Category Archives: Strategy

Hero Equipment: How and where to Embed Gems

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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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Master Ranger Might increase

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master rangerSo by now I believe all servers have had the Master Ranger might value changed from 0 to 10. With zero might, the Master Rangers gave attackers an incredible TK ratio advantage, and many servers and alliances decided not to use them in TK. But as there was nothing preventing it absolutely, many players complained about the MR usage in attacking other players.

Although Kabam’s initial reactions were mixed or even a bit confusing, they now gave in and gave them 10 might, making them slightly less attractive, but still better than T1. So what are your thoughts on this? Do you agree? Should the might value be even higher? Or should they have done something different. Let me know in the poll and comments. In the mean time, the might value has been updated in the TT article.

Campaign: The new Smaug

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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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Hero Equipment: Mining Gems

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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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KoM 101: Farming made easy

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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

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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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Tourney: Might popping order

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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

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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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Attack and Defense runes: When to use them

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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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Tactical Troops: All you need to know

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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

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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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Quick tip: Using Ent gear for Campaign

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entRemember how I mentioned in my article on Hero equipment, that the Ent set is becoming popular to campaign with? That is because each piece of Ent set has two identical bonus attributes: 1% Life to ALL troops (so 2% per piece). But to be effective, do not just swap out all your gear to Ents just yet. To be most effective, use these pieces:

  • If your Hero has Pilfered gear, only use Ent weapon, cloak, amulet and/or ring*/**
  • Any sets lower than Pilfered can be freely exchanged for Ent.

*You don’t need to swap the Pilfered shield for Ent, as it deducts 2% standard life bonus for 2% bonus. See this chart.

**I don’t know whether the 5% life bonus of all 4 Ent pieces weighs up to the 5% attack loss compared to full Pilfered, but I’ve read that the Vitality score outweighs the Efficiency score in campaign, hence this set-up becoming more popular. Try at own risk 🙂

Alliance Boss Battles: All you need to know

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THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUGLike mentioned in my post on update 9.1.0, it brought to the game the exciting new feature of Alliance Boss Battles.

At the time of writing that piece, the feature had not been fully implemented yet, but it has in the mean time, and it is such an addition it merits its own article. So here, I will lay out all the necessary information you need about this feature.

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How to get great High Scores on campaign levels

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campaign pictureDoing campaign levels in Kingdoms of Middle Earth is fun and good for a number of things, such as: Leveling up your heroes, farming items and hourglasses, getting armor scraps to trade for equipment, or get awesome equipment/items/ tokens from Smaug. But there is also the Campaign High Score Event, either individual or alliance based.

Most of the times, people will run down the campaign levels with full t1 armies and wipe out any resistance. But this strategy gets you far from a high score on the different levels, which you need if you wanna compete in the aforementioned events.

So what army should you use? T1 or T5? Mixed or single troop type? Should you use speed ups? How is campaign high score even calculated? In this article, I give you a rundown of some very basic tips to get your high scores up and be competitive.

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10+ Daily things to do in Kingdoms of Middle Earth

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calendarJust a few tips on things you just HAVE to do on a daily basis when you play KoM (semi) seriously. This will really help you in the long term and will keep you from getting farmed, bring you better prizes in premium chance sales, and use your time as efficiently as possible, at the cost of a mere 30 minutes max per day!

Here goes:

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This is why you save Tokens!!

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It has been just over a week since I posted you should hold on to your (now) Galadriel’s Tokens, and behold, last Friday came the moment to show the truth behind it all. Following all kinds of deals and tournaments for the upcoming release of “The Desolation of Smaug”, the Premium chance game went on sale for 1 token to play!

Now, it had only been 16 days from the previous sale, so only 16 tokens could be saved, but I got extremely lucky, and won TWO Token chests over the course of playing the Premium chance game! Take into account the Tokens inside the chests you win with the game, I spend roughly 150 tokens, without a dollar spend. Then to top it off, 2nd, 3rd and 4th city deeds could be traded for even more tokens, and the number rose to just below 200 tokens! Read on to see what I won with those and why it ABSOLUTELY WORTH saving those tokens for these kind of Premium chance deals…

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Infinite Hourglass: One great use!

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hourglassThe Infinite Hourglass in Kingdoms of Middle Earth. It can do one task instantly and one task only. No matter how long…..although I did read one report that put the max time of it on 99 days in actuality. Now you might wonder what to spend this beast on? What is really worth its use? Most people will come to the conclusion of using it for one of the level 10 researches in your Academy.

But there is another theoretical great use for using this item. Here’s how:

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How to use your Galadriel tokens

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tokenGaladriel’s Gift (previously Gollum’s Riddle) is a great way to obtain some of the most powerful items in the game. Besides troops you can train yourself, many items are exclusive to either Galadriel’s Gift, or chests and special events, which are not always around. That’s why it is important to spend them correctly.

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Farming your Third and Fourth City Relics made easy

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thirdcityUpdate: Rhyno just asked for help with 2nd city relics. Basically, everything stays the same, the goblin camp will just drop second city relics instead of third city relics!

Update 2: My final results at the bottom!

Finally after waiting long enough, not only have Third cities been enabled on our server, but relics started dropping from Goblin camps 6-10, giving players who do not spend money on the game or who did not win a 3rd City deed already a chance to farm the relics themselves.

I’m in the process of farming my relics and are nearly there, so I thought it might be handy to share my strategy with you guys, which nets you a Third city Deed within 2.5 hours of farming!!
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Useful tools and spreadsheets

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Throughout my time playing KoM, I have made and used a number of spreadsheets and JAVA programs to help me out gathering information and making decisions. Some of the info from the spreadsheets was used in other blog posts here, but most remained private.

I thought it might be handy to publicize some of it so you guys and girls can use them too. Below is a list of description for the various sheets and program(s) and a link to download them. (More will follow)

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Getting a lvl 212 Hero

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legolas small

For an update on how to level to 212, see this article.

In KoM warfare, the level of your Hero determines for an enormous part how well you do in battle, giving bonuses to both attack and life of your army. Normally, a Hero can be leveled up to you Great Hall’s level x20, meaning lvl 200 max.

However, it is possible to go over this limit because the Hero stops leveling once he is over that limit. which means that if you overshoot the limit by much experience in one go, you can theoretically go to lvl 212. The largest amount of experience in one go is obtained with the “Train with Gandalf” item (50,000 exp).

To get a lvl 212 Hero, level the Hero up by any means, but stop just before reaching lvl 200 (to be exact, within 680 Exp of 200). Make really sure you dont overshoot, because once he is 200, there is no way of leveling any further. When you are just below level 200, apply the “Train with Gandalf”. This will boost the Hero to lvl 212. Voila!

Alternatively, 212 or even 215 Heroes can be won in Gollum’s Riddle, certain chests and in tournaments, but chances are slim…Cheers!

How to cheat Galadriel’s Gift?

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Gollum_Full_BodysmallStrategy is courtesy Rat_Farts, who mailed it around. So apparently, Galadriel’s Gift appears to be less RNG than expected, and patterns emerge in consecutive results.

Strategy to obtain your second city deed is as follows (though, if this works, you could use it for any item you want): Collect a fairly large number of Tokens, so you can play the game a large number of times in a row (see also here). Now when playing the riddles, look closely at the position of the deed in each result. According to some, there is likely to be a pattern that emerges which makes you able to correctly guess where the deed will go next game around 50% of the time.

I have no clue if this works, but if someone is successful in this, please let me know in the comments!

How to best use your Heroes!

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gandalfsmallIn a number of earlier posts, the use of a Hero is mentioned in optimizing certain game processes such as training troops.

This posts is meant to shed some light upon the use of the Heroes, which can be assigned to various tasks within your city. Once you are in your 2nd/3rd week of city building, your Hero becomes invaluable in saving precious time!

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The “Tier 1,2 or 3?” discussion, my two cents

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Two main parts of this game are setting up your city and training your troops. When it comes to the last, it would perhaps seem that the higher the Tier of the unit, the better. And while this is somewhat true, the non-linear scaling of some of the attributes of the troops brings some nuance to the discussion.

This post is meant as an introduction and overview of the different troop types and Tiers, and help you come to a decision when it comes to picking which troops to spend your well-earned resources on. I know it a lot of information/thoughts/opinions, but bear with me…

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Tax rate, population and income

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taxthingsDuring the early stages of the game, setting your tax rate correctly can mean the difference between being able to build and research what you want and need, and not being able to.

Through the early quests, the game urges you to play with the tax rate and maximize income. The tax rate however, directly affects the happiness in your city, which effects the population, which effects eventual tax income and your ability to man your farms or produce troops. So, how do these numbers all relate?

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Get a free Galadriel token every day!

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Gollum_Full_BodysmallUsing the Galadriel’s tokens can give you quite some nice rewards, especially when you save up six at a time for the premium chance. Here is how to get a free token every day:

  1. In the menu on the bottom, scroll right and press Share
  2. Press Email
  3. Once your email program has loaded, just press back until you’re in-game again
  4. Repeat 10 times for a free token!

This can be done only once a day. No actual email has to be send. Good luck!

Farming: How to pop bubbles

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bubbleWhen you go out to farm, you start by looking on the map for suitable candidates: Players with no or weak alliances, low-to-medium might and relatively low level. However, many of your neighbors will initially appear to still be under the seven-day-invulnerability dome.

This limits your farming possibilities, but more annoyingly is the fact that many of these players have been inactive for more than 7 days and are in fact farm-ready. We only need to pop their bubble.

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How not to get farmed in Kingdoms of Middle Earth

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ghost]smallBeing farmed (or simply attacked) and loosing a lot of resources you worked very hard for is really annoying, especially during the first few weeks of the game when a lot of resources are needed for building your basic city.

Add to that the possibility of loosing any number of troops if you decide to defend your city, and you see why it is helpful to minimize the chance of being attacked/farmed.

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Feeding your troops (2nd city)

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We all know the drill….you build comfortably through the seven-days-protection period and start gaining might in making troops. But sooner or later, the upkeep in food they need will outnumber what you could possibly produce in your city. Especially for armies over 200k might it is nigh impossible to keep up with the needs, even with a high level hero helping production and wilds to give you bonuses.

Constantly asking alliance members is annoying and impossible, as they will also grow their respective armies. Luckily, there is a caveat in the KoM system to help you out.

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Wall Might and why you shouldn’t have it!

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We have all seen the messages, either in chat, on some website, or through our own mailboxes….

DO NOT BUILD WALL MIGHT! (example)

TrainDefenses

If you click on the top alliances, many have this even stated as a “cardinal rule”. At first (2 weeks ago) I disagreed. I built me some mighty wall might. And things were going well for me. My 30K might mighty wall seemed to discourage any attackers form approaching my front lawn. Then, one night, some big ass 200k might player decided otherwise.

At first, I didnt even notice, and just started playing as usual. Then, I looked at my might and saw I was missing some 30k (120k back to 90k). I couldnt figure it out, I had my troops on hiding….weird stuff. Then I went through the reports again and AHA, of course, my wall was knocked down harder than Rihanna. From that moment on, I was in the camp of “NO WALL MIGHT(ish)”.

Find out below my take on wall might…

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