Are you prepared for a new Battle Royale experience? Supervive might have a lot to offer, but it isn’t the most beginner friendly. This guide should cover everything you need to know to enjoy an enticing new title in the Battle Royale space.
The battle royale genre has a new look after the Early Access release of Supervive by Theorycraft Games back in November of 2024. The polished but still evolving title is the brainchild of an experienced dev team that was built specifically for this project. I can best describe it as a mixture of League of Legends and Apex Legends. Creative decision making is rewarded, and the mechanics have a satisfying level of depth. While the PvP is intuitive, Supervive itself is morphing a lot of concepts and can feel overwhelming for new players. In this article, I am going to give a rundown of the ‘need to know’ mechanics to thrive in Supervive.
Supervive originally released its Open Beta as a Squad based BR with 10 teams of 4. It has just transitioned to Trios only for the BR portion, with 12 teams of 3. There is a side game mode of Arena which is 4v4 which is a great place to practice mechanics.
Supervive progresses through day and night cycles. Each time you reach a new day, the soft level cap is increased, new monsters will spawn, and the circle begins to shrink.
Supervive currently has 20 Hunters to choose from. The design team has sought to supersede the conventional archetypes in gaming by making sure that each Hunter can functionally carry. Healers, tanks, and control types still have mobility and damage in their kits. Obviously different Hunters have strengths and weaknesses as well as clear counters or synergies. The positive aspect of this design choice is that you are able to play any type of Hunter and still be heavily self-sufficient.
Supervive has steered clear of point and click damage abilities. The game is built around skillshots and plays like a top-down shooter. The WASD movement is crisp and allows for the type of satisfying side-step moments we love from games like League of Legends.
It’s also good to remember that your vision is tied to the direction you are facing. This is especially crucial during nighttime, where you will only have vision over you and your teammates’ aim cones.
The drop in system is very similar to Apex Legends. There is a drop leader which sends the pod down and teammates can choose to split off mid-flight. The pod allows you to cover a distance, so in order to land fastest, you should drop slightly early from your intended location. The pod is moved via WASD.
There have already been multiple iterations of the XP and item system in Supervive. This portion is likely to be tweaked over time. Currently, there is a pseudo-level cap that gets increased each day cycle. The level cap can be exceeded through various sources, but the main form of experience gain (farming monsters) is nerfed once the level cap for that day is reached.
Once you’ve dropped onto the map, it’s important to farm quickly. If monsters have a purple ring around them, it means they are weak to spells and will die quickly to damage spells or CC.
Monsters give gold, which can be used to buy items at shops located across the map or at base camps. At blue tier, your item will evolve and gain a passive ability of your choosing. This is a rather crucial breakpoint in power.
Killing enemy players will also grant experience that is unaffected by the level cap. Shards will drop from killed players that can be used to upgrade items. You can also grab gold from loot boxes.
Base camps are useful for granting vision, repairing armor, and as a shop. The base camp once captured will grant healing and mana regeneration if you stand on it. You can recall a captured base camp as well. Base camps are powerful tools in and out of combat. You can pick up a captured base camp for 800 gold and later deploy it from your inventory. I usually carry around two or three amongst my teammates as they can make or break late game circles.
Armor can be bought in shops, found in vaults, taken off a loot box, or evolved by damaging enemy hunters. Soul bosses will drop two green armors and the boss at Machine will drop armor. Armor functions as decreasing total damage taken by a % until broken. Better armor blocks more damage and has higher total hit points.
Until your entire team is killed, you are still in the fight. There are several ways to bring back your team.
Wisps: When players are initially knocked down, they enter wisp form. In this form, your teammates can resurrect you by standing on top of you. Enemies can make your wisp expire faster by standing on top of you as well. It’s important to note that enemies standing on a wisp take priority over an ally doing so. Therefore, if you want to stop an enemy from resurrecting you either need to kill them or get close and personal.
Day 1 & 2 Resurgence: This mechanic has recently been kept only for unranked Trios. In Ranked Trios, Resurgence is disabled. During the first day and night cycle there is a rolling mechanic called Resurgence. This allows players to respawn above a living teammate after a timer. Be careful though, if you die multiple times the timer becomes quite long. If you are dead when Night 1 finishes, you will respawn on any remaining ally. Being a wisp doesn’t count as being dead for Resurgence, so make sure you jump into the abyss if it’s about to turn to day 2.
Box Respawns: When a wisp expires, the player turns into a lootable deathbox. A teammate can revive teammates from their deathbox via a lengthy animation. This mechanic makes a loud noise that nearby enemies will often push.
Respawn Beacons: Respawn beacons allow a player to respawn all of their fallen teammates. These beacons are one use per team and will notify the entire map once started. If any opponent stands on the beacon it will stall the resurrection.
Most Wanted: Definitely the most fun resurrection mechanic is called Most Wanted. This is symbolized by crowns that progressively spawn on the map. If a team is missing a player, they can hold one crown. The crown begins a two-minute timer that if the holder survives will respawn all fallen players and grant catch up experience. If the crown holder gets a knock, it will shave 60 seconds off the timer. If they spike an opponent over the abyss, the resurrection will immediately trigger. The holder of the crown is marked on map for the entire server. If an opponent kills a crown holder, it will grant his team the experience and resurrection mechanic which makes for many adrenaline-filled moments.
Powers are a core aspect of the power curve in Supervive. Contrary to levels and items, these are less linear and sometimes far more game-warping additions to a Hunters’ arsenal. The powers in Supervive are split into different rarities: White, Green, Blue, Purple, Red. Different portions of the map will spawn certain powers. This is subject to change, but the current map guide is as follows.
While items like Blink, Red Guardian Angel, Fate Rewinder, & Abyss Specialist can be Hunter altering in their own right, many of the powers combo nicely together. To detail every Power interaction would well exceed your patience so I am going to name a few of my favorites.
Money Tree Seeds thrown out seedlings that instantly grow trees. These trees, when knocked down, drop gold. However, if you use the throwing axe on that tree it will grow larger and crash down, stunning anyone it hits.
This combination utilizes Beebo’s ultimate, Celeste’s ultimate, and the Blink power. To execute this Celeste will channel her ultimate, Beebo will then use their ultimate to drive Celeste towards an enemy team. Finally, Beebo uses Blinkstone mid drift to make the combination nearly undodgeable.
There are so many combinations and game-winning plays that can come from powers. A strong understanding of what powers compliment or counter different hunters can really up the skill level of a team.
Where Supervive really shines is its movement options. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim there is an entire article needed to really flush out this portion of the game. I am going to summarize it as cohesively as possible, but I recommend taking the time to get comfortable with the game's movement by using the built-in practice tool.
There is an occasional global power which provides unlimited fuel that is announced at the start of a game. Typically though, gliders have limited fuel. Skilled players utilize a mechanic called ‘feathering’ to achieve two effects. The first effect is prolonging the distance you can travel. The second effect is to scale portions of the map that exceed the normal rise limit of gliding. Feathering is done by dropping to the lower depth of the abyss and initiating the glider right before the abyss kills you. The glider will then propel the player upwards quite quickly. There is a built-in level where the glider typically stops gaining altitude but, if you release just before this level, you can continue your momentum upwards. Feathering is a really important tool for avoiding skillshots while over abyss, covering longer gaps, and escaping or ganking another team through an unexpected pathway.
Supervive can get hectic. At times it feels more akin to Apex Legends than League of Legends. Fortunately, the developers at TheoryCraft Games have built in a voice chat for teams. Staying on the same page with your teammates is really important. Whilst there is a huge range of opportunities for individual skill expression, very little compares to a coordinated group of players. Picking where you want to move to on the map or what target you want to focus on in a fight is essential.
While Arena isn’t the primary game mode for Supervive it does serve as an opportunity to flush out your mechanics. Teamfighting gets very chaotic in the Battle Royale portion. The better you are at piloting your Hunter the easier it will be to respond to the rapidly changing game state of BR. I would advise learning one Hunter to a comfortable level of proficiency and Arena is a great way to accelerate that learning curve.
Supervive is fast paced and full of montage-worthy moments in every single lobby. To best enjoy the game, it does require a moderate learning curve. This is the reality of games with significant depth. I hope this article has given you a good starting point for understanding the ins and outs of an interesting experimental Battle Royale.
