How to Save Troop Formations in Kingshot: Setup, Slots & Auto-Join

Quick Summary: Formations let you pre-save a full squad — specific heroes plus a troop ratio — into a numbered slot, then load it with a single tap the next time you send a march. You unlock your first slot at Town Center 10 and can reach eight total. Set them up once before an event and you stop rebuilding the same march by hand during time-sensitive moments like joining Bear Trap rallies.

Kingshot's Formation system solves a small problem that costs you real time: every time you send a march, the game rebuilds your squad from scratch — loading heroes by Power and splitting troops evenly across Infantry, Cavalry, and Archers. That default is almost never the squad you actually want. Formations let you save the squad you do want and reload it instantly. This guide covers unlocking slots, setting them up correctly, the two save modes most players never notice, Auto-Join, and a Bear Trap setup you can copy.

If you're not sure what ratio to put in each slot, pair this with our Troop Formations Guide — that one covers the best Infantry/Cavalry/Archer splits for rallies, defense, and PvP. This guide is about the mechanic itself: how to save, load, and manage those squads.

How to Unlock Formation Slots

You unlock your first Formation at Town Center 10, and you can reach eight saved formations total. The first six come from Town Center level; the last two are VIP-gated.

The VIP slots need VIP active, not just reached. Formations 7 and 8 switch off the moment your VIP time runs out — even though your VIP level stays. If you rely on those two slots, keep VIP time topped up. See the VIP Guide for why VIP level and VIP activation are two separate things and how to activate the cheap way.

For most players, the six Town Center slots are more than enough. Six is exactly the number you need for a full Bear Trap rotation — one host march plus five ready-to-go joiner squads (more on that below).

Where to Set Up Formations

You build formations from the Squad Deploy screen — the same screen you see whenever you send a march. There are a few ways to reach it:

• Start any march. Tap a monster, an enemy player, or a resource tile and choose to attack, gather, or occupy. The deploy screen opens with the formation slots along the top.
• Occupy an empty tile. Tap open ground and select Occupy. This is the best route when you're setting up several squads back to back — see the tip below.
• From your profile. Open your player profile and go to your troops/squads area to view and edit saved formations directly.

Tip — set up multiple squads from a tile. When you occupy a tile with one squad, those heroes and troops become unavailable for the next one. That's exactly what you want when building several formations: set up squad one, save it, deploy it, and the game only offers you the heroes and troops that are left. It naturally walks you through assigning all your troops across multiple squads without double-booking anyone — ideal for prepping a full Bear Trap joiner set.

Whichever way you get there, the numbered formation slots (the small flag icons) sit at the top of the screen. Tapping a saved slot loads it; tapping an empty one lets you build a new one.

Setting Up Your Heroes

By default the game fills your three hero slots with your highest-Power heroes — which usually isn't the lineup you want, especially for joining rallies where only your first hero's first Expedition skill does anything. To choose your own:

1. Tap the minus button on a hero's portrait to clear the slot, then tap the empty slot to open the hero list.
2. Pick the hero you want and confirm to lock them in.
3. Repeat for the second and third slots.
4. Close the hero selection screen when your lineup is set.

Set heroes before troops, never after. Changing your hero lineup can change your total march capacity, and when capacity changes the troop selection resets to the default split. Do it in the wrong order and you'll set your ratio, swap a hero, and watch your careful troop numbers snap back to 33/33/33.

For rally joining specifically, the hero that matters is the one in slot 1 — its first Expedition skill is the only hero contribution that transfers into someone else's rally. Order among the other two doesn't affect a joiner's damage. (Full breakdown in the Bear Trap Guide.)

Setting Up Your Troops

With heroes locked, adjust the troop sliders to the ratio you want for that squad — for example a heavy-Archer rally split or an Infantry-heavy defensive wall. Then:

1. Drag the Infantry / Cavalry / Archer sliders to your target ratio.
2. Tap Save.
3. Choose an empty (or existing) numbered slot.
4. Confirm.

You'll get a "Formation saved!" confirmation and the slot now holds that exact squad.

Save by Quantity vs. Save by Ratio

When you save, Kingshot asks how to remember the squad — and this is the part most guides skip entirely. The two modes behave differently every time you reload:

• Save by Soldier Quantity — locks in your exact hero lineup and the exact number of each troop type. Reload it and the game assigns those same counts. Best when you want a fixed, repeatable march (e.g., a set reinforcement size your alliance asked for).
• Save by Soldier Ratio — remembers the percentage split of Infantry, Cavalry, and Archers instead of raw counts, and fills it with your highest-level troops of each type at load time. Best for rallies and Bear Trap, where you always want your strongest troops at the saved ratio — even after you train up a new tier.

For anything combat-focused, Save by Ratio is usually what you want. It keeps pulling your best troops as your account grows, so a formation you saved months ago still deploys correctly-upgraded soldiers today. Use Save by Quantity only when the specific troop count matters more than always sending your best.

Loading & Reusing a Formation

Once a slot is saved, loading it is one tap: open any deploy screen and tap that numbered flag icon. Your heroes and troop ratio populate instantly, and you send the march.

That's the whole payoff. Instead of manually rebuilding a squad while a Bear Trap rally is counting down, you tap slot 3 and go. The heroes and ratio you save depend entirely on the job — a 50/20/30 balanced march, a heavy-Archer rally, a defensive garrison, a gathering squad. Save the ones you use often and you'll never rebuild them under pressure again.

Auto-Join: Formations That Join Rallies for You

Kingshot has a feature Whiteout Survival doesn't, and it's built directly on formations: Auto-Join. Instead of tapping into every rally manually, you can have your Town auto-deploy a saved squad to qualifying rallies.

There are two Auto-Join modes:

• Auto-Join with all available soldiers — deploys a full squad at your maximum capacity, led by your highest-level heroes and troops.
• Auto-Join with formations — deploys a pre-assigned squad from one of your saved formations, so your chosen slot-1 hero and ratio are used every time.

Auto-Join with formations only works if the formation actually has troops in it. The feature needs at least one unit assigned in the formation to take effect — an empty slot is skipped. Build and save your joiner squad first, then point Auto-Join at it.

Auto-Join with formations is the cleaner choice for Bear Trap and rally-heavy events: it guarantees the right joiner hero fires its skill every time, rather than whatever high-Power hero the "all available" mode happens to grab.

"Squad Position Locked!" & Other Errors

If you tap a formation slot and something goes wrong, it's almost always one of these:

• "Squad position locked!" — you tapped a slot you haven't unlocked yet. Check the unlock table: slots 4–6 need higher Town Center levels, and slots 7–8 need active VIP.
• "You have heroes with no troops, please set up your squads first" — you tried to deploy a formation that has heroes assigned but zero troops. Open the slot, add troops, and re-save.
• "Please configure a squad Formation" / "Insufficient troops" — the slot is empty or you don't currently have enough soldiers to fill the saved counts. This is common right after a battle when your troops are wounded or already deployed elsewhere.

The most frequent one is "Squad position locked!" during your first Bear Trap. Players see six flag icons and assume all six are usable — but if you're below Town Center 30, the higher slots are still greyed out. Save your squads into the slots you have unlocked.

Example: A Bear Trap Formation Setup

Bear Trap is where formations pay off most — you want to join rally after rally without rebuilding a march each time. Here's a practical six-slot setup. Save each as Save by Ratio so every reload pulls your strongest troops at the endgame rally split.

• Formation 1 — Host march. The squad you use when you call the rally. As the host, hero order doesn't affect joiner damage, so load your best rally-host lineup here.
• Formation 2 — Joiner: Chenko in slot 1. A top flat-buff Lethality skill.
• Formation 3 — Joiner: Amadeus in slot 1. Same buff family as Chenko — stacks additively when both are in a rally.
• Formation 4 — Joiner: Yeonwoo in slot 1. Another same-family flat buff for the additive stack.
• Formation 5 — Joiner: Amane in slot 1. A different buff category that multiplies against the Chenko group.
• Formation 6 — Joiner: Margot in slot 1. Also multiplies against the flat-buff stack — mixing families is what pushes rally totals higher.

The point of separate joiner slots is speed and correctness: as rallies open, you tap the next unused joiner formation and send instantly, guaranteeing a strong slot-1 skill goes into each one. If you'd rather automate it entirely, point Auto-Join with formations at one of these slots.

No good joiner hero left for a slot? Send troops only rather than a wrong hero. A weak hero's skill can occupy one of the rally's four active joiner-skill slots and block a better one — full mechanics in the Bear Trap Guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping Up

Formations are one of the highest-value five minutes you can spend in Kingshot. Unlock what you can — your first slot at Town Center 10, up to six by Town Center 30, plus two more with active VIP — and pre-build the squads you use constantly: a rally split, a defensive wall, a gathering march, and a set of Bear Trap joiners. Save combat squads by Ratio so they always deploy your best troops, and lean on Auto-Join for rally-heavy events.

Once the slots are set, the whole system disappears into a single tap — which is exactly the point during an event where seconds matter.

For the actual troop splits to put in each slot, see the Troop Formations Guide. For joiner hero decisions and rally coordination, see the Bear Trap Guide. And to keep those VIP-gated slots working, read the VIP Guide.

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