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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Tokens removed from Smaug: Big mistake or change for the better?

tokenAs many of you know Kabam has been battling with auto-clickers/bots for some time now. These programs/bots enabled certain players to constantly and relentlessly attack Smaug faster and longer than humanly possible, giving these players thousands of tokens or massive Goblin kills, and the benefits that come with that.

Of course this was seen by both Kabam and the majority of players as being unfair, so action was decided upon. But the problem proved tricky and a neat solution difficult, although the suggestions on the forums and other places were plentiful. Last week, we were presented with the not that great (to put it mildly) limit on attacking campaign, where after a certain number of attacks players had to wait a cool-down period to be able to attack again. Reactions weren’t that positive understandably, and the changes would also break tournaments such as GK and BK, and possibly even CHS. So from the start this would be temporary.

Today we received an email from Kabam about a more permanent change to Tokens and Smaug. Tokens drops will be limited in the Smaug campaign map, so the old way of getting them is gone. Instead, Tokens will be added to the Calendar, Moon Rune and Goblin Caverns/mines. Also Kabam stated that the daily amount of obtainable tokens would be the same as before, but seeing as it was dependent on effort instead of availability, I have yet to see how this plays out.

Although I agree the botting needed to be stopped, I’m not too happy with these changes at all. Again, non-spending casual players are going to be hot hardest. The Calendar will likely contain limited amounts of Tokens. The Moon Rune is too irregular in timing to provide a constant income of Tokens. Mines will most likely be dominated by the bigg buff players.

And I have seen better suggestions put forward as well. One of those was to have a random element put into Smauging, like a randomly location-changing button in the process. These kind of solutions would eliminate most if not all of the auto-clickers as well it seems to me, while maintaining a nearly identical experience for normal players.

I never was a huge Smauger. I was happy to have the time to farm 30 Tokens a day, and that already helped a lot in keeping up to date with all the new features. I just hope I am being overly negative here and things will be better than what I expect them to be, but I also want to know what you think of the new Token changes, so of course, a poll (multiple answers possible):

 

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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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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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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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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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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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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How to get great High Scores on campaign levels

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

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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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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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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Farming your Third and Fourth City Relics made easy

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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Farming: How to pop bubbles

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

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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How to ask Alliance for resources/help

ImageEvery player is likely to, some day, run out of resources to build troops, do research or construct buildings. Its incredibly annoying to have to wait for your farms and quarries to produce the needed resources, or to have to farm it for yourself. Luckily, one of the better features of being in an alliance is the ability to ask your alliance buddies for the needed resources, or better yet, the alliance bank.

However, too many times, players -especially the new ones- ask for resources or help at the wrong place. So here are some simple, easy-to-follow rules on how to correctly ask for either resources or help….

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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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