Merchant Tips

What do you buy at the merchant?

I've had many conversations with alliance members about the merchant ship, What is it? How do you use it?  Does everyone see the same stuff?  etc.  Here are some tips and pointers and how I use the merchant.

Once you hit castle level 10 you will gain access to the merchant.  He does three things: 1. sells "shells" for resources. 2. sells random items for either resources or gems.  3. will trade some items for other items. Everyone gets a different, random set of options.  You can reset him if you want to try a new random set, but it will cost you some gems.

The merchant resets every 8 hours, so you have up to 3 opportunities to interact with him each day (unless you use gems to reset him)  Each time I visit the merchant, I sell my resources for shells.  I do this every time, no matter what (resources are easy to get, shells not so much.)  He won't buy that many resources from you, so it is unlikely you can't get enough.  At C10, you will only be able to sell wood, food and stone, but at c15 you gain access to iron, so you can get more shells each day.

Check his exchange every time he resets. Some times he will exchange something you have tons of or don't care about (like a move building card) for something rare (like a beast skill chest.)  Other times, his exchanges are pointless, but it is always good to check.

Look at his inventory and decide if you want to buy or not.  There are a few items I will always buy if they are offered for shells and I have enough:

Glory Swords: These are very difficult to get enough of without purchasing for gems, so collecting them little by little from any possible source is a good idea.

Beast Skill Chests: I will always do whatever I can to get these. They are very rare and you need a TON of them to get a beast skill put together by the time your beast is ready for evolution 3.

1 and 2 hour speedups (except for research)  If you see a building, healing, or generic speedup for 1 or 2 hours, this is the best deal around for sure.  (Farms may not need the building speedups.)

Elite Teleports: if these are available, they will either be for 1800 gems (a 200 gem discount) or 6000 shells. If I have enough shells, I will grab these for sure.  for gems, it depends on how many I already have, my current gem level, etc.  Might or might not go for it.

Beast Vigor: this is strangely rare.  always get it when you can from any source.

Some people also grab any Exp cards--these will help you level up and get those player skills. 

Stamina potions can be a good one to get as well  Very helpful when you need them, but if you wait until you need them, they're impossible to buy. 

Any others you like to get?  comment below.

Troop Formations

Troop Formations

There are 10 basic troop types that can be sent out to attack or reinforce, plus one that only defends your castle (the golems.)  This will give a brief summary of each and then give some pointers on how to best set up your army for various situations.

Infantry:  There are two types of infantry, the Orc Warriors and the (human) Swordsman. These are your main front line defense and attack troops. They each have a special passive ability (passive meaning that you don't have to do anything to make it work.)  The Orc Warriors reduce damage from mages.  This makes them essential when attacking any other army that might include mages (which is all of them except monsters.)  The Swordsmen raises your army's HP when you are on the defending side.  This does NOT mean that you should only send Orcs to attack and Humans to defend. These buffs are nice, but hardly the only factor.  For example the tier 6 (T6) Orc Warrior has a battle power of 4.5 while the T7 Swordsman has a battle power of 5.5.  This is a 18% difference in power. Since the Orc Warrior's attack bonus affects your whole army and continues in effect even after they are all removed from the battle field, sending 1 T6 Orc and the rest of your infantry as T7 Swordsmen, your whole battle power increases, and you still get the buff.

Cavalry: Again there are two types.  Even-tier Dragon Riders and odd-tier Cavalry.  In general these are not very useful in battle, but they are great for gathering and carrying loads of loot home from a battle, so if you are attacking a castle that won't be too much trouble, but has lots of loot, you might want to bring these guys along.  These also have buffs when used in battle, but when a battle is played out, there is a (perhaps a flaw) in the way cavalry work that causes them to usually do more harm than good.  The problem is this: if your cavalry die before the enemies cavalry, the enemy will charge straight at your mages which are behind those cavalry.  If you send NONE AT ALL, the enemy's cavalry will instead move towards your infantry and fight them until one or the other dies.  So theoretically, if you know the enemy has cavalry, and you can ensure that yours will be stronger than theirs, cavalry could be good, but most people just leave them home and send more infantry instead.  If you opt to not use cavalry in battle, recruit exclusively T2 Dragon Riders to do all of the fetching and carrying for you.

Archers: This time, no orcs, just humans and elves.  Elves have a bonus against infantry and humans have a bonus against mages, so you will want to include at least one of each of these in every army march you send and in every defense.  You will also want to include at least one of each of these against monsters, but for a different reason.

Mages. Here is your main attack force. Elf mages have a bonus during defense and humans have a bonus against cavalry, but again the higher tier is the one you'll want the most of in any army, because it is all about how much damage they can deal and the tier is the largest determining factor. 

Angels: These are promoted one tier at a time, so there is no such thing as even/odd tiered angels, the higher the tier, the better.  Angels have the special ability of being able to target the back row.  This can be a good thing, but it may not be better than adding more mages to the army.  One should certainly be included when going up against a monster.

Beasts: This is a great addition to any army.  Unfortunately your beast gets tired easily and may not always be able to participate, but you will want him along every chance you can get.  These all have one special ability to begin with and then add one when they evolve.  (After the second one, the abilities are passive and can be selected from those you've collected.)  The Pegasus and the Panda work well together as a team once each has reached evolution level 2 and earned their second skill.  The Pegasus gives a boost to the "back row" team (mages and archers) while the Panda gives a boost to the front row (infantry and cavalry)  The Dragon can attack the back row directly which can also be a good skill to have against armies, but less useful against monsters.

Troop formations

You can use your drill grounds to preset army marches for specific purposes. You might want one for attacking armies, one for attacking monsters, etc.  Some have a different one for reinforcing (generally those people who subscribe to the even tier/odd tier idea instead of going with the highest tier in all situations.)  I also have a preset just for attacking my farms, because I want those to be tuned for highest load instead of power.

Here are some basic guidelines:

Attacking Armies: (Castles, Ruins, Elite Adventure, Elite War, etc.)  About 20-25% infantry. Take as many of your highest tier and some of your second highest tier (one will do). and fill the rest with mages and at least one of each type of archer.  If you don't have enough to fill your whole 75-80% back row, add angles.  Bring your beast, of course.  In a situation where your troops can't die, the zero cavalry policy is less important, but in nearly every case, you'll do better without them anyway.

Attacking Monsters: (Standard Monsters, Mutant Swarm, Lake Leviathan, etc.)  Bump up your infantry to about 1/3 and the other 2/3 should be primarily mages, but fill in with archers and angels (in that order) as needed)  Bring one of every troop type: 1 Cavalry, 1 Dragon Rider, and if you haven't already included them, one of each mage, archer and an angel.  Bring your beast.

Reinforcing: This is really just a battle against an army with the only difference being that you will get the defensive buffs instead of the attack buffs.  It doesn't change the formation you send. You still want the most battle power you can get and as much back row firepower.  You can include Cavalry in your front line since your troops and those of your allies shouldn't be killed (as long as you are using your hospital and medic tents properly,) but if you have enough infantry, leave the Cavs at home.

Defending:  Here you are at your own home base and you will get defensive buffs from your armies.  The only real difference here is that you are not limited to how many troops you can field and you can include golems in your defense.  Here you might want to use everything you have, or you might want to send troops away depending on the circumstance.  If you are being attacked by a huge group of enemies and you don't have enough allies on to properly defend you, and you are out of shields, you might opt to sending out any troops that you don't want killed. (the ones who won't fit in your hospital will die.)  So if you wish to do as much damage to the attackers as possible keep your "hospital limit" of troops at home to defend and send the rest out.  Your choice of defenders should be similar to those above, again, cavalry are fine to include here.

The Undead King: This is a weekly event where you have the opportunity to attack a giant undead monster 10 times.  This is basically a "monster' attack with a couple of notable exceptions: Your front row is not going to do you much good.  The undead king is so powerful that he'll usually wipe out each troop type in one hit, so sending 1 is about as good as a bunch.  If you have enough, you want basically all mages or all archers (if archer is selected as his nemesis) and NO (ZERO) angels.
Angels give you a significant de-buff against the undead king.

Happy Gaming!

Dweomr

How to Accumulate and Protect Your Resources

How to Accumulate and Protect Your Resources

Well, you've made it to c14 and you feel like a bigshot!  But every time you get close to piling up enough resources for that c15 build, some jerk comes by and raids you.  Now what?

Follow these tips and your upgrades will go much smoother.

The Pack

Your most valuable ally in this endeavor is your pack.  It looks like such a small and insignificant thing, but it is extremely useful.  When you are given a resource chest, or crate, it will accumulate in your pack.  These resources can NOT be taken from you unless you remove them from your pack.  So don't do that.  FILL YOUR PACK.

1. Attack monsters every day.  As many as you can stand and go for the highest level monsters you can kill.  Each monster will give you a number of crates of a random resource matching their level, so a level 9 monster will give you 9 crates of food, wood, stone or iron.  Additionally you can get materials to use in the forge.  before level 10, this is your MAIN source of forging material, so another very good reason to kill monsters as much as possible.

2. Attack the rebels and rally the ruins, do quests, the daily quest, send flowers, etc.  Basically play the game and crates will come.

Do not use the resources in your pack!  At least don't use them for anything short of a major upgrade or emergency.  

Your Mailbox

If you are a member of an alliance and that alliance has territory, you will receive a letter every day including a territory resource bonus.  This bonus includes only wood and food, but it can remain in your mailbox indefinitely.  There is no need to ever collect it until you need it.  It won't be deleted and can't be looted. If your territory is fairly large, you could accumulate millions of food and wood in here in just a few days.

Quest Rewards

As you complete quests, especially early in the game, the rewards will accumulate.  These rewards can't be looted so they are perfectly safe to leave alone until you need them. These rewards are not as easy to add up to see what you have and they also often contain non-resource items you may need, so check them and take the ones you need, but try to leave as many as possible for your next upgrade.

Using the Resources

If you start accumulating resources in this way, when you reach that first difficult level, usually 15, you will have enough resources handy that you won't have to worry about marauders taking your stockpile away from you.  I would still recommend you harvest and gather as much as you can--the more "safe" resources you leave in place, the more you will have for the next upgrade.  Believe me, they don't get any easier!

When it is time to use resources, begin with your quest rewards.  That way you can also get the speedups, experience, etc that goes along with them.  Your next priority depends on if you still need wood and food or not.  If you do, the territory bonuses in your mailbox are the next to choose.  Then go for the resources chests-look at the bottom of the resource list in your pack.  Levels 1 and 2 are wood and food only, level 3 has stone and level 4 has iron.  Finally, go to the castle and hit "upgrade."  You may see that you don't have enough of one or more resources (shown in red).  Click on "More" next to one of those resources.  You will be shown a list of all of the resource crates in your pack, you can begin opening these until you have enough, then move to the next type until you have enough.  

Conclusion

Keep your resources safe from those who would take them from you so that YOU can use them. After all, you earned them.

Happy gaming!

Dweomr

Kill Event Tips and Pointers for a Small Alliance

Kill Event Tips and Pointers for a Small Alliance

Tired of getting pounded to the ground every two weeks during the War and Order Strongest Lord Kill Enemies Event?  Follow these tips and tricks for best results.

Every realm has a group of players who've spend a lot of money to oversize their castle so they can throw their weight around and bully everyone else in the realm.  Expect a few of these to drop by every other week during the "Kill Enemies" portion of the Strongest Lord event.  Chances are you can't do anything to harm these guys and even if you could manage to get every soldier in your entire alliance into a single timed attack, you probably still couldn't hurt them.

But you CAN hurt them!  Not by attacking, but by defending.  These big guys are going to attack any castle that is not shielded, has T4 or higher troops or has some resources to take.  Many of these castles are not going to have very big embassy capacity, so you won't be able to put enough soldiers into these to make much difference, however by timing your reinforcement troops to arrive shortly after the enemy does, you can get a large number of reinforcements into even the smallest castle and can cause some serious pain to your attacker.

Here are some tips:

1. When an enemy arrives, send out an alert to your team.  Get as many people online as you can.

2. The alliance commander should control the chat everyone else should stay off chat as much as possible to allow the commander's instructions clear and present for everyone.  

3. Whenever your own castle is being targeted, look at your watchtower report and see if you can determine if the attack is real or fake.  If it is a fake attack (a small number of troops designed to look like a full march) post "fake" to the chat.  If it appears to be real, post "real"  Keep communication short and clear.  If your watchtower is too low to be able to tell, say nothing.

4. If a castle is being targeted, but doesn't have enough troops to cause battle mode (crossed swords followed by a detailed battle scene.) It is a good idea for one ally to enter reinforcements early.  This will give everyone else time to get to the fight after it starts.

5. When you see an enemy marching towards an ally, send a reinforcement army timed to arrive after the enemy does.  If you are too far away and don't think you can get there before the battle ends, do NOT use march speed ups until you see the swords.  Once you see those crossed swords, you know that the enemy sent a real force and you can speed into the battle.

6. Your reinforcement troops should not exceed the number of "beds" in your hospital.  Your goal is to cause death to your enemy, not your own troops.  Since you are likely to lose most of these battles, your death rate is going to be high.  Make sure that is only a wounded rate, and not a death rate.

If your alliance gets good enough at this, those big guys will begin to decide they'd rather try somewhere else to get their kill points. If they're losing tens of thousands of troops with each battle they will not want to keep doing that for too long.

If your alliance is NOT good at this, or just too small to pull it off effectively there is another strategy that will work quite well:  Remember that they are there for kill points and resources.  If your castles have NO T4 or higher troops, and hardly any resources, they will have no reason to stick around.

More info about kill events in this previous post.

Happy Gaming!

Dweomr

Beginner's Guide

Beginner's Guide

Just getting started in WaO and don't know where to start?  The tutorial gives you the basics, but not enough to really get off the ground.  Here are my beginner's tips:

1. Don't be afraid to use the "free" speed ups on your building upgrades. There is no limit to how many or how often you can use these.  I remember my first time playing, I was hesitant to hit the "free" icon hovering over my buildings because I wasn't sure if I was using up a resource I would need later.  Nope.  Use them as soon as you can and as often as they appear.

2. There is also a "free" option in the upgrade screen if the build time is less than your current "free" speed up time.  (5 minutes by default, but more if VIP is turned on.)  You can use this even when you have no builder available.  So you can have up to two buildings being actively upgraded, and continue to also upgrade all of your smaller buildings with the "free" button. This also works to start new buildings.  You'll get things started much faster if you use this feature to its fullest.

3. Daily Reward:  Look for this at your city hall.  There are a number of activities listed here, each worth some number of points. Accumulate points to receive reward chests.  You can get up to 6 chests each day.  Don't forget to check back before server reset to see if you have any rewards waiting here for you.  Every day you should try to do as many of these activities as you can.  Of course early in the game, some of them are not yet possible, like "Temple Donations," but some of them are very easy to do, like technology research and building upgrades, which become much harder to accomplish later in the game.

4. Send Flowers:  Yes, this is one of the activities in the Daily Reward, so you were already going to do it, but it bares mentioning separately.  It is super easy to do, and comes with its own reward in addition to daily reward points.  I also wrote an entire article just on this subject.

5. Join an alliance. This game is about community building.  Nearly everything fun about this game happens within an alliance.  Pick one that is active, fits your personality and has people you like.  You might have to switch alliances a couple of times to find the right one.

6. Use your elite teleport WISELY.  You get one for free at the beginning of the game.  You might think they're easy to get because of this, but they are not.  Unless you are planning on spending some money to play, it could be a week or more before you acquire enough gems for another one.  Don't use it until you are fairly sure you've found the right alliance, then talk to your alliance leaders about where you should place your castle within the alliance territory.  Don't be overly anxious to move.  Your castle is perfectly safe in a "newbie" shield until you hit level 9.

7. Use VIP: When you start the game, your VIP level is 1 and VIP is activated.  This gives you several benefits including the ability to search for monsters and resource tiles on the world map.  Use it to find your first few monsters quickly.  It also gives you a longer free speedup time.  That can come in very handy when VIP is a higher level, but eventually becomes fairly useless once buildings take days to upgrade.  I recommend that you focus your upgrading on one of each building type, (one farm, one sawmill, one stone mine, etc.) and leave the rest at the lower level.  Then each time your VIP level goes up, check those buildings and see if you can upgrade them for free.  As stated earlier, this can be done even if your builders are busy, so upgrade all of them at once without having to wait for the "golden hammer" to finish working.  You will not be notified when your VIP level goes up.  Take a look at the ribbon at the top of the screen and when it is red with gold letters, VIP is active.  You get 24 hours of VIP with each new level.

8. set up a second game right away.  I will write another article specifically about this, but even though you don't need it for the first couple of weeks, you will eventually be very glad you started a second (or even a third and fourth) castle immediately.  These extra accounts, whether they are "farms" or "body guards," will be very helpful to you in the long run and the sooner you start, the more helpful they can be.