Part of the Base Building Series:

Quick Answer

Your Headquarters level caps every other building. Nothing in your settlement can exceed it, which is why HQ is the permanent priority and why every other building sits at "one below HQ, or lower if you don't need it yet".

The buildings that actually decide your account:

Building What it does Target level
Headquarters Caps all other buildings, gates troop tiers and features Always upgrading
Hero Precinct Hero upgrades, hero search, troop attack bonus HQ minus 1, always. It is a prerequisite for every HQ level
Barracks / Garage / Range Train and upgrade Infantry / Riders / Hunters HQ minus 1 on your dominant type, rotating for prerequisites
Research Lab The whole research tree High. It compounds
Warehouse Protects resources from raids Keep pace with HQ
Hospital Heals wounded troops instead of losing them Match your army size
Furnace Metal production, gates mid-game progress Before HQ 20
Gas Tank Gas production, the late-game wall Earlier than feels necessary
Lookout Tower Incoming attack warnings with enemy details Enough to read the report
Enlistment Office Recovers 70% of Hospital overflow when defending Track your Hospital

The rule underneath the whole table: the prerequisite pattern for every HQ level from 5 to 30 is Hero Precinct one below your target, plus one troop building one below your target, rotating Garage, Range, Barracks. Build to that pattern and you are never blocked.

Overview

Most base-building advice in this genre is about layout. Here it isn't, because placement does nothing. What matters is which buildings you level, in what order, and how far ahead of your needs.

What you'll find is that the settlement divides cleanly into three groups. A few buildings are prerequisites for HQ and must be kept current whether you want their function or not. A few produce something you need. The rest are situational and can sit at low levels for months without hurting you.

Here's the thing that saves the most wasted resources: you do not need every building at HQ minus one. New players level everything evenly because it looks tidy, and spend weeks of resources on buildings whose function they aren't using yet.

The Prerequisite Buildings

These gate your HQ, which gates everything. Keeping them current is not optional.

Hero Precinct

The most important building after HQ, and the one new players most often neglect.

It appears as a prerequisite for every single HQ level from 5 to 30, always at one level below your HQ target. Falling behind here stalls your entire account, and because the requirement is invisible until you tap the HQ upgrade button, people discover it late.

It also does real work: hero upgrades, hero search for Epic and Advanced heroes, and a troop attack bonus that scales with its level. See the heroes hub for what to do with the heroes it gives you.

[!IMPORTANT] Treat Hero Precinct as a second Headquarters. Every time you finish an HQ upgrade, the Precinct is usually the next thing to start. It is a prerequisite for the level after this one.

Barracks, Garage and Range

Your three troop buildings: Barracks trains Infantry, Garage trains Riders, Range trains Hunters.

They do two jobs at once. They set your training capacity and they unlock troop tiers — tiers 1 through 10 unlock on the building's own level, with T9 at building level 26 and T10 at building level 30. Tiers 11 and 12 leave this system entirely and sit behind Institute research instead.

They also rotate as HQ prerequisites, one per level, in Garage → Range → Barracks order. That rotation is why you cannot simply specialise into one troop type and let the other two rot: the game makes you level all three eventually, whether or not you train from them.

The practical split: push your dominant type's building for training capacity, and keep the other two at whatever the next HQ prerequisite demands. No further.

The Production Buildings

Furnace

Unlocks meaningful metal production and gates mid-game progress. Metal becomes the binding constraint around HQ 16 to 25, exactly as described in the resource guide, and the Furnace is the answer to it.

Gas Tank

Unlocks gas production. Gas is the late-game wall, and it is the resource almost every stalled account stalls on.

Look at the gas column of the HQ cost table: HQ 16 needs 31.3K gas, HQ 30 needs 23.20M. That is a 700-fold increase across fourteen levels, against a production building most players ignore until it hurts.

[!WARNING] Gas is the one resource you cannot gather your way out of quickly. Start the Gas Tank earlier than it feels justified. Accounts that stall at HQ 25 are almost always gas-starved, and it takes weeks to recover.

Basic resource production

Food and wood production matter early and become a rounding error once you have march slots and are gathering properly. Level them enough to fund your early construction, then stop and let gathering take over.

The Defensive and Support Buildings

Warehouse

The only real resource protection in the game. It shields a portion of your stored resources from raids; everything above that cap is exposed if you're attacked and lose.

It is the most consistently neglected building on the site's evidence, and the neglect is painless right up until a warfare window when it isn't. Keep it moving alongside HQ.

Hospital

Wounded troops go here instead of dying. Capacity is the whole story: wounded beyond your Hospital capacity overflow into the Enlistment Office, and only 70% of that overflow is recoverable, with the remaining 30% lost immediately.

That makes hospital capacity a direct multiplier on how cheap your fighting is. An army that outgrew its hospital is an army taking real losses in fights that should have cost nothing. Scale it with your troop count, not with your HQ.

Lookout Tower

Your warning system. It tells you an attack is incoming, and at sufficient level it reports the enemy's march capacity, arrival time, and whether you're facing a solo attack or a rally.

That last detail is what makes it worth levelling. A solo attack and a rally call for completely different responses, and knowing which is coming is the difference between shielding, reinforcing, or ignoring it. The PvP guide covers what to do with the information.

Enlistment Office

Commonly described as "troop backup capacity", which undersells it. It is the recovery net under your Hospital.

When you are defending and wounded overflow your Hospital, 70% of that overflow lands here and can be recovered by spending Duty, which accrues automatically. The other 30% is lost immediately, and anything killed once the Enlistment Office is full is permanent.

Capacity is 4× your Hospital capacity, rising during State Warfare. Note the hard limit: losses taken attacking another player's settlement never enter the Enlistment Office. Unlocks at HQ 10.

That combination makes it far less situational than it looks for any account that expects to be attacked.

The Late-Game Institutes

Three buildings that are really research systems in disguise, and none of them are early concerns.

Research Lab — the main research tree. Slow, compounding, and the largest hidden gap between accounts of the same age. Keep it levelled and keep it busy.

Behemoth Institute — gates Behemoth enhancement and skill progression. The Institute level governs everything downstream, so rushing the machine while the Institute lags means hitting a ceiling you could have seen coming.

Institute of Plasma and Crystal Energy Institute provide the relevant T11 and T12 research routes. Inspect the prerequisites for each troop type and budget research separately from training. A Plasma building enhancement is not the same as unlocking a new troop tier.

For an HQ upgrade blocked by Prosperity, compare each building preview's actual Prosperity increase. The Prosperity planning guide helps calculate a complete upgrade path instead of confusing Battle Power with the required value.

Build Order in Practice

For an account that wants to stop guessing:

  1. HQ, whenever it is available and affordable.
  2. Hero Precinct, immediately after, to unblock the next HQ.
  3. The rotating troop building the next HQ level requires.
  4. Research Lab, kept high enough that the tree never bottlenecks.
  5. Warehouse and Hospital, tracking your resource pile and army size respectively.
  6. Furnace before HQ 20, Gas Tank before HQ 22.
  7. Everything else, when a prerequisite or a function demands it.

[!TIP] Before starting any build, tap your next HQ upgrade and read its prerequisites. Thirty seconds there prevents the most common wasted week in the game, which is levelling the wrong troop building.

F2P vs Spender

F2P accounts should build strictly to prerequisites and function, and never for tidiness. Every level spent on a building you aren't using is a level not spent on Hero Precinct, and Hero Precinct is what blocks your HQ. The second builder changes this entire calculation, and it is worth knowing that biocaps only rent one for two days at a time; the permanent version is a cheap money pack. See the spending guide.

Spending accounts can run buildings closer to the cap across the board, and the main advantage that buys is flexibility rather than speed. Where spending genuinely converts is builders and the long institute research, not shaving hours off individual construction timers.

Common Mistakes

Neglecting Hero Precinct. The prerequisite for every HQ level. Fix: upgrade it immediately after each HQ.

Levelling all three troop buildings evenly. Only one trains your dominant type. Fix: push that one, keep the others at prerequisite level.

Ignoring the Warehouse. Invisible until a raid. Fix: keep it near HQ level.

Letting the Hospital fall behind the army. Wounded beyond capacity die. Fix: scale it with troop count.

Starting the Gas Tank late. The most common cause of a stalled HQ 25. Fix: build it before you need it.

Upgrading for tidiness. Even building levels look good and cost weeks. Fix: build to prerequisites and function only.

Related Progression

The Trading Post also provides Supply Convoy requests and donations. Open that feature for eligible personal resource sharing; it is separate from the alliance warehouse used for HQ and Tower construction.

FAQ

What is the most important building in State of Survival? Headquarters, because it caps every other building. Hero Precinct is second, since it is a prerequisite for every HQ level from 5 to 30.

Why can't I upgrade my Headquarters? Almost always a missing prerequisite, and almost always Hero Precinct or the rotating troop building. Tap the HQ upgrade to see which, or check the full requirements table.

Which building trains which troops? Barracks trains Infantry, Garage trains Riders, Range trains Hunters. Their level also unlocks troop tiers 1 through 10.

Does building placement matter? No. Placement is purely cosmetic, and no combat or production calculation refers to it. The layout guide covers why.

What does the Lookout Tower actually do? Warns you of incoming attacks and reports the attacker's march capacity, arrival time, and whether it is a solo attack or a rally. That last detail decides your response.

How high should my Warehouse be? Roughly in step with HQ. It protects a portion of your stored resources, and anything above that cap is raidable.

When should I build the Gas Tank? Earlier than it feels necessary. Gas costs rise from 31.3K at HQ 16 to 23.20M at HQ 30, and gas is the resource stalled accounts stall on.

Do I need every building at max level? No, and trying is the most common way new accounts waste resources. Build to HQ prerequisites and to functions you are actually using.

Key Takeaways

  • HQ caps everything. No building exceeds your Headquarters level.
  • Hero Precinct is a prerequisite for every HQ level from 5 to 30. Never let it lag.
  • The prerequisite pattern is fixed: Hero Precinct plus a rotating Garage → Range → Barracks, each one level below your HQ target.
  • Barracks / Garage / Range train Infantry / Riders / Hunters and unlock tiers T1–T10 on their own level.
  • Warehouse protects resources; Hospital prevents troop deaths. Both are neglected until they bite.
  • Gas Tank early. Gas is the wall that stalls accounts around HQ 25.
  • The Institutes are research campaigns, not building upgrades. Specialise in one troop type.
  • Build to prerequisites and function, never for even levels.