War Inc: Rising Co-op Strategy: Board Setup and Upgrades

To survive high waves in War Inc: Rising co-op mode, fill every empty tile on your board before merging units, and coordinate your setup so one player provides heavy damage while the other supplies crowd control and utility. Merging two tier-1 units into a single tier-2 unit cuts your active attackers in half for only a moderate stat boost, leaving early lanes vulnerable to swarms. Keep your board full to maintain continuous attack coverage, then transition into targeted upgrades and merges as wave difficulty scales.

Progression by Wave Phase

Managing your board requires shifting priorities as monster health and wave density increase.

Board Presence and Merging Rules

Do not merge units during the opening waves simply because two identical ranks are available. Every deployed unit contributes baseline targeting and fire rate, which prevents basic runner mobs from leaking past your defenses.

Follow these rules when handling board space:

• Summon until full: Spend your opening energy or gold entirely on spawning units until no empty tiles remain.
• Merge utility units first: When your board is full and space is required to summon, combine low-performing support or duplicate utility units before touching primary damage units.
• Protect your carries: Keep your primary damage dealers on the board at lower ranks until your economy can safely support replacing any lost firing rate.

Balancing Damage and Support Roles

Co-op matches fail when both players bring identical, uncoordinated loadouts. Two pure damage setups often lack the slowing effects needed to burst down later waves, while two support-heavy setups lack the raw damage per second (DPS) required to clear tanky targets.

Coordinate your team across two distinct functions:

• Damage Carry: Focuses on single-target burst for bosses and area-of-effect (AoE) clear for dense mob waves. Position heavy hitters along chokepoints where enemies remain in range the longest.
• Support Utility: Deploys units that apply movement slows, armor shred, and energy generation. Applying debuffs early in the lane enables your partner's high-damage units to eliminate threats before they reach defensive barricades.

If playing with a random partner who builds pure damage, pivot your board toward slow and armor reduction to maximize their damage output.

Economy and In-Match Upgrade Pacing

Every unit summon increases the base resource cost of the next summon. Repeatedly hitting the summon button without leveling your deployed units leads to steep diminishing returns.

Use this spending rhythm to stay cost-effective:

1. Fill the board: Keep summoning until all tiles are occupied.
2. Upgrade base unit ranks: Once you have 3 to 4 copies of your main damage carry deployed, purchase that unit's global in-match level upgrade. Upgrading affects every deployed copy of that unit, yielding far more total team damage than paying an inflated cost for a single random spawn.
3. Bank currency before boss rounds: Reserve a pool of currency before milestone boss waves so you can quickly replace or reposition units if a boss stuns or destroys a tile.
4. Avoid aggressive rerolling: Merging repeatedly to fish for a specific high-tier unit drains resources. Work with the units currently on your board and upgrade their global levels once your lane clear stabilizes.

Boss Wave Preparation

Bosses feature high health pools, crowd-control resistance, and special skills that can disable or eliminate units on specific tiles.

To defeat bosses before they reach your barricade:

• Establish line of sight: Place sustained damage units along central paths where support auras overlap and firing angles cover both lanes.
• Apply debuffs immediately: Ensure slow effects and armor shred hit the boss the moment it spawns. Stacking debuffs softens high health pools and extends the window your damage dealers have to burst the boss down before it casts disruptive abilities.