Getting Started in Claws Of Power

If you just installed Claws Of Power and the cat roster feels overwhelming, this page walks you through the first hour the way experienced players wish they had been taught.

What you actually need to do in your first session

When the game opens you get one starter cat and a small pool of cards. The single fastest way to fail the early game is to upgrade those starting cards as soon as you can afford it. Do not. Spend your first session on three priorities instead: collecting four cheaper cat types, upgrading the Dried Fish Factory once, and clearing stage 8 so the second island unlocks.

The card economy is small. If you splash coins on every pretty cat you roll, you will hit a wall at level 12 and have no fallback. The walkthrough below assumes you are playing on Steam and that you have the launch discount active.

Claws Of Power — first impressions overview from the solo dev

Step 1 — collect four roles before you upgrade anything

For the first twenty minutes of play, ignore upgrades. Drag every cat into your reserve and only deploy the two starter roles. Your goal is to own at least:

• one melee DPS cat (front-lane pressure),
• one ranged cat (clears the back enemy), and
• one support cat that produces extra dried fish per second.

A fourth role is recommended but not required for the first ten levels. With those three, How to Build a Deck becomes useful immediately because you have something to balance.

Step 2 — push the Dried Fish Factory to level 2

Your base has a single building on the right side of the lane — the Dried Fish Factory. Upgrade it as soon as you have 80 dried fish (about two wins on the early stages). The factory produces the resource that summons cats, so each level adds roughly 15 percent to your income over the previous tier. Skipping this upgrade is the single biggest mistake new players make.

After the second upgrade, the income curve gets comfortable and you can afford to deploy three cats at a time without starving your economy.

Step 3 — clear stage 8 before you go to bed

Stage 8 unlocks the second island and the second dry fish deposits. Most players who stop at stage 6 and come back the next day find their session much harder because they lost the deployment tempo. The video above shows the recommended team composition for stages 5 through 8 — two melee, one ranged, one support — and the moment when the enemy lanes flip.

When stage 8 is behind you, the second island opens. The Tier List is now useful because the next five levels assume you already know which cats are worth keeping long-term.

What to skip on day one

There are three things that look urgent but are not:

• Equipment crafting. Hold off until you have at least four stable cats. Equipment is shared across cats, so changing role means rebuilding gear.
• Lord Challenge. Lord mode unlocks after stage 20, but the rewards do not scale well until stage 35. Treat Lord as a side-quest, not a focus.
• Premium currency purchases. The launch discount gives you a 20 percent bonus on dried fish packs, but the cats inside do not change the early curve. Wait until you finish the second island.

For the next stretch of the campaign, jump to How to Beat Level 30, the level that catches roughly a third of new players.

After you finish the first ten levels, return to this hub and move on to How to build a deck.