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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Update on new Tacticals and related issues

LT pikemenIt seems the updates keep coming through. After yesterday’s updates, it seems preparations are being made for the inclusion of the two new Tactical Troops, namely the Lake-town Pikemen and Longbowmen. If you go to your Barracks, the building requirements (not rss) can be viewed, and they mention another few additions, seemingly connected to the new Tacticals. Continue reading to see what is known right now.

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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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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: 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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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

Tier 1-5 Attack/Life modifiers

troops compareI cannot believe I didnt do this sooner, but in updating the Campaign spreadsheet, I was going to add the Tier 4 and 5 numbers, until I realized I did not have the Attack and Life modifiers confirmed yet. And with that I mean the multiplication compared to Tier 1. For Tier 1, 2 and 3 it was easy to just follow the stars in the Barracks (1, 2 and 4 attack respectively), but for Tiers 4 and 5 it is a bit different. I’ve now figured them out.

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Hero equipment: All you need to know

Related:

!Scroll down for all available sets!

article headerOne of the most interesting updates to Kingdoms of Middle Earth recently has been the addition of Hero Equipment; Pieces of gear that heroes can equip that give them certain bonuses. But where do you find all the information about the gear? Where do you equip them on your heroes? Where can you see all the items’ bonuses and where are the icons explained? And where exactly do you find these items in the game to begin with?

This article will provide answers to all this and more, giving you a complete overview on one of the better additions to this game in months.

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How to train Tier 4 troops

dwarfphalkanxIn light of Tier 4 troops now being almost completely available for training (just waiting for Ranged troops atm), I thought it would be handy for those that do not train them yet, to chart which buildings and researches you have to upgrade to train them. It’s gonna take a lot of time to get there, and once there, the troops also train hella slow, but here goes.

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Problems with farming gold

Gold_ShotOk, I know not many of you are following this blog, but it would be great if someone could give an answer to this. So as you all know, you can farm any resource over vault level by sending carts or wagons alone, provided the enemy does not defend.

To farm gold however, you need to send some attack troops along with your wagons or carts, to be able to also take home gold. They need to ‘breach’ the wall and defeat the defending troops, even if, in actuality, no wall troops are present. So yesterday, I noticed I was running out of gold and farmed some of my close-by neighbors.

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How to speed up troop training times!

DwarfBarracks01

16-02 Small update on Guardian buff

Once it is time to go from setting up your basic city to full-on troop production for might or a fight, troop training times can severely impact your ability to being able to burn through your resources, defend your city, or destroy your opponents. It is very important to optimize the training speeds of each unit as well as possible. This post serves as a small intro guide into troop training times; specifically, the factors that contribute to getting the training speed up.

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

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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Why bonuses in training/ construction/ research appear smaller than expected

This happened to me a week ago: I go to train some troops, and look before queing at the training times: it was something in the order of 10 minutes. I remembered that I needed to put my hero in the training job, so I did. He was level 65 at the time, so, I expected something around a 30% decrease in training time.

To my surprise, when I did the calculations, turned out the decrease was only ~13%! This messed up my mind. I was thinking: “Wait, if the time normally is 100, it should now be 70, 30% less. And if other bonuses are in play, say, another 50% or something, 50-30 is 20 left, a 60% decrease…..i.e. the decrease in training time should ALWAYS be ~30% OR more!

I’ve never been so wrong in my life….

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Feeding your troops (2nd city)

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!

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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