This guide is based on the author's personal experience and is only relevant to the current game’s content.

How to make efficient use of your friendship gifts?

The commanders are sorted(top-bottom) based on how difficult or expensive to obtain.The gifts shown at the top will provide double the amount of friendship points for the commander in the corresponding column. When using the correct gift, then a Gold gift provides 400 points, Purple gift provides 100 points and a Blue gift provides 20 points.

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Friendship Levels

Each Commander(with the exception of Night King) becomes available in the Tavern once you unlock the commander. Each commander starts with a fixed set of Attributes and their base value. And those values will increase together with the friendship level of the commander. We will take Margaery Tyrell as an example;

These are the initial stats at Friendship Level 1. As shown in the screenshot above, Margaery brings Aptitude, Finance and Command as Attributes and their base values.

Let’s increase the friendship level of Margaery. Thankfully Margaery is kind enough to provide us with a nice hint to let us know what type of gift she likes.

She requires 50 points for the next friendship level so we will give her 3 Silk (Blue quality, Jewelry Item). This will provide her with 60 friendship points and because she is not a the maximum level for her quality the 10 extra friendship points will carry over into the next level*.

As is shown in the screenshot above, Margaery is now at friendship level 2. The value of her attributes are now increased by the amount of stars she has for those attributes. (Aptitude 21 -> 25, Finance 23 -> 28 and Command 16 -> 18).

The hypothesis is that commanders with quality level 5(5 Stars) should stay ahead of quality level 4(4 Stars) 2-5 friendship levels at most. Because of the exponential increase of gifts required it is not worth it to focus on a single commander.

Commanders with quality level 5 should keep a gap of 5-10 friendship levels from commanders with quality level 3, and quality level 2 should be approximately 8-20 friendship levels behind a quality level 5 commander.

Bonus overview increase

Aptitude every 100 points 20min every 4 hours

Finance every 100 points 10k gold per 4 hours

Command every 100 points 20 units every 4 hours

Combat Rate every 100 points 2.5% Total Attack, Total Health and Total Defense.

Leadership Every 100 points 3k army size and 10k rally army size increase

*Tips

Once your commander is at the final friendship level for a certain quality (gray, blue, purple) the amount of friendship points you give more than is required will not be taken into the next level. Only once you upgrade the quality of the commander will you be able to give more gifts to increase the friendship level.

Some players will focus on the aptitude route, the result of this will be that due to the lack of Combat rate your troops will perform significantly worse . Only go this route if you're planning to never attack or be attacked. You cannot redistribute gifts given and especially at higher friendship levels, gifts are a rare commodity.

Battle bonus (combat rate), In a pvp fight, every point of combat rate you have higher than your opponent will provide you with a 0.025% total attack, total health and total defense. With 100points more combat rate then your opponent you will gain 2.5% total attack, total health and total defense up to the cap of 50%. This increase in your stats will be added to your initial stats and bonuses you have and it will be shown in the combat reports(tooltip) as ‘Commander Friendship Bonus’. To reach the cap of 50% stat increase you will need a combat rate difference of 2000 points or more over your opponent.

Conclusion

Looking at the bonuses that each attribute gives, focusing on Leadership (Army size + Rally Army Size increase) and Combat Rate(Total Attack, Total Health and Total Defense) is the most beneficial for solo players and rally leaders. Most of the commanders have both Leadership and Combat Rate stats, so focusing on leveling those commanders up would be the first priority. The Command attribute is a nice addition for T4 players, for T3 players this attribute is not of value as the main goal should be to unlock T4 troops. Make sure you use the right gifts for each set of commanders to receive the two times bonus friendship points. Obtaining paid(black diamond) commanders with the Leadership/Combat rate stat is really beneficial even at quality gray, and will boost your bonuses.