I want to write a short overview of my approach to this game which could be a useful reminder to all of us - in other words, look at it as a "How-to-KOA". I am sure that a lot of you can contribute to this page. Therefore, do not hesitate to contact me via KOA and advise me regarding modifications, improvements and suggestions so we can create the ultimate "How-to-KOA" for both old and new players. Although this is my first KOA server, I am sure that all of us have learned a lot by following HALE, Bruffle, Blizzard and all other players from TWP and other alliances (I would not write all names - it will take too much time). With this knowledge, I am sure we could strive to top 2 alliances and few top 10 players in a fresh kingdom, but I know a lot of you have spent too much money (and time) - so, changing kingdoms does not sound good. And I do not want to do it as well - no point when we can play, have fun and learn in k591.
Aaron will come and go, but if we play organized and shield, he cannot do much.
SO! LET'S START!
1. The most important suggestion is to shield and keep troops safe whenever you are not online.
- 24hrs shield costs 1 000 gold
- 8hrs shield costs 600 gold or 60 000 honor points in the alliance store
- Send troops to any shielded member
- BE CAREFUL! The king can evict you which will automatically send your troops to the city which means that you will be vulnerable - I learned it on a hard way (Aaron burned 200k of my t8 troops by doing this 2 times).
- Communicate with your teammates via alliance mails or via private messages/alliance chat - our goal is to make smaller groups which will be used for the push program and for cooperation like this one - to hide troops together, even to run barbs among the groups. More about this will be said in the next blog page which will be released soon!
- Put your troops in the air!
- Whenever you are online, you can save your troops by launching rallies on other players and/or barbs. Set a 1hr rally and your troops will be safe. You can always disband rallies and set new ones. Keep in mind that the king can evict you which will automatically disband your rallies and make you vulnerable if you do not quickly set up new rallies or you do not hide troops in any other way.
- Send long-distance attacks/rallies/encampments
- Another interesting approach is to send long-distance attacks/rallies on the other side of the kingdom. This is a cheaper option of saving your troops over your sleeping period. AGAIN, the king can evict you and your troops will be immediately in your city.
I think that you can see that there is a lot of different ways of preserving your troops. My kind suggestion is to buy daily offers for 1 dollar from time to time when the KOA offers you 3k gold. It instantly means - 3x 24hrs shields. I think you can gather gold for the whole week worth of shield by doing this. In other words, you could manage to be safe 24/7 (without attacking any players). Imagine if we all could do this - Aaron's attacks would be useless. Also, this is something that FOX is doing.
2. Save your resources in the bag!
- There are many different ways to obtain resources in KOA - plundering, magic spire, undead trader, barbs, the marketplace, gold exchange for resources, etc. Some of these are already explained in details in previous blog pages.
- As you know, if you plunder someone's resources, they will be available for others to plunder them from you. It can be a very effective way of growing up (ask Blizzard!) but that means: you have to be online or shielded to keep those resources safe!
- The most important advice is to keep your resources in the bag until you do not need them. By doing this, your resources will never be plundered and you could safely develop your city.
Another way of getting resources in the bag is via the dungeon. Each day you can earn ancient coins by plundering stages that you already passed. Then, in the undead trader of the exchange section, you can get resources (and many other rewards). The higher the stage in the dungeon, the better and the bigger rewards you get. For instance, I am at 8-4 stage which means that I can get the highest rewards - 21x2 iron for 8 coins, 8x500 silver for 3 coins and 18x100 for 7 coins (I assume that we all have too many wood). In total, I can get 20x21x2k iron per day by exchanging (840k iron in total for 160 coins). Imagine that! I will leave it up to you to find the best strategy regarding this. My advice to you is to rush for all iron and silver you can get. Also, do not forget about your farms - they can get you a lot of resources by applying the same approach. Resource in farms will be safe in their bags until you do not pop them up and plunder/send - my suggestion is to always plunder your farms since you will save so much by not paying trading taxes.
Magic Spire! Well, this is another way of getting resources. By gathering crystals, you can obtain a lot of items in the spire loot - among those are resources as well. It all comes down to the strategy. You can either gather crystals on level 2 (18k/hrs) or you can try out your luck in higher levels. When I am active, I go up to level 4 which means 25k/hrs but then you have to be careful because there is a high chance that stronger players will defeat you and you will end up losing your spot. If you count in your farms, you will soon realize that you can gather crystals for resources in your farms while using crystals on your main account for other aspects of KOA - dragon exp, assault/guardian power, dragon heart stone fragments, lake gravel, dragon essence, etc. Now you can figure out very fast how Hale always have resources and how she can develop faster than other players ;)
Market place. I will not go into details in here. By visiting the marketplace, you can exchange wood/gold for all other resources and/or useful items. Keep in mind that resources obtained in this way do not go in the bag!
3. Build up your stats!
As you all know, stats rule in this game. The higher the combat stats, the stronger you are. Therefore, here is a quick overview of all important aspects of KOA which boosts your stats. I will not spend too many words on this section as you all probably know this part of the game. Look at this as a reminder :)
- Prestige banners
Not much to say regarding banners. The higher the level of your buildings, the higher the stats you have. Banners give you a great boost as you can see it by checking each building in your city (except resource production units, camps, and hospitals). Once you hit higher levels, your banners will be consumed very fast so think in advance about obtaining them via chests, spire loot, etc.
- Equipment and gemstones
Oh my, there is so much to write about this section, as equipment and gemstones give you the highest boosts in this game. Apart from the combat gear which is very well known to all of you (Warmonger, Deathseeker, Ice Lord, Flambringer, Redeemer), what makes the biggest difference between an experienced player and a newbie is the usage of other equipment which gives a great boost to healing costs and speed, training speed, cost and capacity, building/research speed and costs, etc. Please, take a look at those stats and combine them to achieve the highest benefits you can. In my case, only by applying appropriate gear, I can produce 1 100 t8 troops in 15hrs which costs me as producing 750 troops without the gear. I will not spend too many words on this section as I believe you can read all the necessary information by yourself - my short advice will be: avoid Ice Lord and rush for Flamebringer as it gives you a much better boost, use all sort of economy gear, especially Iseult Set, Champion Armor, Galahad's Boots, Dawn Coronet and Jewel of Bounty. Those last 4 gives you a huge boost in resource gathering, troops load, building/research speed time, etc. It will take time to craft those 4 pieces so you can start from the lowest tier and upgrade those by time.
Another aspect of equipment are gemstones which can provide you a huge boost - i.e. chivalry jewel (VI) gives 58.5% of health to infantry, cavalry, and bowmen (I took this jewel randomly). There are numerous different gemstones which boost your combat stats - the higher the class of gemstones, the harder and the more costly is to craft them. Based on luck, money spent and upgrades, you can achieve astronomically high boosts.
Apart from the combat stats, there are so-called "knowledge gemstones" which gives you a reduction of resource needed for researches/building upgrades. Those need to be bought, same we Isuelt Set, but consider it as a good deal which will save you a lot of resources which can be used for army production for instance.
- Artifacts
If you check a big statue in the center of your city called Avalon Artifacts, you will see that you can boost your stats in 8 different categories - 2 for troops and 2 for infantry, cavalry, and bowmen. There are 4 different levels of artifacts - green, blue, pink and those expensive new ones which are ridiculously expensive to obtain. In order to craft artifacts, you need Lake Graves and Holy Water. You can get those in the spire loot, via subscription, via daily delivery, and via daily offers on certain days. These artifacts can give you a great boost - i.e. all blue artifacts give you 90% of infantry, cavalry and bowmen health, attack and defense, and 25.72% of troop health, attack, and defense. Also, keep in mind that pink artifacts and higher can be upgraded which costs more lake gravels and holy water, but gives you higher stats.
- Dragon and dragon's emblems
Dragon and its emblems can boost your troops a lot (ask Savage - he knows it!). In short, by leveling up your dragon, dragon skills can be upgraded which instantly reflects on your stats - you will need assault and guardian power to upgrade those. The higher the level of the dragon, the more dragon skills you will be able to assign. Once they reach level 5, level 10, level 15 and level 20, additional power of dragon emblems will be unlocked - higher stats! If you click: Dragon Lair - Dragon Skills - Assign Skills, you will see that there are skills which can be assigned for attack, defense, gathering and monsters. Hale explained everything regarding this topic in the blog so check it! Shortly, there are 4 different emblems which can be embedded to your dragon skills - same analogy as artifacts, statues, etc. I.E. Rare radiant aggression (V) gives you 56% attack boosts for infantry, cavalry, and bowmen, while Luminous Aggression gives you 80%, but it costs a lot of money.
- Prestige statues
Click on your stronghold - Prestige Statues. You will see that there are up to 16 Statues in 4 different categories which can boost your stats. Each column boosts different stats - Eagle for bowmen, Lion for troops, Bear for infantry and Wolf for cavalry. Each statue boosts attack, defense, and health. As for artifacts, there are 4 different levels of Statues - green, blue, pink and infernal. All Statues except green ones can be upgraded to some extent which gives you higher stats. In order to craft Statues, you need Tomes and Statue Materials. Explore this section by yourself because it is pretty much straight forward thing.
- Researches
There is not much to say regarding this - go to the University, then in Combat section (or Combat II section if your stronghold level is higher than 26) and research as much as you can :) You can get troops boosts, march capacity, and speed increase, etc.
- Dragon spirit's boosts
Lastly, I want to put a focus on stats' boosts that can be obtained via dragon spirit. I think that people forget all the stats that you can get by achieving higher stages in the dungeon. If you click on the dragon spirit and then on Spirit skills, you can see all different boosts. Among those, you can find i.e. bowmen attack, cavalry attack, damage reduction, etc. Just to prove you this: check Tier 4 - by achieving level 30 of your dragon spirit, you get cavalry health, attack and defense boost of 30% and bowmen attack boost of 30%. Not bad, right? Check all other boosts. Also, you can get additional boosts by using talent points of your dragon spirit - this section varies on the class you select, but nothing too significant that will make a big change. Therefore, do not spend time figuring out which class is the best for this - I have already done that and can guarantee you that there is no significant difference.
- Heroes
Last part of KOA's aspect which provides boots to your stats is heroes. There are different heroes which give you great boosts, especially if they are combined for higher benefits such as Sir Kay + Tristan or King Arthur + Sir Baudwin + Elaine of Garlot. There are heroes especially for combat and heroes especially for troops training, research/upgrade speed, resource reduction. I will leave it up to you to discover all possibilities (also, we have a blog page about this as well). Honestly, this is the aspect of KOA which gives me the biggest headache since I have enough fragments to level up all important combat heroes (Sir Baudwin, Tristan, Sir Kay, Elaine of Garlot and Sir Agravain, as well as Morgause) to level 5 and King Arthur to level 4, but do not have enough hero experience to do it :) But, it will be done eventually.
4. My advice for you is - have fun, have respect, create new friendships and do not get addicted!
This whole text will be bolded ;)
People, this short tutorial maybe will not be very useful for old and experienced players. However, this bolded part is my main focus of this page as I feel that I have to remind a lot of us (yes, including myself) that this is only a game. I do not want to beg you but to advice you that you have to stop if it results in addiction. This can be a serious problem for a lot of people and can do a lot of harm in your real life in so many aspects - relationships, health, money, free time which can be used for sport, exercise, hobbies, even gifts for your relatives and friends, etc. I am maybe kinda new in KOA world, but I have played a lot of other online games during my study - I have seen a lot of people, both online and in real life which almost ruined their private lives because of online games. It can be addictive and very costs (in money terms).
Do not fall on a trick of spending a large amount of money, simply because of two reasons:
People, this short tutorial maybe will not be very useful for old and experienced players. However, this bolded part is my main focus of this page as I feel that I have to remind a lot of us (yes, including myself) that this is only a game. I do not want to beg you but to advice you that you have to stop if it results in addiction. This can be a serious problem for a lot of people and can do a lot of harm in your real life in so many aspects - relationships, health, money, free time which can be used for sport, exercise, hobbies, even gifts for your relatives and friends, etc. I am maybe kinda new in KOA world, but I have played a lot of other online games during my study - I have seen a lot of people, both online and in real life which almost ruined their private lives because of online games. It can be addictive and very costs (in money terms).
Do not fall on a trick of spending a large amount of money, simply because of two reasons:
- someone will always spend more like Aaron - it will only make you want to spend more and will cause anger and depression
- you will eventually quit and you know it. I am a big advocate of paying a certain amount of money if you will be active and that money should go for daily offers, subscription, and daily delivery. But outside of that (and that is already a large amount), it is pointless in my eyes. Combine those 3 parts and you will spend around 60-70 dollars/month which is a reasonable price if your account how much time you spend online.
However, do not let that KOA becomes your life because it will do serious harm to your mental health, your emotional intelligence, and your real life relationships. This game is very addictive and soon, people around you will start to notice that. As it is not maybe socially acceptable to play games a lot as an adult, you will face a lot of prejudice which will only cause damage - and it is for your own good. Games are fun as long as they are only games. Too often games become your escape from the reality where you can be someone else, where you can enjoy in being someone else and you slowly start to lose your real self in real life. I have read a lot of studies and books about it and I can warmly suggest you to seriously be careful about this. You can decide your path in here by yourself - I just want you to take care of your health and real-life obligations, relationships, and hobbies and then to focus on KOA and any other online game.
While playing, try to be communicative, try to cooperate and always have respect! There is a quote which my father told me a lot: Respect others, but do not let others disrespect you (it is a literal translation). By that being said, do not be internet warriors which will feed their egos by insulting others and by not protecting weaker players. Simply because there is always someone stronger and more experiences who takes care of you (if not in KOA, then in real life). I am sure that we can have a lot of fun and learn a lot about KOA and all the other real-life things by playing together. I do not chase no.1 place in here, simply because of all of the above-mentioned things. I am here to learn, to meet new people and to share my knowledge.
This blog page will be enriched with a lot of pictures in the future. I do not want to share my stats at the moment because a lot of people can see it :) Keep in mind that this is a short general approach to KOA and that a lot of more information can be obtained via other blog pages, as well as by googling - that is how I have learned a lot. Also, we are always here to answer all questions.
Good luck and have fun!
Love,
Good luck and have fun!
Love,
Cay
P.S. English is not my native language so I apologize for kind of a rough language. A fever still hits my whole body pretty hard :)