State of Survival Gathering Guide: Nodes, Heroes and Speed Bonuses

Part of the Resources & Economy Series:

• Gathering Guide: Nodes, heroes and speed bonuses (You Are Here).
• Resource Management Guide: The four resources and which one gates you.
• March Capacity and Slots: Slots are what limits gathering throughput.
• VIP Levels: Where the sixth march slot comes from.
• Daily Routine Checklist: Sending marches is step five of every session.

Quick Answer

Gathering is the dominant source of resources once you have march slots. Passive production inside your settlement becomes a rounding error; marches on the map are where your economy actually lives.

The four things that decide your rate, in order of impact:

1. Number of marches running. Three marches gather roughly three times as fast as one. This dwarfs every other bonus.
2. The hero you send. Gathering heroes carry named percentage bonuses, and they are cheap to level.
3. Node level. Higher-level tiles hold more and yield faster.
4. Stacked bonuses from the economy talent tree, research, and settlement buffs.

Your march slot ceiling, which most players never learn:

The single best habit: send every march before you log off, and match the trip length to how long you'll be away. Overnight is free gathering time and most accounts waste it.

Overview

New players treat gathering as the boring part between upgrades. It isn't; it is the upgrades.

What you'll find is that the resource curve in this game outruns settlement production almost immediately. By the time you're pushing HQ 20 the costs are in the tens of millions, and no realistic level of passive production touches that. Marches do.

Here's the thing that reframes the whole system: gathering is throughput-limited, not efficiency-limited. A perfectly optimised single march loses badly to three mediocre ones. That is why march slots matter more than march capacity for economic purposes, and why Leadership research is the correct early priority for reasons that have nothing to do with combat.

March Slots: Your Real Ceiling

Slots come from the Leadership line inside the Development research tree, with the last one gated behind VIP. Leadership IV needs Research Lab 23.

Maxed Leadership research alone gets you to 5 marches. Reaching 6 requires VIP 8, with VIP active, which is the clearest reason on the site to care about the VIP track as a free account.

The difference between 3 marches and 6 is not incremental. It doubles your entire resource income, permanently, for every remaining day of the account.

[!IMPORTANT] If you are choosing between the Leadership line and almost anything else early, take Leadership. A march slot multiplies gathering, rally availability and flexibility at once, and no percentage bonus competes with that.

Keep one slot free during your alliance's active hours. An account with every march parked on a gas node cannot join a rally, which is the most common way to be a poor alliance member without realising it.

Gathering Heroes

The cheapest large bonus available, and the one most consistently skipped.

Specific heroes carry named gathering bonuses tied to specific resources:

Three practical points.

These are mostly Epic and Elite heroes, not Legendaries. Chef, Rusty and Ghost sit in the starter roster outside the generation system entirely, which means they are cheap to acquire and cheap to level. You are not spending scarce Legendary fragments here.

Match the hero to the resource. Sending Ghost to a food node wastes the bonus entirely. Use the shortage in your next planned upgrade to choose the resource, then match the gathering specialist.

Check carrying load and troop availability. Use enough load for the intended node while keeping troops available for alliance activity. The formation guide separates gathering requirements from combat ratios.

[!TIP] Keep a dedicated gathering preset with cheap troops and your best gathering hero, and swap to it every time you send a march. Sending a combat formation to gather is the same waste in reverse as sending a gathering formation into a fight.

Node Levels

Resource tiles in the wilderness carry levels, and the level determines both how much the tile holds and how fast it yields. Higher-level tiles give more resources in less time, which makes the level worth travelling for within reason.

Two failure modes to avoid:

Sending a march too small for the node. You cannot carry the full yield, the tile is left partly harvested, and you spent the trip anyway.

Sending a march far too large for the node. The march finishes early and sits idle until you notice.

Roughly matching your march capacity to the tile is the whole optimisation, and it takes a glance rather than arithmetic.

Gather near your alliance's territory. Shorter travel time means more trips per day, and you are inside protection if the state turns hostile. Alliance resource nodes inside held territory are a genuine perk of an organised alliance.

Stacking Speed Bonuses

Gathering speed comes from several sources that stack:

The economy talent tree. Chief talents include gathering speed. Cheap, permanent, and applied to every march for the life of the account.

Research. The economy branch in the Research Lab carries gathering speed and yield bonuses. Front-load these; they fund everything downstream.

Settlement gathering buffs. Purchasable with biocaps:

Whether those buffs are worth buying depends entirely on timing. Outside an event they are a poor use of premium currency, and the biocaps guide would tell you to put the same 600 into a builder slot instead. Inside a resource-gathering scoring phase during SvS preparation, where the resources also become event points, the arithmetic changes and can be clearly positive.

[!WARNING] Marches on the map are not protected by shields. A gathering march is vulnerable even while your settlement is shielded, so recall before warfare windows if your state is contested. See the PvP guide.

The Overnight Routine

The highest-value gathering habit takes ten seconds.

Before you sleep, send every available march to the biggest nodes within reasonable travel. Long trips match a long absence, so nothing finishes and sits idle for six hours.

In the morning, collect and immediately resend with shorter trips matched to your day. That is the entire technique, and an account that does it reliably gathers substantially more than one that sends marches whenever it happens to remember.

F2P vs Spender

F2P accounts should treat gathering as their primary economy and build around march count. Max the Development tree's Leadership line, climb to VIP 8 for the sixth slot, level the cheap gathering heroes, and take the Economic tree and economy talents early. Skip the biocap gathering buffs outside scoring events; they are exactly the impulse purchase that drains a free account's premium currency.

Spending accounts get the sixth march slot faster through VIP and can afford gathering buffs during scoring windows, where the resources convert into event points as well as into upgrades. The buffs remain poor value on a quiet Tuesday regardless of budget.

Common Mistakes

Leaving marches idle. The largest single waste in the mid game. Fix: send them all, every session.

Sending combat troops to gather. Expensive troops, zero benefit. Fix: cheap troops and a gathering preset.

Ignoring gathering heroes. A free 15–20% on every trip. Fix: level Chef, Rusty, Ghost and Mike; they are cheap.

Sending the wrong specialist. Ghost on a food node does nothing. Fix: match hero to resource.

Every march parked during alliance hours. You cannot join rallies. Fix: hold one back.

Buying gathering buffs outside events. Poor biocap conversion. Fix: save them for scoring phases.

Gathering unshielded during warfare. Shields don't cover marches. Fix: recall first.

If gathering cannot cover the next upgrade in time, compare the request cap and collection timer in Supply Convoy. For a planned gathering session, the Chief Talents guide distinguishes gathering benefits from Instant Collect, which concerns settlement production.

Gathering Tasks and Seasonal Effects

For Plasma Lab component tasks, confirm when the resource return registers and finish before the event closes. The documented MIGO Strikes Back Station has a separate Instant Gathering effect; check its cooldown, qualifying conditions and your march's load before using it on a nearly empty tile.

FAQ

How many marches can you have in State of Survival? Six is the ceiling. Five come from the Leadership line in the Development research tree, and the sixth requires VIP 8 with VIP active.

Which heroes are best for gathering? Mike for food and Chef for wood at +20% each, Nanami and Mikoto also at +20%, Rusty for metal and Ghost for gas at +15%. Most are cheap Epic or Elite heroes rather than Legendaries.

Does troop type matter when gathering? Inspect carrying load and troop availability. Use enough load for the intended collection, appropriate resource bonuses, and troops you can spare from active combat.

Are gathering buffs worth the biocaps? Not outside events. The basic buff is 100 biocaps for +50% over 8 hours and the top one is 600 for +100% over 24 hours; both are only clearly worth it inside a scoring phase where the resources also earn event points.

Does node level matter? Yes. Higher-level tiles hold more and yield faster. Match your march capacity roughly to the tile so you neither leave yield behind nor finish early.

Can my gathering marches be attacked? Yes. Shields protect your settlement but not marches already on the map. Recall them before warfare windows in a contested state.

Is gathering better than settlement production? Substantially, once you have march slots. Passive production matters early and becomes a rounding error by the mid game.

Where should I gather? Choose a suitable node with enough resources and reasonable travel time. Proximity to the hive does not make a gathering march immune to attack.

Key Takeaways

• Gathering is your economy once march slots exist. Settlement production fades fast.
• Five marches from Development-tree Leadership; the sixth needs VIP 8 active.
• Slots beat capacity for gathering. Three marches gather three times as fast.
• Gathering heroes give 15–20% and are cheap Epic and Elite heroes, not scarce Legendaries.
• Match the specialist to the resource. Ghost for gas, Rusty for metal, Mike for food, Chef for wood.
• Check load before launch. Use enough carrying capacity and preserve the troops needed for active combat.
• Buffs cost 100 biocaps (+50%, 8h) or 600 (+100%, 24h). Worth it only inside scoring events.
• Send everything before you sleep. Overnight is free, and most accounts waste it.