Beginners Guide #3: Resources And How To Use Them

There are many resources you can collect in Jurassic World Alive. At first, it can seem overwhelming, but we’ve got you covered explorer! This guide will help you understand what each resource is, what it can be used for, and what resources you should conserve!

Creature DNA is the second most plentiful resource out there in the Jurassic World Alive universe. You collect creature DNA in a few ways. Darting is the easiest way (check out our darting guide if you haven’t already). You can also get creature DNA from your free 6 hour incubator, and from battle incubators that you win for playing in the arena. There are also often themed incubators for sale either with real cash or for Hard Cash (in game currency).

It’s worth noting that buying creature DNA via incubators or with Hard Cash is generally a bad way to spend that valuable resource. For instance, I get about the same amount of Epic DNA out of the 5000 Hard Cash incubator as I can make in 2 darting sessions. So while it may be harder to find those dinosaurs and dart them, generally speaking you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck by saving your Hard Cash and not using it to buy incubators.

Hard Cash can be earned in a few ways, but it is a slow process to gain the quantities you usually need for the big purchases. If you’re a free to play player, it’s always best to save your hard cash for as long as possible to take advantage of big coin sales, which come around once every few months or so.

You can gain Hard Cash by spinning drops (capped daily at a relatively low amount), by being in an active alliance that is completing missions, by completing daily missions, by completing Achievements, and by winning or ranking in some tournaments that award Hard Cash. You can also get Hard Cash by buying one-time offers (generally a good deal if you’re willing to part with some real world money), and buying it in the store. There are also occasional Hard Cash sales that generally offer the best deals, but these only come around once every few months and still require some financial investment to get.

Scents can be used to attract creatures to your current location. There are a number of kinds of scents but the most common are Small Common Scent (6 minutes), Large Common Scent (20 minutes), Rare Scent (20 Minutes) and Epic Scent (20 minutes). Our Scent Guide gives you more info on how to maximize using your scents. You can get scents in a few ways.

Scent Strikes (the strike towers that look like a Large Common Scent) will award a random Common or Rare Scent (for the lower difficulty) or a Common/Rare/Epic scent (for the harder difficulty). You’ll still see common scents most often. You can also get Small Common Scents from spinning supply drops. Be sure to use these regularly as you only get 2 of each type of scent (unless you purchase more above the limit) at a time.

You can also buy Scents in the store for Hard Cash. On average the rare and epic scent will give you around 2.5 Rare (for the Rare Scent) or 2.5 Epic (for the Epic Scent) creatures while moving and using a scent – so you can already see these are a much better buy than incubators. Still, for the free to play player, you may not want to spend Hard Cash on these. If you’re paying a little to play, there are ways to get great results from these described in our Scent Guide.

Stat boosts were a new introduction with update 1.7 and they are relatively hard to come by. There is generally one stat boost strike per week that awards a decent chunk of stat boosts (usually 25), and occasional sales in the store that award them as well. But the most important way to get stat boosts is via collecting your Daily Battle Incubator. There's a grid that helps us understand which arena awards how many stat boosts in each daily battle incubator (below).

The higher you progress in the arenas, the more stat boosts you can collect daily.

Check out our opinion piece on boosts for our thoughts on how boosts might be improved. 

Next up, we're going to talk about Scents and how to maximize your use of them! Be sure to check back often as we continue to fill out the rest of our Beginners Guides for Jurassic World Alive!