JWA Sanctuary Guide - Themed Sanctuaries

Hello again Explorers! We are back with another hot topic: Sanctuaries. While there are several different methods to maximizing your sanctuary usage, this guide will focus on one of those methods: Themed Sanctuaries. Huge shout out to OrigamiRobot from our discord who wrote this guide! This is his analysis and opinions on using Themed Sanctuaries correctly. We understand there are different ways to organize sanctuaries and will go into more detail on other methods in future articles. 

written by: OrigamiRobot

I was really excited when Sanctuaries were first announced.  Being able to farm Arena exclusives and Epics sounded great. The idea seemed straightforward enough: put a creature in a Sanctuary, care for it, get DNA.  In practice, we've found the actual user experience of Sanctuaries a bit clunky. But hey, free DNA is free DNA, so let's see if we can streamline Sanctuaries a bit.

Before we talk about strategies, let's make sure we all know the basic facts about how Sanctuaries work.

1. Placing a creature in a Sanctuary gives a 1 time DNA reward upon that creature's return.  A creature is returned after 48 hours and the DNA received is based on rarity. 5 DNA for Epics, 15 for Rares, and 45 for Commons.

2. Placing a creature in a Sanctuary also shares that Sanctuary with your Alliance for 24 hours.  Shared Sanctuaries can automatically be accessed by any Alliance member from anywhere.

3. Caring for creatures in Sanctuaries rewards you with an instant DNA reward.  The amount is determined by the rarity of the creature, what type of care it prefers, and the level of the Sanctuary.

4. Performing the same type of care repeatedly on a creature yields diminishing DNA returns.  After 3 hours, the creature will go back to giving full rewards. This effect is on a per player basis.

5. Caring for creatures in Sanctuaries also generates Sanctuary Points which work towards increasing the Sanctuary's level.  The maximum Sanctuary level is 20.

6. Caring for creatures in Sanctuaries requires Care Items.  Food and Toy items can be gathered from Supply Drops (up to 6 of each per day) while 2 Interact items can be gathered from each 6 hour free incubator.

7. The number of creatures that can be placed in a Sanctuary is based on its level.  A level 1 Sanctuary can hold 4 creatures and this capacity will increase by 1 for every additional level.

8. A sanctuary will reset to level 1 14 days after the first creature is placed.  This will return all creatures to their owners.

9. A player can only place 4 creatures in Sanctuaries at any given time.

Wow, that sounds... really complicated.  It does play out a lot simpler that it looks, so let's look at some strategies.

My preferred strategy when it comes to Sanctuaries is what I call Themed Sanctuaries.  This means each Sanctuary focuses on a single creature. My main reasons for this stem from two user interface annoyances that I haven't discussed yet.  The first annoyance is that when you are looking at the Shared Sanctuary page, you only get to see 4 creatures in that sanctuary. When there are many different creatures in a single sanctuary, you might have to go back and forth between them to find the creature you need DNA for.  This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the second annoyance. When you exit a sanctuary, you get kicked all the way out to the map. Then you have to go back through the loading screens to pick a new sanctuary that you hope has the creature you want.

Themed Sanctuaries solve both these problems by guaranteeing you find what you're looking for in a sanctuary and making it a 1-stop shop.  The Sanctuaries with higher priority DNA get more traffic and thus will naturally be a higher level. It's a win-win. There are some basic creature placement rules to follow, but before I list those, I want to get you in the right mindset with a slightly unintuitive request:

Don't feel the need to place creatures based ONLY on your needs!  The DNA you get from a creature returning is not significant enough to have it be the sole factor in determining which creatures you're placing.  Placing a Rare creature gets you 15 DNA at the end of 48 hours. In those same 48 hours, you could get 150+ Rare DNA by caring for creatures already in the Sanctuary. 

Themed Sanctuary Rules

To figure out the best way to use your creatures, I suggest the following:

1. If a Sanctuary has less than 6 creatures, consider adding yours.  Why 6? Well, 6 is the daily amount of Food/Toy items you can get and so it's the perfect number to use at once.  Having 6 creatures in a Sanctuary allows someone to go in, quickly farm their DNA, and get out. Conversely, if a Sanctuary already has 6 or more creatures, you might consider placing your creature somewhere else, because:

2. If a Sanctuary is about to expire, please add your creature to refresh it.  Creatures are stuck in Sanctuaries for 48 hours while they are only shared for 24 hours.  This means that to keep them shared, you need to be strategic in timing your placement. If 6 people put creatures in the same Sanctuary at the same time, the Sanctuary will become unshared long before the creatures are returned and a 7th person would be required to reshare it.

Neither of these rules takes precedence over the other, but they do work together in a way I hope is obvious.  As you can see, following these rules may require you to put a creature in a sanctuary you don’t personally care about, but it will greatly benefit others in your Alliance.  Other players will be doing the same for the creatures they don’t care about and you do. The short and sweet version is: Keep 6 of the same creature in a Sanctuary and keep it shared as long as possible.

This is a very low maintenance strategy, but communication within your Alliance always helps.  With a bit more coordination, you could expand this to have sanctuaries based on different hybrids or other themes.  Just do whatever makes things easiest in your group and let the Sanctuary levels work themselves out. And make sure to join our discord for more discussion and tips on sanctuary management!