[PLAYER GUIDE] Research Guide Part 1

*Special thanks to WAR Angel from K19 for contributing her game guide to us!

*Notice: This is a long gameplay guide and may take you 10 minutes to read.

In this guide, I will review a list of the most important researches in the order that they must be focused on. Keep in mind that a lot of these researches may have some other researches as a requirement, even researches that are lower in this same list or are not listed here at all.

First, let’s start with the mandatory researches that everyone must do especially when starting the game:

1 - Building Mastery (Production Branch)

This research adds construction speed buff. Focus on leveling it up fast. If you don't have a lot of buildings left or you’re already done with them, you can let this research go and focus on the rest of the mandatory researches in this list first but you will need this research for tier four troops researches later on anyway, so you have to get it done at one point or another. 

2 - Spying (Military Branch)

This research will allow you to spy on other players and rebel camps. Higher-level Spying will allow you to check a lot of details about the target.

3 - Elite (T3) Troops (Military Branch)

The elite troops will become your main army for a very long time. The tier 1 and tier 2 troops don't do well in nearly anything. T3 troops help you in PvE and PvP fights. Try to reach castle level 17 and unlock them as soon as you can. After that, train T3 troops for your main army and only use T1 and T2 for gathering or as a meat shield (the troops that will be sacrificed in fights so your main army survives). 

4 - Pacification Strategies (Expedition and Pacification Branch)

The expeditions are how your alliance gets alliance chests which are the main economy of your alliance. The higher level rebel leaders you kill, the better rewards you get for yourself and the better chests you give to your alliance. Upgrade your commanders and unlock higher tiers of this research so you can hit higher tier rebels. It’s very important for you and your allies to have enough researches and commanders to be able to 3-shot kill a level 3 rebel leader at the very least, so aim for it!

5 - Formations (Formations Branch)

Formations are about “in which order your troops will engage the enemy” both when you attack and when you defend. There are 6 basic formations in this game, one of them (Infantry-Cavalry) is unlocked by default. You have to research the other 5 from the Formations research branch. Using effective formations to counter the enemy helps a lot in PvP and PvE fights (for example rebel camps and rebel guards) and having them unlocked as soon as possible helps a lot.

Now let’s review some of the semi-mandatory and important researches that you must focus on, in the order that you think is best for you and your playstyle:

6 - Troop Formation (Advanced Military Branch)

This research has nothing to do with actual formations which were mentioned above. After doing this research, you can define different army groups in your Bannerman Hall. whenever you want to send attacks after that, you can just use those pre-set groups from the left side of your attack screen. You might think this is not important because you can still choose what you’re attacking with manually, but without pre-set armies you will be really slower in PvP.

7 - Storehouse Management (Production Branch)

This research increases the capacity of the protected resources in your Warehouse. Obviously, if you can bubble every day that's a better protection but it's also wise to have a good capacity in the Warehouse to protect your resources from the raiders. 

8 - Sheltered Capacity (Commandership Branch)

This research will increase the protected army in your shelters. Even if you have a good amount of hospital space, it’s very strategic to have a better shelter and to use the shelter for you extra troops or for all of your troops when your total army is still small, because healing them need resources and time.

9 - Supply Mastery (Commandership Branch)

When someone attacks you, you will get back a part of the cost of the troops you lost with a chest icon on the bottom right side of the screen. This ability will increase the amount of rescue.

10 - Path Finding (Military/Advanced Military Branches)

This research gives you Marching Speed bonuses. This especially is important for events like alliance conquest and players who want to play this game more offensively. The research on the Military branch is a requirement for Tier 4 troops.

11 – Resource Production Mastery (Production/Formations Branches)

Resource production mastery researches are “Farming Mastery” for Grain, “Logging Mastery” for wood, “Quarry Mastery” for stone, “Iron Mining Mastery” for Iron and “Gold Dragons Minting” for gold. These researches increase your base production of those resources. All of these researches but the one for gold are in the Production research branch. The research for gold production is in the Formations branch.

12 – Endurance/Motivation Recovery (Refinement Branch)

It’s very important to have a high recovery rate for motivation and endurance so you can hit more rebel leaders and rebel groups/dragon lairs per day. This will speed up your progress in the game a lot.

13 – Resource Exploitation (Production/Formations/ Branch)

These researches increase your Gathering Speed. Gathering helps you in getting the resources needed for other researches and it helps you to find the material needed to craft the base lord set. In addition, gathering gives points in KvK, so it’s not a bad idea to do a few researches on these as soon as possible.

Other researches that are related to gathering: 

- Researching “Coordinated Gathering”, which is at the start of the Advanced Military branch, also helps since with it you can choose the exact amount of troops you need to finish a gathering node.

- “Gathering Guide” in Formations and Great City Military branches, increase the March Speed toward gathering nodes.

- “Wagon Upgrade” in the Formations branch increases the total army you can send for gathering. 

14 – Craftsmanship (Refinement Branch)

These researches will allow you to go to higher levels of refinement (green, blue, purple and gold) with each of your equipment. Do “Expedition Beyond” every day and get green stones to use for refinement and unlock higher tiers when needed with these researches to not stop the progress.

15 - Royal Troops/T4 Troops (Military Branch)

Royal Troops are a part of the story quest and we all have to do them sooner or later. They are the ultimate troops a player can own. After you unlock them, our main armies will consist of them. Just pay attention to:

- Unlocking them is extremely time consuming and Gold consuming (so many requirements)

- To unlock them you need to upgrade the Measters’ Tower to level 25 which needs Bannerman Hall 25, Dungeon 25 and Hall of Faces 25. All three buildings need a lot of diamond consuming items to be built (in total around 650k diamonds) so you need to save a lot of diamonds for all these buildings.

- You need to finish all the other researches in the Military branch and all the researches in the Production branch beside “Diamond Prospecting” to be able to research these. That means you will be updating your troops' armor, health, attack and defense significantly. The royal troops are not much stronger than elite troops, the main difference being the researches that you do along the way to get to T4.

All things considered, not a good strategy for F2P players to focus on these researches early on. It might be more beneficial for you and your alliance if you finish more Expeditions related researches first.

16 – Talent Archive (Advanced Military Branch)

This important research will help you to save and reuse lord talents in a faster way. After finishing this research and if you have the item "Talent Archive" in your inventory, you can save a set of talents (for example, one for attacking and one with construction and research focus) and switch between them with "Reset Talent" items whenever you need it.

17 - Equipment Archive (Advanced Military Branch)

This important research will allow you to use "Equipment Archive" items to save and load the lord’s equipment in a very fast way for free. 

18 – Army Cost Reduction (Advanced Military Branch)

These researches reduce the resource cost to train the army. The researches for tier 4 troops are especially important since these troops cost a lot of gold for training.

Click here to readResearch Guide Part 2

P.S.: This was first published on 2020-04-26.