Darkness Rises is genuine eye candy in terms of recently published Android RPGs, but much of the game actually takes place behind the scenes of gorgeous hacking and slashing. In a different guide, we talked about the importance of customizing your gear to maximize your character’s power. Elsewhere, we explained the intricacies of skills and essences , as well as how you can make the best of your resources as you level up. The one thing that all of these upgrades have in common, though, is gold – and lots of it.

For an F2P game with plenty of in-app purchase options, Darkness Rises actually gives you a good number of ways to collect the gold and diamonds you need for free. When it comes to gold, in particular, the camp is a great place to start farming. Here’s how.

Setting Up Your Camp

In Darkness Rises, your camp is shared between all the characters on your account. It becomes available when you first complete adventure stage 7-5 and the corresponding tab is unlocked on the bottom left of the main screen. Once you click the “Camp” button, the loading screen takes you to the main camp overview.

Here, you’ll find an open fire and the possibility to assign your characters to various camp duties. When a character is assigned to Deploy Resources, he or she sits down around the fire and an icon above their head gives you information about the collecting process.

Camp Resources: Food and Gold

Food and gold are the two resources that you need in order to build and further develop your camp. While the gold pool is shared with that of the character you’re currently playing with, food cannot be obtained from any source outside of the camp itself. To collect both, you can assign your available characters to Deploy Resources.

Two slots are available for each resource and, as soon as you assign a character to one of them, you’ll notice that the overall production for that respective resource is multiplied by the character’s level (not power). It follows, as such, that you should task higher level heroes to whichever supply is more important for you at the time.

Of course, having played the game to this point, you’re already familiar with the importance of gold for… well, pretty much everything. Why, then, would you ever prioritize food? Two reasons – to upgrade the camp and eventually increase your production, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, to buy things from the camp shop, where food is the only currency.

The camp shop features a wide selection of items, from essences to rank B gear, polishes, adventure keys, and even fragments for rank A armor, accessories, and weapons. In addition, one noteworthy category of purchasable items is that of ultimate scrolls, which are overall fairly rare throughout the game.

If you’re interested in any of the above, you might consider prioritizing the production of food in the detriment of gold. Otherwise, your camp can serve as a veritable gold farming operation in order to finance the development of your characters.

Camp Upgrades and Optimization

Two factors influence how much gold or food your camp produces per hour. The first is the level of the characters you’ve assigned to each resource, while the second is the level of the camp itself. To upgrade the camp, click on the designated button at the bottom of the camp overview screen.

Play Darkness Rises on BlueStacks 4 

Here, you’ll find information about the cost of a camp upgrade, as well as the benefits. Although you might be tempted to postpone these upgrades in favor of more pressing matters (such as enhancing or refining your gear, for example), it’s actually worth doing them as quickly as possible. Take, for instance, the transition from level 2 to level 3, which will set you back 150,000 gold. Provided that you collect resources on a regular basis before the camp deposit is full, you can recover your investment in under a day using a level 35 character and three level 10 alts.

Once the upgrades are completed, the best way to further optimize the camp is to evenly level four of your five characters on the same account. This is yet another incentive that suggests one should play Darkness Rises on all characters, rather than choose a favorite.

You’ll also notice that when you upgrade the camp, the amount of gold and food you can store before collecting is increased. This means that you will lose fewer resources due to, for example, the fact that you’re unlikely to collect them every 3 to 5 hours during day- and nighttime.

Camp Battles

If the amount of food you collect on an hourly basis is not to your liking, there is a way to get more by stealing from your neighbors. Morally reprehensible as this may be, it’s still bucket-loads of fun and can up your production significantly.

Before you get into a battle, you’ll want to set up your team using three of your available heroes. Obviously, heroes with higher level and power are preferable, but even one decent main character can get the job done.

In exchange for a special battle ticket, you’ll be matched up against a camp with overall power that is similar to yours. Next, you’ll be given the option to confront the team that was found during match-making or to refuse the battle.

The match itself is similar to a ranked PvP encounter where you fight against the AI as it controls the characters of another player. The difference is that both you and your opponent have a squad at your disposal and must defeat all three enemy heroes in order to win. However, you do not actually have to play with each of your heroes to do so. If your main character is strong enough, you will be able to use him or her to clear through the entire enemy team.

That concludes our guide to camp basics and management in Darkness Rises. If you’re looking for even more ways to optimize your gold production in the game or if you want to create neat shortcuts for camp collection and other functions, try playing Darkness Rises on Bluestacks, which is guaranteed to decrease your grind time considerably!

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