State of Survival: Influencer Trap – Event guide

Influencer Trap is a special alliance event that can be unlocked every 48 hours. However, I was not able to find a comprehensive guide covering all aspects of the event – starting from positioning, roles, rally setup and timers ending up with optimal heroes choice and even some memes! I hope this information will be useful for every player, no matter if he’s a beginner or an experienced one.

Version history:
1.6 - 22/01/2020 - trap levels 6 to 8 added;
1.5 - 04/12/2020 - major rework due to the in-game update;
1.4 - 15/10/2020 - updated with T5 Heroes;
1.3 - 03/09/2020 - once again, trap damage is different - I've uploaded a video and updated troop choice section.
1.2 - 24/08/2020 - after further testing, Hero Choice page was corrected (again);
1.1 - 20/08/2020 - correction to the Hero Choices & Rally Timers;
1.0 - 05/08/2020 - guide created.

Overview

This event can be activated only by the Alliance Leader or any R4 officers. To do that, a special Alliance building – Influencer Trap – has to be completed first. Don’t build it too close to your HQ or mountains – you will need A LOT of space around it for your alliance members to occupy.

Influencer Trap has 6 difficulty levels and several bosses (a.k.a. Monstrous Summoners) on each of them. You can proceed to fight the next boss only if you defeated the previous one. There are different tactics for each level, but the most important one is making sure you have enough people online. To achieve that, Alliance Leader / Deputies are expected to communicate Trap opening time well in advance and – ideally – stick to the same time slots per week regularly.

Once opened, your alliance has only 30 minutes to beat the boss.

• If the boss is killed or 30 minutes timer expires, the trap will go into 48 hours cooldown and Energy Cells can be donated again.
• If the boss is killed before 30 minutes timer expires, a group of zombies will appear instead. Attacking it will grant additional rewards.

Before you start

• Switch your Chief talents over to the WAR tree;
• A Peace Flare will not allow you attacking the trap – if you bring it down remember that you won’t be able to shield for the next 30 minutes;
• Make sure you have enough troops for TWO full rallies (recall them from farming in advance);
• Your troops will NOT get wounded during the event;
• The event might take up to 1 hour to complete – make sure you have enough time, otherwise inform you R4 / R5.
• Event rewards are sent immediately depending on your event performance (your aggregated damage across all rallies you participated in);
• No need to get upset if you were not able to kill Summoner – individual rewards will NOT be affected. If you managed to kill one, all event participants will only get some additional Alliance Silver Coins.

Positioning

You need to surround the Influencer Trap with your strongest Alliance members. Not only battle power matters, but their 3 main heroes and their rally capacity are also very important (I will explain it later on in this guide).

Since there are 8 spots around, to start with I suggest the following:

• 4 closest (12 o’clock, 3 pm, 6 pm and 9 pm) are your Top 1-4 members;
• 4 on diagonals are your Top 5-8 members.

Top 8	Top 1	Top 5
Top 4		Top 2
Top 7	Top 3	Top 6

Once your Alliance has beaten easier levels, you may need to add more people around – either to create more rallies (if you have a lot of active members) or just as a backup of the top 8. Here’s an improved setup:

	BACKUP	BACKUP	BACKUP
BACKUP	Top 8	Top 1	Top 5	BACKUP
BACKUP	Top 4		Top 2	BACKUP
BACKUP	Top 7	Top 3	Top 6	BACKUP
	BACKUP	BACKUP	BACKUP

Roles and Responsibilities

To complete this event all alliance members have to work as one team. There are 2 main roles assigned, each with its responsibilities, but I would also like to stress the importance of doing preparations adequately.

Rally Owner (a.k.a. your Alliance Leader / Deputy)

1. Communicates Trap time in advance. Preferably in UTC, if your alliance has members with different timezones.
   • If these time slots are fixed (and won’t change over time), it will allow more people to plan their participation well in advance. I.e. you can schedule something like Tuesday 5 pm, Thursday 7 pm, Sunday 10 am;
   • Do remind everyone via an in-game group message / alliance discord / etc. 24 hours before the event to ensure maximum online;
2. Drafts a plan (rally setup) depending on the number of members online.
3. Reminds everyone (especially new joiners) about specific troops combination and Hero choice (see the relevant section below).
4. Makes sure Rally Leaders are online and are clear with the Rally Setup;
5. Opens the trap when the time comes.

Rally Leaders (a.k.a. your strongest alliance members)

1. Setups his troop formation in advance (see below).
2. Communicates to the Rally Owner he’s online;
3. Makes himself familiar with today’s plan;
4. Launches rally ASAP according to the plan;
5. Kicks out rally members who have wrong Heroes / troops combination.

Rally Joiners (a.k.a. the rest of your alliance members)

1. Setups his troop formation in advance (see below).
2. (optional) Communicates to the Rally Owner he’s online;
3. Jumps into earliest rally possible, even if not all his troops will fit into available rally capacity;

Rally Timers

Since the trap mechanic has been reworked, every alliance member can do the following:

• Start 1 rally at the trap. This rally doesn’t count in your overall rally limit;
• Join up to 6 (depends on your VIP level) other rallies.

However, due to the limited amount of strong Heroes and (sometimes) limited amount of troops, joining all 6 rallies wouldn’t be always efficient or even possible.

That’s why, as far as we tested, the recommendation is to maintain 3 strong troop formations. See later sections for optimal Heroes choice depending on your account / state evolution.

1. Squad A: your best Heroes – you start rallies with those;
2. Squad B/C: your second best 6 Heroes – you join rallies with those.

Once the setup is done, A squads are sent by Rally Leaders. Squads B/C are used by Rally Joiners to fill any available rallies.

Summoner LEVEL 1-3

Monstrous Summoner is quite weak at this stage because he has very low HP. All you need to do is to ensure as many people as possible hit him at least once. I suggest simply doing a pair of rallies with your strongest Rally Leaders and 500 troops limit for all participants. That will cover 40 people in your alliance (due to 20 participants rally limit). If you have more people online, just reduce the number of troops per rally and launch a 3^rd one.

With each next Summoner level, you will need to increase the number of troops per rally. I.e. on Lvl. 10 we’ve sent a pair of rallies having around 2000 troops each (with 40 people online), on Lvl. 15 it was 5000 or so. Troops were T8 tier, those who had T9 or T10 sent little bit less. If you don’t kill it in the first 2 rallies – don’t worry, just start a few more and reduce the number of troops per rally depending on how much HP left.

SUMMONER LEVEL 4-5

This setup is currently being tested. Guide will be updated if more efficient combination is found.

Rally 3	Rally 2	Rally 4
Rally 1		Rally 1
Rally 4	Rally 2	Rally 3

This setup is pretty straightforward – your 2 strongest alliance players open trap with 1 rally each using their Squad A, 10-15 seconds later next 2 strongest players do the same, then again until you have 8 rallies open.

Rest of people join the rallies with the following setup: first 4 joiners are using their Squad A, rest are using any (A, B or C). Why is that so? Because 4 rally joiners contribute to the rally damage.

SUMMONER LEVEL 6+

Not implemented in the game yet. Developers will release it at some point in future, but the date is not known.

	Rally 8	Rally 4	Rally 8
Rally 6	Rally 3	Rally 1	Rally 3	Rally 6
Rally 5	Rally 2		Rally 2	Rally 5
Rally 7	Rally 3	Rally 1	Rally 3	Rally 7
	Rally 8	Rally 4	Rally 8

Rally Setup

The first and most important thing is to prepare your troop formation in advance.

Second question is what affects your damage to the Influence Trap and why it might be different between 2 identical rallies? Because following variables are taken into damage equation:

• Troops tier;
• March capacity;
• Hero power (including skills and gear power);
• Chief Talents;
• Battle tree researches at your Lab.

So if you’ve sent same heroes with a specific amount of troops but your damage is lower than your peer with the same setup – make sure you took into account one or all of the items described above.

And the last important thing – you need to remember that for Rally Leader(s) 3 skills of his 3 heroes are taken into account, while Rally Joiner(s) can contribute to the rest of rally only with his first Hero skill.

That’s why quite important is to remember:

• for Rally Leaders: put strongest Heroes with maxed skills;
• for Rally Joiners: put your strongest Hero first.

Troops Choice

After numerous testing done by Collab Team, for Summoner Level 5 and up, there’s only one and most effective troop formula:

• 5% Infantry
• 30% Riders
• 65% Hunters

You can try going with 100% Hunters or any other combination of Riders/Hunters (i.e. 50%/50%) and your personal damage might be higher. However, it is not recommended: if every rally participant does the same instead of using formation above, the total damage of the rally will be lower, meaning you will do less damage overall.

Heroes Choice

Choosing the right Hero is quite important. When talking about Legendary Heroes, the current state of game favours later Tiers, so by default Hero strength (and priority to choose a particular one) looks same:

T5 (Tyler, Brooke, Julie) > T4 (Jarrett, Ernie, Zach) > T3 (Zoe, Ash, Miho) > T2 (Jeb, Wolfe, Trish) > T1 (Lucky, R&R, M&F).

That’s in general. When doing Influencer Trap, there are few notes to take – some of the earlier Tier Heroes will be outperforming later Tiers!

For Rally Leaders, you need to make sure all 3 of the chosen Heroes have got their skills maximized. It will significantly impact the total damage output of the rally.

• For F2P:
  • Eva is better than Sarge because her 3^rd skill is boosting her 1^st skill damage;
  • Chef since he’s only Epic Brawler you can build via Intel Missions;
  • Jane only in case you haven’t collected enough M&F Hero Fragments.
    
• For P2P:
  • Tyler (T4) > Jarrett (T4) > Zoe (T3) is your best choice with the current 1.9 patch, followed by Jeb (T2);
  • Ash (T3) > Brooke (T4) > Ernie (T4) > Wolfe (T2) > Ray&Rolex (T1) > Nikola (T1). Please note Nikola’s infected attack boost doesn’t work on the Influencer Trap.
  • Julie (T5) > Zach (T4) > Miho (T3) are both good choices while M&F (T1) is overdamaging Trish (T2).

For Rally Joiners, it is important not only for the solo damage but for the overall damage too. A 6 people rally with 6 Sarges as the first hero will have damage increased by 100% due to his Gun Turret skill providing 25% damage boost. Why increase is 100% only? Because rally can benefit from the first 4 joiners’ Heroes only – see image below.

• For F2P:
  • Eva or Sarge – doesn’t matter, whoever you have stronger;
  • Rest of Heroes doesn’t matter, whoever you have stronger.
    
• For P2P:
  • See above for Rally Leaders;
  • Rest of Heroes doesn’t matter, whoever you have stronger.

Some (PRO) tips

• It is more effective if only Rally Leaders write in the alliance chat during the Trap timer. Usually, they notify Rally Joiners if they arrived either with incorrect troop formation and/or with a wrong Hero at the first place and were kicked out from the rally. In such case, Rally Joiner has to fix his formation and join the next available rally.
  
• If you manage to keep the alliance chat empty from players’ conversations, it is actually faster to join rallies by tapping rally invite in the chat than going through the rally list screen (which is very laggy).
  
• Remember this old meme? Well, it’s not relevant anymore 🙂

Summoner Power and Rewards

Special thanks to

• Request / Collab Team – for optimal troops formation, power/rewards data and Heroes choice.