Beginner's Guide 7 min read Updated 2026-04-25
Last Shelter: Survival — beginner's guide
A comprehensive guide for new players to get started in Last Shelter: Survival, covering essential tips, hero priorities, and milestones for the first week.
Editor's note
This guide is a work in progress and will be updated regularly as we gather more information and feedback from the community. If you have any tips, suggestions, or corrections to contribute, please reach out to us!
Day by day
Your first week
Hour 1 – 24
Day 1 — first hours
Phase 1/3
- ▸ Plan to spend 2-3 hours on your first session — Last Shelter has a lot of systems to absorb and you don't want to feel rushed or overwhelmed.
- ▸ Focus on the main questline and Chapter rewards. Complete every available story mission, as they reward valuable resources, hero medals, and speed-ups to help you progress.
- ▸ If you are a spender, the $5.99 extra building queue is a fair-value deal — it includes a solid amount of goodies and unlocks Ada, a premium hero.
- ▸ Complete all the events in the Radar Station as they become available.
- ▸ Recruit heroes whenever you have free recruitment opportunities. Don't do single pulls — wait until you have at least 10 tickets and the game will give you +1 for free.
- ▸ Upgrade your Headquarters and buildings as the questline demands. Focus on the buildings that gate your next quest objective — don't try to upgrade everything equally.
- ▸ Customize your avatar and Commander name to something you like. This is a small thing, but essential before joining an alliance.
- ▸ Resources are more limited than in other games in the genre. Be mindful when spending speed-ups and resources.
- ▸ Join an active alliance as soon as you unlock alliance features. Alliances provide resource help, protection, and the social context that makes the game stick. Look for the most powerful and active alliance based on your HQ level.
- ▸ When the questline starts gating you on a long upgrade or research timer that you can't speed through, that's a good natural stopping point for day 1.
- ▸ Before logging off, send your gatherers out on the world map and queue a long upgrade or research that will complete while you are offline.
Day 2 – 3
Early days
Phase 2/3
- ▸ Continue with the main questline. It remains the highest-yield activity through your first week and unlocks new features and content.
- ▸ If you can, log in 3-4 times a day to claim your hourly free chests, complete time-sensitive events, and manage your gatherers and queues.
- ▸ Always be researching something. Rush 'Hero Appointment' to have a second hero in your marches. After that, focus on researches that reduce construction and investigation time.
- ▸ Make sure to always be training the highest troop level available (in each troop building). It's key to reduce the idle time to the minimum.
- ▸ Visit the Hospital on every log in and heal any units available.
- ▸ Keep the electrical buildings and ration trucks filled with fuel. Otherwise, the shelter will start losing population.
- ▸ Keep completing all the events in the Radar Station.
- ▸ Don't forget doing the 'Supply Hub' stages every day. The higher you reach the more rewards you will get.
- ▸ Help your alliance with construction donations and rally requests. The free speed-ups from helping add up fast.
- ▸ Before logging off, remember to send marches to gather resources while you are offline.
Day 4 – 7
Rest of first week
Phase 3/3
- ▸ By end of week 1, you should aim to reach Headquarters level 14-15 and have at least 3-4 main heroes leveled close to your current power cap.
- ▸ Complete every 'new player' event before its timer expires (Daily Trial, Apocalypse opener, server migration window) — these events award irreplaceable resources, hero medals, and speed-ups that disappear once they're gone.
- ▸ Try to participate in your alliance's activities and events as much as possible. This will help you build relationships with your alliance members, earn rewards, and stay engaged with the game.
- ▸ Don't worry too much about optimizing your hero pairings or HQ layout at this stage. Focus on the questline, completing events, and joining alliance activities. You will have plenty of time to optimize and strategize later on, once you have a better understanding of the game mechanics and your playstyle.
Where to invest first
Hero / Commander priorities
- + Ada: Premium legendary hero, only available if you are a spender. She helps with building speed and reduced repair costs. Not a must-have but helpful early-game.
- + The Socialite: Free epic hero. Solid Grenade Specialist. She does decent damage in the early game. You can use her until you find something better.
- + Shoota Man: Free legendary hero given during the first 7 days. Machine Gun Expert. He should be in your team, especially if you are f2p. He helps quite a bit in the early game.
- + Destroya: Free legendary hero given during the first 7 days. Grenade Specialist. Same as Shoota Man — invest in him, especially if you are f2p or a light spender.
Don't do these
Rookie traps to avoid
- − Upgrading all buildings equally. Instead, focus on your Headquarters and the buildings that gate your next quest, and postpone the rest.
- − Letting your stamina cap out. Always spend stamina on monster hunts or zombie raids before logging off — wasted stamina is wasted progression.
- − Spending speed-ups randomly. Spend them strategically on alliance event score and your hero/HQ development bottlenecks.
Pick your tier, know the trade-offs
Spending guide
Light spender
$10-30 / month
- ▸ The $5.99 extra building queue is a fair deal.
- ▸ The Permanent Recruitment pack for $11.99 is a good investment, as it gives 10 Advanced Recruitment Tickets every day.
- ▸ The Arms Supply pack for $27.99 monthly is a solid option as well. It gives exclusive buildings and 500 daily diamonds.
Heavy spender
$50-200 / month
- ▸ For heavy spenders it's recommended to get the 4 extra building queues — the time saved compounds across every upgrade. Beware that each additional queue costs more than the last.
- ▸ Trade Supply packs are also interesting. They give additional resources every day for a fixed monthly fee.
- ▸ The Growth Fund is quite decent as well. Based on your HQ level, it provides different amounts of gems.
Whale
$300+ / month
- ▸ Apart from the packs mentioned above, whales can purchase diamonds directly and spend them at the Diamond Store for huge bundles of resources.
- ▸ A word of caution for whales: Last Shelter's monetization is engineered to extract — set hard monthly limits before you start, not after.
Your 7-day checklist
First-week milestones
- ✓ F2P can comfortably reach HQ level 14 by end of week 1.
- ✓ Light spenders can reach HQ level 16-17 with 4-5 well-developed heroes.
- ✓ Heavy spenders can reach HQ level 18-20 with 6-7 well-developed heroes.
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Last Shelter: Survival review