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Income Clients

In most cases, whether you are just starting off or in higher levels, I recommend investing heavily in Income clients.  The earlier you build up your income in the game, the more options you have later on.  Higher income allows you to upgrade to better weapons, spells and techniques, as well as save up money to upgrade to better clients.

I’ve seen too many players use up their slots for non-Income clients and they really pay for it later on in the game.  They get themselves in a position where their Defensive clients are no longer strong enough to protect them against high-caliber opponents and they lack the funds to switch over to Income clients, so they are forced to camp for long periods of time in order to save up enough money.  So don’t get stuck in this position.  Invest in Income clients early and always save up to upgrade those clients or to buy better Income clients.

Defensive Clients

Sometimes it makes sense to buy some Defensive clients, but this is usually in the early levels of the game (between levels 1 – 30).  Early on in the game, all of your opponents will have smaller clans sizes.  Therefore, the strength of your Defensive clients makes a significant difference when you are defending against attacks, because your opponents are relatively weak at this stage.  However, as you go on to higher levels, most players will maximize their clan size along with their dojo, so suddenly Defensive clients aren’t very effective against attacks anymore.

That is why I recommend investing in Income clients rather than Defensive clients, because with Income clients you are giving yourself options for the future, while Defensive clients are only offering you temporary protection.  But, if you insist on using Defensive clients then I would only dedicate a portion of your client slots to them and continue to invest in Income clients for the remaining slots.

Herbal Clients

The only time Herbal clients make sense is if you are planning to rely on missions to gain experience points and level up.  In order for this strategy to work, you would need to forget about attacking your opponents, because you won’t have any spare money to buy decent dojo items.  Also, the majority of the skill points you gain from leveling up will need to be spent on increasing your Energy, so that you can do more missions.

Since your Herbal clients will restore your energy quickly, you should check in to do missions as frequently as possible.  Every penny that you make from your missions should be banked, away from the hands of rival clans.  The reason it is so important for you to save your money is because you will need to replace your Herbal clients with Income clients eventually.  And if you don’t have enough money saved, you will have a very difficult time defending yourself against other clans while you’re trying to build up your income.

So that’s an overview of the benefits for each type of client.  There is a place for all three types of clients in Ninjas Live, but the focus always shifts back to income eventually.  For this reason, I recommend focusing on Income clients right from the beginning because it’s easier to develop your Income early on when your competition is still weak.  Once you hit the higher levels, dojo items become very expensive and opponents are always heavily armed, so it will be more of an uphill battle.

ATMs are great players to add to your clan.  Once you have establish a permanent link to the player, you can withdraw from them whenever you want.  But, be sure to respect the rules of the ATM player though by reading their comment wall.  Some ATMs will ask you to restrain from attacking them excessively, while others will announce that their ATM is closed (meaning they do not want to be attacked), in order to save up their money for a Hitlist Party.  Respect whatever rules the ATM player states on their wall, because they are really cool members of the Ninjas Live community and they add to the overall gaming experience.

Cash-In at Hitlist Parties

ATM players will host Hitlist parties from time to time, where they give away large amounts of money in the form of bounties on the Hitlist.  The way you find out about Hitlist parties is through ATM players.  Once you’ve add them to your clan, check their comment walls frequently and keep an eye on their broadcasts.  ATMs will announce a time to meet on the Hitlist and when that time comes, you will see a sudden surge of players show up on the Hitlist with absurdly large bounties and then the whole thing becomes a free-for-all for all of the players watching the Hitlist.

To take full advantage of a Hitlist party, be sure to have plenty of money in the bank so that you can heal quickly and make sure your stamina points are at 100%.

List of Known ATMs

To get you started, here’s a list of known Ninjas Live ATMs to add to your clan list:

PGBC9, D3D45, N7P7U, 87URF, SXT7C, U3GND, BVXGY, YEXKM, 2SPJT, 8CNNP, 5YVYY, YFX6C

I want to keep this list updated with the latest ATM codes, so if you know of other ATMs, please share their clan codes by e-mailing me directly at general@ninjasliveacademy.com or posting the ATM code in the comments section below.  Cheers!

The strategy that I’m going to walk through is an opening strategy that covers what to do in the beginning between levels 1 to 35.  The idea is that you are building a strong foundation for your character early on in the game, so that it is smooth sailing when you get into the higher, more competitive levels.

Spend Most of your Skill Points on Defense

At the very start of the game, you want to burn through as many missions as you can so that you level up as quickly as possible.  Here’s the important thing – every time you level up and get skill points spend the majority of them on Defense.

If I’m not spending the skill points on Defense, then I’m spending it on Attack.  The ratio between Defense and Attack depends on how much you like to Attack other players.  If you’re a defensive player, meaning you don’t want to attack very often, then spend 100% of your points on Defense.  If you like to attack more often, then use 1 skill point on Attack for every 5 on Defense.

The idea is to build up an impenetrable defense, so that you’re not ever worried about losing to rival clans when they attack.  This alone minimizes your losses greatly because you are now the hunter rather than the hunted.

Another benefit of having a very strong defense early on is that you don’t need to worry about banking your money.  This saves you from wasting 10% of your money on the deposit fee.

Use Your Honor Points Early

If you play the other Storm8 games or if you’ve been good at collecting free Honor Point offers, you should have well over 200 points at the very start of the game.  Use these Honor Points early on in the game to give yourself a big advantage over your competition.

For this strategy, I recommend spending all of your Honor Points on the Ceremonial Chest at the very beginning.  Spend all 200+ points on the Ceremonial Chest and if you are lucky, you will end up with 4+ uncommon or even rare weapons that are significantly more powerful than any weapon, technique or spell that is available in the early stages of the game.

Combine these weapons with your stacked defense and your ninja should be nearly invincible (at least for the first 10 – 20 levels).  But we’re not done yet – let’s give your ninja more advantage!

Recruit 3 Members into Your Clan

The next step is to go to the Ninjas Live Academy clan code list and invite 3 other players to join your clan.  Don’t go nuts and invite more than 3.  The reason is that you want to keep your clan number at exactly 4 (3 other players, plus yourself), so that you’re the top dog in the lower clan bracket division.  Here, you are taking advantage of the game’s bracketing system which breaks up the competition based on clan size.  The first bracket groups all players with clan sizes between 1 to 4 members.  So increasing your clan size to 4 ensures that you have an advantage over all players with a smaller clan and you don’t need to worry about larger clans attacking you.  Plus, you keep your dojo costs low because you only need to equip 4 clan members.

If you want to learn more to about the game’s bracketing system, read our post on choosing the right clan size.

Focus Your Money on Income Clients

So now that you have built your foundations for a very strong character, you can relax and play the game.  Do missions regularly and attack other players to collect money and gain experience points.  When attacking, pick and choose opponents that have smaller clans and weaker weapons to minimize the chance of losing.

With all of the money that you collect, spend them all on maxing out your Income Clients.  Your goal is to always have 5 stars on the best Income client available to you on every open client slot.

This will take a little bit of time to get started, but once you get the ball rolling, it will be very easy to max out your income.  Once you’ve maxed out your income, continue to save your money so that you’re ready to max out again when you unlock new clients.

If you have extra money lying around you can spend it on improving your dojo weapon, but only do it to keep up with the competition and avoid incurring a big upkeep cost.

Start Lining Up your Clan Members

Just because you are keeping your clan size at 4, doesn’t mean you can’t start lining up your recruits.  Post your clan code on Ninjas Live Academy so that your getting a steady stream of requests to join your clan.  However, when you get a request, don’t accept it right away.  Just leave it there and let those requests accumulate.

The idea is that by the time you’re ready to make your break out move at around Level 35, you will be able to accept all of your requests at once and instantly max out your clan size.

So that’s my strategy for playing levels 1 through 35.  Once you reach level 35, everything changes because the game will no longer follow the bracketing system.  That means any player regardless of clan size will be able to attack another player of the same level.  And with your current clan size of 4, you will get crushed unless you max out your clan size (hence, the advice above).  With a maximized clan size, you will need to adjust your strategy.  Luckily there are a few different strategies that work well for level 35 and up, which I will cover in a future post.  But for now, focus on this opening strategy and your character will be in an excellent position to transition into a new strategy when the time comes.

I’m not saying that leaving your money out in the open is the right strategy for everyone.  There are players that get attacked very often and therefore would lose all of their cash if they didn’t bank.  However, if you’re getting attacked that often, the solution is not figuring out a way to hide your money, but ultimately, figuring out how to defend yourself better.  If you are losing often to rival clans, I suggest reading the previous posts “5 Easy Ways to Stop Farming” and “How to Prevent Ninjas from Frequently Attacking You and Fighting Back” for tips on how to make yourself less vulnerable.

That said, every player should be taking a second to figure out whether it makes sense for them to bank their money.  All you need to do is take a look at your news feed history and make a mental note of how much money you’ve lost in the past 24 hours.  Now compare that against the profits you make from your income clients in a day.  If the money you’ve lost is less than 10% of your daily profits, then you should NOT be banking your money.

I recommend doing this quick check every once in a while to make sure you’re not banking more often than you need to be.  By employing this strategy, I’ve saved over hundreds of millions of dollars just by not banking when I don’t need to.  I suspect that a majority of players would benefit similarly from not banking their cash.  Let me know how this strategy works for you by leaving a comment below.  Happy hunting, ninjas!

Maximize your Clan Size

So maybe you don’t have enough money saved up to buy yourself an expensive dojo to make your clan stronger.  Instead, what you can do is fluff up your feathers and give the illusion that appear stronger than it really is.  You do this by adding as many ninjas as you can to your clan, until you reach your maximum clan size which is 5x your current level.  This will drastically decrease the chance of people farming you, because most players are looking for the easiest prey.  So if they see another player with a smaller clan, they will automatically attack them instead of you because they know they can get a sure-win even without looking at the stats.

Go to the Post your Clan Code section after reading this post and invite all of the ninjas on the list to join your clan.  Post your own clan code on there as well, so that you start receiving invites from other members in the Academy.

Bank your Money as Often as you Can

The number one reason people farm you is because of the money.  So instead of losing your money to your competitors, take the 10% hit on the deposit fee and bank your money as often as possible.  If you take your money out of harm’s reach, there is much less incentive for another player to farm you.  They will leave you alone and look for someone with a bigger payout.

Keep your Health Low

You can keep your ninja hiding in the shadows by intentionally keeping your health below 27 points.  When your ninja is hiding in the shadows, Ninjas Live doesn’t allow other players to attack you.  So all you need to do is go on an attacking spree until your health is below 27 points, then keep an eye on your health bar.  Once your health ticks above 27 points, choose a weaker player to attack so that you get the win and you bring your health below 27 again.  Repeat this and it will be virtually impossible for players to farm you.

Invite them to Join your Clan

You’ve heard the old saying – if you can’t beat them, join them.  A lot of times, if you just drop them a friendly message and invite them to join your clan, they will accept your offer.  And once you’re in the same clan, he or she won’t be able to attack you anymore.

Put Them on the Hit List

If all else fails, you can add the player onto the Hit List.  Just view their profile and click on the “Add to Hit List” button.  It doesn’t matter what amount you put in for the bounty.  Even the minimum amount will ensure your target gets slaughtered within minutes.

Half of the time, this deters the other player from farming you again.  The other half of the time, the player has anger management issues and will attack you even more.  So, I recommend using the Hit List only if you’ve exhausted the other options.

You can easily collect over 200 Honor Points by installing a few games, which only takes a couple of minutes. After you have collected your Honor Points, I recommend spending them on the following:

Convert Them into Money

This is probably the best way to spend your Honor Points.  For 10 Honor Points, you will instantly receive your income x 4!  So, say you are currently getting $25,000 from your income clients.  If you cashed in all of your 200 Honor Points, you will instantly have an extra $2 million (which I recommend spending on more income clients).

Another way of thinking about this is that every 10 Honor Points saves you 4 hours of waiting for your income to build up.  So 200 Honor Points saves you 80 hours of time.

Try Your Luck at the Ceremonial Chest

If you’re the gambling type, the Ceremonial Chest is a tempting option.  It comes at a hefty cost of 50 Honor Points though.  But if you’re lucky, you might uncover a truly rare treasure!

Changing your Ninja Class

Between Assassins, Mystics, Mercenaries and Thieves, the Assassin and Mystic classes are by far the most popular of the four and with good reason.  The Assassin and Mystic classes have a significant advantage in power which grows as you reach higher levels.  Check out the post, Mystics, Assassins, Mercenaries and Thieves: Which is the Best?, for more details on the different character classes.

If you’re currently not a Mystic or an Assassin, you might consider spending 50 Honor Points to change your class.

The main reason against having a lot of health is that if people are farming you, you can get attacked and looted a lot more times before your ninja will hide in the shadows.  Whereas, if you only have 100 – 120 health points, the most someone can attack you is 3 or 4 times in a row.  But imagine getting attacked 10 or more times in a row while you’re sleeping and losing all of your money – that sucks!

So don’t waste your skill points on health, especially since it costs twice the number of points to increase health than the other skills.  It’s much better to invest in a combination of attack and stamina, if you want an attacking build.  Or stick with defense and energy, if you want a defense build.  Go read a previous post on how to spend your skill points wisely for more details on this.

The caveat here is that health points become much more important when you reach 100+ levels.  At these levels, ninjas are so strong that if you don’t have a lot of health points, they’ll be able to knock you out with just one hit and that’s not fun.  So when you reach the 100th level, you should start thinking about developing your health points.  But for players between levels 1 – 99, it’s much better to stick with developing the other skills and this will result in better win/loss stats for your ninja.

Defense Clients

Herb Clients

While you look at the chart below, it is good to note that your return on investment (ie. income vs. cost) always decreases when you upgrade to the next level of an income client, with a significant drop after the 3rd star.  Also, the more prestigious or advanced an income client is, the lower the return on investment.