Survival Mode Hack Using Charles Proxy

[PATCHED May 3, 2012]

The Depot Hack was patched on April 12, 2012.  Soon after, I published the article "Survival Mode Hack Using Cheat Engine".  In response, I received many comments (most of which I did not publish) that would have been unnecessary if the person making the comment had read the article carefully all the way through.  Don't make the same mistake with this article.

This article will explain essentially the same hack but using Charles Proxy instead of Cheat Engine.  You should take advantage of this hack and make as many items as you want before the hack is patched!


Limitations to using Cheat Engine for the Survival Mode Hack include:

• You can only create military units--as far as I know--but cannot create consumables (including Tactical Nukes), energy packs, Element Z packs, buildings, decorations, etc.
• You can only transform to other military units of the same theater as you start out with: land to land, sea to sea, and air to air.
• You can only transform to other military units that have codes of the same length that you start out with: 3 to 3, and 4 to 4.

All of these limitations can be overcome by using Charles Proxy.  However, there is still one important limitation, even when using Charles:  you must not have any of the items that you are trying to create in your inventory, depots, or empire!

WARNING:  If you make a mistake, be prepared to either surrender and pay a ransom or finish playing Survival Mode.


Step 1 - Preparation

As an example, I will demonstrate how to create Tactical Nuke III's from Cadet Soldiers.  You do not have to use Cadet Soldiers--you can use other units.

You should know the item code and subtype of the item you are trying to create.  Tactical Nuke III's have code N73 and subtype "consumable".

Load the Empires & Allies game.


Step 2 - Set Up Charles Proxy

Open up the Charles Proxy program.  Keep in mind that the free trial version of Charles has a 30-minute time limit before the program closes.

If you are new to Charles, you need to make sure Charles is set up correctly.  I will provide some guidance, but this is not meant to be an exhaustive tutorial on Charles.

First, to avoid complications with Charles, make sure "Secure Browsing" is turned off in your Facebook settings:

If you are playing E&A in Firefox, make sure the Firefox plug-in for Charles was installed when you installed Charles and that the "Mozilla Firefox Proxy" setting is checked as in the image below.  If you are using some other browser, make sure the "Windows Proxy" setting is checked.

Make sure breakpoints are set for the "flashservices" folder of the URL "http://fb-client-zc.empire.zynga.com".  DO NOT set it on the Zynga URL itself.

Step 3 - Set Up Survival Mode

Enter Survival Mode.  Select 1-5 Cadet Soldier to use for battle.  DO NOT press the red "Fight!" button yet!


Step 4 - Enable Breakpoints in Charles

Enable breakpoints in Charles by pressing the red hexagon.  This tells Charles to intercept and pause all requests from the client to the server and all responses from the server to the client.


Step 5 - Start Fight

Now press the red "Fight!" button in E&A.

When the first request or response is intercepted and paused by Charles, the "Breakpoints" window will pop up in Charles as in the image below.  The left panel shows all intercepted requests (red up arrows) and responses (red down arrows).

Most likely, after you hit the red "Fight!" button in E&A, the game client will send a request to one of Zynga's game servers.  You should see something like this in Charles:

Select the "Edit Request" tab.  Select the "AMF" tab that you see see near the bottom of the screen (not shown in image above).

Expand the folders.  You should see something like in the image below if you are looking at the correct request.  It is essential that you see "SurvivalModeService.loadSurvivalMode" as the "functionName".  You should see the information for the units (Cadet Soldiers in my example) that you selected before hitting the red "Fight!" button.

Step 6 - Transform

Tactical nukes belong to the subtype "consumable".  Replace "army" in the image above with "consumable" WITHOUT quotation marks.  (You select the field to edit by double-clicking on it.)

Cadet Soldiers have item code U01, which is why you see these codes in the image above.  Tactical Nuke III's item code is N73.  Replace each line starting with U01 with just "N73" WITHOUT quotation marks.  It is sufficient to include only the code--you don't need to include the commas or other numbers. To be faster, once you enter the first new code, copy it, and paste it to the other 4 lines.

Now, hit the "Execute" button near the bottom.  Charles might have captured other requests and responses in the meantime, so execute them all as well.  If you did things correctly, the battle in your E&A game will end and you should see this:

You might get a connection time-out if you took too long to do all this.  That's okay.  You're now more familiar with what to do.  Just start all over and you should be faster the second time.


Step 7 - Repeat and Refresh

If you want to transform more units, repeat steps 3-6, except that you do not need to exit and re-enter Survival Mode.  You also do not need to enable breakpoints again as in step 4 if you never disabled them.

When you are done, exit Survival Mode.  If you check your inventory, the new items might not show up yet.  Refresh the game.  The new items should show up now, and the old units you used for the hack should be back.

Keep in mind that since you now have these new items, you cannot make more of them using this same hack until you get rid of all the new items somehow.

Now you can try and make other items as well: Accuracy III's, Oil Well III's, Engineering Offices, Large Haunted Houses, decors, trees, etc.  You can look up the codes and subtypes of many items in other pages (see the nav-bar of tabs near the top of the blog).


Problems & Trouble-shooting

If you see many "443"s or "default"s in Charles, it might be because you didn't set up Charles correctly or did not turn off secure browsing.  If you are using Chrome, try using Firefox instead.

If you are forced to refresh the game, it's probably because you took too long to look for the correct request and edit it in Charles.  Once I press the red hexagon in Charles and the red "Fight!" button in the game, it only takes me 30 seconds or less before I execute the request.  You need to practice to be fast enough.

• Make sure breakpoints are set ONLY on the "flashservices" folder of the correct Zynga URL that I gave above--NOT on the entire Zynga URL.  This way Charles won't catch too many requests and responses, which will more likely lead to a time-out and connection error, forcing you to refresh the game.
• If you are new to Charles, try not to press the red hexagon in Charles until RIGHT BEFORE you need to press the red "Fight!" button.
• Tip to be faster:  When you edit the lines in Charles for the units/items, you only need to enter the code, not the numbers or commas.  Once you type in the first code, copy it, and paste it to the other four lines.