01. What Hot Pursuit Is
Hot Pursuit is a rotating 3-day PvE event with two halves. In the Solo half you pick one difficulty, scout a Fugitive onto the world map, march-kill it, and climb a 50-stage ladder for escalating rewards. In the Alliance half ("Elite Bounty"), once enough members have cleared solo targets, R4+ officers scout a shared Fugitive Boss and the whole alliance dogpiles it.
The solo half is split across two ladders shown as tabs: Hero Trial (Easy through Hell) and Champion Trial (Easy through Hell again, far harder and far richer). Each ladder is five difficulties of 50 stages, so the full progression is ten difficulties, climbed one per event.
The fugitive you fight is a straight power check — a stack of raw troops, 300 soldiers on Hero Easy stage 1 and up to 390,000 at the top of Champion Trial. No gimmicks, no counters. If your march power beats the target, you win.
The event runs on a 21-day cycle. Once a run ends, the next one starts roughly three weeks later — that is your window to bank the Energy you will need (see Section 07).
02. Choosing Your Difficulty
You may pick only one difficulty per event, and the highest you can select is one above your best-ever cleared difficulty — you unlock Normal by finishing Easy, Hard by finishing Normal, and so on. That makes difficulty a progression you climb across events, not within one. The counter runs straight through both tabs: Hero Easy is tier 1, Hero Hell is tier 5, and Champion Easy is tier 6.
⭐ Finish the difficulty you can clear — don't stall in a harder one
The difficulty-clear gift (a big flat bundle) and the unlock of the next tier both require completing all 50 stages. Overreach into a difficulty you can't finish and you forfeit that clear gift and fail to unlock the next tier for future events. A full clear at your level beats stalling at stage 20 of a harder one every time. Clear fully, then step up next event.
Difficulty is a pure power check — here's what each tier demands from stage 1 to stage 50. Note the overlap: Hard's stage 1 (12.6M) is weaker than Normal's stage 50 (55.86M), so a strong roster clears low Hard stages long before it finishes Normal.
Hero Trial — tiers 1–5
| Difficulty | Stage 1 Power | Stage 50 Power | Notable Loot |
|---|---|---|---|
 Easy | 900 | 7.2M | Frag ×5, Diamonds ×20 |
 Normal | 1.17M | 55.86M | Frag ×7, Diamonds ×25 |
 Hard | 12.6M | 108M | Frag ×9, Diamonds ×35 |
 Nightmare | 27.93M | 231.66M | Frag ×11, Electro Core ×45 |
 Hell | 71.28M | 376.2M | Frag ×13, Electro Core ×54 |
Loot column shows the difficulty-clear gift. Higher difficulty also multiplies your per-kill resource bundle (see Section 4).
Champion Trial — tiers 6–10
Champion Trial used to be a copy of Hero Trial. It is not any more — it is now a second, genuinely harder ladder with its own fugitives and its own reward tier. Champion Easy stage 1 (85.14M) already outweighs Hero Hell stage 1 (71.28M), and the ladder tops out at 694.98M.
| Difficulty | Stage 1 Power | Stage 50 Power | Notable Loot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 85.14M | 419.76M | Electro Core ×56, Eqpt. Chest ×6 |
| Normal | 100.19M | 465.7M | Electro Core ×58, Eqpt. Chest ×7 |
| Hard | 116.42M | 537.37M | Electro Core ×60, Eqpt. Chest ×8 |
| Nightmare | 133.85M | 613.8M | Electro Core ×63, Eqpt. Chest ×9 |
| Hell | 152.46M | 694.98M | Electro Core ×65, Eqpt. Chest ×10 |
"Eqpt. Chest" is the Chief Eqpt. Materials Chest, which Hero Trial never pays. Every Champion tier also pays a Legendary Universal Hero Fragment ×15 — that count stops scaling, where Hero Trial ramps ×5 to ×13.
🚨 Two separate gates gate Champion Trial
Players confuse these constantly, because they are independent and either one can be what is blocking you.
- ▸Seeing the tab needs your server to be at least 179 days old. Before that there is no tab bar at all — just a plain difficulty list. This is server age, not your account age, so nothing you do speeds it up.
- ▸Selecting Champion Easy needs Hero Trial Hell cleared — all 50 stages of it. The in-game tooltip says exactly this.
💡 Champion pays in a better currency tier
Champion does not just pay more — it pays different items. Its per-kill bundle is the (Safe) resource variants instead of raw resources, its chests are Lv. 2 instead of Lv. 1, and its Hero EXP is the 5K item instead of the 1K one. Champion Easy alone out-pays Hero Hell on almost every line.
03. The Ladder & Power Walls
The 50 stages don't climb smoothly. Every 10th stage is a wall — a ~2× to 3.8× power spike — and the power then drops back down and climbs again. Build for the milestone, not the average, because the stages right after a wall are a breather.
Easy difficulty makes the pattern obvious: stage 19 sits at 83,160 power — then stage 20 leaps to 313,380 (3.8×) — and stage 21 falls back to 158,400. The same spike-and-reset repeats at stages 30, 40, and 50 in every difficulty. If you can beat the milestone monster, the next nine stages are downhill.
Those milestone stages are also where the good per-kill loot lives. On ordinary stages the instant reward is just a resource pile. On the ×10 stages it adds hero fragments, diamonds, and speedups. So the smart target is always the next ×10 — pushing to stage 20 or 30 is worth far more than the linear stages in between.
The fugitive's look escalates every 10 stages — a quick visual tell for which power band you're facing.
- ▸Scout window is 1 hour. A scouted fugitive stays on the map for 60 minutes before it vanishes ("Target disappeared"). Plenty of time — but don't scout and walk away for the night.
- ▸Only the next stage is scoutable. You clear in order; there's no skipping ahead to a milestone.
- ▸Use the city shortcut. A main-city button jumps you straight to your next scoutable fugitive once you've chosen a difficulty — faster than opening the event page each time.
💡 Your event page may not match your ally's
There are two versions of the Hot Pursuit page, and the server decides which one you get. You cannot pick it, buy it, or predict it, and it can differ between two players in the same alliance. Nothing that matters changes: scout cost, the ladder, the rewards and the Champion gates are identical in both.
The newer page adds a 1 / 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 progress bar, and its Rewards Preview shows the stage-50 bundle rather than the next stage's drop. It also tells you plainly that finishing short of 50 pays only partial rewards. If your screenshot and an ally's disagree, this is why — neither of you is bugged.
04. Solo Rewards — Three Separate Buckets
Solo rewards come from three channels that behave differently. Confusing them is the most common way players misjudge which difficulty and how far to push. Only one of the three scales with the stage you reach.
1 · Per-kill bundle — scales with DIFFICULTY
Granted instantly every time you kill a fugitive. Flat within a difficulty, but it multiplies as you go up tiers: Hero Easy pays ~60k ammo/cash per kill, Hero Hell pays ~300k (5×). Champion pays a comparable amount again, but in the protected (Safe) resource items instead of raw resources.
2 · Best-stage mail — scales with STAGE (best only)
After the event, you're mailed the personal reward for your single highest stage cleared — not the sum of every stage. Hero EXP and resource chests that grow with stage number. Push as high as you can.
3 · Difficulty-clear gift — finish all 50
A large one-off bundle for completing the difficulty. This is the fat prize — and the reason to finish rather than stall. It scales hard by tier (see below).
| Difficulty Cleared | Clear Gift |
|---|---|
| Hero · Easy | Legendary Frag ×5, 100-Diamond ×20, 1-Hr Speedup ×18, 1K Hero EXP ×50, Lvl 1 Res Chest ×500 |
| Hero · Normal | Frag ×7, Diamond ×25, Speedup ×19, EXP ×100, Chest ×1000 |
| Hero · Hard | Frag ×9, Diamond ×35, Speedup ×20, EXP ×150, Chest ×1500 |
| Hero · Nightmare | Electro Core ×45, Frag ×11, Diamond ×40, Speedup ×21, EXP ×200, Chest ×2000 |
| Hero · Hell | Electro Core ×54, Frag ×13, Diamond ×50, Speedup ×22, EXP ×250, Chest ×2500 |
| Champion · Easy | Electro Core ×56, Eqpt. Chest ×6, Frag ×15, Diamond ×55, Speedup ×23, 5K EXP ×50, Lvl 2 Chest ×300 |
| Champion · Normal | Electro Core ×58, Eqpt. Chest ×7, Frag ×15, Diamond ×60, Speedup ×24, 5K EXP ×50, Lvl 2 Chest ×350 |
| Champion · Hard | Electro Core ×60, Eqpt. Chest ×8, Frag ×15, Diamond ×65, Speedup ×25, 5K EXP ×50, Lvl 2 Chest ×400 |
| Champion · Nightmare | Electro Core ×63, Eqpt. Chest ×9, Frag ×15, Diamond ×70, Speedup ×26, 5K EXP ×50, Lvl 2 Chest ×450 |
| Champion · Hell | Electro Core ×65, Eqpt. Chest ×10, Frag ×15, Diamond ×75, Speedup ×27, 5K EXP ×50, Lvl 2 Chest ×500 |
⭐ Where the Electro Core actually is
Inside Hero Trial, only Nightmare (×45) and Hell (×54) pay Electro Core. Hero Easy, Normal and Hard pay none at all.
Champion Trial pays it in every difficulty, ×56 up to ×65 — so even Champion Easy beats Hero Hell on Electro Core. If Electro Core is what you are here for, clearing Hero Hell once is the gate that changes your whole return from this event.
05. Warrants & Rally Assist
💡 Warrants are for helping, not scouting
Scouting a fugitive costs energy. A Fugitive Warrant is spent only to convert your own too-tough fugitive into an alliance Rally target so allies can help you kill it. Players who hoard Warrants "to scout with" have misread the whole system.
You automatically receive 5 Fugitive Warrants at event start, and any unused ones are wiped when the event ends — so there's no reason to save them. Requesting assistance costs 1 Warrant and flips your solo fugitive into an alliance-helpable target; your allies then Rally onto it. You must be in an alliance to request help.
✓ Refill your Warrants by helping others
The first 5 times you help an ally launch a Rally, you're guaranteed a Warrant back — so a socially active player effectively never runs out. Helping and participating in Rallies also grants rewards that reset daily, so pitch in every day, not just once.
Those daily Rally rewards are capped at 10 Rallies you lead and 50 Rallies you join per day. The join cap is high enough that you will never hit it by accident — but the lead cap is not, so spread your own assist requests across all three days instead of dumping them on day one.
- ▸Assist requests expire. A shared fugitive has a countdown; once it lapses the request is dead ("This assistance request has expired"). Answer ally calls promptly.
- ▸Don't burn a Warrant on a fugitive you can solo. Save the conversion for the milestone walls that actually out-scale your march.
- ▸At zero Warrants the button still looks available. It shows as 0/1 and simply does nothing when you tap it. The game gives you no error — so check the counter before you assume the request went out.
💡 Request assistance to assist others
If you know you can fully clear a difficulty level, requesting assistance at levels 1-5 (the easiest levels), will allow those who assist you to receive additional warrants that they can use later on higher difficulties of their own that they may otherwise struggle with. If you know you won't need to use your warrants, using them early "gives them away" to others who may need need additional help.
06. Progression Strategy
The efficient way to climb a difficulty is a strict escalation: at every stage spend the cheapest option that still wins, and hold your Warrants until nothing else works.
- 1 · Solo — march the target yourself and keep going until a stage beats you.
- 2 · Rally — when solo stops working, convert the stage to an alliance Rally and push as far as rallies carry you.
- 3 · Warrants — only when a Rally still can't clear it, spend a Warrant to request assistance.
⭐ Rally every ×10 wall
The milestone stages (10, 20, 30, 40, 50) spike ~2× to 3.8× over the stage just before them, so you'll typically need to Rally each wall even if you soloed the run-up to it. Budget a Rally for every ×10.
🚨 Don't spend Warrants early
You only start with 5, and they're your last resort. Burn them on stages you could have soloed or rallied, then fail a Warrant-assisted stage with none left, and you're stuck — no way to push any further. Hold them until you genuinely can't clear a stage any other way.
07. Energy — The Hidden Bottleneck
Power decides whether you can clear a stage; Energy decides whether you can afford to. Hot Pursuit is a serious energy sink, and running dry near stage 50 is the worst way to lose a difficulty you were strong enough to finish.
Every stage costs Energy twice — once to scout the fugitive, once to attack it — and rallying a stage costs more than soloing it.
| Action | Scout | Attack / Rally | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo a stage | 15 | 10 | 25 |
| Rally a stage | 15 | 20 | 35 |
| Full difficulty (50 solo) | — | — | 1,250 |
Rallying adds +10 Energy over soloing the same stage (25 → 35). The 15 Energy scout cost is confirmed in the game data; the attack and rally halves are measured in play, so treat the split as close, and the 25 and 35 totals as the numbers to budget against.
⭐ The budget math — a clear costs nearly the whole event
A no-rally clear of one difficulty is 1,250 Energy. Across the 72-hour event you get the free Delicious Meal (120 Energy) at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC — six meals, 720 Energy. That still leaves 530 Energy on you. At 1 Energy every 5 minutes, regenerating 530 takes 2,650 minutes — just under 44 hours, nearly the entire event — and that's the absolute floor, with zero rallies.
And that floor assumes your meter never sits full — the moment it caps, regen stops, which realistically happens overnight while you sleep. Your three daily Intel tasks drain Energy too. If K9s are unlocked on your server Beacon's skill hands some back. Net: with no donuts to spend, there's a real chance you run out before stage 50 — and rallying only tightens the window.
🍩 Hoard donuts before the event
Hot Pursuit runs on a 21-day cycle, so you get about three weeks of warning every time. Use it: start banking donuts so you'll have the Energy to finish. If you have no spare donuts, keep chipping away as Energy refills through the day and never miss a Delicious Meal. Having the power to clear a difficulty but running out of Energy at stage 47 is the one outcome you can't recover from.
08. Unlocking the Elite Bounty Boss
There are 5 sequential bosses ("Armed Hijackers"). Unlocking one is a member-count gate, not a damage gate: a set number of alliance members must each clear a solo target at a required difficulty. You must clear boss 1 before boss 2, and so on.
🚨 Getting the boss on the map ≠ being able to kill it
Unlocking a boss only takes the member count above; draining its HP is a separate job. Because every hit on the boss is capped (Section 09), a boss needs dozens of max-strength marches to kill — and it only lives 30 minutes. A small, active group can absolutely do it by marching repeatedly, but only if they're online and swinging the moment it spawns. Line up your hitters before you scout — an unlocked boss left unattended just expires.
| Boss | Boss HP | Unlock Requirement |
|---|---|---|
 Boss 1 | 1.5M | 10 members clear an Easy solo target |
 Boss 2 | 8M | 15 members clear a Normal solo target |
 Boss 3 | 25M | 20 members clear a Normal solo target |
 Boss 4 | 55M | 30 members clear a Hard solo target |
 Boss 5 | 150M | 40 members clear a Nightmare solo target |
The required difficulty rises with the boss — boss 5 needs 40 members who can each handle a Nightmare fugitive, which is a real roster check on its own.
09. Killing the Boss — The Damage-Cap Math
💡 The cap is per hit, not per player — a small group can grind it out
Every march is clamped to a maximum damage per hit. The cap is not a lifetime total, so there's no cap on how many times you swing. Divide boss HP by the per-hit cap and you get the number of max-strength hits to kill — hits a handful of players can rack up over many repeated marches. Bosses are routinely dropped by just 4–6 active players.
| Boss | Boss HP | Per-Hit Cap | Max Hits to Kill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boss 1 | 1.5M | 50k | 30 |
| Boss 2 | 8M | 250k | 32 |
| Boss 3 | 25M | 650k | 39 |
| Boss 4 | 55M | 1.4M | 40 |
| Boss 5 | 150M | 3M | 50 |
"Max hits to kill" assumes every hit lands the full cap — the best case. Weaker marches deal less, so the real number of marches is higher. The true limit isn't bodies, it's time: you have to deliver all those hits inside the boss's 30-minute window. A small group clears it by everyone marching back-to-back — faster marches and more hands both shorten the clock.
✓ The one-troop opener — make sure everyone gets paid
On the low bosses the flip side bites: boss 1 dies in about 30 hits, so if 40–50 members pile in with full marches at once, it's dead before everyone lands one — and anyone who missed earns nothing. Because boss rewards (Section 10) pay for participation, not damage, a single hit — even a one-troop march — collects the full bundle. So many alliances open with everyone sending a one-troop attack to lock in their participation. Once leadership confirms every member is in, they call to finish — from there anyone sends unlimited full marches to drain the rest.
10. Boss Rewards & Scheduling
✓ Rewards are flat per-participant, not a damage leaderboard
Every participant receives the same boss gift plus a rolled reward bag on the kill. The damage percentage shown is informational only — there is no ranked prize for topping it. A small account and a whale earn the same participant bundle. So don't hold back trying to "win" a chart that doesn't pay: just keep marching until it's down, and get paid like everyone else.
Boss gifts scale by tier — boss 1 pays Diamonds ×100, Legendary Frag ×2, plus speedups, EXP and resource chests; boss 5 pays Diamonds ×100, Frag ×2, and richer speedups/EXP/chests. All participants also share a rolled reward bag (hero fragments, diamonds, resources) on top.
⭐ Schedule Scout for peak online hours
Only R4+ officers can scout the boss, and they get two options: Scout Now or Schedule Scout (any future time on a 5-minute grid). Since the boss lives only 30 minutes and you need 30–50 members to converge, schedule the spawn for when your alliance is actually online. A boss scouted at a dead hour will expire half-killed and waste the unlock.
- ▸Coordinate the call. Scout Now pings online members — use it only when you already have a crowd standing by.
- ▸Bounty arrives by mail. Post-battle mail lists every participant and their KO reward — an all-participants payout, so make sure everyone actually threw a march.
11. Common Mistakes
- ▸ Overreaching your difficulty. Stalling at stage 20 of a hard tier forfeits the clear gift and the next-tier unlock. Finish the difficulty you can clear, then step up next event.
- ▸ Hoarding Warrants to "scout with." Scouting costs stamina; Warrants only convert a fugitive to a Rally — and they're wiped at event end anyway.
- ▸ Scouting the boss the moment it unlocks. Unlocking it just spawns it — killing it takes dozens of capped hits inside 30 minutes. Have your active marchers ready first.
- ▸ Scouting the boss at a dead hour. 30-minute lifespan + dozens of repeated hits needed = schedule it for peak online, always.
- ▸ Chasing the damage %. Boss rewards are flat per-participant; there's no ranked prize. Deal your cap and move on.
- ▸ Ignoring daily Rally rewards. Assist rewards reset daily — help allies every day, not once, and refill your Warrants doing it.
- ▸ Treating Champion Trial as a reskin of Hero Trial. It stopped being a copy — Champion Easy stage 1 out-powers Hero Hell stage 1. Do not select it on the assumption that it plays like the tier you just cleared.
TL;DR — The Quick Hits
- 1. Hot Pursuit = 3-day event: Solo ladder (50 stages) + Alliance Elite Bounty boss.
- 2. Ten difficulties across two ladders (Hero Trial, then Champion Trial). Pick one per event; unlock the next only by clearing all 50 stages of the current one.
- 3. Finish your difficulty — don't stall in a harder one and lose the clear gift + unlock.
- 4. Every 10th stage is a power wall (up to 3.8×), then it drops back. Build for the milestone.
- 5. Milestone (×10) stages pay the best per-kill loot — push to the next ×10, not the stages between.
- 6. Per-kill bundle scales with difficulty (5× at Hell); best-stage mail counts only your single highest stage.
- 7. In Hero Trial only Nightmare and Hell pay Electro Core (×45 / ×54). Every Champion Trial tier pays it, ×56 to ×65.
- 8. Scouting costs stamina, NOT Warrants. Warrants only convert a fugitive to an alliance Rally.
- 9. You get 5 Warrants (wiped at end); the first 5 ally-helps refund one each — help daily.
- 10. Boss unlock is a member-count gate; killing is a separate job — spawning it isn't the same as dropping it.
- 11. Damage cap is per hit, not per player: bosses take ~30–50 max-strength hits (boss 1→5), so 4–6 players can grind one down with repeated marches inside its 30-min window.
- 12. Boss rewards are flat per-participant — no damage leaderboard. Just land your hits.
- 13. R4+ should Schedule Scout the boss for peak online — it only lives 30 minutes.
- 14. Muster your hitters BEFORE scouting the boss; unlocking it ≠ being able to kill it.
- 15. Climb in order: solo until you fail, then rally until you fail, then spend a Warrant. Rally every ×10 wall; don't waste Warrants early.
- 16. Energy is the real cap: a no-rally clear is 1,250 (25/stage, of which 15 is the scout). Free Delicious Meals give 720 over the event; you regen the rest. Hoard donuts before Hot Pursuit hits the calendar.
- 17. On low bosses, open with a one-troop attack from everyone to lock in participation rewards, then call to finish — rewards are by participation, not damage.
- 18. Champion Trial has two gates: the tab needs a server 179+ days old, and selecting it needs Hero Hell fully cleared.
- 19. The event repeats on a 21-day cycle — that is your window to bank donuts and Energy.
- 20. Two versions of the event page exist and the server picks yours. The mechanics are identical, so a different-looking screen is not a bug.