Tribes are friendly groups of non-player characters that help you in your quest against the Blackguard.
There are six tribes across the Archipelago. Starting from the top-left corner of the map and going clockwise, they are:
Spiritdancer Tribe, a tribe specialising in support. Its zone is highlighted in yellow.
Iceguard Tribe, a tribe specialising in defense. Its zone is highlighted in light blue.
Frostbanner Tribe, a tribe specialising in defense. Its zone is highlighted in purple.
Firespike Tribe, a tribe specialising in attack. Its zone is highlighted in red.
Emberfury Tribe, a tribe specialising in attack. Its zone is highlighted in orange.
Lifewell Tribe, a tribe specialising in resource production and rewards. Its zone is highlighted in green.
In order to get a tribe to help you, you must fully explore the area that the tribe covers. Unlocking the first Tribe will require a minimum of level 18 Radar, but to unlock all of the tribes, you need a level 20 Radar. If you tap on a tribe that is not ready to help you, the unexplored regions that are required to unlock the tribe will flash red.
Raw Crystals
Raw Crystals can be mined from the Raw Crystal Mine, which is located next to your home base on the Archipelago.
There, you can exchange the four basic resources - Gold, Wood, Stone and Iron for Raw Crystals. The process is instantaneous, but the cost to mine the Raw Crystals increases the more you mine it.
The initial mining costs 500,000 of a particular resource, and this increases by 500,000 every time you mine Raw Crystals with that particular resource. Each time you mine, you will receive 100 Raw Crystals.
If the cost to mine is higher than the current amount of resources held, Diamonds cannot be used to buy the necessary difference. For example, if the cost to mine using a particular resource is 3,500,000 and you only have 1,000,000 of that resource, you cannot use Diamonds to buy the remaining 2,500,000 of that resource.
Mining Raw Crystals with one particular resource do not affect the costs of mining Raw Crystals with any other type of resource. For instance, using 500,000 Stone to mine 100 Raw Crystals will not cause the amount of Gold required to mine 100 Raw Crystals to increase.
The cost of mining Raw Crystals is not capped and if enough are mined with a particular resource, it will exceed the maximum storage capacity of that resource. If this happens, you can still open trader crates to obtain the required resources.
The cost of mining Raw Crystals resets to 500,000 every two weeks. This happens at the same time as the reset of the tribe boosts.
You cannot mine Raw Crystals if your Raw Crystal Storage is full. To increase the storage capacity of Raw Crystals, you must unlock new tribes or upgrade tribes that are already helping you.
Raw Crystals can be used to utilise a tribe's boost, improve the boost's power, or upgrade a tribe.
Boosts
Each tribe provides a boost that will help some aspect of your war effort. To use these boosts, you must use Raw Crystals that you have mined up.
Each boost assists the war effort in some way. For instance, they may increase the health or damage of a particular defense, increase production of a particular resource, or increase a particular troop's health or damage.
You can use a tribe's boost any number of times, up to a maximum which is determined by the tribe's level. In order to use a boost more times than you already can, you must upgrade the tribe.
The cost to boost increases the more boosts you use on a tribe. The first boost costs 50 Raw Crystals and this increases by 50 for each subsequent boost.
The boosts you use persist for up to two weeks, up until the tribe boosts reset. The reset occurs at midnight GMT.
If the tribe boosts' ending would coincide with a Mega Crab event, the tribe boosts will last one day longer. This is to ensure that all players from all time zones will have the same tribe boosts available throughout the Mega Crab. The following tribe boosts will be shortened by one day to compensate for this.
When tribe boosts reset, the boosts will be changed, and all existing boosts you have used will end.
The boosts will stack with the corresponding Statue bonuses additively. For example, if you have a total amount of 50% troop damage Magma Statues and a 30% damage boost for Riflemen in the Firespike Tribe, your Riflemen will have a total of 80% damage increase.
The possible boost types are as follows:
All available boosts that Statues can provide. Note that Tribe boosts can increase the health or damage of an individual troop/hero/building or resource reward of one resource type.
Troops or buildings steal health when attacking, like the Warrior.
Troop movement speed increase.
Building attack speed increase.
Upgrades
Raw Crystals can be used to upgrade a tribe. Doing so will increase the number of boosts you can utilise of a tribe, as well as increase the resource rewards of the tribe's militia and increase your Raw Crystal storage capacity.
Tribe boosts continue to function while a tribe is being upgraded.
Tribe upgrades are permanent and will not be reset, unlike the tribe boosts.
Militia
In addition to boosts, the tribes will also offer their militia.
The native militia of a tribe can travel to any Blackguard Base in their region and destroy it so you do not have to destroy it yourself.
Doing so, however, nets less resources than if you destroyed the Blackguard Base yourself unless the tribe is level 5.
In addition, the militia will only be able to salvage Fragments from the raids and will not be able to seize any larger type of Power Stone.
The resource rewards from the militia can be boosted by Resource Reward statues on your home base and/or by applicable boosts from any applicable tribe.
