About this guide

I play Last Asylum: Plague, probably more than is healthy, and I wrote this guide to help you enjoy it as much as I do. Everything here is how I play: honest about money, careful with resources, and built around one strong main squad.

A few things I believe. You'll see them on every page:

• Free to play is a real way to play. You can get a lot out of this game without spending a cent.
• Play the game your life allows. Rent, family, savings and time come first. Spending is your choice, never a duty.
• Focus beats spread. A few well-built heroes beat a crowd of half-built ones.
• Carries win fights; Tanks keep them alive. Build your damage first, and your Tanks just enough.

New players lose months to mistakes they didn't need to make: Tanks in the back row, resources spread over twenty heroes, speed-ups burned on days that scored nothing. This guide is here to save you that time, so you can spend it on the fun parts.

The numbers come straight from the game, so you can trust them. When a patch changes something, I'll flag it.

You are the Doctor of a Sanctuary in a world eaten by plague. You heal the sick in your Clinic, gather Grain, Timber and Herbs, raise walls and soldiers, and send heroes out against the Blights, the creatures the plague has made. Every other player on your server is doing the same, so you'll join an alliance and face them, and the Blights, together.

It's a long game

Nothing here happens in an afternoon. Upgrades take minutes at first, then hours, then days. New heroes arrive over your server's first hundred days or so. Events run on a weekly rhythm, and seasons change the rules. The players who do well check in every day, keep their builders and squads busy, and spend their resources on purpose.

Your first game: start on a new server

This is not a single-player game

Pick an alliance where people log in every day, help each other's builds and turn up for events. A sleepy alliance is a slow alliance. Once you've found a good one, stay: hopping around loses your alliance points and help, and some events need 48 hours of membership. More on ranks, roles and spotting a scam alliance: Alliances.

You're not alone

This isn't a peaceful building game. You will meet hostile players and hostile alliances, and you and your alliance have to defend against them. Alliances claim land and cities, and a city your alliance owns has to be defended or someone will take it. As your server grows, servers start fighting each other too. A good alliance and a well-built main squad are your protection. How conflict grows with your server.

Your path through it

• Tutorial (Sanctuary 1–8): Your first hours behind the walls. Follow the quests, learn the buildings and claim every free reward.
• Early Game (Sanctuary 9–20): Finding your feet: learn the world and its events, settle into an alliance, and learn to work to the clock cycles.
• Mid Game (Sanctuary 21–29): Level up and contribute to your alliance. The hard part: upgrades stretch from days to weeks.
• Late Game (Sanctuary 30+): A maxed Sanctuary. Squeeze out every point of power for alliance wars and the rankings.

Where to go next

• Free or paid: what spending changes, and how to stay strong without it.
• How the game runs: server age, seasons, the week and events.
• My sanctuary: copy your game in, and I’ll tell you what to fix and what to do next.