The ideal way is to follow whatever arcana era company builder says. So upgrade your AE till lvl4 before making a new company.
https://arcana.warera.wiki/company
This article will give you an in depth view about the topic. If you don't want to read all that just follow the arcana era company upgrade builder.
https://warera.io/en/articles/factory-guide-upgrade-or-build-a-new-one-e04e73
Use this website to check optimum eco build according to your level and number of companies you have.
https://economic-build-warera.netlify.app/
For a level 15 player with 4 company limit try and get 40 Enterpreneurship/ 80 energy/ 31 production. No skills in workers.
Bonus question: Whom should I work for?
Work for the person paying you highest. Loyalty won't pay for your companies or war. Try and avoid new players hiring on significantly above market rates because they will go bankrupt and you will have to search for new job.
Use this site to make the build you like be it money + dmg or be it only dmg.
https://spywarera.com/tools/buildoptimizer
Shift whenever you want but for me try to be atleast lvl 25 or higher with 8 companies built at lvl 5 AE and 7-8k wealth from companies. You should also have a stock of 4k worth of equipment and weapons for 1 week of war. This is for a lvl 25 player. Alot of people will disagree but this is what I feel.
For higher level players it will vary and higher level players will guide you on them.
Bonus Ques: What is war mode?
You get skills for every level you achieve. Using those skill points to improve your fighting skills is war mode and using those to improve your economic skills is eco mode. And no there is no button to switch. There is a reset skill button with has a 7day cooldown that you need to use to switch between war mode and eco mode.
Produce whatever gives the highest profit per production point. Use the arcana era site to see profit per pp. Always remember, selling 1 cooked fish or 1 pill may seem to give a massive amount of absolute benefit but they have costed 40pp or 200pp for single unit.
If you want my advice, try to produce iron or lead because they have stable high prices and production bonuses. If you want to go the "hiring workers route" produce fish.
No, there is no benefit in setting up companies in non rec regions. Countries earn money through taxes workers pay. You cannot hire workers in those regions for profitable amounts. Even if you hire workers, you will lose money, the country will get a negligible portion and the worker will get his share. If you wanna give money to your country, just donate to the country.
And whether you should move or not depends on what company AE level you have and what difference in bonus percentage there will be. Explaining the whole process requires a new article and someone has already done it. So read their article and give them a like.
https://warera.io/en/articles/should-you-move-your-factory-647fcf
Honestly it is beyond the scope of this article to explain all the nuances about hiring workers. Join discord and ask for help so that people can properly guide you.
My tips:
Dont hire workers at lower levels at least till lvl 20.
Don't hire workers when market is unstable (like on 6th oct 2026). Wait for market to stabilize.
Don't hire workers at above market rates. If you have by chance made such a mistake, message your workers to leave. Sometimes they will be happy to do so. If not, disable your company. The loss a worker will give you is not worth it the negligible amount of coin you lose when disabling company.
When hiring, always set the minimum energy and production levels. Dont hire newbies with 30E and 10P.
No, do whatever you feel like. The guides exists to make your life easier. You can follow them if you want a fixed path and fixed returns. They are limited in scope and can neither make you win more or lose more. You can absolutely experiment to see what works and what doesn't. For example, I rec that don't hire workers till lvl 20 when I myself did it at lvl 16. I was getting good production bonus and low taxes at cooked fish factory so I hired 4 workers and got good profit.
Wait for all 5 wooden chests to spawn before collecting. Try not to gamble with wooden chests and sell them.
Use the back to home button as a powerfull button to save oil to move closer to chests or battles.
When above lvl 20, use green equipment to deal dmg in battles with over 100m dmgs to get free equipment.
Re roll daily/ weekly/monthly missions costing a lot of money. Like eating 5 fish (45 coins) at lvl 25 is not worth it for a weekly mission. Reroll these kinds of missions.
Crafting missions are tricky. Crafting a common or rare or uncommon will always lose you the value of steel (1/2/4 respectively). Crafting a purple can turn out to be profitable or even more loss making. It's up to you whether you want to gamble crafting or not. So dont craft rare (green) or uncommon (blue) as you don't have any chance of making profit and are losing more money than when you craft a common item. Never craft specific equipment as it costs double the steel and not worth it.
All these websites don't show the current market rates. So you could be getting more profit than being shown or absolutely no profit at all. Use these sites at your own caution. Similarly the worker estimated benefit bar is also not updated to current rates. Use your own calculations to see whether you are earning profit or not. Arcana era has a profit calc tool which you can input values and check whether you get returns or not.
If you are working for a pakjabi (pakistani punjabi if anyone was wondering) or anyone for that matter, check whether you are getting market appropriate wages or not. Pakjabis have a tendency to hire at 1% tax company and then shift to 10% tax company. You can leave the company in such a case as the 24 hour limit doesn't apply. Leave and work for the max wages. Ain't no place for the poor in warera. We all living pay check to pay check in benesum's market manipulated world.
Dont be shy, dm people regarding genuine help you need. This game has a pretty nice community who will be happy to help you probably even enemy countries. Not the Kgrs tho. They narcissist as f.
This is not meant to be a guide. I have tried to answer these FAQs to the level best of my understanding. Take these advice at your own risk.
Musa_gone / NSF™