Here are some tips that always help:

The Long, Narrow, and Winding Path Leads to Victory
You can fit more than one ant into a tile. Use long paths to limit enemy numbers, and make them winiding to kep the enemy from reaching your queen too easily. You can add speed tiles to make your ants move faster if you find their travels tedious.

Get Lots of Royal Jelly
Global ant upgrades can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Get as much royal jelly as possible and get the unique upgrades for each ant ASAP.

Numbers are always good....
Ants need numbers to win. Always make sure you have a lot of ants. that being said....

...but so are ant upgrades
If your ants die faster than they are replaced, you will eventually lose. Upgrade them whenever possible to make each individual ant stronger.

Stockpile food
Having food stockplied is a necessity for Formicarium Challenges and surviving at night duirng Missions 2.1 and 2.2, as well as in Freeplay.

Plan out your colony in advance.
Ants can be replaced, tiles cannot. Plan out what you want and where so that you don't end up strapped for food later.

Now onto the missions!

This is your base. Here, you can spend food to build and upgrade tiles, territory to expand the nest, and royal jelly to do research. More on those in the next section.

As a basic note:

The colorful things are seeds. You eat these.

The three weird little tube things are connectors to other formicariums. These will spawn enemy ants in challenges.

Food always spawns in a circle. Be sure to keep this in mind.

This is where you do Formicarium Challenges. Make sure to prepare for them!

The top left buttons let you do missions and research. The DNA one is for ant upgrades, the two ants that seem to be kissing is the mission list.

Alright, now onto the good stuff.

This is a simple mission, wiht a simple goal: kill everything else on the map.

Here is what you can kill:

Wood Worms
These are harmless weevil grubs. They are the easiest source of food in game. They cannot attack or defend themselves, so use your workers to butcher them so that you can hatch warriors. On the map, they are represented with green question marks until you find them.

Devil's Coach Horse Beetle Grubs
Your first challenge. These beetle larvae can shread your ants in a one on one fight, and go through workers like a knife in hot butter. Overwhelm them with black ant warriors to kill them. They can be harvested as a food source. They are represented with red exlamation points on the map until discovered.

Woodlice
Ah, the pill bug. Unable to attack, but tough to kill. Can bunker down to increase defense at the cost of mobility. Use lots of warriors to kill it. Can be harvested for food several times. They share the fog of war picture with the wood worm (green exclamation point).

Devil's Coach Horse Beetle
These beetles are only found in Northern parts in the map. THey hit hard, are extremely heavily armored, and can spray your ants with pheromones to confsue them. USe lots of ants to kill them. Be warned, they are always found wiht some of their larvae.

This one is all about surviving the slave maker ants until you can get the numbers to initiate the final battle.

DO THIS QUICKLY - THE ATTACKS GET STRONGER THE LONGER THE MISSION GOES ON!

Also, there are two new types of enemy in this mission:

Slave Maker Ants
These will steal ants from your nusery tiles and make said tiels unable to spawn new ants for some time. Try to put you nursery tiles out of the way to slow this down.

Funnel Web Spiders
The spiders occupy areas containing the corpses of woodlice. The can instantly kill your ants, but need to return to their nests after doing so. Use swarms of ants to overwhelm them, then loot their nests for food.

This is a special mode unolcked once you complete the mission at least once. In this mode, a mission has an extra creature added in to make your life harder. These two missions use Mole Crickets for that purpose. These will burrow into any of the tiles you have already modified (that is, put food, nursery, or speed hexes on them).

THUS, YOU DO NOT WANT TO BUILD LOTS OF EXTRA SPEED TILES IN EITHER OF THESE MISSIONS ON CHALLENGE MODE! ALSO, PLEASE KEEP EXTRA ANTS GURADING YOUR QUEEN SO THAT THE MOLE CRICKETS DON'T FORCE YOU TO CANCEL AN OFFENSIVE!

You will have to fight off two colonies of ants, plus a few beetles.

Make sure you have lots of ants for this. Also, when the narrator mentions something along the lines of a continuous attack, retreat inside of your formicarium - it will let you bottle up the enemy at the entrance and in the tunnels.

These missions take place in a new area called the beach, and also introduces a new ant,

These ants come in two flavors: ranged ants and melee ants. You can create ranged ants in the formicarium once you pay for them with royal jelly. The melee ones are exclusive to freeplay and these missions.

Wood ants have two variants: slow firing wiht high damage and rapid fire with less damage. High damage gets an AOE effect at max upgrade, rapid fire gets a slow effect.

The choice of which strain you use in the formicarium is permanent. Use these missions to decide which one suits you best.

This mission will be your introduction to the day-night cycle of the game.

During the day, enemies are weaker, you can see around the entire map rather easily, and food is plentiful. In this mission, it also means that the lower levels of the beach will be covered in insect corpses. These are your primary source of food. You'll need to send your ants outside fo the colony to harvest the bodies, and do so before night falls.

During the day, you have two major enemies: other wood ants (which can use both rapid fire and mortar strains of ranged ants), and

Tiger Beetles

Tiger beetles move fast, hit hard, and are incredibly durable. Avoid unless you want to kill them. Oh, and as a rule of thumb, the bigger they are, the more health they have.

Eventually, a time will appear on hte screen. When it reaches zero, the tide will rise, and the lowest level of the beach will be covered in water, killing anything that was on that part of the beach. It will do this three times total, at which point night will fall.

During the night, more dangerous enemies will spawn. This mission requires you to survive three nights.

On the first night, you will encounter

Hermit Crabs

These will mostly just wander around the beach, but a couple will try to invade your nest. Hermit crabs have high health and can retreat inside of their shells to heal when heavily injured, so you will need to hit them very hard and without pause in order to kill them. Once they are dead, you can harvest them for food.

From the second night onwards, your nest will also come under attack from

Wolf Spiders

These creatures will wnader around your nurseries, killing any ants they find, before trying to kill your queen. Form up your ants around the queen to stop this.

After each night, send out your workers to harvest additional food. You need to stockpile extra food each night and get more ants lest you find yourself defenseless when darkness falls.

The finaly night will see a large wolf spider attack the nest, as well as about seven of her offspring. Defend the queen, and you can easily survive this.

This mission is mostly focused on defending your colony from attack. This time, there are two other ant nests on the map, which occupy the lower levels of the beach. In three dyas, those levels will flood, and those ants do not want to be there when it happens. Thus they will try to move up the shore. Unfortunately, you are in their way.

With the other ants having the prime pickings of hte beach, you cannot hope to gather insect carcasses for food. Instead, just outside your nest are two groups of root aphids, which provide honeydew for your ants to eat. Of course, this food is not free - ladybugs will try to eat the aphids. While you can ignore them during the day, at night, they will attack the insects in trios, and failing to defeat them can result in you going down an aphid farm.

In order to win, you'll need to balance defending your colony, protecting your aphids, and getting enough ants to resist enemy attack. Expand as fast as possible, and beware the devil's coach horses that call parts of your nest their home. Once they are dead, harvest the food and hatch/upgrade as many ants as possible - you'll need all the help you can get. Beware that, during hte night, devil's coach horses spawn continuously, and will attack your ants, in order to stop them from killing the ladybugs.

The final battle will have your ants face off against both colonies, including their queens. To say it will be a tough fight is an understatement, but if you've managed to last this long without completely depleting your ants, you'll probably win this.

For these missions, Challenge mode causes juvenile tiger beetles to spawn in the sand. These will hide in burrows until your ants get close, at which point they will attack and kill one. They will only attack if the ant is alone and are very vulnerable while attacking, but become invincible after burrowing and instantly kill there targets. Any not killed the previous day will continue to be a problem in future nights.

You can see where the larvae are burrowed, so if you want to avoid them, do so.

This battle will include gene stealer ants, black ants, wood ants, three tiger beetles, and ten wolf spiders.

You will need wood ants for this mission, so get some.

Just like in the last mission, try and hunker down inside your nest when the final onslaught begins. You may also want to get the Royal Guard upgrade for your queen.

From here on out, you've completed the early access campaign, and are now free to do whatever you want. Good luck!

Alright, first off, you need to move to a different formicarium to do the next few challenges!


Your nest, your foods srores, your ants, ALL OF IT WILL BE GONE!

You will get a certain amount of royal jelly for every tile of territory excavated, every enemy killed, every ant made, and every food point spent, though, so keep that in mind.

Now, onto the missions.


Alright, now we get to the


Leaf cutters come in four types:

Minims, who are automatically produced when you make a brood tile for any other ant in a leaf cutter colony. They are not controlled by you.

Minors, who are your workers. They dig out new tiles, and gather leaves, but can only gather about five food points worth of leaves, and are slowed down while carrying leaves.

Media, who are your warriors. They are the workhorses of the leaf harvesting operations, and have two advantages over minors in this field: they are not slowed down harvesting leaves, and they can carry bigger pieces than minors. Their tiles cost 80 fungi, and they need six fungi to be replaced.

Finally, we get to


These are the ants your gene stealers can use. Just like wood ants, they have a choice of two special abilites: stun or taunt. Stun gets AOE for its level three version, taunt gets extra armor when near death.

Leaf cutter majors can get the largest leaf pieces, but they're most useful either as guards or leading a charge. Only use them for harvests if you really need to, or have plenty of them.

Majors cost 150 fungi to hatch and 15 to replace lost ones, so don't waste them!

Note: Gene Stealer ants cannot harvest leaves, so don't try that when leaf cutters are added into freeplay.

• Leaf storage and waste tiles are designated by you.
  
• Minors, Media, and Majors gather leaves and deposit them at storage tiles.
  
• Minims take leaves to brood tiles, where they become fungus - this is food for leaf cutters.
  
• Spent fungus leaves behind waste, which the minims will then take to waste tiles, where they gradually decompose.

Now back to the mission:

The objective is simple: collect ten thousand leaves BEFORE the other colony does so. Easy, right?

Not quite - the other colony starts out only about three to four hundred leaves ahead of you, but they will RAPIDLY outpace you from that point onward, as they already have media and major to gather leaves for them.

If you try to get media as soon as possible to lose the gap, YOU WILL LOSE!

So, what to do?

Spam minors. LOTS OF MINORS! You want at least 25-30 minors beyond the seven that come with your queen before you start making other castes.

From there, divide your ants into two harvesting groups: one that is composed solely of minors, and the other of majors and media. Have them harvesting from two different spots, otherwise you will not be able to overtake your enemies.

Also, here are the bugs you will need to deal with:


They can jump. They will use this to attack isolated workers, but will always avoid groups of workers. They are, at best, nuisances.

A type of katydid. They are problematic for groups of ants, because they can reflect damage back onto ants via their spines. A decently sized group of media and majors will shred them, though.


These are what people in the United States call daddy long legs. They will try to pick off isolated ants. They can stun all ants around them using chemicals, and when injured, they will drop one of their legs and run away. The still twitching leg will draw aggro from your ants, so your ants will attack it instead of the arachnid until the leg finally goes limp. Again, these are nuisances.

Oh boy, these guys can be problematic. They hit REALLY HARD, and no matter what, they will not show up on your minimap. The big ones can also eat an ant to heal themselves. The small ones are annoying, but the big ones are a hassle if you don't surround them fast enough.


These ants are not playable, and spawn either on their own or in packs. They rove around the map, harassing you whenever they find your workers. They can use their jaws both for powerful attacks, or to propel themselves out of combat, which also heals them. They are, at best, an annoyance when you get media and majors, but expect them to pick off some of your minors from time to time.


Devil's Coach Horse Beetle, Rain-Forest Edition!

No, seriously - they are pretty much just re-skins of the DCH, though the adults have a different spray effect - it causes ants to flee. The flee time lasts less than with the DCH's confusion, though.

Anyway, to win mission 3.1, spam workers until you have thirty, then get some media (start with 7), then get majors, and harvest from at least two sites at once - one with minors, the other with media and majors. Also, if you can afford to do so, harass the other colony and try to evict them from a harvesting site - the temporary slow in their leaf intake rate can be vital.

Now onto the next mission!


This mission has a new threat for you to face:


These guys come in three flavors, just like with your leaf cutters:

Minors, who do a large amount of damage for their size, but can't take much in return.

Media, who are just buffed up minors.

Finally, there are


Given how small these guys are relative to your majors, you'll like think they're rather over-hyped.

They aren't.

See, Army Ant Majors can give their allies a damage increasing buff that lets them shred through your ants. Even fully upgraded majors won't last long against them.

The objective of the mission is to drive these guys off. Army spawn along three preset trails in game, where they will go back and forth, gathering food. These trails get progressively closer to your nest, and the last trail will bring them to your doorstep.

So, what do you do?

Kill them. A lot.

Some advice:


Army ants can do a lot of damage really fast, and can easily slaughter your ants if they get the advantage in numbers and majors. Sending a lot of Majors at them will only delay this problem. And should your majors die off too fast, you will rapidly run out of food and get slaughtered.


Army ants rely on numbers and majors to overwhelm your ants. Striking their trails when the mobile majors have just passed by will be the most effective way to break their ranks.


The first couple ants leading each trail of army ants are compsed solely of majors, and they will tear you apart if you try to halt their advance. Let tehm pass, then split the trail in two - you'll lose less ants this way.


Army ants will retreat at night, so use night time to replenish your forces. Again, splitting your ants into two harvesting groups helps.

As for new enemy bugs, there is only one notable addition:


Scientifically known as amblypygids, these creatures stand on long legs that let them attack from a distance. A few baby ones will be hidden underground with rove beetle larvae, whilst adults spawn on the surface at night. The adults can take quite a pounding and give just as good as they get, so avoid them unless absolutely necessary. An absolutely massive whip spider hides under a piece of wood near the center of the map, and is visible as a big red square on the minimap. Only kill him if you have a lot of ants and need a lot of food - his hiding spot is home to two large plants each holding 600 points of leaves, but he can kill fully upgraded majors with one swing.

Note: This guide is meant to be compatible with any ability choice, but for those wondering, I completed it with 19 black ants, 19 mortar wood ants, and 19 stun leaf cutter ants.

Also, I suggest getting speed tiles to decrease the time it takes for replacement ants to get to the front lines. As always, have at least 1000 food stockpiled - you'll need it.


You read that right - you will be fighting another colony here. Now, here's what you need to know:

• Enemy ants will consist of ereptor workers, trap jaws, and army ant majors. Please reread the notes I made on them for missions 3.1 and 3.2 to know their weaknesses.
  
• To win, you need to go inside the enemy colony and kill their queen. Entering other colonies is now a thing.
  
• Make sure all of your ants are together for this. You can divide the leaf cutters into a separate group that leads the rest, though, should you find it suits your play-style better.
  
• Be careful once you start beating back the enemy ants - the scientist will start crushing your leaf cutters with his finger to give the enemy a chance to turn the tide.
  
• The mission will not end until you kill the queen, but she needs food to spawn them. Outlasting her warriors and killing her workers when the scientist starts dropping food on the enemy nest will leave her defenseless.

It seems I am almost finished, but there is one final trick the enemy queen has up her (metaphorical) sleeves:


Thinking about throwing in the towel? Don't - she may have upgrades you don't, but her's still have a cooldown. Once she starts sending hordes of fully upgraded ants at you and you are kicked out of her nest, fall back and regroup outside her nest, surround and wipe out her warriors, then prepare

In order to continue his experiment, the male scientist moved you to a new terrarium.

Once again, you lose everything. This shouldn’t sting as much now.

You're now in a somewhat barren looking terrarium. Complete a mission to get food in it.

Mission 4.1: Cold Blooded

Now to play as fire ants!

Fire Ants have three traits to note:

First, they can attack both with bites and stings. The sting does the most damage (and most of that is venom), so keep that in mind when you pick upgrades in the formicarium.

Second, level three fire ants spawn two per hex. This doesn't count against the formicarium population limit, so you can use them as extra muscle for less tunnels.

Finally, fire ants can build bridges across certain gaps (marked with white rocks) allowing them to cross water to reach food. If the water level changes, the ants will get washed away, and any ants on the side not connected to your nest that were not washed away will go crazy and die rapidly. Keep this in mind for mission two.

Fire ants are themed around expendability - their two permanent upgrades (of which you can only ever choose one, no take backs) are pervasive brood (they spawn free after a while since the last spawning) and vigorous brood (they get a buff for a short duration after spawning). Vigorous brood is best used to rush, while pervasive brood is meant for turtling and making a big push. Choose which one works best for you, but I ended up using pervasive for both missions.

Alright, now to the mission:

Back boned animals finally make a live appearance here, and they make an impression: at the top of the map is an AMERICAN BULLFROG. You need to kill her to win the mission, but she will eat your ants and heal from them like a mantis, except she can eat them multiple times, several in one attack, and the healing isn't a single lump some, but regeneration that is extended every time she eats an ant. The regeneration power is ever present in amphibians.

Aside from the bullfrog queen, there are two other amphibians in this mission:

The narrow mouthed toad is the first and so far only toad in the game. It can swim (like all amphibians) and is also an accomplished digger. Every night, some of them will dig into your nest. Depending on how far you've expanded, they might just fumble around the edge of the nest map, or they might make a beeline for your queen. They are guaranteed to become a problem by night two. Be sure to swarm them. Also, since they can eat multiple ants with a special attack, try surrounding them in an open brood chamber and hitting from multiple directions.

The eastern newt is a more serpentine foe that swims around and occasionally crawls onto land. They usually get eaten by the other ant colonies, so ignore them for now. If you do fight them, try to surround them - their long bodies make turning difficult.

You also have another new type of threat to deal with:


You're in a swamp. Now you have to deal with carnivorous plants.

The pitcher plant carries edible nectar within, but there's a high probability that ants trying to collect it will get swallowed. Also, they sometimes have spiders on them that spit venom and try to jump your ants. I don't remember what this spider is called, so I'm gonna leave him here.

The venus fly trap just lures your ants in and kills them, with no reward to offer. Fortunately, unlike the pitcher plant, it needs time to reset its trap. Bum rush it with expendable ants if it is near food and ignore the casualties.


There are two other colonies in this mission:

A colony of big headed ants is found on the left side of the map. You can ignore them on normal, though if you do fight them, they get special warriors with comically oversized heads. Those heads pack a punch, but the warriors will sometimes flip over and become vulnerable.

A nest of little black ants is found at the bottom of the map. You can do whatever you want to them. My only advice is that if you want/need another colony out of the picture, focus on taking out that colony only. A two front war leaves you open to getting eaten by a toad.


This map has its own spiders and beetles.

Green Magnolia Spider: Combines the jumps of a jumping spider with the speed of a wolf spider. Kill it quickly.

Chequered Beetle: The local mooks. The larvae are slow but well armored, adults have no chemical attacks but are well protected. Swarm them.

Bombardier BeetleShoots burning fluid out its butt to kill your ants. Swarm it between bursts for the kill.

False Bombardier Beetle: Basically a reskinned devils coach horse beetle. Same strategy applies. Their larvae will start showing up in the next mission. No fancy strategy, just kill them.

Six spotted tiger beetle: reskinned beach tiger beetle, same strategy applies, but they don't get to super giant size.

Wasp Mantisfly: First flying enemy, likes to hang out on tall plants and swoops in to attack you. Heals when perched. Swarm and butcher.


First off, getting food is a bit more difficult now - the devs have reduced the food drops on enemies (mostly because they don't like you feeling too invincible making a stand in the formicarium), so you need to forage a bit more. Fire ants also get access to a new food source in milkweed aphids, which live on milkweed plants. You can relocate them to a nearer plant to avoid fighting rivals, but this will make those rivals mad. You can collect one group without provoking them in the top right of the map, though you will need to kill a mantisfly.

I highly recommend building up a sizeable force of ants (Not sure how many space you will need, since fully upgraded fire ant hexes give two warriors a hex) by day four, because night four can see you getting eaten alive by toads. Once you've got an army you are comfortable with, swarm the toad.

Titan enemies (like the bullfrog) can be scaled by your ants. Not only does this allow them to attack without fear of injury, it also buffs melee attacks on the titan from all other ants. Use this to beat up the bullfrog until she leaves...which tells other amphibians that the coast is clear. Fight off the toad and newt army to win the mission.

You are now a fire ant colony stuck on a mound that is slowly being submerged by rising water. You need to make enough ants to form a living raft so that your queen can escape. You probably have some idea of what I am talking about if you saw Ant Man.

This mission requires you to build lots of ants (warriors are preferred) and I do mean lots of ants - on easy, you need to build about 125 warriors to complete the mission. So yeah. I recommend not upgrading your ants, since this mission heavily favors quantity over quality.

Bugs will periodically be washed up on the right side of the surface map by the flood water, which will rise once every day, and again every night. There are groups of aphids scattered over the map that can be collected to provide a continuous source of food, but you better know what you are doing - unless you start working immediately to get 19 warriors and seven additional workers and give them very specific commands, you won't be able to rescue the aphids at the bottom of the map before the ground floods (the aphids just climb up the plant).

There are four new enemies in this mission:

Pine Woods Tree Frog: Think of it as a smaller bullfrog with the powers of a toad except for digging. Also, they hop away at low health.

Dwarf Salamander: Like the newt, but bigger, plumper, and red. Same strategy applies.

Sundew: The venus flytrap of the mission - the actual venus fly traps on the map are props. Same rules apply.

Blue Skimmer: The second titan of the game. She's present as soon as the game begins, but only becomes a threat at night four, when she lands. Swarm her to kill her, be wary of amphibians or arthropods giving her unintentional support.

Oh, and there's a colony of little black ants on the bottom left of the map. You can pilfer their outcropping for food and aphids, as long as you do so before they get washed away.

My advice for you here is simple: build warrior tiles as often as you can. Pay attention to the rising tide and use it to collect food - the rising tide opens up bridge points that let you collect seeds from pinecones, which constitute the majority of the food in this mission. If you harvest everything from the surface at a given tide, expand your nest and pilfer the food hidden in locked chambers. You have to get all of your ants produced by day five, because the tide change on night five will wash you away.

Once you have all the ants you need, send them up to the highest point on the map (it's marked) to win the mission.

Okay, here is where things get weird.

With the female scientist off to go watch some tests regarding naked mole rats, the male scientist decides that now is the perfect time to mess with royal jelly. And it isn't your ants he is messing with.

Enter,


Yeah. Now we are fighting hybrid creatures. Think of them as what would happen if Frankenstein was messing with bugs instead of people. All of them are titan class enemies, so you can mount them. Oh, and if you don't kill them fast enough, the scientist will start hitting the formicarium, which kills ants and will damage your queen, so you're on a time limit.

First off, there is the

It's a hermit crab crossed with a scorpion. The tail and stinger are hidden under the snail shell. Attacks from mounted ants will break the shell, so keep that in mind. Since the shell will eventually break anyway once you hit it enough, hold off on mounting until the shell is no more.

With the hermit scorpion dead, your next opponent appears....though I do believe that opponents is more appropriate. Enter,

Though I don't think they have stated names, I call them the Whip Mantis and the Praying Scorpion. One is a whip spider with mantis arms, the other is a mantis with whip spider pediapalps. They really hate each other. You can speed up the fight by tricking them into fighting. The Mantis is the tankier of the two, but her sister can inflict a lot of damage before either fleeing or croaking, so make sure they fight as much as possible.

Once they die, the female scientist reveals that she decided to come back early. While the male scientist stalls for time, you have to face his final creation:


A hybrid of tarantula and dragonfly, this thing is beefy and hits hard. Occasionally it will use powerful attacks, but these are really heavily telegraphed and should be easy to dodge - avoid the big colored vortex.

Once you win, the male scientist will hide you home in a cupboard before security escorts him away.

Congrats! Now we only have one more big update before the game leaves early access!