Lordrush Drill Camp Strategy Guide

Understanding Drill Camp (and Avoiding Mistakes!)

In the complex ecosystem of Lordrush, where resource management and hero development are the primary drivers of success, the Drill Camp stands as one of the most critical yet frequently misunderstood features. For new players, it often presents a perceived strategic crossroads, leading to "decision paralysis" regarding which heroes to level manually and which to place in the camp. For veteran players, it becomes a small prioritization puzzle as the hero roster expands with each new generation.

This guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of the Drill Camp’s mechanics, the developer intent behind its design, and a step-by-step strategy to ensure you are maximizing your Hero XP while avoiding the costly mistakes that can set an account back by weeks of progress.

1. The Developer Intent: Reducing Hero “Mistakes”

To understand how to use the Drill Camp, one must first understand why it exists. In many hero-collection strategy games, player "churn" (basically, the rate at which players stop playing) is often driven by perception of having made a mistake in investing limited resources in the wrong hero. If resources are easy to earn in the opening days of the game to allow progress, a player can feel trapped if once they later learn that hero they dumped all those limited resources into is a dud.

The developers of Lordrush implemented the Drill Camp as a tension-release mechanism. Its functional purpose is to raise the floor for experience levels across your entire roster. By allowing you to focus your Hero XP on only five "Instructor" heroes, the game automatically brings every other hero in a "Drill Slot" up to that same level. This ensures that you don’t have a hero that gets left behind when you find out too late that they are necessary. Also as you unlock new, powerful heroes in later generations, they are immediately viable for content without requiring an immediate, massive injection of Hero XP.

2. Core Mechanics: Instructors vs. Drill Slots

The Drill Camp UI is divided into two distinct sections: the Instructors and the Drill Slots.

• The Instructors: These are the five heroes at the top of the interface. These are the only heroes on your entire account that you should manually level using Hero XP items. The system identifies your five highest-leveled heroes as the instructors.
• The Drill Slots: These are the slots below the instructors. Any hero placed here will instantly have their level boosted to match the lowest level among your five instructors. If you have four instructors at level 80 and one at level 60, every hero in a drill slot will be level 60.

Scaling with Your Town Center

The number of available drill slots is not static. It scales directly with your Town Center level. This creates a natural progression where your roster’s "bench depth" grows as your city matures. By the time you reach Town Center level 30, you can have a total of 20 heroes leveled for the price of five. This efficiency is the cornerstone of raising heroes in your account.

3. The Big Mistake to Avoid: XP Locking

The most significant error a new Lordrush player can make is placing an already-leveled hero into a drill slot without first resetting them.

When you manually spend Hero XP on a hero, that XP is "attached" to them. If you then place that level 40 hero into a drill slot provided by level 60 instructors, the hero will become level 60, but you do not get the original level 40 XP back. The Drill Camp benefit is applied as an incremental "boost" on top of the hero's base level. This means that unused potential Hero XP is locked to a hero that could be getting use on your instructor heroes elsewhere.

The Strategy: Before placing any hero into the Drill Camp, check them individually. If they have a base level higher than 1, you are currently "locking" Hero XP in that hero that could be better used to push your five instructors toward their level cap. You should use the reset function (free to do every 24 hours per hero) to reclaim 100% of that XP and then place the level 1 hero into the Drill Camp.

4. Selecting Your Instructors: Does It Matter?

New players often stress over which specific heroes should be the five instructors. Philosophically, the answer is: it barely matters. Because the drill slots mirror the instructor levels, any hero in the slots is statistically identical in level to the instructors.

However, there are two minor strategic considerations for instructor selection:

• Selective Leveling in the Early Game: During the first 20 to 30 days of a server, you may not have enough Hero XP to bring all five instructors to the same level. In this narrow window, you might choose to level your primary Conquest and Arena heroes (like Bane or Sebastian) five or ten levels ahead of the others. Because the Drill Camp only cares about the lowest level instructor, this allows your "carry" hero to be stronger in tactical modes while your roster remains at a stable, slightly lower floor.
• Ascension Requirements: To reach the higher level caps (level 70, 80, etc.), heroes must reach certain Star Levels. If you have a purple hero at 5 stars and an orange hero stuck at 2 stars, the purple hero makes a better instructor because their level isn't capped by their star rating.

5. Prioritizing Heroes for Drill Slots

As you progress, you will eventually have more heroes than available drill slots. This requires a prioritization strategy based on the hero's role: Growth vs. Combat.

The Case for Growth (Blue) Heroes

Blue heroes (see the hero tier list) like Ogg, Rogers, Herm, and Sylvie are primarily utilized for their Expedition Skills (gathering speed and city output).

• The Myth: "I need to keep my gatherers at a high level to gather effectively."
• The Reality: A hero's level primarily affects their Squad Capacity (how many troops they lead) and their Conquest stats. It does not affect their expedition skill level. As long as you build their Star Level, their gathering buffs will reach level 5 regardless of whether the hero is level 1 or level 80.
• The Decision: In the early game, you want them in the Drill Camp to ensure they have enough squad capacity to clear a level 8 resource node in one trip. However, once your Command Center and Research provide enough base capacity, blue heroes should be the first candidates removed from the Drill Camp to make room for combat heroes.

The Case for Combat Heroes

Combat heroes (Purple and Orange) should always take priority in drill slots. Higher levels provide:

• Conquest Stats: Essential for climbing the Conquest ladder and ranking in the Arena.
• Escort Size: In tactical modes, the number of "escort troops" following a hero is determined by their level.
• Expedition Squad Capacity: Crucial for Bear Hunt and PvP Rallies, where bringing more troops to the fight directly increases your damage or survivability.

6. Navigating the Hero XP Bottleneck

Around the time your Town Center reaches level 27 or 28, you will encounter a Hero XP Wall. You will likely find that you are accruing Hero XP much slower than you can upgrade your instructors.

Strategic Advice: Do not panic and begin purchasing Hero XP with gems, VIP points, or rare event currencies. The Hero XP bottleneck will eventually resolve on its own, leaving you with an abundance of Hero XP eventually. And by this point, you will not be getting that much more benefit per hero XP for each incremental hero level. This makes it a poor value pack purchase.

Instead, through consistent participation in Conquest, Intel Missions, and Beast Hunting, you will eventually accumulate the ~118 million Hero XP required to max out five instructors at level 80. Buying XP is a waste of resources that should be spent on other higher-value items like Widgets, Governor Charms, or Hero Gear materials.

7. Late-Game Roster Management (Generation 3 onward)

The arrival of Generation 3 heroes (around day 100) is when players should first start to expect running out of Drill Camp slots for more heroes. You can then use excess Hero XP on new heroes outside of the drill camp, but eventually, your roster may become so large that even that might not be sufficient.

Follow this removal priority when you need to free up a slot for a new hero you don’t have the Hero XP to level:

• Remove All Blue Heroes: As discussed, their gathering buffs are level-independent.
• The “Joiner-only” heroes: In Lordrush, a hero's Priority Expedition Skill (the first skill slot) is what they contribute when joining an alliance rally. Crucially, a Level 1 hero provides the same Level 5 skill bonus as a Level 80 hero. If you are joining e.g. a Castle Battle rally and your only job is to provide a lethality or health buff from your joiner hero, you can pull that hero out of the Drill Camp. You will send fewer troops due to the slightly lower march size, but this may not matter since the alliance still gets your 25% buff.
• Evaluate Use Case: If you haven't invested enough Orange Shards into a new generation hero to make them "viable" (usually 4 stars), keep them at Level 1 and out of the camp until they are ready to replace an older hero in your main marches.
• The Thora Exception: By the mid-to-late game, your primary troops and tech will be so strong that you will "overpower" the PvE content (Beasts and Terrors) that Thora is used for. She is a prime candidate to be pulled from the camp to make room for other heroes that need the combat advantage.

Conclusion: Running Your Own Race

The Drill Camp is a powerful tool designed to simplify your Lordrush journey. By focusing your experience on five instructors, being diligent about reclaiming excess XP from heroes, and strategically cycling out growth heroes as your roster matures, you can maintain a versatile, combat-ready army.

Remember: the goal isn't to have every hero at max level; the goal is to have the right heroes at max level.