Guide to Power Stones and Statues

So What are Statues?

You can unlock Sculptor at HQ 5. With the Sculptor, you can then build statues using fragments, shards and crystals (power stones). After deploying the statues in your base, they could boost your offense, defense or resources with extra bonus. When you look at the info screen for building, defense or troops, the extra boosted bonus by the statues is displayed as a purple “+” number.

Statues play an increasingly important role in game play as you progress.

There are 4 types of statues; and they need the corresponding fragments, shards or crystals to build them
(e.g. you must use 7 Dark fragments to build a Dark Idol).

• Life - Resource production 
• Ice - Defense: Building Health, and defensive building damage 
• Magma - Offense: Troops Health and Troops damage 
• Dark - Gunboat, power stones drop chance and loot boost (Resource Reward)

And each type has 3 levels:

How many different statues are there? What is the chance of getting the best one?

For a given type of Statue (e.g. Gunboat Energy), the probability of the boost level in listed below.

However, the exact ability of the Statue for a given color of fragments, shards or crystals are assigned randomly, and there is no way to know ahead until it has finished building. For example, when you build a Masterpiece from 7 Dark Crystals, you cannot choose whether it is for Gunboat Energy, Resource Reward or Power Stone Chance. You will only find out the ability and boost percentage when the Sculptor has finished building it.

The actual number may be off by +/- 1% because of rounding errors.

I have the sculptor, but where can I find power stones?

Short answer - attack. You will randomly receive fragments, shards or crystals (power stones) as enemy bases are destroyed - they could be real player bases, NPC bases or Dr. Terror bases. Resource bases do not give power stones.

The recent updates gave us new sources of power stones - daily rewards and the submarine. The type and amount of daily rewards are given according to your Victory Points. As for the submarine, you can find better power stones at greater depth; so upgrade your submarine.


Once you have accumulated enough fragments, shards or crystals, you will see a “Create” pop up bubble over the Sculptor.

The ratio of fragments : shards drop is approx 7 : 1
The ratio of fragments : shards : crystals drop is approx 28 : 4 : 1

Dr. Terror Stages would give you Dark fragments, shards or crystals.

Most of the fragments, shards or crystals are found in Headquarters. They may appear in other buildings too, but much less frequently.

The ratio of power stones drop from Head Quarters vs Other buildings is approx 13 : 1

The Power Stone Chance Dark Statues would increase your chance to getting power stones (fragments, shards and crystals) when you destroy a base.

What is Power Powder?

When you reclaim a Masterpiece Statue, you get 7 x Power Powder.
You also get Power Powder when you upgrade your Sculptor.

Power Powder can boost your existing statues (2x) for a fixed period of time.

What would happen if I have multiple statues of the same type?

The bonus of each statue would stack if they are of the same type. For example, if you have a 12% Wood Production Life Idol and a 20% Wood Production Life Guardian, the total boost for your Wood Production would be 32%. And you can keep multiple Guardians and Idols of the same type too, so you can have 3 Troop Damage Magma Guardians and 3 Troop Damage Magma Idols at the same time if you want.

The only exception is Masterpiece. We cannot have more than one Masterpiece of the same ability. This is to prevent top players from accumulating absurd amount of boost in one area of game play. You can have two Magma Masterpiece if one is to boost troop health, and the other boosting troop damage; but you cannot have both boosting troop damage. If the Sculptor created the same kind of Masterpiece to the one you already own, you would be forced to salvage or store one of them.

Which Statues Should I Keep?

As we can only keep certain number of statues depending on our HQ and Sculptor levels, we have to make decisions as to which statue to keep and which to reclaim. Almost all the statues can benefit you, so there is no right or wrong decisions. We should all aim to get Guardian and Masterpiece; so keep the Idols until you have enough shards to make Guardian, and enough Crystals to make Masterpiece.

If you are offensive type in game play style, you would find Magma and Dark Statues very useful; OTOH, if you are the defensive type, Ice and Life Statues would give you a nice boost. Power Stone Statues would benefit every type of play style, but it won’t be make too much difference until it gets to higher boost percentage.

My advice is to upgrade your HQ and Sculptor to the max to get as many statues as possible.

How many Statues can I make and deploy?

The number of statues you can have depends on your HQ and Sculptor levels.
Once you exceed the maximum number, you have to salvage existing statues or salvage/store the one you just made.

What is the maximum number of fragments/shards/crystals/Power Powder I can have?

You can have up to 9 Millions EACH of fragments, shard, crystals or Power Powder - so in effect, unlimited! You can store and accumulate as many as you want from your raids.

My Statue has a different number than those in your table - is your table wrong?

The actual number may be off by +/- 1%. The way it works is that there is base boost % for all the statues, and each type is multiplied by the boost multiplier factor. For example, for Gunboat energy, it is 1.7x, while for troop damage, it is 1.3x. As decimals are not used, the numbers are rounded to integers, so there is potential round off error. Interestingly, the rounding off is not very consistent in the actual numbers - sometimes, Supercell seems to use round up, while in most cases it uses round down. That's why you may find some statues off by 1%.

Statue Storage

Statue storage (available from HQ13) was added in March 2016 update. It allows you to store between 1 (lvl 1) to 5 (lvl 5) statues for future use. You can only store newly made statues, once a statue is deployed, it cannot be put back into storage.

Boom Beach offensive style of play

A lot of players find themselves hitting a bit of a wall early on in terms of all the players on their map are much higher in xp and difficulty than themselves and come here for help. I thought I would write something up to help these players and linking them to this instead of typing the same responses every time. 

I think the problem most players find themselves in is when they start playing the game they attack and attack with no issue but slowly their vp (victory points) rises to the point where they find themselves a small fish among large ones. Boom Beach is a strategy game and part of that is managing your vp and learning to play the game in a smart way. In Boom Beach it pays to play for only what you need then stop, at least early to mid-game gameplay. Instead of killing everything you can all the time throughout the day it's usually a better strategy to play in one session to work for an upgrade, make an upgrade then wait for the next day. Some players also try to focus on both offence and defence upgrades at the same time. The problem is this is a very slow and difficult way to play the game. Anyhow, here are some simple steps that will help you a lot in this game so listen up:

Step 1 - Upgrade HQ as soon as you are able to with xp level. There is no downside to upgrading your HQ. It offers new Armory upgrades so you want to do it as soon as possible.

Step 2 - Focus all upgrades on strengthening your attack strength. Upgrade Armory, Landing Craft, Gunboat, Sculptor etc. You want to make yourself as strong as possible in terms of attack so you can attack anyone even if they are much higher levels than yourself. Some Landing Craft levels can be left to upgrade after other stuff once you get them to a level that hold the max of whatever troop you use.

Step 3 - Try not to worry about getting attacked, there are always bigger fish in the sea that will gobble your base up no matter what you upgrade. Don't worry about trying to defend too much. Getting attacked lowers your vp, offers you gems and intel (if you kill over 10 troop space worth of troops). Make a base designed for kills perhaps rather than actually defending. Intel and gems is more useful than trying to defend an unstoppable attack. 

Step 4 - Make all of your statues offensive orientated. No blues, no greens. Only red and purple. Blue Ice statues won't stop you from getting attacked. If you have low level defence there is little point to dropping Ice anyway and just means one less offensive statue which could make you stronger on your attacks. Green statues give you very little extra resources compared to what you make actually attacking for resources. You want a lot of GBE statues to make it easier on attacks. Use Resource Reward (RR) statues instead and boost an RR MP to do a session of map clearing on Dr T days or other event days where the boost will affect the rewards, you can make a lot more resources this way and are actually able to attack less and gather enough resources for any upgrade in one boost. Avoid trying to save for upgrades. You basically want to attack for an upgrade in one boost or session without logging out of the game, then stop. There are no shields in BB so trying to save for upgrades means you will just lose a lot of resources when you are offline from other players attacking. Don't be afraid to boost a GBE MP statue, TD (troop damage) or TH (troop health) MP also if it will mean less troops killed in map clearing so you can attack for what you need without having to wait too long to retrain troops. Also don't be afraid to add another RR Guardian if you want even more resources per attack. You have to find a balance between what is useful and what is overkill though. Having less gbe statues may affect your attack strength so you have to find a nice balance for your own playstyle.

Step 5 - Events such as Dr T, Imitation Game etc don't increase your vp. You don't need to worry about attacking these and gaining vp. Attack NPC (non player Blackguard bases) often. They level up every time you attack them and the more leveled they are the more resources they offer. The early one's don't offer a lot of resources but you can get power stones and intel from them. I attacked mine as soon as they appeared and actually started having maxed lvl 60 ones by the time I was xp lvl 46. If you want to attack during the day these are sometimes good to keep your intel up and to keep you busy. Attacking NPC usually just gain 1 VP then lose it when it respawns (this means they are VP-neutral). There is a limited number of 2 vp they sometimes offer but this is rarer the more you attack them and there is a limited number of npc offering 2 vp. 

Step 6 - Upgrade your Armory to it's max level for your HQ level. This offers you the maximum upgrades available for your HQ. Upgrade Gunboat abilities like Barrage, Artillery and Shock before all others. A stronger Barrage or Artillery means using less of them when attacking and longer Shocks help also. Upgrade only troops you use often in armory. Try to have two styles of attack so one that doesn't work for one base can be covered by the other. Warriors work well on bases where things like Tanks and Heavy/Zooka don't. Don't upgrade troops you don't use. You can do them later. Only focus on what you need to focus on.

Step 7 - Small and quick upgrades generally give more xp for less time so do them first. When you need certain xp levels to upgrade your next HQ keep this in mind. Generally longer upgrades tend to offer less xp for time than the smaller ones. Try to focus more on upgrading offensive and production buildings before defensive ones when possible and maxing vault and storages is always optimal so you can afford the most expensive upgrades at any time. 

Step 8 - If you make a good PSC (power stone chance) MP statue it may be wise to place it. I'm talking maybe a PSC of 50% and upwards. You make more stones so you increase the amount of statues you produce meaning you may get better statues quicker than without using a PSC.

Step 9 - Find a good TF. Use the forum to find TF's in the TF section. Try to find a TF with similar to higher players than yourself. They can post replays, show you attacks in ops that you wouldn't have thought of before and your game skill will quickly improve surrounding yourself with better players. The rewards are good great in a helpful TF. Just be sure to pull your weight and help the TF with intel and OP attacks.

If you focus solely on your attack strength the game works on "easy-mode". You will find the game open right up for you and all these issues like worrying about the xp levels on your map will be a thing of the past... HAPPY BOOMING!

Big Upgrades w/o Terror and Fundamentals

Please note I'm not suggesting everyone can do it without Terror so easily. In fact I'd absolutely suggest planning on using Terror/events. 

II. Fundamentals:

These are some general tips that will work with many different setups whether you are are all offense, balanced or mostly defense. 

(1) Level your NPCs. Clear NPCs every chance you get in the leveling game. Max level NPCs give GREAT loot (up to 200k+ with a good unboosted statue) and it's even better than it used to be because you always get 60 level NPCs at the top now instead of 57-60's and occasional 50's. You can be killing level 60 NPCs in the early 40's. A level 60 NPC gives more than double what a level 40 NPC does. 

(2) Max your Vault. Whether you play defense or not, you will get raided and your Vault will effectively "produce" resources every time you are raided. If you have 2 million resources Vault 20 "produces" 240K when you get raided. 

(3) Clear your Map. Not just the day you are doing the upgrade. As you can see from discussion of Bluer's resources in Joey's thread, even if you get raided all the time your income will outpace what you lose from being raided.

"No you just clear your map and the gains far outweigh the losses. He doesn't lose anywhere near 20% per raid, it's 12% after the 400K that's protected which, if you have 2-3 million of something, is like 10%. Get raided 6 times that's like 1.2 million. Meanwhile it's easy to generate 2-3 million a day from all sources by map clearing with a decent MP."

This point can't be underestimated. You can build up substantial resources in the days before the big upgrade. Saving a really good base is fine but saving bad bases costs you in the long run, don't save bad bases for 22 hours, kill them and get new spawns. Above a certain VP this advantage wilts but at those VPs you are clearing your map anyway for the VP. And "clear" doesn't have to mean "completely clearing every single base", if you want to hold a super good loot base you can. 

(4) A little planning goes a long way. The mathematical advantage of map clearing can be strong enough that you don't need to plan (especially if you can leverage defense) but planning things out never hurts. The basis of all planning is simply to leverage all sources of resources -- from the normal PVP and NPC spawns on your map, to Dr. Terror, to your RB boats, to (multiple) daily rewards, to (multiple) OP rewards, to your submarine, to your powders (boosting RR of course if needed but also boosting offense to help clear or get farther in terror and/or boosting ice to increase your mathematical clearing advantage), to liquidating Hammerman bases if you don't care about reserve VP for gold badges, to yes even diamonds of which you get thousands as a free player. 

(5) Use your 4 hour protected window. Even with Defense and Ice, as you collect more and more resources the mathematical advantage starts to fade. The best defense in the game is protected time. When you're doing that huge upgrade it's important or understand how the protected window works and how you can leverage two of them back to back and it's important to not waste it on days you most need it -- log in, do what you need to quick and log out if you'll need it later.

(6) Options and patience will help you get there. Things don't always work out at the first possible chance. After I did HQ 20 one Sunday (also without Terror) on the next Terror I fell short of not only Sculptor 8 but Armory 20 due to having rushed a bunch of new buildings and upgrades out with resources. I was fine with that, did a comparatively modest Vault upgrade that day and continued to clear most of my map and build up resources for the following days.

(7) hit the VP sweet spot for upgrades. If you go over the examples you see all these people were in the 600's for VP which is where the sweet spot for loot is concentrated. These are the people hitting 47/48 and doing big upgrades boosting RR. Too much below that and the loot you get is too low; too high and you start getting raided a lot more without seeing more loot to compensate.

Over and over again what we've seen of people struggling is this: you find out things like their vault is not maxed, their npcs are not leveled, they are saving bases instead of clearing map, they don't use protected time window, some nonsense about not wanting to gain a few VP's, etc. Many people made these mistakes and still got their big upgrades done but that doesn't mean they aren't mistakes; mistakes that make those upgrades harder than they need to be.

III Final Thoughts:

Good strategy players respond to changes and shifting incentives, they don't just plow ahead and complain that they aren't getting everything handed to them with what has become a suboptimal setup. 10 months ago it might have been optimal to save bad PVP and turn them over to get whale bases. 5 months ago SC made a clear shift away from that by massively increasing the terrible minimum loot and nerfing whale bases. The new optimal way to get resources involves clearing these minimum bases and getting new spawns. 

I didn't list RR statues -- honestly everyone already knows how important they are and how great a good RR MP is. That said if you don't have a good one (or even if you don't have one at all) that's not the end of the world. Run another guardian or two, even if only for a few weeks. Finally, do not overestimate RR and underestimate the other advantages you can gain -- I did several of my LC's to 20 (3.7 million each resource) without any RR statue. 

I also didn't include defense in the above tip list because I wanted to focus on universal things people can do with different setups. However, as I note in my thread linked above, I credit defense as the single biggest factor. I was raided 0-2 times most days between level 41 and 47. Replacing the resources lost to one raid a day is incredibly easy - hit your taps and knock out a couple NPCs when you wake up in the morning ... and everything else you get that day is profit.

Turtling 101: The Principles of Turtling in Boom Beach

Greetings everyone, Many people have sent me PMs asking how to play the turtling style. After responding to many requests, I’ve decided it’s just easier compile it all in one place instead.
(Note: Turtling means relying on own production for resources, not raiding others for resources)

Before I go any further, I just want to reiterate that SC has created in Boom Beach an extremely rich and complex game which supports many different viable play-styles. Some can play all-offense with red and purple statues, booming every base in sight. A few can quietly produce and be impervious to all attacks. Still others play a mix of each style. Many strategies are playable and afford a viable path to advancement (with proper planning of course). There is no single “best” style because everyone has different personalities, time constraints, and want different things out of the game. So keep an open mind, see if you can incorporate some of these ideas to help your game, perhaps even temporarily.

Diving in…..

The three golden rules of turtling:

1. I shall maximize all production sources

1. I shall supplement my income by raiding only VP-neutral bases

1. I shall never be raided

Golden rule #1: maximize all production sources

• Get sawmill, quarry and iron mine maxed for your HQ level.

• Capture and hold the max number of resource bases possible.

• Make one or more gold/wood/stone/iron MPs. Up to you which one, and don’t have to make every single one of them.

• Make a Resource Production Masterpiece statue and boost it 24x7. It increases every resource and also has a compounding effect when combined with other green statues.
• Maxing production and boosting all green MPs will yield over 1.4mil wood/stone/iron per day.

• No need to make green guardians, use the slots on other statues.

• Upgrade your sub and constantly dive for resources.

• Grab resources from daily boat and op reward boat.

• Make a Building Health and Defensive Building Damage MP because it will boost resource base defense.

• Max your vault to keep all resources safe.

Golden rule #2: supplement by raiding only VP-neutral bases

• Raid npcs because you (usually) gain 1 VP then lose it when it respawns (VP-neutral)

• Raid Dr.T. because he does not give you any VPs.

• Do NOT raid PvPs, or raid them only rarely.

• Make a Troop Health and a Troop Damage MP to help your attacks.

• Make a Resource Reward MP to increase the loot gained

• Other statues like GBE, PSC are very useful but not as critical as the ones above.

• Turtling doesn’t mean neglecting offense completely. Being able to attack npcs and Dr.T is crucial to supplementing production loot.

• Boost your reds and purples when attacking Dr.T. You want to get as far as possible because it is a good source of loot, and not a single VP!

Golden rule #3: never be raided

• What’s the point of golden rules 1 and 2 if you lose everything you’ve accumulated?

• If you’re raided, it means your defense is inadequate for the opponents you’re facing. Two solutions: lower VP and upgrade defense.

• Upgrading defense consists of leveling up and also studying good base designs.

• You should also have 2 ice MPs, but no need to go overboard with ice guardians.

• Lowering VP requires beaching your HQ. Do it when your resources are mostly/completely protected by your vault so you lose minimum. Best time to do it is during Dr.T day when everyone is out raiding.

• You know you’re reached the optimum VP when you’re no longer raided for 2 weeks. This means your defense is strong enough for your VP. Now you don’t have to improve your defenses anymore but instead focus on offense, production, or whatever you please.

• Occasionally an npc base will give you 2 VPs, making your VP creep up. No problem, plan a big upgrade to deplete all resources then beach your HQ. In fact, you can beach your HQ whenever you are low on resources, just to have a larger margin.

• Max your HQ so it is harder to take down. It also opens up new defenses which you should deploy immediately and raise it to a decent level (unless your defense is already awesome enough).

Pros:
Minimal playing time required, 30m-1hr/day.
The game does the work for you: it produces resources and you just sweep it into your storages every day. Set it and forget it.
No need to stay logged on during troop rebuilds for fear of being raided.
You sleep tight every night knowing you keep what you make.
Slow and steady. As someone said, playing BB is like reading a good book – savor it slowly.
Cons:
Limited attacking means you don’t earn that much intel, around 15-20/wk.
Not a skilled attacker due to lack of practice on harder bases.
No diamonds and intel from defending, because no one attacks you.
High-level active TFs don’t want you because of your low intel and (usually) low offense.
Slower progression compared to all-offense raider/pillager style.
Low spawn rate of 1% because of huge number of pvps.

FAQ:

What troops do you suggest?
 - To be consistent with the “minimal playing time” theme, I use TMeds because they are hardy and I rarely incur any losses during my raids, therefore no rebuild time. I get all my booming done in 30mins once/twice a day.

What statues?
- Required MPs: blue BH, blue DBD, green RP, red TH, red TD, purple RR, purple GBE
The rest depends on what facet you want to emphasize. I added PSC, wood, stone, but gbe and rr are also good. In the late game, you need lots of iron to get max level upgrades so iron MP is good.


Do you ever attack pvps?
- Rarely. On my fully-uncovered map, I have 30 pvps with 1% spawn rate. I am very sensitive to the complaints about being rolled by high-lvl players, so I just don’t attack except sometimes to cover a last bit of resource shortfall that I did not want to spend diamonds for. Besides, turtles always play nice: leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.

Boom Beach is all about booming, aren’t you missing the point?
- SC designed the game with production-rich buildings and green MPs, so why not play them? Also given us a huge variety of defenses and blue MPs, so why not play them too? Put them together for a viable turtling strategy. Their recent updates have been steering the game towards more “balanced” play, emphasizing defense and ice. We also know they frowned on the guy who got to the top with only 1 sniper tower. All-out booming is not the only way to play. Supporting many different play-styles increases the appeal and player base.

Would anyone want you in a TF?
- I am in a 5-man TF which clears Tank Tango/H acksaw 2-3 times/wk. They are laid back and not obsessed about rankings. There's a place for everyone in the BB universe.

Will you want to make a run for the leaderboard?
- Never never ever! Turtles are quiet by nature.

What VP should I have for my lvl?
There is no hard cap for VP per lvl. Just keep your VP at the lvl where you can defend 100% for a few weeks. If you upgrade defenses, you can attack player bases because that's free resources for you. Your VP will climb a little but your upgraded defenses should be good enough. So... do not keep your VPs artificially low otherwise you will be foregoing free PvP resources and slowing your progression. It's a delicate balance of VP and defense.

Credits to Woolybugger