Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble is a free-to-play SLG (Simulation Game) developed by XIPU Games. It was released on both the App Store and Google Play Store on the 5th of September, 2023, where the game has quickly amassed over 100k downloads. In this game, you summon animal heroes, build your base, and partake in match-and-merge style combat!
However, many beginners find it difficult to navigate through all the various features and game modes in Animal Lords: Merge and Rumble. If you find yourself in a similar situation, keep reading as we break down everything you need to know in our ultimate beginners game guide for Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble!
About Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble
When you first launch the game, a cutscene ensues, giving you a brief overview of the story. It depicts Minos, an island under the Tree of Life, where an ancient dragon awakens and summons its army, The Fallen Legion. They try to take over the world but are stopped by the physical embodiment of the Tree of Life, the Holy Spirit. However, in the process, the Tree of Life is damaged and retreats in the form of a seed and gets planted away from the Dragon’s army.
Gameplay


When you launch Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble, you will arrive at your base after viewing the stunning cutscene.
Animal Lords will then give you a tutorial on the basics of base building and the combat system. You can build and expand your base on your own after the tutorial. You can also summon new heroes, collect resources, train troops, and much more. We will go over each one of these features one by one!
The Combat System


Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble has a simple, intuitive, and enjoyable combat system where, before every battle, you can choose your desired heroes and then begin fighting.
Mixing and Matching


Once the battle begins, you are presented with an array of troops that you can swap around to match vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
Every time you merge troops, extra troops get added to your army, and a stronger troop is formed on the board. Stronger troops are denoted by the colors of their capes and tiles. The colors go from grey to green to blue to purple to orange in ascending order of strength.
You can also manually move troops from the board to the battlefield; however, that costs a move unless the troop is purple.
Fighting and Hero Abilities


When you run out of moves, the battle begins. While the troops attack each other on their own, you need to activate the hero abilities at the bottom of the screen by yourself.
Growing Your Army
In order to grow the strength of your army, you need to train troops using the Sheilder Camp, Support Camp, Warrior Camp, and Archer Camp, which you will be able to build when you have expanded your base to a certain point. This brings us to our next topic, which is on regaining land and expanding your base.
Regaining Land and Expanding the Base
When you first arrive at your base, you will notice that you only have a tiny area to yourself with no space to build anything or organize your base. Should you choose to expand, you need to clear obstacles and chase out the Fallen Legion to unlock more building space.
Clearing Obstacles


Whenever you unlock a new area, there will be many obstacles that need to be cleared. This can be done by clicking on the shovel icon above the selected obstacle. It takes only a few seconds to clear the obstacle and rewards the player with resources.
Building
After you have unlocked more space, you can head to the building interface by clicking on the hammer icon on the bottom right and construct new buildings. These buildings include resource farms, army barracks, army camps, as well as other useful buildings. Over time, you will also need to upgrade them to improve their productivity and effectiveness.
Opening Chests


You will occasionally come across treasure chests that have all sorts of useful loot. To loot these chests, you just need to click the open button when the key is over the highlighted section of the slider.
Over time, the highlighted portion will become smaller and smaller, increasing the difficulty of opening chests.
Fighting and Driving Off the Fallen Legion
Every time you enter a new area, you will be faced with the Fallen Legion, who you have to drive away by battling. These battles are generally very easy and often unlock repairable buildings.
Freeing Troops
You will also come across imprisoned troops, which you can rescue and add to your army.


The first part of the rescue mission involves walking around and collecting berries. If you come across an enemy, the one with the higher amount of berries will hit the other and steal some of their berries.




You can win by either having the most amount of berries when the time runs out or eliminating all the other Lords. Once you win, the troops held captive will be freed and added to
Awakening Tree of Life






Remember the injured Tree of Life? You also need to revive it by giving it 5 Sources of Life. You can collect these Sources of Life by battling extremely tough Fallen Legion in areas with glowing golden markers, as shown in the leftmost image.
Heroes
A unique aspect of Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble is the wide variety of Animal Heroes you can unlock. They are also classified into different element types and combat types, like healers and dealers.
Unlocking New Heroes
You start the game with only 3 Heroes, Felix, Volier, and Porter, but you will soon be able to reconstruct the summoning portal with which you can unlock new Heroes. You will have 3 summoning options: Normal, Advanced, and Supreme Summon, which require their respective types of Resonance Crystals. Keep reading to learn how you can get them!
Enhancing Heroes












When you have unlocked a hero, you can also upgrade and enhance them using resources. This upgrades their stats and unlocks new special abilities alongside their existing ones. As for the resources required, you need Elixir to Upgrade Heroes and Normal Arcane Stones to Enhance them.
Resources
From enhancing your heroes to upgrading your troops, every action in the game requires certain resources or in-game currencies. Let’s have a look at the various resources and in-game currencies that Animal Lords has to offer.
Petals and Berries
Petals and Berries are the resources used for all types of building upgrades and troop training. They can be farmed from Sacred Lotuses and Berry Farms, respectively. Additionally, they can be earned by winning battles and looting from the World Map.
Elixir
Elixir is the resource used to upgrade heroes and can be farmed from potion factories and winning battles.
Resonance Crystals
Resonance crystals are used to summon heroes from the summoning portal. There are 3 types: Normal, Advanced, and Supreme, which are used to perform Normal, Advanced, and Supreme summons, respectively. They are obtained through events, daily tasks, and purchasing packs.
Soul Crystal
Soul Crystals are used to redeem hero Fragments in the Soul Crystal Shop. They can be obtained from the summoning portal or from breaking Hero Fragments.
Arcane Stones
Arcane stones are used to Enhance Heroes and can be earned by completing Chapters 1-9 in Adventure.
Ingame Currencies
If you ever feel like you need to speed things up or get a jumpstart in the Animal Lords, you can always use some of their in-game currencies. Here are the two currencies available in Animal Lords.
Diamonds
Diamonds are used to skip wait times for construction and upgrades. They can be bought with real money or earned through completing Chapters.
Animal Coins
Animal Coins are used to purchase packs and participate in top-up events. Unfortunately, Animal Coins can only be bought with real money.
Conclusion
As is already evident, Animal Lords is a game rich with a wide variety of game mechanics and features to enjoy. Equipped with the knowledge from this Ultimate Beginner’s Guide, you will be able to get a headstart in Animal Lords: Merge & Rumble as you begin your journey to defeat the Fallen Legion. If you liked our in-depth guide, you should also grab a peek at our guides for Color Invaders Idle and Stumble Guys.