Beast Hunting is the first alliance event most chiefs meet, and it is also the one most often misread — usually because someone assumes they can join whenever they like. Century Games publishes three short answers about it, and between them they cover almost every "why can't I hit the bear" question.
Who can start it
Alliance members above R4 can start Beast Hunting. That is the whole rule. If nothing is running and your alliance is quiet, the answer is not a timer — it is that no R4 or R5 has opened the trap. If you are R4 yourself, opening the hunt is one of the cheapest useful things you will do all day.
Who can join
Century Games' English answer to "why can't I participate in Beast Hunting" is specific: you need to have joined the alliance for more than 46 hours before you are eligible. That is worth knowing before you hop alliances during an event window — jumping ship on a Friday can cost you the weekend's hunts.
One honest note. The Korean edition of the same help-centre article says something different: it describes a cooldown of three days after you take part in a trap hunt, running until 00:00 UTC three days later. We have not been able to reconcile the two, so we are telling you exactly what each version says rather than picking the one that sounds better. If you play the English client, plan around the 46-hour membership rule; if you see a lockout after hunting, the Korean wording is the one describing your client.
The trap, and why donating past max is not wasted
The trap has levels, and the alliance raises them by donating. Once it hits max level, Century Games confirms you may continue to contribute, but the level will not increase. People read that as "stop donating". Read it the other way: donations past max still generate the individual contribution the event tracks, so if your alliance rewards activity, keep tapping. What you should not do is hold resources back expecting another level.
How to actually fight it
This part is field experience rather than publisher text, so treat it as ours, not theirs. The beast does not counter-attack in the way a player city does, which is why alliances lean on Marksmen — the highest single-target damage in the game sitting safely in the back row. The practical checklist before you send a march:
- Turn your Pet skills on manually. They do not fire on their own, and the difference between a chief who switches them on before every hunt and one who does not is enormous over a season.
- Send your strongest single squad rather than three weak ones — damage rankings reward concentration.
- Check your hero line-up. Per the Combat FAQ, expedition skills fire whether or not the squad has the matching troop type, so a hero who is "wrong" for your composition still contributes.
What we would not claim
You will see a figure of "every 47.5 hours" quoted for the respawn cadence. Century Games does not publish that number anywhere we can find, and the help centre frames starting the hunt as a manual R4 action, not a schedule. We list it as community folklore, not a rule.
Sources: Who can start Beast Hunting · Why can't I participate in Beast Hunting · Contributing to a max-level trap
Every rule above is Century Games' own wording from the official English help centre. Anything we added from play experience is labelled in the text.