In Whiteout Survival, there is a mechanic called Troops Formations. It allows you to pre-save your squads (heroes and troops) to be then loaded up with a click of one button!

Every player should learn how to use Formations because it saves a lot of time, especially in time-sensitive situations like joining rallies during Bear Hunt.


How To Unlock Troops Formations?

You unlock your first Formation at Furnace Level 10, and you can have up to 8 formations. Here are the requirements:

  • Formation 1 - Reach Furnace Level 10
  • Formation 2 - Reach Furnace Level 15
  • Formation 3 - Reach Furnace Level 20
  • Formation 4 - Reach Furnace Level 23
  • Formation 5 - Reach Furnace Level 26
  • Formation 6 - Reach Furnace Level 30
  • Formation 7 - Active VIP 5*
  • Formation 8 - Activate VIP 8*

*To get any benefit from VIP Level bonuses, including access to extra Formations, you need to both reach the necessary VIP Level and have the VIP active. Reaching a new VIP Level activates VIP for 1 day. You can prolong VIP activation by using Gems (10.000 Gems for 30 days) or buying packs with money.


How To Setup Troop Formations?

You setup Formations from the Squad Deploy screen. You can get there from your Player Profile, click on the Troops tab and then on Squads.

Or by selecting an enemy on the map to attack, or simply by clicking on an empty tile on the ground and clicking on Occupy.

Tip: The last option, clicking on the ground and occupying the tile with troops, is best used when you want to setup multiple squads. You setup one squad, save it, then deploy it. And when you start setting up second squad, heroes and troops from the first squad are no longer available, so this makes it easier to keep going with what is left and utilize all your troops and/or Troops Formations to its best potential. Especially useful for setting up multiple squads for Bear Hunt.


In the Squad Deploy screen, the game loads up your heroes based on their Power - which might not always be the correct order you want to use them in. Or even the heroes you want to use at all.

The game also typically tries to use all of your highest tier troops first by default and if you have enough of them equalize between Infantry, Lancer and Marksman with a ratio of 33/33/33. This also might not be what you are looking for.

  • When you first start playing, you will need to adjust troops by hand, later on you will unlock features like 'Equalize' or 'Balance'. I will add more information about these later.
  • When going to a Resource Tile to gather, the game actually uses the lowest tier troops first. You can manually change the troop selection to higher tier, which can net you more carrying capacity.

Setting Up Heroes

To change the order of your heroes, or choose different heroes to deploy:

  1. Click on the red minus button at the top-right of their picture, and then on the empty hero position. This will bring up Select Heroes screen.
  2. Click on the empty hero position there,
  3. and select your desired hero.
  4. Then click on Assign to lock them into place. Repeat for second and third position.
  5. When you are happy with your selection, click anywhere in the open to close the Select Heroes screen.

When you are done selecting heroes, then you should setup your troop ratios. Do not do it in a reversed order because when you change hero deployment (remove a hero or change a hero of different level) the troop selection resets to default because the total deployment capacity changed, and you would have to set the troops again.


Setting Up Troops

Shown in the example below is roughly a ~10/25/65 ratio I selected for one of my Bear Hunt squads.

  1. Adjust troops based on your preference.
  2. Click on Save.
  3. Select one of the Troops Formations.
  4. Click Confirm.

Done! Then if you want to load up the saved formation, just click on one of the "numbered flag" icons at the top when in the Squad Deploy screen.

The heroes and troop ratio you setup depend on the situation you want to use the squad in. Maybe your alliance told you to send only certain heroes and amount of troops to reinforce HQ during Crazy Joe, or maybe you just want to setup a 50/20/30 beast hunting squad with Gina so you don't always have to pick her manually. You need to know what setups will be most useful for you personally.


Getting Error Message?

If you are getting the message "You have heroes with no troops, please set up your squad first." this means you have not followed the steps in the section How To Setup Troop Formations? correctly.

You are clicking on the squad number in the upper menu before you have saved your squad.

  • In the example below, I am clicking on an empty squad slot 4.
  • If I clicked on 1, 2, 3 or 5 then the squads saved in those slots would load.


Example of Multiple Setup Troops Formations

This is an example of Troops Formations I have setup on one of my accounts for Bear Hunt.

  • Formation 1 - My main march with which I call rally (order of heroes does not matter, since I will be the rally leader).
  • Formation 2 - First "joiner" formation. Jessie as leader.
  • Formation 3 - Second "joiner" formation. Jasser as leader.
  • Formation 4 - Third "joiner" formation. Seo-yoon as leader.
  • Formation 5 - Fourth "joiner" formation. Philly as leader.
  • Formation 6 - Fifth "joiner" formation. Gwen as leader.