All for One! One for All!

It was the last call of the day. I was the senior EMT in a crew of 3: Me, a guy who had been on the job about 2 months, and Jessica, a new hire on her very first day. I already knew Jessica from guest-teaching her EMT-B class a couple of months before.

We heard the call go out, first on the fire band radio, then oun our own dispatch radio. An ALS unit was sent "for the man down, not responsive and barely breathing." A moment later we were sent to back them up.

The address was an apartment, one in a squat brick building of 8, exactly like many other buildings of 8 along a long strip of Kedzie Avenue. It was easy to find: Fire trucks, police, and the other ambulance had all got there before us and were filling the parking lot. A cop in a tan uniform waved us in the open door. "Second floor to the left!" Neighbors gawked from open doorways. Everyone was wearing identical yellow surgical masks.

Into the drab, dim apartment; down the narrow hallway I could see him. A tallish black man, with a belly so bloated he looked pregnant. He was lying mostly in a tiny kitchen with brown appliances, his head sticking out into the hall. One paramedic was attempting to perform compressions and use the bag valve mask, while crouch-stooping in a very awkward position. The other was preparing to start the IV.

I dropped to my knees by the patient's head. I took the bag valve mask and fitted it over the patient's mouth and nose. At the same time, Jessica took her place beside the patient and began doing compressions. I counted softly for myself and for her, "One, two, three, ...28, 29, 30. Hold up let me breathe." I squeeze the bag mask twice, watching for the chest rise. Okay, go. One, two, three ... We continue this way until her compressions start to get sloppy and my hand holding the mask cramps up. "We got to change, " I tell her. "After the next round of compressions, we'll switch." We scramble around each other until I'm at the chest and she's holding the BVM. As I'm doing compressions I'm also watching how she holds the mask. "Dig your fingers into his jaw," I tell her. "Really pull his jaw up into the mask."

The activity continues around us. Someone starts an IV, someone places a king tube in his throat. In the background, someone is praying. Jessica and I are in our own bubble. Compressions, breaths, counting, switch. All the while, I am talking to her. Down the stairs, out the door, into the ambulance, on the road. Compressions, breaths, counting, switch. For one moment, a tiny second, I step outside myself. Half a thought pops into my head, and the thought is about Wally, the paramedic who trained me, working alongside his own students. And then, another half of thought, well hell, loot at me, I'm still teaching. The process was so natural and effortless, I hadn't even realized I'd been doing it.

The hospital staff took over when we arrived. We watched through the glass door while they continued to work him, then finally gave up and called the time of death.

I went outside and paced up and down the sidewalk for a while, breathing and thinking. I thought of medics I had worked with, who talked calmly through an emergency, sharing their practical wisdom even as their hands were flying through the motions of saving a life. I would reply those moments in my head after the call, trying to remember everything I had heard. I always admired those paramedics. I admired both the ability to teach on the fly that way, and their willingness to share their knowledge with me.

I had become that which I admire.

How to use the Smokescreen Bomb

The Smokescreen Bomb is a cost-effective way to protect your resources if you are trying to save up resources for a building project. It is a little tricky to use, however. It has worked well for me, once I caught on, so here are the details.

1. What is Smokescreen Bomb?

The game says:
"Following a defense failure, a 2 hour Peace Shield will open automatically to protect against subsequent attacks. The Shield will not open if you are engaged in attacking behavior."

So, once you get hit, the shield will open instantly. Hopefully the attacker will have moved on before it expires, or you will have come on line and put up a real peace shield.

Bear in mind, you will still take the first hit. This means your troops are unprotected, and you will still lose some resources. The bug advantage of this is, if you have a big pile of resources, you will not lose most of it.

Once you deploy a Smokescreen Bomb, it will stay set for 72 hours. It contains one peace shield. Even if the peace shield is never used, the bomb expires after 72 hours. Once the peace shield is opened, the Smokescreen Bomb is spent and will not work again. As far as I know, there is no way to add a new peace shield to the bomb.

One useful feature of a smokescreen bomb is, you can turn it off if you want to, then turn it back on. This is really handy if you want to use one on your farm. You can remove the Smokescreen Bomb to hit your farm, then put it back up when you are done.

2. Where do I get a Smokescreen Bomb?

Smokescreen Bomb is available in the Wonder Store. To find the Wonder Store, tap on your lord portrait, upper left corner of your screen. you will see 2 chalices below your picture.Tap the left chalice, the GO TO STORE. Scroll down on the left. Smokescreen bomb is at the bottom of the right column. It costs 800 gold.

3. How do I set up the Smokescreen Bomb?

Once you have bought the bomb, you have to deploy it. Go back to the Lord Profile. You will now see a red dot next to that chalice. That indicates something new. Tap the chalice to display all the wonders you have purchased. Then choose the Smokescreen Bomb and choose EQUIP. Your bomb is not in place.

4. How do I know if my Smokescreen Bomb is still active?

When you check your lord profile, you will see a picture of the Smokescreen Bomb where the chalice used to be. There is a countdown clock telling you how long you have left.

Tap on the picture of the bomb to see if you still have a peace shield left.

5. What mistakes do people make using the smokescreen bomb?

These are all the mistakes I made:
--I bought it but forgot to equip it
--I didn't realize it only had one shield
--I tried to use it during a time when we were getting hit constantly, so it didn't last very long (and was a waste of gold)
--Scouts still see a huge pile of resources, so people will still try to hit it.

Why Donate? How to donate?

Alliance donations are an amazing thing for both you and the alliance. There are many good reasons to donate. These are the best ones:

Donating to the alliance helps us earn new abilities that benefit everyone in the alliance.
When you donate to the alliance, you earn Alliance honor. This is basically Alliance currency that you can spend in the alliance store for things like teleports and speed-ups.
Every Sunday, the game gives prizes for donation. If you donate regularly, by the end of the week you will have donated enough to get resources back. The top three donors get even more.
Your donation history will determine your place in the Castle Push order.

Donation Requirements:

The AfO/OfA family has minimum donation requirements. They are not hard to meet. The requirement is 5000 donation points per day for castles of less than 1 million power, and 7000 points a day for castles of 1 million or more. If you max out your donations once per day, that will keep you current.

I will check the donations standings every week on Sunday.

How to Donate:

In order to donate to the alliance, tap the alliance tab on the bottom of your screen, then tap donate. Look for the donation topic with the gold star. That's the one we're focusing on. Tap the appropriate buttons to donate.

You'll notice some numbers above the donation button. The one on the left tells how many donation points you will receive. The one on the right tells how much Alliance honor you will get from each donation.

You're only allowed to donate so much at a time. Watch the red timer. When it passes 4 hours, you'll be locked out of donating until the timer runs out. The way to get around this is to stop donating when the timer says 3:45 or so. Then you can come back and continue to donate small amounts throughout the day. This will help you get more Alliance honor.

How to know how much you have donated:

To see your place in the donation history, tap the Alliance tab. Then go to the top where it says manage and tap that. Then tap on donations. You will see the daily, weekly, and forever history of donations.

To see if you are current with your donations, go to the weekly tab and look at the first number after your name. That is how many points you have for the week. Multiply your daily requirement by the number of days that have passed in the week. The week starts at midnight Monday GMT, which is Sunday night in the United States/Canada. For example, if today is Wednesday and your requirement is 7K daily, multiply 7K x 3 days = 21,000 points. That is what you should have.

Castle Push is determined by your lifetime donation history.

What if I don't feel like donating? What if I have a big building project/troops in the hospital/selfishness personality disorder?

Short answer: too bad. We all get wounded troops. We all like to build stuff. We can't make exceptions for things like that. The requirement we have set is not hard to reach. Donations benefit everyone and you must participate. No exceptions.

Rank and Promotion Structure

By Dirk Perfect

This is how the rank structure in All for One/One for All works:

R4: Members who show a good understanding of the game, are online every day, keep up with donations, help other members and help out with running the alliance frequently

R3: Members who are doing well, are current with donations, and are above the current power level cut-off point. As of this writing, the level is 2 million power, but that will be adjusted as we all grow stronger.

R2: Members who are active and donating, but are not yet at the power level.

R1: Those who have recently joined, have not chosen a name, who have not been online or who are not donating.

Frequent or long-term R1s are subject to tutoring by other members (help with things like name change, donating, level up, killing event, etc.).

Failure to correct issues, continued absenteeism, failure to donate, and non-compliance with rules will result in expulsion form the alliance.

Resource Management Part 1: Getting resources

Resources truly are the life blood of this game. In this article, I will tell you about the different kinds of resources and how to get and manage them.

By now, everyone should be familiar with the difference between safe and unsafe resources. If you have any doubt as to the difference, see this article .

There are 4 aspects of resource management: Getting resources, using resources, conserving resources, and protecting resources.

Safe resources are the easiest to manage. For a list of where to find safe resources, check this article. The important thing to remember here is, once safe resources are opened, they become unsafe. You want to use every source of unsafe resources before you turn to your safe resources. Once you do resort to opening the safe resources, try to choose the most appropriate amount to open, and don't open more resources than you are going to use right away.

Now for the unsafe resources. There are many ways to get unsafe resources. Gathering and farming are most important ways to obtain resources. These are ways that can work for you all the time. There are ways to make both of these common methods more efficient and productive.

Farming is absolutely the most important way to obtain resources, because your farms will produce resources for you even when you are not on line or don't have time to manage your gathering. First of all, make sure all to have all possible farms, lumber yards, and mines in your castle, and have them all at the highest possible level. It is truly shocking how much difference you have in output, between just a couple levels of a farm or lumber yard. Multiply that by the maximum number of farms, lumberyards, and mines in a castle, (8 each for a Lv. 10 castle!) and you will have the difference between feast and famine in your estate.

In order to gather effectively, you need the maximum number of march slots and the troops to fill them. You can get additional march slots be researching in your Academy at level 6, 12, and 20. You can also get an additional slot when you activate VIP Level 8 or higher. Obviously, the more slots you have, the more resource tiles you can harvest at once. Make getting those additional march slots a high priority. Then make sure you have the troops to fill them. Artillery levels 1, 3, 5, etc. are the most efficient gatherers because they have the best load capacity.

Both gathering and farming can be enhanced in a number of ways. You can use Gathering Bonuses or Farm/Mine/Lumberyard extra labor from your inventory, but once you use an inventory item, it is gone. Instead use your Forge, Academy and Recruitment Hall. You can forge equipment and recruit or enhance guards to increase your production and gathering speed. You can also do research to increase gathering speed, production, and troop load, which is the amount your troops can carry home. In addition, your Airship can be tweaked to increase gathering speed and troop load.

Gathering in the Alliance Farm (or lumberyard or mine, whichever is active at the moment) has 2 advantages. 1) It is almost bottomless, so you can send your troops to gather and they will not come back until they are totally full. 2) Troops cannot be attacked while they are gathering there.

Now let's look at some of the more advanced ways obtain resources. Except for the donations bonus these are all unsafe resources.

Daily Tasks: By completing all the daily tasks you can get about 180k food and wood, plus a reasonable amount of iron and silver if you castle is big enough. These are all things you should be doing anyway, including several activities that produce their own safe and unsafe resources.

Donations: Besides being a daily task, donating regularly will give you a weekend donation bonus of 400k food and wood, plus iron ans silver as appropriate, every Sunday night. If you are in the top 3 donors for the alliance in the week, you will get additional prizes. First prize is 1M food and wood. You do not have to open the resources until you are ready to use them, so these are essentially safe resources. Once you open the package, however, it goes directly into your unsafe resources, so do not open the bonus until you have a project ready!

Munitions Exchange: Keep your munitions exchange at its highest level. This will give you both more free trades, plus more resources per trade. In addition, you get more resources per trade each time you trade for the same resource. So you might get 10k wood the first time, then 10.1k, then 10.2k, and so on. Even better, sometimes you can get lucky and get 2, 5, or even 10 times the amount of a normal trade.

Quests: Regular and epic quests provide resources. The resources get better as the quests get more difficult. Keep an eye on what needs to be done and you will always have a quick source of resources.

Floating face in your castle: There is a round portrait of a woman's face, that often appears over your castle or airship dock. When you click on her, she gives you some (usually terrible) advice. Click again on the down arrow at the bottom of the advice, and a few thousand resources will appear.

Plunder: When all else fails, go steal resources form somebody else! Before you go, make sure to tweak your airship to include Cloud Storage, which increases troop load.

Talent: When you level up your lord, you get talent points to assign to different skills. By assigning points to the Economy talents, you can earn the Instant Yield talent. Every 12 hours, you can activate this talent to give you an instant harvest equal to 5 hours worth of your harvest inside your castle. There is also an Instant Gather talent, which is harder to earn, that will cause all troops to return from gathering with a full load.

Those are all the ways I know to make the most of your resources, If I have missed anything let me know and I will add it to this list.

Next I will tell about how to conserve resources as you are using them, and how to protect your resources from your troops and the enemy.

Teleport Magic

Type	What it does	Where to Get	Cost	Comments
Beginner	Move to new kingdom Move within kingdom	Players are issued 2 Beginner teleports early in game	Free	Can be consumed when using Alliance teleport
Random	Move to random location within kingdom	Store Merchant Stall Alliance Store	500 Gold 300-495 Gold 50K honor
Alliance	Moves you close to alliance leader, no matter where she is on the map	Alliance sends it to you when you join	It’s complicated	******* WILL CONSUME Beginner or Advanced teleport --OR-- Cost 2k gold
Fortress	Moves you close to Alliance Fortress, usually within the alliance territory	Alliance Store	150K honor
Advanced	Moves you to a precise location in the kingdom	Pay when you use it Merchant Stall Alliance Store	2K gold 1200-1950 gold 200K honor

The Complete Guide to Getting Attacked (or Not)

Being attacked is probably the most unpleasant fact of life in a war game. Nobody enjoys signing in for a nice afternoon of beast hunting, to find their castle on fire and all their troops hospitalized. Even worse is watching helplessly as you or your friends get attacked. Here is what you need to know to keep yourself (relatively) safe.

Part I: The Basics of Being Attacked

There are 3 things that can be lost or damaged if you are attacked.

Your castle walls can be damaged
Your resources (food, wood, iron, and silver) can be plundered
Your troops can be injured or die

There are many reasons you might be attacked, but outside of killing events, resource raids are by far the most common reason. Castles bigger than Lv 15 are hard to maintain just by making and gathering their own resources, and it is far easier to steal someone else's stuff than to get your own.

Other reasons you might be attacked are, someone is trying to score kills off you for a killing event, someone has a personal vendetta against you, someone in your alliance harassed another alliance, or the attacker is just a jerk out for random kills and laughs.

When you are attacked, your attacker will take as many of your resources as his troops can carry. Your troops will go into your hospital, as much as the hospitals can hold. Any troops that cannot fit in the hospital will die. Your walls will also be damaged.

Part II: How to avoid being a target

A. Resources:

The best way to avoid being a target is not to leave resources out where they can be plundered. You wouldn't leave your purse or phone on the seat of your unlocked car, would you? Then why would you leave resources around for someone to steal?

I plan to write another piece about resource management, but for now it is just vitally important for you to understand the difference between safe and unsafe resources. If you are not sure, there is a brief explanation here.

Your warehouse can protect a certain amount of resources. To find out how much, tap on the warehouse, then on info. It will tell you an number, plus another number. The first number is the base amount of resources that level of warehouse can protect. The second number is whatever bonuses you might have earned by research, etc. The total of the 2 numbers is the amount that is safe from plunder. For Example, if I have 250,000 + 7000, then I can keep 257,000 of that resource safe from plunder. All the resources in your "Items" are also safe.

The best way to avoid being attacked for resources is to avoid leaving resources lying around.

I cannot say this enough. When you realize your resources are starting to stack up, use them as soon as possible. If you go gathering or plunder somebody, use the resources as soon as your troops get back. If you are saving for a big project, save "safe" resources and don't break them out until you are ready to use them.

Food and wood left lying around attract rats and roaches....and enemy soldiers!

B. Troops:
The other big loss you can suffer from an attack is your troops. If your troops get hit while inside your castle, they will go to the hospital until the hospitals are full, then they will die outright.
Your troops can be hit while they are out gathering, but this is less likely. However, troops hit outside the castle will die outright, while those hit inside the castle will go to the hospital

You can also divide your troops up between gathering plots and/or your castle so you don't have them all in one place. The easy way to divide your troops is to tap "Equalize" when you are sending them out to gather. That will divide your troops evenly between the number of march slots you have, and then you can send them to various places. You can also manually adjust the number of troops you send anywhere. If you have only one march slot, you might choose to leave some of them in the castle while others go out gathering. Don't send them too close together. The farther apart they are, the less likely all of them will get killed at once.

The one thing I do not recommend doing is letting your troops camp out somewhere. They are simply an easy target.

Troops are safe as long as they are marching. You can keep them occupied for a while by sending them across the map to hunt a beast or a red guard. They march even slower if you make them cross the dense forest in the middle of the map.

C. Traps:
The more traps you have around your castle, the less appealing you will be as a target. Keep your trap factory upgraded. There are 3 kinds of traps, for Distance troops, Cavalry, and Infantry. Make sure to have even numbers of all 3 kinds, so you can be prepared for anything. Try to have as many traps as possible.

Traps only set off when troops are also in the castle.

Part III: Prepare for the inevitable attack

A. Build Hospitals It is easier to heal wounded troops than to train now ones, so you want to keep you hospitals in tune with your number of troops.

To find the total number of troops you have, go to your drill grounds, where all the troops hang out when they are in the castle. In the first line under where it says "INFO" you will see "Total Troops" and ###/###. The first number is the troops in your castle right now; the second number is the total number of troops you own.

To find your hospital capacity, tap on any hospital, then "Info". The sum of the 2 numbers in the bottom line is your total capacity. You want that number to be slightly higher than your number of troops.

B. Upgrade your embassy . Your embassy determines the number of reinforcements you can accept. Keep it as high as it can be.

C. Practice. Run through everything in the next part a few times before you get hit, so you already know what to do. You do not want to be trying to read this very lengthy article while you are being besieged!

D. Have a plan. Consider ahead of time which options will work best for you.

E. Line App. You can communicate with people when they (or you) are not on the game. You can tell them, or they can tell you, when an attack is imminent.

F. Food. Keep spare food in your inventory, enough to heal your troops without having to wait for gatherers. It will take more food than you think, so be sure to keep more than you think you need.

Part IV: What to do when you are under attack

Option A: Shield

Go ahead and open a peace shield. A 2 hour one will usually do. Most attackers will now wait around until your shield expires; they will just move on. This is an expensive option, however, and really is only worth whole if you have a big pile of resources you can't use for some reason.

Option B: Random Teleport

You can use a random teleport if you have been scouted, but not while you are under attack. While it will confound your enemy, you will be stuck with the problem of how to get home.

Option C: Nothing to Lose

This is by far my favorite option. Once I have been scouted, I do whatever I can to use up whatever excess resources I have. I particularly like to build more traps with them!

Of course, I get my troops out, too. Here are some ways to keep them safe:

Send them to reinforce a neighbor
Send them out to gather or hunt a far-away beast
Randomly send them out camping (my least favorite option)
If I don't want the enemy to see where they have gone, I start a rally. My troops will "disappear" from the castle, but nothing will be visible to the enemy. (Remember, if you have more troops than fit on one march slot, you need to start more than one rally!)

I particularly like this option because I can just imagine the enemy's frustration when they find that whatever they thought to take from me, has been taken from them instead!

Remember, if you have no troops and no plunder-able resources in your castle, you have NOTHING TO LOSE!!! The enemy cannot hurt you.

Part V: When you see someone else getting attacked

I made up a CRAP acronym to help you remember this part. (I am an EMT. We loooove acronyms!)

Communicate. Raise the alarm. Tell the alliance a fellow musketeer is under attack!
Reinforce. Tap on the victim's castle. Tap "reinforce." Send troops.
Act fast. That why we practice.
Persist in communicating. Get on Line app. Text or call anyone whose number you have. Let everyone know. You would want them to do it for you, right?

Part VI: After attack

A. Walls: This is the easy part. You will see a little rectangle on the wall to the left of the draw bridge. Tap on it. It is your choice to spend the 50 gold to put out the flames, or you can just wait for them to stop burning. Then tap Repair. you will have to do that every 30 minutes until the defense is repaired. It doesn't use resources, however, so its a minor issue.

B. Troops in hospital: Troops in the hospital will need food to get them healthy again. You should have kept aside some food in case of emergency. Heal as many as you can, then send them out to gather food for the next bunch.

C. After-Action Review: This is the most important part!!! Discuss the attack with the alliance. Share your battle reports. Consider wheat you might have done differently or will do in the future. Consider this a learning experience and move on.

I hope this has taken some of the fear and uncertainty out of enemy attacks. Just remember, this is a game. We are here to get better at the game and have fun with it, NOT to get stressed out by it.

Free Gold!!!! (Without breaking any rules)

Everybody wants gold, and as much as possible, right? This is how to get more gold, every day, without spending a lot of real cash to do it.

The BEST way to get more gold is to use the bank. The bank is that building on your screen that has the big gold coin bouncing above it.

Do whatever you can to get 800 gold. Try any and ALL of these things:

Collect daily chests from alliance
Complete epic quests (on the left-hand edge of your screen)
Complete achievements (tap your portrait in the upper left corner of the screen, then tap the military medal in the lower right corner)
Get gold from the Doctor
Level up your lord or airship

Once you have 800 gold, drop the $0.99 and get one small pack of gold. I normally never tell anybody the have to buy stuff for this game with real money, but yes, you MUST do this.

Buying any gold pack for any amount activates your bank. You now have 1000 gold.

Deposit that 1000 gold in the DAILY SCHEME. It will earn 7% interest after 24 hours. Withdraw and re-deposit everything your interest along with the original 1000 gold until you have `1500 gold.

Now you can keep re-depositing that 1500 gold every day and it will give you an income of 106 gold a day. See? FREE GOLD!!!!!

What is Castle Push ?

Castle push is when the whole Alliance works together to help one member build a castle.

This is a proven way to help the whole Alliance grow stronger faster. It's especially helpful when the castles start getting bigger and needing more resources to upgrade.

In order to be eligible for Castle push, you have to be at least an R2 and have a trade station. Cancel push order will be determined by lifetime donation rankings. If you move up in the rankings, you will also move up in the order.

When the program starts, the eligible player with the highest donation ranking will be the first one to be pushed. That person will tell how many resources they need to push their Castle to the next level. Then all members will donate what they can until that person has enough to upgrade their Castle. The push will then move to the next eligible member, and so on.

Sometimes, someone will leave the alliance for some reason or other. If you rejoin the alliance, you will go to the bottom of the lifetime donation rankings. If you leave the alliance to go hunting on your own, or because you need to attack your farm Castle, take a screenshot of your alliance ranking before you leave. Keep track of where you would be in the rankings if you had not left and let the administrator know when your turn is getting close. If you leave to join another Alliance, and then come back, I'm afraid you'll have to stay at the bottom of the rankings and work back up.

What time is it? (In the game clock)

Edited to add: The game developers recently added a game clock. It is in the game settings.

The game uses UTC, which stands for Universal Coordinated Time. This is an international time standard. For practical purposes, it is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or Military Zulu Time.

Every time zone in the world can be identified as GMT plus or minus a number of hours, depending on whether the time zone is East or West of Greenwich, England.

For example, the Central US time zone is 6 hours behind GMT. When it is midnight in Chicago, it is 6 am in GMT. Therefore, Chicago's GMT time is GMT-6.

The game resets at midnight GMT. The easy way to know when events are going to happen in the game, find out when the game resets in your time zone. That will be the start of the new game day. Most people speak in terms of something happening so many hours before or after reset.

If you get stuck, go to the daily tasks and look at the countdown clock. It will tell you how long until the game resets.

Here is a converter to help you.