Age of Apes Guide, Tips, Tricks & Strategies for All Players

Welcome to the ultimate Age of Apes guide! In this article, I am going to share with you all the tips and strategies that you need to have in mind when playing the game.

You will learn how to increase your power faster in Age of Apes, how to play the game better and ensure that you get the maximum amount of fun each time you play.

These tips and tricks are more suitable for beginner and intermediate players, but it doesn’t hurt to at least scroll through them even if you are an advanced “monkey”: you never know, there might be one thing you haven’t considered.

I have also decided to update this guide today (it was initially published in 2020 – yes, the game is that old!). So check out some Age of Apes tips!

1. Complete the main missions

The Main Quest line is what you should focus your attention on as soon as you start playing.

This acts as a tutorial of sorts, helping you better understand the game’s mechanics, but also guides you through the recommended steps you should take early on in order to ensure your City’s optimal development.

There will be some dead times in between the Main Quest missions – don’t just waste time waiting for the next one to unlock.

Keep upgrading and attacking and exploring and basically playing the game while you wait, but make it your priority to complete the main quests first – at least until you reach City Hall level 10.

A piece of advice here would be not to collect the rewards from the side missions, though.

Keep them piling up and only collect their rewards when you are lacking resources for a building upgrade or starting a new research.

Simply collecting all the mission rewards makes little sense because you have no real benefits from that.

On the contrary, if you become a whale of resources, you risk getting attacked by stronger players looking for an easy win.

It’s safer to keep those resources stashed in your side quest line and collect those rewards only when in need. This helps a lot to keep up with the upgrades and general flow of the game.

2. Upgrade the City Hall ASAP

The City Hall is the most important building in the game, as its level decides what is the maximum level of your every other building in the city.

Therefore, you should rush leveling up the City Hall – this is the only way to go if you want to become a top, strong player.

Remember that once you reach City Hall level 10, your beginner’s protection shield will expire.

This means that you can be attacked from this point on, so make sure that you have a decent army built – and most importantly, that you are part of an active alliance – when you reach level 10.

But you can rush to level 9 first, make the necessary upgrades to catch up and then continue all the way to level 13-15 with your rush.

The order in which you upgrade the buildings is important too. The most important ones, excluding the City Hall itself, are the troop training buildings which should always be maxed out.

Next, work on the Research Center as you need to constantly research. Finally, focus on getting up the levels of the buildings required for the next City Hall upgrade.

Only when you get that to a satisfactory level (which is 9 in the first 2-3 days and 15 in the next 5-7 days) you can start working on the other, non-essential buildings too.

3. Keep an eye on the horde missions

What I love about Age of Apes is that it makes individuals and even alliances within the faction work together for the ultimate well being of their own Horde.

Therefore, in order to make sure that you get to play the best game possible and get the best experience out of this mobile game, you should also focus on the Horde Missions.

These also act as a tutorial of sorts, introducing various new mechanics into play and challenging all of the Horde’s members to work together as a unit.

You will have to donate items you have gathered in order to complete the Rocket Missions, you will have to collect resources for the horde and work on the Repairers and the train line in order to expand your Horde’s territory.

4. Join an active, powerful alliance

While the horde itself is important for your potential progress and positioning on the map, as well as various minor boosts that you can get, it’s still your alliance that matters the most in terms of benefits.

If you are in a strong alliance with active members, your life in the game will be much easier.

You will be able to collect resources regularly, you will benefit from the gifts resulting from your fellow alliance members’ completion of various tasks and purchases and you will also get various boosts and bonuses from the alliance research tree.

In other words, being part of a solid alliance is essential for your game.

Make sure that you join an alliance whose members are in your time zone (very important for rallies and getting help when building/researching) and also one with an active leadership.

Next, play your part and donate, teleport to your alliance area or wherever you are needed and your game will be a lot better.

5. Attack White Monkeys as often as possible

As soon as you have your first batch of level 1 hitters trained, you should start attacking White Monkeys constantly until you run out of action points.

These are the AI-controlled units and give you both small rewards when defeated, but also increase your Fighters’ experience, leveling them up and helping them to get better.

Beating White Monkeys is a requirements of many missions and in-game events, so you will never be able to say that you’ve attacked too many.

Send as many generals as you can to attack them and make sure you always attack the highest level you can defeat.

The game itself will tell you if you have a chance or not to beat them – and anything above “Should be OK” will result in you winning the fight.

6. Complete the Daily Quests

Every day, you will get a set of missions that once completed will reward you with points.

Gather enough of these points and you will receive chests filled with useful rewards from doing so, in addition to the smaller rewards that completing the said quests bring you.

The reason why you want to complete as many daily quests as possible is that reaching that final chest ensures that you win at least one Projector Module – which is essential for your resource production (see tip #7) but also premium currency which is hard to get otherwise.

You also get all sorts of medals and items along the way which will prove more helpful than not.

7. Upgrade the Holo Projector and keep it running!

The resources produced within your city are created by the Holo Projector. This is a building that makes it a bit difficult to understand and operate, mainly because it’s also the home of your scouts and you’ll always have notices to Scout instead of reminders to upgrade or power-up the Holo Projector.

Anyway, it is there where you will produce two of the main resources in the game: food and iron, which are required to build and level up your buildings and everything else in the city.

In order to power-up the projector, you need to use batteries that you earn from doing various tasks in the game.

These will power-up your projector for a longer or shorter amount of time, depending on the level of your building and how many batteries you’re using.

During this time, you will automatically collect resources – so it’s essential to have it running 24/7 in order to provide for a nice resource flow to your warehouse.

But leveling up the Holo Projector is done by using Projector Modules, which are only rewarded as daily mission rewards.

Therefore, another reason to keep completing those quests! It will increase your Projector’s level, allowing you to produce more resources for longer periods of time.

8. Work toward upgrading all your troops

The main missions will only guide you through rushing your Hitters to level 2, but you should make it your goal and main focus early on to get all troops to level 2 ASAP simply because they are stronger and better.

As soon as you have your level 2 troops available, you should only train the better troops and use the lower level ones for tasks such as collecting resources and sending them first into battle until they are consumed.

Reaching Level 3 and afterward level 4 and 5 will be more and more difficult, requiring a lot of investments in both resources and time – but do have at least getting your troops to tier 3 sooner rather than later.

I wrote a more in depth article explaining why you should upgrade your troops in Age of Apes.

9. Check your Items inventory

As you play the game and perform all sorts of tasks, you will be rewarded with tons of items that will go straight into your inventory.

These will usually be resource packs and less useful things, but every now and then you will receive some very important ones that should be used right away.

Especially in the first 7 days after starting to play the game, you will receive a plethora of such rewards.

Make it a habit to check your items regularly and use the ones that give immediate benefits (like VIP points, premium currency) and whatever else you need in that particular moment.

10. Focus on developing Fighters to level 20

If you are a F2P player, you won’t really get access to a huge array of Fighters (the in-game Heroes that lead your troops) soon after starting the game.

But you will still end up with 4-5 of them after a few days of playing and if you’re lucky, you will have at least a really good one on your hands.

You should make it your main goal to upgrade your main Fighter to level 20. I recommend getting an offensive-minded one to level 20.

At that point, you can add a secondary fighter to join them in battle and contribute with their own set of bonuses and skills. This makes it a lot easier to defeat opponents, both in PvE as well as PvP.

Make sure to check out my Age of Apes tier list to see which are the best fighters in the game at the moment.

11. Don’t shy away from special offers

While many players want to enjoy the game without spending any money – and that’s totally understandable – you should know that if you can afford to spend some real life currency in Age of Apes, you’ll do a lot better and progress faster.

The game will always have all sorts of special offers and promotions, some of them under a time limit, some not.

Currently, some of the best ones in my opinion are unlocking the second builder permanently, but also unlocking legendary fighter Oscar.

Just keep an eye on the store and see what special offers are really worth it for you. You will be surprised to see that some offer really, really good value for the money.

12. Collect resources when you log out

Try to plan out your play sessions in such a way that you are ready to send your troops to collect resources when you log out and stop playing for a longer period of time.

This way, you ensure that your troops are always working and you get a constant influx of resources.

Ideally, have three different Fighters available for collecting resources – one for each type (food, iron and uranium) but if that’s not possible, two for the basic ones should do.

Remember that when collecting resources, Wall Breakers are the best units to send because they carry more than others.

13. Use your boosts!

Your inventory will soon be filled with boosters that will fill up construction times or research times or training times.

While most players like to stock up on those items, planning to use them later on in the game when the timers are getting longer and longer, I actually suggest against that and choosing the absolute opposite strategy.

The reasoning behind this is that those short speed boosters of 1 or 5 minutes will be pretty much useless when the upgrade times will be of up to 24 hours.

Yes, cutting even one minute off 24 hours is useful, but early on you might get one extra level of a building if you use a 1 or 5 minute booster.

This means that you get to progress faster and level up faster early on, building a solid foundation for later on.

So use those quick time boosters early on and pile up on the longer ones (15 minutes and above) for the mid to late stages of the game.

14. Scout the areas for treasures

Constantly explore nearby regions and uncover what’s behind the fog that’s covering the entire world.

You will find all sorts of treasures there and important landmarks that could help you and your alliance greatly.

A good strategy, if you have the time to do it, is to teleport close to an area that you want to explore and send your scouts constantly to do so.

This way, you save up on some time that would otherwise be needed by your scouts to reach areas that are farther away.

Since teleporting in Age of Apes is basically free, you can hop around the map where needed. Just have in mind that in order to teleport, you must have all your troops back home.

15. Log in multiple times per day

The best way to play this game, especially if you want to be really serious about it is to log in multiple times per day or have lengthy play sessions constantly.

This will allow you to attack mutants, explore and interact with other players, which is extremely helpful.

Especially early on, when you will constantly build and have things to collect, it’s vital to log in at least a few, if not several times per day to play.

16. Unlock that second worker!

The second worker is very important throughout the game, but even more so early on when you’ve got short wait times and lots of things to build.

So make sure that you unlock it at least on a few occasions and have two workers build your empire instead of just one.

It would be great if you could unlock it permanently from the store, but it costs real money.

If you don’t want to spend, you can still unlock it by paying premium currency, which is something you will have a ton of early in the game due to all sorts of free rewards that you will get.

Wrapping up

With 16 actionable tips and tricks shared above, you have everything you need to ensure that you not only get a great start in Age of Apes, but you also continue on the right path.

If there are any in-game mechanics or anything else that you need clarification or help with, don’t hesitate to share your questions below.

And do share your own tips and tricks for Age of Apes: others would love to learn from your knowledge, for sure!