Bear Hunt
Alliance rally event on the Raging Bear and the top free source of Forgehammers. Costs no stamina, no troops, no resources to participate.
Bear Hunt is the rare alliance rally event that costs nothing to attack: zero stamina, zero troop losses, zero resources. Every member with a march can participate the entire window without burning a stamina budget. That alone makes it the most F2P-friendly rally event in the game — and the most consistent free source of Forgehammers anywhere.
The bear sits at the alliance’s Pitfall building. An R4 or R5 starts the trap, and the alliance has a fixed window to deal as much damage as possible. Rallies only — solo marches do nothing. Members either host a rally or join one. Personal damage drives personal rewards; once the alliance hits its shared damage cap, the alliance reward pool unlocks for everyone.
How damage actually works
The single most-missed mechanic in Bear Hunt is how joiner heroes contribute. Two rules:
| Role | What contributes |
|---|---|
| Rally host | All three heroes, all skills, all stat buffs |
| Rally joiner | Only the first hero’s first Expedition skill — and only for a fixed top set of joiners on the rally |
That second row is the lever. A rally has many joiners, but only the strongest first-skill effects from the top contributing joiners actually propagate to everyone on the rally. The rest of the joiners contribute troop capacity and nothing else.
This is why hero choice matters more than Power when joining. Sending your highest-Power hero with a defensive or economic first skill can actively make the rally worse than sending no hero at all, because that defensive skill displaces a teammate’s lethality skill.
The bear does not counterattack. Lethality and Attack are the only stats that score. Defense and HP add nothing. Lethality starts lower than Attack and is harder to push, which makes it the more valuable stat to invest in.
Joiner heroes — the meta stack
The heroes the alliance wants you to bring as a joiner all share the same trait: a first Expedition skill that grants flat Squad Lethality.
| Tier | Heroes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| S | Chenko, Amadeus, Yeonwoo | Flat Squad Lethality on the first skill |
| A | Amane, Hilde | Flat Attack on the first skill |
| Avoid | Jabel, Gordon, Edwin, Longfei, Helga, Diana | Defensive or economic first skills displace better skills on the rally |
If your top hero is on the “avoid” list, send no hero at all rather than displace a teammate’s lethality skill. This is non-obvious and unintuitive — the instinct is always to send your strongest unit.
Troop formation
Archers carry Bear Hunt damage. The formation by generation:
| Generation | Infantry / Cavalry / Archer |
|---|---|
| 1 | Low / Mid / Archer-heavy |
| 2 | Low / Low / Archer-heavier |
| 3 | Low / Low / Archer-dominant |
| 4+ | Minimal / Low / Almost all Archer |
One floor rule: keep a meaningful Infantry count in your march even when your formation share is small. The damage formula has a low-end Infantry floor and penalizes marches that drop below it disproportionately.
A Gen-3 formation used at Gen 4 is one of the most common silent damage leaks in the event — the archer share keeps climbing as generations advance.
The Pitfall building
Pitfall enhancement is the alliance-wide damage lever, and it runs on Hunting Arrows donated by members.
Every member can earn arrows from daily Intel Missions. Skipping Intel days is the single biggest individual contribution to a weak Pitfall, and a weak Pitfall is an alliance-wide damage penalty. Arrow donation is uniform across both tracks — Pitfall progression isn’t pay-gated.
R4 and R5 are responsible for starting the Pitfall enhancement between hunts. The alliance can grind out arrows all week, but if leadership forgets to actually push the upgrade, the bonus doesn’t apply.
TL;DR
- Join every rally. Hosting is for top-stat accounts — your damage is far higher as a joiner on a strong host than as a host on your own
- Send a Chenko, Amadeus, or Yeonwoo as your joining hero whenever possible. If you have none of them, send no hero at all rather than a hero with a defensive or economic first skill
- Run your generation’s formation, but keep your Infantry count above the low-end floor — the damage formula penalizes marches that drop below it
- Do your daily Intel Missions every single day. Skipped arrows are an alliance-wide damage hit
- Teleport near the Pitfall before the event. March time is your only real bottleneck
Pre-event setup
A handful of small things move you from “joined the rally” to “joined the first wave of every rally”:
- Teleport within a short march of the Pitfall the day before. Long march times silently kill total damage
- Have your archer-heavy formation pre-built and ready to send. Rallies fill in seconds; fumbling the squad screen costs you the slot
- Don’t have troops out gathering when the event starts. Marching troops can’t join rallies
- Open the event with the right hero already in your lineup — swapping mid-rally costs you the first wave
TL;DR
- The real spender lever is rally-leader strength: hero gear, charms, Lethality research. A strong host sets the ceiling for the entire rally
- Stack Chenko, Amadeus, and Yeonwoo so your alliance can fill more rallies with optimal joiners
- Don’t fall into the “send the strongest hero” trap as a joiner — Power is the wrong metric here
Rally hosts by generation
Hosts contribute all three of their hero skills plus the full stat buffs of the lead account, so a strong host sets the damage ceiling for the whole rally.
| Generation | Strong hosts |
|---|---|
| 1 | Amadeus, Jabel, Saul |
| 2 | Amadeus, Hilde, Marlin |
| 3 | Helga (when maxed), Amadeus, Petra |
| 4+ | Amadeus, Petra, Rosa |
Rosa in particular is a “widget” hero at Gen 4+ — her skill adds a flat Lethality bonus to the rally regardless of who else is on it.
If you’re hosting rallies
This is where heavy investment pays off. The host contributes all three hero skills plus full stat buffs, so a maxed rally leader can multiply the contributions of every joiner.
- Push Lethality research aggressively. Attack scales with troop generation; Lethality requires deliberate research and gear investment
- Lethality-focused gear pieces and charms on the host account
- Cluster your city near the Pitfall before the event so your rally cycle time is short — the host can re-launch within minutes
- Pre-activate city buffs (Lethality, Attack, Enemy Defense Down, Deployment Capacity) ahead of the event open
- Use the staggered-wave pattern with the other rally leaders: don’t all open at the same instant or you split the joiner pool
The joiner roster problem
Larger rosters have a counterintuitive disadvantage: more wrong-skill heroes to accidentally send. The “send my strongest” instinct is wrong here — a high-Power Diana or Longfei as a joiner is a damage loss, not a gain.
Fill your S-tier joiner bench:
- Chenko, Amadeus, Yeonwoo — all carry flat Squad Lethality on the first skill
- Owning multiples lets your alliance fill more rallies with optimal joiners across simultaneous waves
- For specific stacks: mixing two different S-tier joiner heroes on the same rally is generally stronger than four of the same hero, because joiner-skill effects layer differently
Coordination — what alliance leadership runs
Bear Hunt is an alliance-coordination event before it’s an individual one. The pieces R4 and R5 are running:
- R4/R5 hosts cluster near the Pitfall before the event. Long march time is the only real bottleneck on damage
- Staggered rally waves instead of everyone opening at once. Simultaneous opens split the joiner pool; staggered opens keep joiners flowing into rally after rally
- Strong hosts get joiner priority. Weak hosts displace S-tier joiners from where they’d score more damage
- Final push near the end of the window: everyone opens a rally at once so no joiner slot is left empty in the closing minutes
- Pitfall maintenance between hunts. Donated arrows need to actually be applied to the Pitfall upgrade — leadership owns that step
If you’re R4 or R5 and you’ve never run Intel-Missions-into-Pitfall as a regular cycle, that single change tends to outperform any individual hero or formation tweak.
Common mistakes
- Sending the wrong joiner hero. A defensive or economic first skill displaces a teammate’s lethality skill. This is the single biggest damage leak in every alliance, on both tracks
- Using Power as the joiner-hero metric. The strongest hero you own is often the wrong joiner — Power doesn’t reflect first-skill value
- Skipping daily Intel Missions. Your arrows are the alliance’s Pitfall bonus. Skipping is a measurable alliance-wide damage hit
- R4/R5 forgetting to enhance the Pitfall. Members can grind arrows all week, but if leadership doesn’t apply the upgrade between hunts, the bonus never lands
- Solo-marching the bear. Solo marches do no damage. Rallies only
- Running last generation’s formation. Archer share keeps climbing — a Gen-3 formation at Gen 4 leaves significant damage on the table
- Dropping below the Infantry floor. The damage formula has a low-end Infantry floor; below it, marches get penalized regardless of formation percentage
- Long march time. If your city is far from the Pitfall, you participate in fewer rally cycles. Teleport before the event, every time
- Activating the Moose pet. Its damage-reduction skill targets damage the bear doesn’t deal. Irrelevant in this event
- Hosting weak. If your stats aren’t competitive, you do more damage joining a strong host than hosting your own rally