, you should have at least one co-invader so you can pull off four invasions a day via Rotating Timespheres. There aren't a whole lot of 'dirty tricks,' so to speak, but invading someone just before dayroll and putting on Ascension means that they probably go splat on you in their revenge invasion the next day - if they bother. Another 'trick,' and I use the term very loosely, is that a lot of kage don't tend to be on at night Billy time, so attacking then means that you're less likely to have someone Cure Right Wounds or keep popping Reversing Hourglasses. Of course you'll be attacking 4x a day if you're doing it right anyways, but if you only plan on invading once that day, do it at night.

Also, this sort of belongs here, so I'll just c+p the basic bingo defense guide. Remember: unless you love being hard bingo'd, don't use the Eye of the Storm allies.

• If you actually want to run bingo defense (difficult without Kaijukage), just do something like Smiley/Doughman/Blind Fury/My Name Is. If you want to run Seasons Don't Fear instead of My Name Is, swap out Doughman for Anonymous lvl 2 and use Tools of the Trade. To be blunt, you can't really defend yourself against a decent player without kaijukage bonus HP, so the important thing is to have Note protection to keep people from abusing The Tote bonus against you. Bingo Armors are great, but for them to be effective, you'll need to be willing to blow Ryo on hundreds of them, and keep blowing ryo on them as they break.

Pre-War (Tier 0)

When you first start a village, you will suck. Even with extra people there, the village will suck. Horribly. Everything you're used to - cheap Party House, lots of extra stamina/day, Juice, EVERYTHING good about a village - will be gone or expensive. This is, unsurprisingly, a Very Bad Thing(tm). Your job as kage is simple: fix that.

For starters, you'll want to get the Banker, Hitaiate Maker, Party House, Tasty Ramen Shop, and Nonja Farm for the village. These upgrades are better than the other crap-tier upgrades for one simple reason; they benefit villagers in particular for the most part, whereas things like Solidarity and Fortified Walls benefit the village, but not the villagers. This is important - you have NOTHING to offer people as a basic village, so you need to give them SOME sort of incentive to stay as quickly as possible. Prioritize the Tasty Ramen Shop and Hitaiate Maker upgrades first, as the +10 stamina will give you something to add to your recruit message and the Hitaiate Maker will let you have an awesome headband.

Once you have those, you get to find an awesome headband to go with the village (protip: it should fit the village and not look all… pixilated and crap) and write an awesome recruitment text. Focus on what you DO have, not what you don't; mention the stamina, mention the low tax rate, whatever. Just don't do that "lol we suck but help us be awesome" garbage, because no one wants to join a crappy village like that.

As for the villagers you DO have, just have them Collect and play the Prize Wheel to try to win resources. Ideally, everyone should be spending 6 figures per day on Prize Wheel until you're out of Tier 0. It's worth it, and doing so can shorten Tier 0 from a possible multi-month problem to days. Those are your only two methods of getting resources since you don't have SNAKEMAN OR NO SNAKEMAN, Nonja Lab or Machine Shop yet and they suck at resource acquisition anyways, so suck it up.

This phase is the worst of any of them, since you can't invade or raid and don't have jack to boost your village with. Just struggle through it and don't whine - you wanted to start a village, you knew the consequences, you did it anyways. Just keep your eyes on the War Council, the light at the end of the tunnel.

War (Tier 1)

Finally, happy fun time! Now that you're in the war, you can SPY. Have your main dude spy, have everyone in the village, especially those accomplished ninja you borrowed from friends, spy. Have new people spy if they can handle it. You want a complete spy network as quickly as humanly possible, even if they do kinda suck at sticking until you get Sneaky Tricks in the third growth phase. Every bit as importantly, get the Spy Network upgrade as soon as possible. It will let you plan invasions for maximum effect, and if you followed all the previous instructions, this phase will be the easiest. Big fish in a pond of small fish, and you can ram through anyone's patrol bonus, bingo most kage, and generally be awesome.

Slam down SNAKE Oil Lites as fast as possible. Encourage your villagers to do the same. This Tier should take less than 2 days, optimally done. If you're here without these items, get them from either going to another village and buying them, trading for them, playing for them, or fight WorldKaiju for them.

Again, keep Collecting and having your ninjas try to win resources at Prize Wheel.

Once you have Spy Network and a crapload of spies, focus on the usual suspects; stuff that helps your village. You're tough enough that the village attack upgrades aren't really necessary, so here are the things you should really be focusing on in order, though you can fiddle with the order a bit to suit your situation.

Chunin Training School and Genin Training School will give you more crap to brag about on your app text, and Creepy Traps will help keep failninja from coming near your village. Nothing else in the 5upgrade bracket is necessary until much later, so let's move on to the 10upgrade required bracket.

To buy:

• Arms Depot will sell some decent perms for newbie ninja and help a tad with invasions. You shouldn't need the invasion help yet, but… buyable perms, yay!
• Jonin Council will make your ninja very very happy and is something else to add to the app text, assuming it isn't already too bloated.
• General Store will make failvillagers happy, because cheaper=better!
• Science! Facility will be your best friend forever; use your nest egg to max out SCIENCE! machine 1 ASAP, then run it constantly until you reach Tier 3.
• War Room gives +2 Arena attacks a day, which doubles the speed at which failvillagers can earn the arena items and generally makes everyone happy. Yeah, even you; y halo thar daily Warrior's High!
• Crafting Workshop. Free stamina, ingredient hunting, and potion making for fails without Wasteland access. 'Tis GLORIOUS! You may want to up the priority on this one, though I generally find that rank and perm-enhancing upgrades do more to help villagers. Still, the +10 stamina lets you upgrade your app text a bit, so this is a must-get.
• Black Market is a good upgrade, especially considering how much money your ninja should be spending on the Prize Wheel. It's not a huge difference, but it'll definitely help.
• Overseers are awesome. +5% collect bonus for genin/chunin = mucho grande better resource find chances, and you need a lot of resources.
• Ninja Dog Kennel and Sand Village Trading Post are equally useful; neither sell anything all that great, but they're cheap, boost upgrade count, and help make you look a little better. Besides, Dog Collars are awesome.
• You might want to get Bingo Academy primarily to keep up a limitless supply of Bingo Armors, if you're going that route.

Avoid:

• All defensive upgrades. To be blunt, you won't be able to actually protect the village for crap until post-Epic, and an extra 3-4 difficulty or successes isn't going to stop anyone. Anti-spying upgrades are also useless save for one you'll get soon, so don't bother with those either. Invasion Defense is garbage now, Claw Machines and Darts Hall are expensive and don't help much, and frankly you don't need the help with upkeep that Connections offers.

At this point, you'll be up to 20-ish upgrades, possibly more if you went with Bingo Academy. Get the Natural Research Facility, and we'll move on to the next section.

Natural Resource Facility (Tier 2)

This is the point at which far too many villages flounder; to-invade difficulties skyrocket, and juuust about everyone in the game wants your sweet sweet tasty resources, and they're not gentle about taking them. Ascension and being a non-failkage will help, but… it's still going to suck. Of course, that's not permanent, and you can do some things to protect yourself.

If you are having trouble with invasion difficulties, get Big Ladders. That upgrade alone will save you a lot of tears, and it's cheap. Also, if you haven't already, get Ninja Attack Squad, Siege Engines, Saboteur School, and the Arms Depot. They're all pretty cheap, and they'll make things a bit less painful from here on out. Once you have those, or at least Big Ladders, things will start to be a bit more manageable; those 50d40 invasions will be down to 42d30 or so in the upper range, and you should be able to handle those pretty well without an Ashen War Paint, or with one FOR GREAT VICTOLY.

This? This is the point that you'll want to start running 4 invasions a day, and having a dedicated invader (or three) will really shine. Being a new tier 2 village sucks. Badly. You want to get resources, and by extension upgrades, as quickly as possible. Suck up the stamina cost and work with your invader; most upgrades are still pretty cheap at this rank, so you can afford to drop Ascension and help out once your main invader has blown both his daily invasions if you don't have a secondary invader.

Slam down SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites until you get Enticement Altar, and get your villagers to follow suit. Consider continuing even after this point, although once you have this, you'll be constrained by only being able to defeat 1 Kaiju/day. Note that you ideally should be summoning (and therefore defeating) 1 kaiju/day.

Initially, you'll want to aim for Burgerninja for its massive +30 stam/day boost. That's great to add to your headband, and unlocking Burgerninja lets people help farm major contracts to help with the influx of village ryo. Second on the list is definitely Ninja Cooking School - the +100 stamina/day from ramen will make your job a lot easier, and it's just something else shiny to add to the app text. Otherwise, you'll want to aim for the usual villager-benefitting stuff; Forest Trail, Jonin Training Academy, Quiet Glade, that crap. Not nearly as many awesome upgrades right now as when you first entered the war, but there's still a lot of decent stuff.

Once you hit 40 upgrades, you can start to get some of the really shiny stuff. In particular, I'm referring to the Sneaky Tricks upgrade, probably the single most useful in the game; -50% chance for spies to get detected means that you'll have to spy a LOT less, and ensures that very little short of the Inquisition will root out your spies. Honorable mention goes to Medical Ninja Facility (+20 stam/day), Chakra Training Center (-10% chakra costs), Ancient Teachings (+10% AP/XP), Marketplace (so you can buy your SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites) and Nonja Lab (ZOMBJAS!). They're all great upgrades, not to mention excellent to add to your recruitment app, but they're overshadowed a bit by the Enticement Altar.

The Enticement Altar is one of the biggest and best upgrades you can get, and one of the best to use to recruit villagers. Summoning monsters regularly, and touting it, is excellent for both village and villager growth, and any player with a modicum of experience will want monster summonings - kaiju drops are shinies. They're also apparently good to bribe people to join with, though I've never done it personally and don't really condone bribery in general. You should already have all the kaiju drops from Terri lvl 3ing your last village, so give the extra drops away; use them to reward invasions or spy sprees, drop them in the Claw Machines when you get that, whatever. They're superb motivational tools, and you should use them as needed.

Chakra Filtering is one of the most expensive upgrades in the game, but for good reason: it's the only way to have a bingo defense, period. Without? Any Redeye will have you for dinner, no matter how you defend yourself. With it, though, you can finally start to see failed bingo attempts - which is, unsurprisingly, a Very Good Thing(tm). Ascension doesn't work if you're bingo'd after all. -_-

Once you get those epic upgrades, you might as well start filling out the upgrade count with kaiju upgrades and some of the cheaper (and crappier) buyable upgrades; Connections and Elemental Harmony can get a tad expensive but are probably good choices by this time since your upkeep will be skyrocketing around now, and stuff like Elemental Shield is good to get in preparation for Force Field. You still won't be anywhere near difficult to invade, but at least it'll help out a little bit. Just… get upgrades. This is a really boring part, and frustrating to boot considering that you don't have Force Field and therefore can't really defend your village beyond Ascension, but you have to get through it to get to 70 upgrades - and that's when the fun really begins.

Good luck with Epic Monument, by the way. Hope you have a lot of Rotating Timespheres, Shady Dealings 3, and a bit of luck on your side - or just slam down SNAKE Oil and/or SNAKE Oil Lites. If you go for the invasion route, try to pick 3 fully-loaded villages and hit them in as rapid a succession as possible, and supercharge your bingo defenses; use an Eye of the Storm ally in conjunction with Seasons Don't Fear, Tools of the Trade, Chakra Filtering, and of course, Ancestor Spirit. Yeah, Eye of the Storm ally. This is one of the very few circumstances that it's generally considered understandable… though, since the person Hard Bingoing you won't know that, they'll probably Hard Bingo you anyways. -_- You'll definitely want a dedicated invader or two here, just in case the whole Eye of the Storm thing backfires and you get trashed.

…Okay. Seriously. Look at the 70-upgrade-required upgrades. LOOK AT THEM. They're all freaking sweet. Force Fields will let you actually defend yourself - have everyone Patrol with all village defense upgrades acquired for a good 45d30 to-invade, which very few people can hit. It's a bit expensive, but suck it up; get Shady Dealings 3, invade a few times, be happy. Hard Corps is nearly required to beat kaiju efficiently, and the three bloodline upgrades are all flat-out epic - Infinite Awareness is necessary for speedlooping and makes life in general for Redeyes much more pleasant, Spartan Battleground combined with Boots of Walking and a fully enhanced jutsu basically gives Legacy-nin unlimited jutsu in missions, and Eternal Mirrors… kinda sucks, comparatively, but is still great for early on in seasons when you don't have much JXP and jutsu are expensive.

From here on out… you know everything. All that's really left is what order to get the remaining upgrades in, though I'd recommend shooting for the Juice Bar first - it's 50 freaking resources, but worth it.

The main thing to note before buying Elemental Beacon is that if you enter Tier 3 with no advanced native resources, you may get a lot of invaders going for Silver Eye. Either have extra advanced resources or plan to get some quickly (or be prepared to get invaded).

Elemental Beacon (tier 3)

If you get low in your native advanced resources, get some quickly to ward off Silver Eye wanting invaders. Note that there isn't a lot of non-Silver Eye-based invasion in this tier, largely because of Rumor mill, which is gained through defeating Drama Llama. Once you have this upgrade, you can mill contracts for resources, which should reduce your need to gain resources by other methods. You'll want to go through major Kaiju as quickly as possible until you get this upgrade.

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Footnotes

1. Original material from Village Building for Manly, Awesome, and Intelligent People by Asteroth, used with permission

2. BC Q&A 15:37 9/11/10

3. Dated information, but the concept is correct.