IV. Other Player / Enemies

While the Blackguard are considered to be the primary enemy in the game - they are certainly the force of evil that has been taking out the civilian population and constructing bases and outposts all over the islands. They are NOT however the ONLY enemy.

Remember earlier when we said the regular single player campaign and multi-player are rather blurry in Boom Beach? What we mean by that is that even though there is an active multi-player mode in which you can set up games to battle your best mates, there is in fact a multi-player element to the ENTIRE game, including the campaign.

This takes a simple form: Player-oriented attacks. Basically as you explore the map, upgrading your Radar Installation and then paying to scan new sectors and remove the Fog of War, you are going to encounter four types of targets.

This is the most common type of target to appear on your map - and it basically represents a small island village whose natives have been captured and enslaved by the Blackguard in order to serve as a source of resource production.

These villages have names like Rocket Rain, and Double Slugger, and tend to have tech levels below 9 for the first part of the game.

The Blackguard have set up basic defenses and enslaved the natives, who are forced to work by gathering and processing resources. When you defeat the defenses and take out the Blackguard HQ you have succeeded in liberating the natives.

The natives will be very grateful to you and celebrate their liberation by contributing a percentage of their resource and wealth to YOU on a regular basis as long as they remain free.

While these may superficially appear to be very similar to the first type of target - Captured and Occupied Native Villages - they are in fact very rare and special targets that in addition to having stored resources or other structures have an Outpost in place of an HQ and, more significantly, they contain some sort of resource-generating structure (like a Sawmill, Stone Quarry, or Iron Mine).

When you capture these and liberate the natives the entire production of whatever the resource source is here will be directed to you for as long as you can manage to hold onto the island and its facilities.

This is critical to your advancement in the game both in leveling up and building your base since it is the primary manner by which you will obtain the more advanced resources that you will need, including Stone and Iron.

These are the home bases for the Blackguard - They are identified as such based upon the name of the specific Blackguard Officer who is your present foe.

For example the initial enemy in a new game is the Blackguard Officer called Hammerman - and when you reveal his base as you search through the world removing the Fog of War, the name of the base will be revealed as "Hammerman's HQ".

You will know you have found a Blackguard Base because unusual dialogue will play upon discovery in which the Blackguard Officer boasts at you or tries to intimidate you with how much he is not afraid of your discovery if his location.

Taking this sort of base tends to be a lot harder than the battle for the previous two types, both because it tends to have a higher tech level and be better defended, and because the Blackguard Officer will direct the defenses of the base.

It will contain a mixture of defensive units, and it will offer a much higher than usual reward for its capture: for example in the game we are playing to create this guide, the Victory Rewards were 29,285 Gold and 20,700 Wood Units along with 5 Victory Points.

His base had a Tech Level of 10, and included an armored Level 1 MMG 9000 Machine Gun Nest as well as a pair of Level 4 Mortars! The base had a number of bunkers, a HQ building, and several Radar Installations. The more vulnerable side-approaches were heavily mined, but there was no naval base or naval forces present.

Taking this level of base requires well-trained and well-leveled troops and a fair bit of luck!

The last type of target you will encounter is the second largest in terms of numbers, and these are the home bases of other players who play the games - some may be your mates, but most will be perfect strangers.

Their bases will, of course, feature the sort of defensive setups that only a human player can create and deploy, which will make them far more challenging and entertaining targets!

More to the point though, these are the same players who will be seeking out and attacked YOUR base! They are the cause for your logging in to the game each day and often discovering that while you were sleeping an enemy player has attacked and sacked your base, stealing your stockpiled resources and otherwise spanking you silly!

Because these attacks usually happen when you are away from the game they can feel very mysterious - but in fact they do not have to be. You can actually replay the footage of the attack that was recorded while you slept - simply tap on the Map Icon in the bottom-right-corner of the play screen, then tap the icon with three lines on it in the top-left-corner below the level icon.

This is the Enemy Activity News Page and it causes a column with a summary of all of the enemy activity that has taken place going back many days. You can find the event during which your base was attacked and sacked, and then click on that to open the details for that event.

Among the details listed are the date and time of the raid, the amount of resources lost to the enemy player, how many troops were deployed and what types, and how many troops were destroyed.

On the right hand side of the news summary is a large green button labeled "View Battle" that you can press, and you will then see he attack unfold!

Not only do you get to see how the enemy player managed to sack your base, you get to see the tactics that they employed and, what is even more important, you get to learn how effective - or not - your own defenses are!

That means you will get the sort of valuable information you need in order to improve your base defenses. That being so we strongly recommend that you ALWAYS watch these, and always react accordingly and help make your base harder to sack next time!