Last War Survival – Overlord (Gorilla) Guide (2025)
Unlock the Gorilla Overlord in Last War Survival. Learn when it becomes available, how to unlock it as F2P or P2P, training paths, skill order, and calculators for smart progression.
Last War Survival: Overlord (Gorilla) Guide — Unlock Faster, Train Smarter
The Gorilla Overlord is an additional member you can add to your squad in Last War Survival. Once unlocked, it provides troop and defense buffs that can tilt battles in your favor. But the road to unlocking and training it is long, especially if you’re free-to-play. Let’s break it down.
🗓 How to Unlock the Overlord?
The Overlord becomes available on Season 2, Day 89 (it used to be Day 96 before an update). At first you'll have to go through a storyline where you rescue and heal the gorilla. This event spans a couple days and each day you can find supplies by completing specific radar tasks and you'll get some from the baby gorilla as well. The progress per day is as follows:
- Day 1: 50/150
- Day 2: 90/150
- Day 3: 130/150
- Day 4: 150/150
On the fourth day the gorilla is recovered and it will unlock the Tactical Institute. This building provides you with Training Guidebooks for the gorilla. Additionally the gorilla becomes available to train in its Overlord Base, and you get a second option in the Armed Truck minigame in front of your base where you can run through levels with the Gorilla Overlord.
💰 How to add the Overlord to your Squad?
Unlocking it was the first step, but in order to get the Gorilla Overlord added to your squad you first have to train it. When you go to your Overlord Base, you'll notice that there are 3 Specialized Training entries below a Promotion Rating button. Before your squad can get equipped with the Gorilla Overlord, the Promotion Rating needs to reach "Rookie Partner I". This status is locked behind training levels, where you will first need to get to training level 100 (for all 3 specializations) before you can fully reach that status. A short breakdown below:
- Reach level 50 in all 3 training specializations to unlock the promotion from "No Rating" to "New Partner I"
- Reach level 100 in all 3 training specializations to unlock the promotion from "New Partner X" to "Rookie Partner I"
- Promote the Gorilla Overlord from "New Partner I" to "New Partner X" (requires 2 bond badges per level), and then to "Rookie Partner I" (requires 4 bond badges)
Once you reach Rookie Partner I it will become available to assign to one of your squads.
Summarised, the items that you need to get to this stage are:
- 1800 Training Certificates
- 300k Training Guidebooks
- 24 Bond Badges
For the full overview and step by step information for each of the levels, take a look at our Overlord Training Calculator.
How to unlock the Overlord as Free-to-play?
When going down the free-to-play route to unlock the Overlord, keep in mind that it will be a very slow grind. Training Certificates and Bond Badges will be your main bottlenecks as these are hard to get by in the game.These are the ways for you to gain resources for the Gorilla Overlord:
- VIP Store (Training Guidebook and Bond Badge - weekly refresh)
- Alliance Store (Bond Badge)
- Campaign Store (Training Certificates and Training Guidebooks)
- Gold and Purple Overlord Chests (gained from the Armed Truck and other events)
The first week there are also one-time options to get some additional resources. These are through the Overlord Growth Boost and Overlord Training Battle Pass (free tier). However, resources are limited and your main way of getting them will be through the weekly restocks in the stores and the Overlord Chests. There are also radar tasks that appear (max 3 a day) up to a maximum of 42 tasks that provide you with Overlord items.
How Long Does it Take to Unlock the Gorilla Overlord as a Free-to-play?
With the amount of resources required, it will take until the start of Season 4 before you will get enough of everything to get the Overlord to Rookie Partner I. At the end of season 3 during its off-season you will find that the Black Market has Overlord related materials which will help you to reach your goal.
In real time this means around 3.5 - 4 months of playing is required before you can unlock the Overlord, during which you will see more and more Overlords pop up in Truck battles and other places. Do not let this put you down, as the power added to a squad through the Overlord is not as great as for example the same power added through Tech Research. The Overlord is a great addition, especially later on after leveling it further, but the power gain you will see in squads does not translate well to actual difficulty of beating that squad.
How to unlock the Overlord through paid packs?
If you want to know how you can unlock the Gorilla Overlord fast, the answer is paid packages. The initial rescue takes 4 days, but through the available packages you can have the Overlord added to your squad the very next day!
Once the rescue is done, new packs are available for purchase together with an Overlord Training Battle Pass. For those wanting to get the Overlord as quickly as possible it comes down to purchasing all available packs and their different tiers:
- Overlord Training Battle Pass
- Overlord Training Pack
- Training Certificate Pack (x4)
- Bond Badge Pack
- Overlord Training Special Offer Pack (Tier 1-5)
Everything together will provide you with enough resources to get the Overlord to Rookie Partner I, but it will cost you around $500 to do so.
For those wanting to spend less, you can still unlock the Overlord in about a month by only buying the Tier 1 packs. There are multiple weeks in which you can purchase additional packs and this will halve the amount of money required to unlock the Overlord.
What the Overlord Adds to Your Squad
When the Overlord gets added to your squad, it will bring you a large boost in squad power. Generally you can expect to see a 1.5m-2m increase as soon as you can add it to your squad. Be careful though, as this power increase looks big on paper but in reality the Overlord's power doesn't reflect very well in battles. The same power increase through tech research or gear would benefit you more, but it's nevertheless a good addition to your squad. Once you start to upgrade the Overlord more, its skills will become better and provide more benefits during battles.
What Overlord Skills to Prioritize?
The Overlord has access to 5 skills, which are all locked behind certain level requirements. For the full unlocks, you can have a look at our Overlord Promotion Calculator which highlights when additional levels get unlocked for skills.
You'll want to leve your skills as follows, from highest to lowest priority:
- 1: Brutal Roar - this provides a debuff to the enemy team which reduces their critical hits.
- 2: Overlord's Armor - a generally good passive by reducing damage taken so the Overlord remains alive for longer.
- 3: Furious Hunt - additional damage based on crits taken by your heroes. This becomes more valuable with higher skill levels due to the reduction in crits to trigger this attack.
- 4: Riot Shot - the regular attack and the skill you will unlock earliest. It's alright, but not something to spend skill medals on when there are other areas to improve still.
Lastly there is the Expert Overlord skill that unlocks at level 51. This skill has no further levels, so one you unlock it you're done with it. Therefore it's not included in the list of upgrades as you will not have to upgrade it.
How to Further Level Up the Overlord?
Once the Overlord is added to your squad, you're far from finished. There are many more levels, promotions and skills to upgrade over time. There is no one-size-fits-all upgrade setup for the Overlord, as there are a variety of plateaus to get through. Your best course of actions is to have a look at our calculators for each of the Overlord's upgrades to understand the resources that are involved:
Keep in mind that the training aspect has artificial ceilings by requiring you to reach a certain threshold (increments of 50 training levels) before you can continue upgrading the bonding level, which in turn allows you to unlock 50 more specialised training levels. This is one way to keep your stats relatively close together to not have one attribute much higher than the others.
Overlord Item Overview
The Overlord requires a variety of different items to level it up. We'll provide you with a short overview that highlights where to find them. This includes F2P options as well as paid ones, which we'll highlight.
Recurring
Some areas provide recurring resources for the Overlord:
- Tactical Institute (Free) - a building in your base that generates Training Guidebooks continuously.
- Overlord Armed Truck Stages (Free) - the armed truck will provide you with a continuous stream of Overlord Chests from idle rewards, as well as Training Guidebooks and Certificates as part of clearing stages.
- Weekly Store Refreshes (Free) - the VIP, Campaign and Alliance store all provide resources for the Overlord that restock on a weekly basis.
- Zombie Invasion Store (Free) - the Zombie Invasion event will provide some Overlord resources in its store.
- General's Trial (Free) - the General's Trial will start providing Overlord resources at Advanced Difficulty level 4 and up. It's recommended to try and get to that difficult as soon as you can.
Later there will be more additions that return over time:
- Overlord Growth Handbook (Paid) - this first appears during week 4 in Season 3 and offers additional resources for the Overlord. This returns sporadically.
- Overlord Training Battle Pass (Paid and Free) - a new battle pass that is part of the Hot Deals Event Rotation.
One-time
One-time options are events and other interactions that happen once and don't return later in the game.
- Overlord Growth Boost Event (Free) - the first week when the Overlord gets introduced you have this event to get additional items for it.
- Daily Overlord Radar task Missions (Free) - you will get a total of 42 radar missions related to the Overlord. These show up in your radar between the other tasks and are limited to 3 a day. These are similar to the Monica missions you had at the start of the game.
- Battle Pass (Paid) - the first week contains a battle pass for the Overlord. This specific one does not return but a Training Battle Pass will.
- Overlord Training Special Offer Pack (Paid) - the first week has a special pack available that will not return. Fully buying all tiers of this pack will allow you to get enough resources to unlock the Overlord for your squad (when used in addition to the other options available during the first week).
Final Thoughts
The Gorilla Overlord is a good asset to one of your squads. It behaves similar to the Drone in terms of upgrades, where you level it separately from the rest of your team. It's an overall slow grind to get your Overlord stronger, so don't be discouraged and keep on grinding! When in doubt, refer to our calculators to help you out:
Tags: Last War Overlord Guide, Last War Gorilla Unlock, Overlord Training Strategy, Last War Skills Priority, Overlord Battle Pass