Basic Gear and Gem set-up illustrations

citrine gemI have noticed a trend on Line in the last few weeks, and I feel stupid for not doing this sooner. It’s really simple: A picture says more than a thousand words. And over the past few weeks, I have seen plenty of illustrations/pictures that depict certain elements of the game, as a short guide so to speak.

And if we look at gear and gems for example, I have articles on Best gear Sets, where and how to use Gems, which gear attributes go where when…and then we have Hero Skills going in the mix as well….

And although they are good reads to get familiar with he material, it’s mostly text and not suited for quick referencing. And while chatting such as in Line, it is much easier to give a picture than explaining it word by word every time. So here below the fold I have posted some illustrations for basic gear/gem set-ups. I know other versions are also around, but hey, I like some photoshopping and I like it to be available on the site.

Feel free to download them and share them on for example Line, whenever a tournament starts again and people start asking the same questions.

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Hero Skills: When to use which?

skill morale boostHero Skills have been released for a while now, with even a new batch of offensive Skills released recently. But which skills are best in certain situations? In this article I while detail a number of situations and sketch a number of ways on which Skills are most useful in each. Some are very straightforward, others require some more thought. In the end, this will not be a long or difficult read, but could be helpful to some…

  • 1. Types of Skills
  • 2. Attacking general
    • 2.1 Attacking wall/advanced
  • 3. Defending
    • 3.1 Defending wall/advanced
  • 4. Campaign general
    • 4.1 Boss level double-tap
    • 4.2 Advanced campaign set-ups
  • 5. Mining
    • 5.1  Mining warfare
  • 6. Resource production
  • 7. Final words

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CHS: The double-tap

smaug thumbnailFor most levels in campaign, attacking them is straightforward. You select an army and hero to attack, attack, and presto….you either win or lose. Whatever the case, the next time you attack that camp, the camp has been reset and all Goblins are there again.

But on the boss levels, this is different, and losing on those maps will leave the remaining Goblin force waiting for you for the next round of combat. How many Goblins still stand is indicated by the boss health bar when you click on the level.

It is been long known that finishing off the boss levels in multiple attacks also gives (potentially) much higher High Scores, if done properly. But not many people know how or why this is. In this article, I will provide some information on why this is and how can you can figure out your best attack pattern.

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Best Sets lists and how to use them

thorin furWhile I used to post a screenshot of the top 30 offensive and defensive gear sets with the Best Sets article, I have now provided a link to a zip file which contains the two spreadsheets I use for that, containing all of the hundreds of possible gear combinations. In order to work with it or understand them, I will provide here a short explanation of what each number represents, and how you should use it to compare gear.

  • 1. First off: Division, Gems and random rolls
  • 2. The numbers explained
  • 3. Using the list effectively

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Battle Mechanics V: Conclusion

headerWelcome once more to the final part in this series for now. Warning up front: This article will not contain (much) new information, but will serve, as the title implies, as a conclusion on the previous parts I-IV, summarizing the findings, and perhaps serving as an easy reference piece. So let’s go over what we covered in the previous parts.

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Battle Mechanics IV: Diminishing Returns and how to deal with it

attackWelcome to the fourth installment in this Battle Mechanics series. In this part, we will once again take a closer look at Diminishing Returns, how it works, and how it influences our choices for gear and Gems, following the formulas we arrived at in parts I, II and III. Diminishing Returns (henceforth DR) can be a tricky subject, but once you understand how it works it is actually pretty easy to work with.

  • 1. The concept behind DR
  • 2. DR visualized
  • 3. DR and distribution of buffs and debuffs
  • 4. Should you always balance buff and debuff?
  • 5. Conclusion on choosing gear with DR in mind

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Battle Mechanics III: Why your opponent doesn’t matter

skill fierce loyaltyWelcome to part III in this Battle Mechanics series. In part I and II, we constructed the basic battle formula with buffs and debuffs, focusing specifically on gear buff and debuffs. Now it is time to chose the optimal set of gear. But before we get to that, we consider here our opponent. Many people still tell me that I have to take into account the opponent’s gear when choosing my own, in the sense that (usually), if an opponent has mostly debuffs, I should aim for buffs, and vice versa.

In part IV, we are going to (for the last time hopefully) discuss our own gear choices, taking Diminishing Returns into account, but here in part III, I will first briefly detail why you should never look at your opponent’s buffs and debuffs distribution.

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Battle Mechanics II: Separating the Buffs

lifeWelcome to the second part in this Battle Mechanics article series. In Part I, we constructed the basic battle formula, showing the relation between attack and life, and buffs and debuffs. Although we could go from there into other territory, I feel this second part is needed to avoid any confusion afterwards. In this part we will look at the different types of buffs and how they (possibly) interact.

  • 1. Recap
  • 2. The different Buffs
  • 3. Difference between additive and multiplicative
  • 4. What matters in the end

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Battle Mechanics I: The basic Battle Formula

tauriel bowWelcome to the first in a series of articles on some basic battle mechanics in the Hobbit | KoM. In this series, we are gonna look at how combat in KoM basically works, and how it affects your gear choices. In this first part, we start of with looking at the basic battle formula, and work from there towards choosing the best gear set-ups, emphasizing primarily the reasons behind the sets such as given in the Best Sets article.

  • 1. The basics
  • 2. Adding in buffs
  • 3. Adding in debuffs
  • 4. Rewriting and final formula

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Masters Season II tournament series

trophy-cupThe Masters Season 2 has officially begun. The series of events spans the entire remainder of the month of March, consisting of both individual and alliance based tournaments, in which special items to track progress can be won. Also, prizes will consist of special items that can be traded in in the Sage Tower for various prizes, giving the players freedom to spend their earnings on whatever prize they need most! In this article I will provide all known information about the tournament series 2 as it plays out.

  • 1. Series in a nutshell
  • 2. Schedules
  • 3. Sage Tower trade-ins
  • 4. Season 2 prizes
    • 4.1 Alliance prizes
    • 4.2 Individual prizes
    • 4.3 Cross-world Alliance prizes
    • 4.4 Cross-world individual prizes

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Hero Skills: All you need to know!

Please note more information will follow once available.

skill fierce loyaltyThe latest addition to the game has been Hero Skills, a game-feature that will allow you to enhance your heroes with special skills that will help in a range of areas, from combat, to resource mining, to gem mining, and even allowing you to revive troops lost in battle. Skills are first unlocked, or learned, in the academy, with special items.

Once known, a skills can be learned by a hero and upgraded further. In this article, I will detail all there is to know about this subject!

  • 1. How to learn new skills
  • 2. Giving skills to Heroes
    • 2.1 Free enrolls
    • 2.2 Enrollment scrolls
    • 2.3 Skill Books
  • 3. Upgrading Skills
  • 4. Unlearning/deleting Skills
  • 5. Available skills
    • 5.1 Skill upgrade costs
  • 6. Skill dependencies and unlock costs
  • 7. Enemy’s Skills

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Tournaments: Alliance Boss Kill

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUGThe Alliance Boss Kill tournament got introduced shortly after the introduction of Alliance Bosses on the campaign map. During normal play, the Bosses can be summoned and killed to receive rewards including Vala Stones, gear, Valto runes and Gatherer Stones to level up your City Guardian. During Boss kill tournaments, you get points for killing the bosses. It is a pretty straightforward principle, so this article wil not be that long or complicated.

  • 1. The basics
  • 2. Scoring
  • 3. Tactics
    • 3.1 Go for the highest Boss(es) only
    • 3.2 Use you attack Hero/gear
    • 3.3 Set your timers
    • 3.4 Spending can seal the deal
  • 4. Conclusion

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Masters Season 1 tournament series

trophy-cupA new series of tournaments has been announced by Kabam: The Masters Season 1. The series of events spans the entire remainder of the month of February, consisting of both individual and alliance based tournaments, in which special items to track progress can be won. Also, prizes will consist of special items that can be traded in in the Sage Tower for various prizes, giving the players freedom to spend their earnings on whatever prize they need most! Considering the name, there will likely be more Master Seasons in the future. In this article I will provide all known information about the tournament series 1 as it plays out.

  • 1. Series in a nutshell
  • 2. Schedules
  • 3. Sage Tower trade-ins
  • 4. Season 1 prizes
    • 4.1 Alliance prizes
    • 4.2 Individual prizes

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Why the new Gems will mess up gear choices…

citrine gemOne of the most popular articles on this site is the Best Sets article, describing which sets of gear are most useful for attacking, defending, and for campaign/CHS. At the moment, this article is still very useful, but pretty soon, it will be completely rendered useless. Why? The new Gems. In this article I will explain why this is the case and how gear will be chosen in the near future…and why this makes me think the new Gems stink….

  1. The new way of selecting gear
  2. Why will gear selection change? The old situation
  3. The new situation: The new Gems
  4. The new “best” gear
  5. An example with Replenish and Void gear
  6. Does diminishing returns not factor in at all anymore??
  7. What did I leave out

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World Mergers: All you need to know

openscreenYes they are coming: the World Mergers. Players going inactive means many servers are slowly dying out, which is bad news for active players. Luckily Kabam has come up with a solution: Merge a few relatively inactive worlds into one more active one. But this will of course have some consequences, especially for players playing in multiple worlds. I do not have all information yet, but Kabam has made an excellent post on the forum with a lot of useful information. For completeness I have copied the contents of that post below, and will amend any info I find that is not in there.

I urge all players, but especially those with multiple worlds to read it carefully and start preparing! Any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll try to answer. The forums are of course also a good source for additional info, so check them out as well!

The following list are worlds that are confirmed to be merging with each other. Part of this information is taken from this website (hob-assist.com/), which also has timers running down showing when exactly each merge will take lace! Be sure to check them out! Merger list and Kabam info below the fold:

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Hero Equipment: How to acquire Bard’s Gear

bard heroWith the new Lake-town campaign map, players have the opportunity to farm the levels for Bard’s gear or get them from the new Alliance Bosses. But unlike other drops, the gear requires other gear to be farmed before it becomes available in most cases. Just like with constructing some buildings, you need to work your way up if you want the complete set of Bard’s gear. Below is an overview of the dependencies of all pieces of gear, where and how you can find them, and how to complete the Bard’s set.

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New Campaign map: Lake-town-Along the Shore

bardgearannouncementToday a new campaign map was released, continuing the Lake-town themed updates lately: Lake-town: Along the Shore. It is a rather short map, consisting of only 2 parts, comprising 10 maps total. Rewards for the map parts are pretty nice, with a lot of resources to be farmed from the two boss levels. Of course, the might of the Goblins also increases exponentially, so the boss levels stick out at 7.2m and 14.4m might (!). Numbers we are used to see from temporary maps, but this one seems permanent.

Other features include:

The two map parts spawn a 210 and 250 Alliance Boss, which drops Lake-Town Advanced chests, containing the following items:

laketown boss drops

 

Besides the Bosses, a number of levels also offer possible drops for Bard’s gear. Bard’s gear is a new set of gear aimed at Bard, the new Hero in Lake-town. The gear can be farmed/unlocked sequentially by going through the new campaign, killing the Alliance Bosses, and trading in Sage Tower. For many of the drops in campaign, you need to use Bard to attack and equip him with his gear you already have unlocked. A post about how to acquire the full set can be found HERE.

The info for this map has been added to the Campaign map which you can find HERE.

Lake-Town 5th City: All you need to know

laketownarticleheaderLake-Town is the new expansion city to the Kingdoms of Middle Earth that was released late November, and which will be available to everyone after the 4th of December for free! Unlike the 4 older cities, the style of the city matches that of the human Lake-town from the movies, instead of the familiar Elven or Dwarven theme. Although a lot in the city will seem familiar, some key differences with regards to gameplay and buildings also come with the 5th city. In this article I will sum up all available information on this newest city.

  • 1. The Basics
  • 2. The Buildings
    • 2.1 Familiar Buildings
    • 2.2 The new and changed Buildings
  • 3. Construction
    • 3.1 Lake-Town architects
    • 3.2 Pearl and Lake-town architect full overview
  • 4. Oysterboats, Pearls and Tactical training
    • 4.1 Pearls
    • 4.2 Oystering Research
    • 4.3 TT training
  • 5. Heroes
  • 6. How to start with your City construction

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City Buildings: the City Guardian

guard headerAs soon as you open your city, it’s there: The City Guardian. A large statue in the middle of your city, seemingly more decorative than functional. But the City Guardian actually functions as a protector of your City, providing very useful buffs that will certainly help even the most experienced players. In this article, I delve a little deeper into the Guardian and give an overview of how it functions.

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City Buildings: the Sage Tower

headerThe Sage Tower acts as the event center of your cities. Uniting your cities, only one center can be constructed, serving all your four or five cities. Items won in special events can be exchanged in the Sage Tower, while other items such as gear and Gems can be exchanged for materials acquired in campaign primarily. As there are a large number of Sage Tower trades, this articles is meant to give an overview of these for less-experienced players.

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Kom101: City Buildings Overview

buibarracksOne of the basics aspects of the game Kingdoms of Middle Earth is acquiring and building up your cities. When starting the game, you have one city, but this can be expanded to 4 cities, and a special 5th Lake-Town city. Cities can contain a number of different buildings, each with their own function and dependencies.

In this article, I will summarize what each building does. Two types of buildings are mentioned: The City buildings contained within your City Walls, and the Field, or resource buildings, which are constructed on field plots. Buildings from the 5th Lake-Town city will come in a separate article.

Although most building and research dependencies for each building have been mentioned, this article on normal construction, and this article on Runecrafting can also help figuring out requirements.

NOTE: Images of the buildings are courtesy of the HobbitArmies Wikia page here

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Hero Equipment: How and where to Embed Gems

Gem Embedding enables players to make their gear perform even better in war, enhancing attack, defense, and/or march sizes. But the higher level runes are difficult to acquire, as it takes to 1 year and 8 months to just farm one level 6 Gem from scratch with the picks regenerating for free. Although we are helped by Gem Shards and Gems in chests and tournaments, it’s still inefficient to just start combining them to level 6 Gems, so choices have to be made.

In this article, I will look at what the Gems do in each gear piece type, what gear should be Embedded first, and how to most efficiently upgrade Gems along the way.

  • 1. Buff types and Gem effects
  • 2. Diminishing returns
  • 3. Best Gem Embed gears
    • 3.1 Offensive
    • 3.2 Defensive
    • 3.3 Campaign
    • 3.4 All-round set-up
  • 4. Efficiently upgrading Gems

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Campaign: The new Smaug

smaug thumbnailLast week we received news the New Smaug was introduced. It was highly anticipated, and  a lot of players took to the forum to explain Kabam how NOT to ruin the experience in the process of upgrading the dragon. Unfortunately, the new Smaug was highly disappointing and was met with a lot of negative feedback.

But in a surprise move, Kabam decided to listen to the critiques within a week and upgraded Smaug again. Read on to see what has changed form the old familiar lizard and a possible way to fix him once and for all…

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Splitting up Articles from Blog posts

tauriel bowHe everyone, as you may have noticed, the menu bar now has a Articles button and a Blog button. I decided that I wanted to make a split between the more informative, static posts, and the more subjective pieces and posts about less important stuff.

For the informative static Articles, you should think about the articles about Hero Equipment, Gem Mining, Troop Attack Order and Tactical Troops. The information contained in these is updated every now and then, but the article stays largely the same, and relevant, over the months.

For the new Blog category, you should think about articles on updates to the game, opinions on certain matters and posts not directly related to the game. These are posts you probably won’t be revisiting frequently and will be relevant only for a short while. You can assume that any major changes or additions to the game will make their way into the Articles section.

I hope that clears things up on the new menu. Cheers!

Troop Attack Order

Updated with all new troops and attack orders! 14-01-2015

D_Dwarven_PhalanxBack in the days of Tier 1-3 and Wall, we knew which troops would be targeted first by an attacking army. Wall troops die first, then Tier 1-3 fighting troops, then lastly the supply troops. This held no matter what troops you sent at a city. The only ‘exception’ to this was the fact that a Dwarf army would (and will) attack Elven reinforcements first and vice versa, leading to the infamous cart rein shenanigans.

But unfortunately for us, the Tactical Troops messed this up, as they seemed to prefer other targets over the Wall troops to attack first, flanking the enemy armies and attacking the weak points at the back. For some Tactical Troops little changed, but for some, the order in which they attack enemy armies is a mess. This post lists all the attack orders for all troops available in the game right now, and will be updated when the new Tactical Troops are introduced.

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Hero Equipment: Mining Gems

dwarf pickAs proposed earlier, I have put this subject in a separate article, to keep the information on both Gem mining and Embedding separated and thus hopefully easier to comprehend. The main purpose of mining in Kingdoms of Middle Earth is to acquire the Gem Shards needed to make the Gems used for embedding in gear.

Here I will give an overview of the things necessary to find the mines on the map, mine them successfully for Gem Shards, and other possible benefits from mining. To mine we need to know the following things:

  1. What is Mining exactly?
  2. What types of Mines are there?
  3. How do you find Mines?
    • Watch Tower
    • Search Results
  4. How do you start mining?
    • Attacking a Mine
    • Mining progress and report
    • Reinforcing a Mine
    • Gem Pouch research
  5. What are the possible drops?
  6. Defending Mines
    • Strategy
    • Use in TKing
    • Alliance agreements

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Hero Equipment: Embedding Gems, all you need to know

headerWith update 10.3, a new system of enhancing gear has been introduced, besides upgrading and enhancing, namely Embedding (Gems) So what does this feature exactly do and what do you need to do this? As in the article about upgrading and enhancing, I will try to combine everything you need to know into this one article. For a run down of what gears to embed with Gems, see this article.

  • 1. What is Gem Embedding?
  • 2. Where can you find this function?
  • 3. What is needed to embed gems?
    • 3.1 Gem Shards
    • 3.2 Gems
    • 3.3 Combining Gems in Forge
    • 3.4 Embedding gems and unlocking more sockets
    • 3.5 Removing Gems from gear
  • 4. Gem Pouch research
  • 5. Available Gems and levels
    • 5.1 Artamir Gem

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Hero Equipment: Diminishing returns…

attack debuffOr, you CAN have too much of a good thing….Remember this old post about how each consecutive bonus to a certain process becomes less effective than the previous one? I’ll illustrate shortly with an example. Say you attack some goblins, and your attack value is 100, and you kill 100 goblins.

Now you have 2 items. One increases you attack by 100%, or 100 points, and one reduces the goblins life by 50%, or half their life. Which item do you use? Well, in the first round, it doesn’t matter. Applying the attack item doubles your attack, so you kill twice the amount (200) of Goblins, while the life reduce item also results in double the amount of kills.

We apply the attack item, so attack is now 200 and Goblin life still 1. Again the question, what item do you apply now? Now we see a difference. If we apply the attack item again, our attack becomes 300 and we kill 300 Goblins, not 100%, but 50% more then before. But if we apply the life item now, Goblin life is halved and we kill 400 Goblins, a 100% increase.

And that is diminishing returns for ya: each consecutive added bonus becomes less effective -in this case the attack bonus- , such that other bonuses become more and more effective when used…Now, up until now, this was never an issue with gear because the gear bonuses were not THAT high to make it really noticeable. However with the Replenishing and Necromantic sets, we get introduced to this effect very distinctly, because the bonuses they offer are so incredibly (in my view ridiculously) high.

And that is the reason why a full Replenishing set is LESS EFFECTIVE at defense compared to a mix with Void gear. Individually, the Replenish set is much better. Equip a Hero with Void sword and Replenish Sword alone, and you will see the Replenish sword do better at defending. Test a FULL Replenish set against a FULL Void set, and Replenish wins again. But, because the +life bonus of Replenish is so high, it’s diminishing returns is likewise really high, even so that it makes adding in Void gear work better with its -foe attack bonus. It is exactly like the Goblin example above. The more you use of one, the less effective it becomes and the more worthwhile it becomes to use the other…

And this will make finding the perfect gear set-up more difficult and experimental in nature then it used to be. Please take note of this. When newer, even better sets come out in the future, do NOT mindlessly equip the full set, but mix it with gear with different types of offensive and/or defensive buffs to see whether diminishing returns plays a role (and it will), to come to the best mix of items….Cheers!

How to get Great High Scores on Campaign with Tactical Troops

master rangerSo, when I first wrote about this subject in the older articles, Tactical Troops (TT) had not been released yet or just shortly, and I never added a new article about getting good high scores for CHS events. But every major CHS event I see an enormous spike in views, so I guess people are still looking for the ultimate guide. And although such a guide does not exist really, here are the steps you can take yourself to make you personal best CHS guide using TT!

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Hero Equipment: Update or Enhance first?

valar stoneSo apparently the options of Enhancing and Upgrading hero equipment/gear have left some people to wonder whether it is better to first enhance or first upgrade? Does it cost more items to enhance a lvl 10 item versus a lvl 1 item? Or do the Valto runes have less effect on fully enhanced gear compared to non-enhanced?

Nobody really seemed to be able to provide a good answer, even though it didn’t make much sense in my mind for such a thing to exist. But I thought it would be good to figure it out once and for all and give you the answer to the question “does it matter what you do first?”. And of course the answer is:

NO

I tested this on two pieces of Wartorn gear, and seeing whether doing one option first meant differences for the second. Results can be seen below the fold, but if you do not need much persuasion, just follow the above answer.

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Gear bonuses and when to use what gear

article headerSo a while ago I made a post about when to use Attack runes and when Defense runes, as there seemed to be confusion about it even among more experienced players. I recently noticed the same problem with using gear, so I thought it time to write an article on that as well. Especially with the new debuff attributes, it has indeed become less intuitive to know what to use when. In this article I will try give the basics on the available gear attributes, and on when they are best used.

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Hero Equipment: Best sets to use

pilferediconOne of the questions on everyone’s mind in this game is what the best hero equipment/gear are for attacking, defending and campaigning. With a pretty constant stream of newly introduced gear with differing bonuses, it can be difficult to decide. So here is a small overview of the best sets currently available, below the fold, as the article has grown a bit longer than anticipated.

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Inventory overview spreadsheet

chestSo, with tournaments, or even just in general, it is sometimes handy to know what troops you have in your inventory. Whether out of sheer curiosity or for planning for a tournament of might, it can be somewhat troublesome to figure out exactly what you have to pop. No more! The spreadsheet in the link below can be filled in quite easily, after which it automatically calculates numbers and might per troop, tier and totals. The addition of mass unpacking makes it a little less useful, but still…

Inventory overview spreadsheet

KoM 101: Farming made easy

small-farm-tractorsPerhaps not long awaited, but certainly long planned…my post on farming in Kingdoms of Middle Earth. Farming resources from other players is on of two ways of gaining resources, the other being producing it yourself in your cities. Farming other players however, is vastly more profitable than producing, and so will quickly become essential for your might growth, if done properly of course.

In this article, I will explain to you my method of farming. I know there are many methods and styles to choose from, so if you don’t like this style that’s ok. I’ve just found that it nets me more than enough resources in a short time, trying to be as efficient as possible. It will take some effort to set up, but once working, will really ease your farming trips.

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Campaign: Temporary maps

campaign mapOne of the later additions to the game has been the introduction of temporary campaign maps. These maps appear at seemingly random times every now and then, and disappear again as well after usually a few hours. I thought about including them in the campaign spreadsheet, but seeing as I am not convinced they will be reused, I will write here a small article on how I think you should generally approach these and what the potential rewards are (and they are pretty good).

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Hero Equipment: Gear bonus levels

So I’m giving this its own post, as I want to keep the main Hero Equipment page mostly about the available sets, certainly with all the new sets added to the game. Below is a chart with the percentages bonus each of the currently 4 Tiers of equipment bonus do, from level 1 to level 10.

The four Tiers (marked *1-*4 in KABAM emails) start out at 1%, 2%, 4% and 8% bonus respectively, but can grow to considerable amounts if you happen to be lucky enough to get gear at level 10! Use this as a reference for determining end-game gear specs, or whatever you like :). Thanks to QuietschEnte  for confirming the numbers!

Tourney: Might popping order

Another short post. Probably a lot of you have this already, but here goes. With servers that are older than a few months, Tournaments of Might very quickly turn from who can train troops most efficiently, to who can press the pop-troop-chest buttons the fastest and longest. Training should no be neglected, but popping chests makes for most of the might gain.

troop chest poppingOf course, every chest pops a certain number of might, and with that comes strategy. Whether you want to go full out in the early hours, or start T1 slow and end with a T5 bang, knowing what order to pop boxes in is important. For that purpose, I’ve made a chart with all the possible troops chests ordered in the number of might that is popped per chest. Because of the size, I’ve put it below the fold. Please also note this is the version WITHOUT Wall troops. With those version will follow. Happy popping!

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Alliance Shop: Where to farm Vala stones

amber blablaOk, ok, so by now everyone who has leveled up their alliance somewhat, knows that acquiring Amber Stones of Vala becomes more and more important. At level 30, I could entrust roughly 300 stones per day, now I need to entrust over 750. More then enough to make keeping up with Alliance Bosses time consuming, and assuming the Stones aren’t bought in shop.

So farming these Stones becomes more and more important. Whether you do a whole lot in one Invul burst, or farm daily what you need to Entrust, knowing where to find them at the least might loss is important (it seems?).  I just want to give two small tips for farming the stones most efficiently.

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Alliance Shop: All you need to know

articlepicSo the Alliance shop was added to my server last week. Weird, as some newer servers got it way before us, but anyways, it’s here now! Time to E&D. For those who do not know yet what this thing is all about, I will explain in this article what you can do with and for the Alliance shop. Where do you find it? What’s E&D? What can you get from it and how do you do that? That and more, after the break.

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Hero Equipment: Upgrading gear

up[gradegear article headerFinally, one of the biggest promises of the last few months has been fulfilled: Upgradable gear has arrived. No longer are we at the wimps of luck or mithril…now, we can start upgrading our own gear and make the best gear combinations possible. In this article, I will try to combine all possible information on upgrading and enhancing your gear pieces. Like always, if I learn stuff later on, I’ll add it to the article.

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Attack and Defense runes: When to use them

alone ROFI was tempted to put this article under the KoM101 category, but realized this actually isn’t that simple, going by the mistakes I see people make in attacking and defending. I’ve seen some weird attack reports, with people misusing runes and Tactical Troops.

alone ROIIn this article, I am gonna lay out the basics of when to use defensive, and when to use offensive runes. By no means is this stuff really complicated, but apparently many people still do not have a complete hang of it. So when do you use which runes? That and more, after the break.

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Attack report spreadsheet (updated)

swordshieldWith every new update, there is a chance some of my articles become outdated. I’m trying to keep track of the most important information and keep it updated, such as the Hero Equipment article. The old Battle report spreadsheet I posted some time ago was also in need of some improvements, as more than a few new troops have been introduced since the last version.

The updated spreadsheet now contains all the available troops, including the Tactical Troops, has boxes for additional information, better layout, and more useful information about the battle outcomes, such as absolute and relative tk/might ratios and a t1 equivalence calculation. This spreadsheet is handy to keep track of past battle performances without filling up your mailbox, and is great for analyzing why you got a certain ratio in a particular battle.

Download it through THIS link and have fun!

KoM 101: Getting through your first 7 days

bubbleWhen you start playing Kingdoms of Middle Earth, you are thrown into a busy, confusing world, with cities, wilds, goblins, alliances and players yelling in GC. It can be difficult to get a grasp of the many game aspects. I remember my starting point as extremely slow in hind sight…Figuring everything out by myself, occasionally guided by the KoM wiki, progressing ever so slowly. If I would have known what I know all now, progress would have been much faster.

This article is meant for new players who, instead of figuring out everything by themselves, want to get a head start. Starting a new game, you are placed in your safe bubble for 7 days. But how do you start your journey? What should you build and train, what aspects to focus on? All this and some more tips after the break!

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KoM 101: All Elven and Dwarf Wall troops

Following the article on all Elven and Dwarf troops, some suggestions came in on doing a similar article for the Wall troops of both factions.

headerWall troops can be trained in your City Walls. They provide good Might numbers, but are not overly strong, so most people do not actually build a lot of them, as it gives away easy tk’s for enemies. If you do want to use these, do so during Might tournaments or when you can back them up with a high Hero and normal troops. 

walltroopstats

Tactical Troops: All you need to know

mummakil

I have mentioned in past posts on campaigning and the latest update to the game, that new non-trainable ‘Tactical Troops’ had been introduced. Here, I will try to put all available information on these units. Any missing information will be added shortly. The new units are, in no particular order:

  • Pack Mammoths
  • Master Rangers
  • Stone Giants
  • Lyncean Raiders
  • Woodmen
  • Lake-town Pikemen
  • Lake-town Longbowmen

So what are they? What do they do? Where do you get them, and how should you use them. All that and perhaps more, after the break.

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How to get great High Scores on campaign levels 2

campaign pictureThis article serves as a small follow up of the previous article on getting great campaign scores. I want to delve a little deeper and discuss some issues not touched upon in the previous article.

I will discuss the make-up of a campaign high score visually with a graph I made, go a little bit into Hero gear, discuss the use of guides, the new non-trainable troops and more.

If you have suggestions for more tropics, put them in the comments.

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KoM 101: ALL in-game items and prizes (sort of)

articleheaderAnother addition to the beginners articles; in this article are listed virtually ALL in-game items you will encounter playing Kingdoms of Middle Earth. From chests, to Hero’s Glory, and from Hobbit building crew to Rune of Fury, this list gives an extensive overview of the items you use in the game, what they do exactly, and what they cost if you want to buy them in the shop (provided of course the item is for sale). Items are listed in the categories: Battle, XP, Campaign, Hourglasses, Chests, Construction and Resources, Tournaments and Various . Hop on in!

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Tauriels Circle of Fate and more: Update 9.2.0!

openscreen

  • Update(1): Keys and timer clear, chest prizes

A new update has hit the servers. The update delivers several very exciting additions to the game, which I will detail below.

Immediately noticeable is the VAST decrease in lag, to levels similar to before the last update, which made the game painfully slow. Good job KABAM.

Other additions on gear and Tauriels Circle of Fate are described below. Information will be added as its coming in, as not all features seem to be fully enabled yet.
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KoM 101: All Elven en Dwarven troops

D_Dwarven_PhalanxWhen you’ve played Kingdoms of Middle Earth for a couple of months, sit on millions of might, maxed out your four cities and are comfortably inside a big supporting alliance, it is easy to lose perspective on how things were when you started playing this game. I was reminded of this fact by a new player in our alliance, who I am helping out on growing as fast as possible. This inspired me to write some articles on the basics of the game, starting with this one.

For new players, it might be difficult to recognize all troops that are available in the game. What troops are what Tier and what do the troops of the other faction look like? Below are two images which contain all currently available troops for both the Dwarven and Elven race, Tier 1 to 5. Time to keep these warriors apart (click for larger version):

troop pics article Dwarf

troop pics article Elven

Forge runes: All you need to know

forging runesWith the new update to the game, 4th cities can be runecrafted, and runecrafting up to level *11 is finally possible, although a pain in the ass. Just think about the number of Hobbit Runecrafters you need to to be able to train all Tier 4 units and then think about how available these things are to get your hands on. But I think it is a great time to go over the topic of forging runes, the runes you need to get to level *10 in the first place.

So where do you get these runes? What do you use them for, and how? Which trade from the Sage tower is most profitable? And how many do you need to upgrade your buildings. In this post, I will try to combine all available information on the topic.

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