Greenification is the core mechanic for revealing Desert Artifacts in Season 3 of the mobile strategy game Last War. It is possible to greenify map tiles starting from day 3 of week 1 as soon as a city gets captured; captured cities will be surrounded by green tiles and selecting any location adjacent to those green tiles and clicking the “Greenification” button sends an in-game ‘recon plane’ to turn that desert tile green.
Players can maximise the greenified area by sending a recon plane to the edge of a green area, which will greenify a 3×3 area around that edge. They can also put a skill point into the profession skill that increases the area of greenification. Moving diagonally will give the fastest way to greenify a large area with the least amount of stamina used, thus framing greenification as a spatial optimizing puzzle.
Players can only greenify sand lands that are adjacent to existing greenified areas. The available greenification range will increase as the event progresses; once 80% of a region is greenified, it’s considered complete and contributes to the overall warzone progress. Greenification only counts towards the 80% goal if a single square reaches 80% or more. Thus, if players have many tiles close to 80%, a few scout planes can quickly ‘finish up’ the greenification process. Getting tiles above 80% does not seem to help towards the overall percentage goal as, once tiles have a green checkmark, they are counted. This points to the potential advantages of live-service games in rendering topics like reforestation as the terrain etc. can evolve over time in ways that make the game and underlying topic more reactive than a fixed game could. However, it also frames reforestation in numerical terms, i.e. the idea of ‘greenifying a region’ does not critically engage with the impact on that ‘region’ but purely registers for the purpose of maximizing bonuses.
Greenification occurs across two main stages throughout the season. In stage 1 (weeks 1-4), greenification unlocks only after a city is captured. Strongholds, Trade Posts, and the Capitol cannot be greenified during this stage but capturing a city will convert surrounding ‘contaminated land’ into greenified areas. In stage 2 (weeks 5-7), commanders can greenify regions starting from Level 1 and expand the outreach to cities, strongholds, trade posts, and the capitol. Reaching 80% greenification progress in the current level unlocks the next level, leading up to capitol greenification on level 7.
As greenified areas provide valuable ‘desert artifacts’, this frames greenification as an escalating ‘race’ between players and an alternative form of territorial control gameplay. Players must first remove all obstructions (bases, mines, structures) from artifact locations before greenifying. If no Desert Artifacts show up in a greenified an area, the Desert Artifact is either blocked or it has already been found by another player. Thus, the game introduces social pressure to incentivize greenification as well as tangible extrinsic rewards through the artifacts, rather than e.g. offering (primarily) emotional or narrative gratification as e.g. the rewilding mechanic in games like Terra Nil.