How To Increase Shelter Capacity in Lords Mobile

If you’re new to Lords Mobile, you probably already had a few encounters with enemy players’ troops and lost monumentally. New players can cut their losses significantly and save heroes from their early demise through the built-in shelter building in the castle. However, this shelter can’t always hold as many troops as your army has, making losses nearly certain when outmatched. Luckily, the shelter size increases with Castle upgrades and certain perks you can obtain along the way.

The shelter protects your army and, more importantly, your hero from dying. While heroes respawn after seven days, keeping them in the shelter is an effective method of allowing them to fight another day. In fact, it’s advisable to always keep the hero inside the shelter, even when you’re online and moving your troops around. There’s no telling when an enemy player might chance upon your castle and attack you.

What Limits the Shelter Capacity?

The shelter capacity is limited solely by your castle size, which also presents the maximum army size you can field at the start of the game. At the first castle level, you can only put 1 600 soldiers into the sanctuary, which is the same as the starting army size.

As you upgrade the castle, your initial army size and sanctuary capacity will mirror one another. At Castle level 25, your army size and shelter capacity both equal 200 000.

The base shelter capacity can’t be improved further since there are no more castle upgrades after level 25, and other buildings don’t influence this capacity.

Your biggest enemy in achieving the maximum shelter capacity will be time and resources. Upgrading buildings can take a while, especially at later levels. Resource acquisition is also a process that requires nuance and strategy, and many online guides can teach you how to get better at it. However, there are a few more ways to get a slight shelter capacity boost.

Shelter Expansion

In the “Military Command” research tree, you can find a research item called “Shelter Expansion.” Researching this technology, the first time requires you to upgrade your Academy to level 20 and have a Gold Storage II in your base. The first level of the expansion grants 500 additional capacities, increasing with future upgrades.

Further upgrades for shelter expansion in the research tree require increasingly more resources and time to complete, which can prove to be a challenge in its own right when you’re starting out. Heroes and armies that speed up resource acquisition or lower research time might be worth dipping into. You’ll also need to upgrade the Academy and Gold Storage II along the way to get access to higher research tiers. The final research level, “Shelter Expansion 10,” requires an Academy level 25 and Gold Storage II level 10, and adds a total of 50 000 to the shelter capacity.

Leader Level

If you put a Leader hero into the shelter, its level will increase the shelter’s carrying capacity. A level 1 hero will increase the bonus by a measly 80 troops. However, a level 8 hero will allow for a total of 10 000 additional troops in the shelter.

Familiars

There’s currently only one familiar that can interact with the shelter and its capacity. The Harpy is a mainly supportive pact 2B familiar that grants additional VIP points and increased shelter capacity. At level 60, the Harpy can boost the shelter with 50 000 more troop slots.

Army Boosts

Increasing your Army Max Size via the Army Size Boost will temporarily increase your army size by 20% or 50%, depending on which type of boost you acquire. The same boost will apply to the baseline shelter capacity, allowing you to store 240 000 or 300 000 soldiers at Castle level 25. Additional shelter upgrades, such as through the hero, research, or familiars, will interact with this boost as well, effectively increasing their benefits.

However, do note that the Army Size Boost lasts only for four hours, which means you’ll have to keep an eye on when it expires.

Maximum Shelter Capacity

If you have a level 8 Leader in the shelter, a fully-leveled Harpy familiar, a level 25 Castle, and all shelter expansions, your baseline shelter capacity becomes 310 000. If you then use an Army Size Boost, this becomes an effective 465 000 shelter capacity for up to four hours.

Additional FAQ

How many troops can you fit in a shelter in Lords Mobile?

If you’re using all the tricks in the book and have fully upgraded the buildings, heroes, familiars, and the research tree, the shelter can have a significant capacity. With all things considered, the shelter can always take 310 000 troops to be protected from enemy attacks.

You can temporarily increase that number to a whopping 465 000 by using a 50% Army Size Boost. However, keeping that boost up will drain you of available Gems rapidly.

Can you pull troops from the shelter at any time?

When setting the shelter for troop and hero protection, you can choose between 1-hour, 4-hour, 8-hour, and a 12-hour defense. After that time, all the troops and heroes will be booted from the shelter and forced to fend for themselves. You can also set up notifications to remind you 10 minutes before the time expires to ensure troops can be reset into the shelter.

If you happen to come back to the game early, you can remove the troops and the hero manually, even if the timer hasn’t run out yet. You can then put them back again for another time period to prolong the protection.

Sheltered Away in Lords Mobile

Now that you know the maximum sheltering capacity, you can work around that with smart research and resource management. If you happen to get a Harpy familiar, it will go a long way towards ensuring your troops are protected from hostile attacks.

What is your sheltering strategy in Lords Mobile? Let us know in the comment section below.