Part of the State Warfare Series:

Beginner Strategy Hub: Related reading.

State vs. State (SvS) Battle Guide: Related reading.

Alliance Strategy: Dominant Coordination: Related reading.

War Preparation is a 48-hour solo points event where you convert two specific consumable items — Training Speedups and Hero Gear Essence Stones — into points for milestone rewards and a top-100 leaderboard. It is mechanically a stockpiling test wrapped around a 48-hour spending window: the players who score highest are the ones who arrive with inventory, not the ones who farm during the event itself.

The event is widely treated as part of a broader pre-PvP preparation cycle on Generation 2 servers, but the event itself is a personal scoring race rather than a server-wide combat event. Don't confuse the framing with the mechanics.

Quick Reference

Field	Value
Duration	48 hours, fixed window
Format	Solo points event — personal milestones + top-100 ranking
Point sources	Hero Gear Essence Stones (800 pts each) and Training Speedups (1 pt/min, Training/Promotion only)
Milestone tiers	100 / 2,000 / 7,500 / 16,000 points
Honor Ranking floor	4,000 points to qualify
Headline milestone reward	4,000 Gems at 16,000 points
Rank 1 reward	50,000 Gems + 3 keys + speedup bundles
Server eligibility	Generation 2 only (reported)

Availability

War Preparation is reported to appear only on Generation 2 servers and to stop appearing once a server advances to Generation 3. This gating is consistent across community references but is not stated in official patch notes or in-game help text, so treat the Gen 3 cutoff as indicative rather than guaranteed. No confirmed Furnace level or server-age threshold exists beyond the generation gate.

The event recurs on Gen 2 servers rather than appearing once. Treat it as a known scheduled item to plan around, not a one-shot.

Core Scoring Mechanics

There are exactly two ways to gain points during the event:

Action	Points
Use 1 Hero Gear Essence Stone	800
Use 1 minute of Training Speedup (Training or Promotion only)	1

Several specifics are easy to misread, and each one wastes inventory if you get it wrong:

[!WARNING] Training Speedups only count when applied to Training or Promotion. Construction, Research, and General Speedup consumption produces no points. The in-game label is specifically "Training Speedup (Training, Promotion)."

It is the consumption of the speedup that scores, not the training itself. Training new troops or promoting existing ones does not, by itself, generate War Preparation points. The trigger is the act of spending speedup minutes against an active Training or Promotion queue. Completing training cycles using natural game time produces zero points, no matter how many troops you train.

Hero Gear Essence Stones are the dominant point source per item. At 800 points per stone, each stone is equivalent to over 13 hours of Training Speedup in point value. Inventory of stones is therefore the strongest single predictor of where you will land on the leaderboard.

Milestone Rewards

Personal milestones unlock at fixed point thresholds:

Threshold	Headline Rewards
100	Meat and Wood resource bundles
2,000	Larger resource bundles across Meat, Wood, Coal, and Iron
7,500	Resource bundles plus speedup items
16,000	4,000 Gems plus two milestone items (5 of each)

The 16,000-point tier is the headline milestone for most players because of the 4,000 Gems payout. The two items awarded alongside the gems are confirmed in quantity (5 of each) but their specific identity is not reliably documented — community discussion typically describes them as high-rarity hero manuals, though this should be treated as an unverified claim.

Resource milestones (Meat/Wood/Coal/Iron at 100 / 2,000 / 7,500) are useful but are not the reason most players push the event. The economic case for participation rests on the gems and on ranking rewards.

[!TIP] Twenty Hero Gear Essence Stones alone clear the 16,000-point milestone outright (20 × 800 = 16,000). If your inventory holds enough stones, you can reserve all Training Speedups for either a ranking push or non-event activity.

Honor Ranking

The top 100 players who exceed 4,000 points qualify for ranking rewards in addition to milestone payouts.

Rank	Gems	Keys	Notes
1	50,000	3	Plus bundles of 1-hour speedups across three categories
2–3	Scaled down	2 / 1	Reduced gem and speedup quantities
4–10	Progressively smaller	—	—
11–50	Progressively smaller	—	—
51–100	1,000	—	Floor of ranking rewards

The specific speedup categories distributed in ranking rewards (Training, Construction, Research, or General) are not individually labelled in available references, so the downstream value of these bundles depends on which categories you receive. Plan around the gems and treat the speedups as a variable bonus.

[!NOTE] 4,000 points is the qualification floor. Falling below it disqualifies you from ranking rewards regardless of leaderboard position. On competitive servers, the bottom of the top 100 typically scores well above this floor — sometimes multiples of the 16,000 milestone.

Should You Push This Event?

Not every player should burn inventory chasing 16,000 points. Use the following framework before the event opens:

Skip-the-Push Tier — Minimal Participation

If your stockpile is shallow (fewer than ~5 stones and under 50 hours of Training Speedups), spending heavily for War Preparation is rarely worth it. Hit the early milestones with whatever incidental usage occurs naturally, but don't accelerate consumption. The opportunity cost of stones used for forging and speedups used for major construction or research often exceeds the value of partial milestone rewards.

Milestone Tier — Target 16,000

If you can reach 16,000 points without depleting your inventory below operational levels, this is the standard target. The 4,000 Gems alone justify the spend for most accounts, and you'll incidentally clear all lower milestones along the way. This is the right tier for most active players.

Ranking Tier — Top 100 Push

Only worthwhile if (a) you have inventory well above the 16,000 requirement, (b) your server's leaderboard activity is documented enough that you have a realistic target rank, and (c) the marginal gem and speedup payoff justifies the additional spend.

[!IMPORTANT] The deciding question for most players is whether they can clear 16,000 points without spending into their forging or training reserves. If yes, push. If no, take the milestones you can reach incidentally.

Inventory and Target Reference

Target	Speedup Minutes	Or Stones (with leftover)	Mixed Example
100 pts	100 (1h 40m)	1 stone (700 pts spare)	—
2,000 pts	2,000 (33h 20m)	3 stones (400 pts spare)	2 stones + 400 min
4,000 pts (ranking floor)	4,000 (66h 40m)	5 stones	4 stones + 800 min
7,500 pts	7,500 (125h)	10 stones (500 pts spare)	8 stones + 1,100 min
16,000 pts	16,000 (266h 40m)	20 stones	15 stones + 4,000 min

Preparation Strategy

Because point sources are narrow and item-driven, this is essentially a stockpiling test. Players who enter with a deep inventory of Hero Gear Essence Stones and Training Speedups score far more efficiently than those who try to farm scoring items live.

Stockpile Before the Event Window Opens

This is the single most important habit. Avoid consuming Hero Gear Essence Stones and Training Speedups in the days leading up to War Preparation. Once you can identify the event on your server's calendar, treat that date as a hard freeze on those two item types.

Watch Alliance Mobilization Timing

[!CAUTION] Be especially cautious during the preceding Alliance Mobilization event. Alliance Mobilization frequently rewards the same item categories War Preparation cares about — particularly speedup consumption. Spending those items for mobilisation points immediately before War Preparation is the most common way to arrive empty-handed. Many players prioritise War Preparation by treating Alliance Mobilization as a lower-priority window for these two item types specifically, even at the cost of fewer mobilisation points.

Plan Stone Usage Around 16,000

Twenty stones alone clear the 16,000-point milestone outright. If your inventory holds enough stones to clear the headline milestone via Essence Stones, you can reserve speedups for either a ranking push or non-event activity.

Time the Activity, Not Just the Spend

Speedups only score when applied to a running Training or Promotion queue. Confirm you have queues active and Training capacity available before burning speedups, or the consumable disappears without scoring.

Tactical Execution During the Event

The 48-hour window is long enough that pacing matters.

Don't Spend Everything in the First Hour

The leaderboard becomes informative after the first 12–24 hours. Spending early commits you to a target before you know what the field looks like; holding inventory in reserve preserves the option to upgrade or downgrade your goal mid-event.

Confirm Queue State Before Consuming Speedups

Speedup consumption is point-generating only when applied against an active Training or Promotion queue. Common queue interruptions — completion of a batch, alliance helps shortening a queue to zero, capacity caps — silently reset the situation. Verify a queue is running and has time remaining before you spend.

Use Stones in Clusters, Not Drips

Stones produce a clean 800 points per use with no queue dependency. They're best used to clear milestone thresholds in deliberate steps — for example, bridging from 7,500 to 16,000 with stones rather than speedups — so you can confirm milestone payouts trigger as expected.

Save High-Value Speedup Blocks for Queue-Rich Moments

If you have a long Training queue running (e.g., a capacity-maximising tier upgrade batch), that's the optimal moment to feed in long-duration speedups. Avoid spending speedups when your queue has only a few minutes of work remaining — the speedup will overshoot, and the excess minutes won't score.

Watch the Leaderboard in the Final 6–12 Hours

Most ranking shifts happen as competing players make their final spend decisions. If you're in or near the top 100, this window is when you'll need to react.

[!TIP] A practical pattern: spend stones early to lock in milestones (since they have no queue dependency), then use speedups throughout the event against active queues. This separates the guaranteed-scoring items from the queue-dependent ones and reduces the risk of wasted inventory.

Cross-Event Resource Planning

War Preparation does not exist in isolation. Several other recurring events also consume Training Speedups and, less often, Hero Gear Essence Stones.

Identify the Full Sequence

Alliance Mobilization is the most commonly conflicted event, but training-themed events, server-wide training sprints, and milestone-style daily events can all create competing pulls on the same inventory. Map the cycle once for your server, and you can budget inventory across the full sequence rather than reactively.

Stones Are Scarcer Than Speedups

Speedups arrive through dozens of channels; Hero Gear Essence Stones come from a smaller set of sources and serve other progression goals — notably hero gear advancement. Spending stones for War Preparation has a real opportunity cost against gear progression, and that cost is higher than the equivalent speedup spend.

The implication: in mixed-strategy clears, lean toward speedups for the lower milestones (where minute totals are achievable) and reserve stones for the final bridge to 16,000 if speedup inventory runs short.

Don't Over-Train Just to Spend Speedups

If your training queues are filled by capacity, you're scoring against work you'd be doing anyway — the ideal case. If you're queueing low-tier troops you don't need just to absorb speedups, you're double-spending: real resources on troops you didn't want, plus the speedup inventory on top.

After the Event

A few considerations for handling post-event rewards and recovery:

Treat ranking-reward speedups as inventory for the next cycle. Because War Preparation recurs on Gen 2 servers, the speedups won as ranking rewards are best held for the next iteration unless you have an immediate higher-priority use.
Reinvest gems against your stone scarcity. If you spent heavily on stones, gem rewards can sometimes refill that line through stone-bearing packs or shop offers. Recognise stones as a recovery priority post-event rather than letting gems flow into general spending.
Re-baseline your stockpile freeze policy. If you depleted inventory more than expected, raise your freeze trigger date for the next cycle (start the freeze earlier). If you ended with significant unused inventory, you over-stockpiled and can free up resource use in the inter-event window.

Common Mistakes

Spending speedups on non-Training activities during the event. Construction, Research, and General Speedup consumption produces no points. If your speedup inventory is mixed, separate Training Speedups before the event begins.
Assuming raw training activity scores points. Completing a training cycle without applying speedup minutes against it does not contribute to your score. The scoring trigger is speedup consumption tied to a Training or Promotion queue.
Burning items in Alliance Mobilization right before War Preparation. The two events frequently appear close together on Generation 2 servers, and the overlapping reward incentives are the most common avoidable mistake.
Aiming only at the 4,000-point ranking floor. Reaching 4,000 qualifies you for ranking rewards, but on competitive servers the bottom of the top 100 typically scores well above the floor. Plan your point budget against historical leaderboard data for your own server rather than the minimum.
Spending speedups against a near-empty queue. A 1-hour speedup applied to a queue with 10 minutes remaining wastes 50 minutes of point-generating consumption. Always check remaining queue time before applying long-duration speedups.
Treating the event as a manual training event. It is not. The event rewards inventory burn on training queues, not training output. A player who trains zero net new troops but consumes inventory against running queues outscores a player who trains thousands of troops at natural speed.

Open Questions

Several aspects of the event remain unconfirmed in primary sources. Decisions affected by them should be made cautiously:

Gen 3 cutoff timing. Whether the event disappears immediately upon Gen 3 transition or persists through a final cycle is not documented.
Specific identity of the two milestone items at 16,000 points. The quantity (5 of each) is confirmed; the item type is not legible in available references.
Specific speedup categories in ranking rewards. Three categories are distributed, but which ones (Training/Construction/Research/General) is not labelled.
Exact ranking distribution between bands. Rank 1 (50,000 Gems, 3 keys), ranks 2–3 scaling, and the 51–100 floor (1,000 Gems) are documented; precise quantities for rank bands 4–10 and 11–50 are not exhaustively recorded.
Whether any non-speedup training or promotion action ever scores points. The in-game UI describes the trigger as speedup minute consumption only; community guides occasionally claim direct training awards points, but this conflates the two.

For aggressive optimisation, treat any specific value attached to these unconfirmed elements with scepticism.

FAQ

What scores points in War Preparation? Only two things: consuming Hero Gear Essence Stones (800 points each) and consuming Training Speedups against active Training or Promotion queues (1 point per minute).

Do Construction or Research Speedups count? No. Only Training Speedups applied to Training or Promotion queues generate points.

Does training troops without speedups score anything? No. The scoring trigger is speedup consumption, not training completion. Natural-time training generates zero event points.

How many stones do I need for the top milestone? 20 stones × 800 points = 16,000 points. This clears the headline milestone with no speedup spend required.

What's the ranking qualification floor? 4,000 points. Players below this threshold are not eligible for ranking rewards regardless of leaderboard position.

Does War Preparation appear on Gen 1 or Gen 3 servers? Reported as Gen 2 only. The Gen 3 cutoff is consistent across community references but not officially confirmed.

Should I spend stones or speedups first? Stones have no queue dependency — they score reliably every time. Use stones to lock in milestones, then use speedups against active queues for additional scoring.

What's the biggest mistake players make? Burning Training Speedups and Hero Gear Essence Stones during Alliance Mobilization right before War Preparation opens. The two events frequently appear close together, and the overlapping incentives catch players who don't check the event calendar.

Key Takeaways

Only two items score: Hero Gear Essence Stones (800 pts) and Training Speedups (1 pt/min). Nothing else contributes. No construction, no research, no natural training.
Stones are the dominant point source. 20 stones = 16,000 points = the headline milestone. Inventory of stones is the strongest single predictor of your score.
Stockpile before the event, not during it. This is a spending test, not a farming test. Freeze stone and Training Speedup consumption when the event is on the calendar.
Don't burn inventory in Alliance Mobilization right before. The two events conflict on the same item categories. Prioritise War Preparation.
16,000 points is the standard target. The 4,000 Gems justify the push for most active players. Below that, take milestones incidentally.
Speedups only score against active queues. Verify your Training or Promotion queue is running before consuming. Wasted speedup minutes are wasted points.
Pace your spending across 48 hours. The leaderboard becomes informative after 12–24 hours. Hold inventory in reserve until you know the competitive landscape.
Stones first, speedups second. Stones score cleanly with no queue dependency. Use them to lock milestones, then deploy speedups throughout the window.

Related Handbook Guides:

Whiteout Survival War Preparation Guide [2026] — Scoring, Stockpiling & Milestone Strategy