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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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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Master Season 1 TK tournament delayed

trophy-cupJust a short message for all of you wondering: Yes the planned TK tournament in the schedule for Masters Season 1 week 1 (Sunday) has been delayed. This event is supposed to be held on all uneven servers but hasn’t shown up yet. People have asked mods on the Kabam forums for clarification, but it seems an answer will follow tomorrow…

Master Ranger Might increase

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.

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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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!