[Player Guide] Commanders Guide (Part 1) [Updated 8/06]

Commanders are your best friends in Westeros. You need them to lead your armies and to speed up your growth. Without them, you can’t kill rebel leaders or to participate in in-game events. In this guide, I will do a quick and complete review of commanders and will explain everything you should know about them!

Overview

There are currently 53 commanders in Westeros at this time. You can see a list of all commanders and the commanders you own if you click on the “Commanders” button in the bottom-right menu or with the hotkey “H” when the game is open.

Each commander has a troop type, that determines the troops that will follow the commander in battle and the type of commander. Countering rules affect commanders as well. Infantry commanders have more damage against spearmen commanders for example.

Unlocking and Improving Commanders

To unlock commanders, you need to find 10 commander medals. Some commanders are available in the Weirwood tree or different events in-game and some are only available to purchase in-game shops at the moment. The tables at the end of this guide (part 2) have all details about the sources for different commanders.

To improve commanders, you need to both level them up and improve their quality. 

Commanders have 2 different level identifiers. If you pay attention to your commander, you can see a roman number and an English number. Let’s call the English number level and the roman number maturity. For not awakened commanders, the max level is 60 and the max maturity is VIII (8). After Awakening maximum level is 80 and max maturity is X (10).

To improve your commander level, you need to feed them. At certain levels, you will be able to equip commander items. Each commander has exactly 6 item slots. When you have all 6 items equipped and your lord level is high enough, you can increase the maturity of your commander. After you increase the maturity of your commander 6 new item slots appear for your commander. You won’t be able to level up your commander really high if their maturity is low, so you need to constantly find and equip the items your commander request for each maturity upgrade to be able to level them up. Both commander food which is needed for commander level and the items needed for upgrading commander maturity are available in different Weirwood stages.

There is also another restriction with the commander’s levels. Not awakened commanders can’t level up higher than your lord level. However, your lord level is not related to any of your commander’s levels directly and is a completely separate number. To increase your lord level, you need to spend lord experience items or to finish game quests, or kill enemy troops. You can see your lord level if you check the lord details page by clicking on your avatar. Lord level maximum is also 60. 

Awakened commanders can go up 5 more levels for each star level they have. For example, if your lord level is 43 and you have commander at 1 star, you will be able to reach level 48 and if you have the commander at 2 stars you will be able to reach level 53. This means fully awakened commanders when your lord level is 60 can reach level 80.

Commanders' quality is the second way of improving commanders. Your commanders appear in different color frames. After unlocking commanders, they are grey. You can spend more on commander tokens to improve their quality so they turn green, blue, purple, and gold in the same order. Gold commanders have better Specializations and attributes that I will discuss later on in this guide. In the following table. I show how many commander tokens you need to improve their quality:

You will need 330 commander tokens to unlock them and to reach the gold quality. Commanders can also be awakened to become more effective. Please check my Awakening guide for more details about this.

Skills and Specializations

Commanders offer three sets of abilities that are useful in 3 different battlegrounds.

If you open any commander page and check their Specializations page and stay on “Army Skill” you can see a page like this (the image is for Arya):

As you can see each commander has 1 active specialization (Like “Act of Mercy” for Arya) and 3 passive specializations. These specializations affect general gameplay and casual fighting.

The passive skills are from two different types. The skills with a castle mark, like “Forestry Specialization” of Arya in the image above are called “Economic Passives”. These skills add a passive buff to your account that is active all the time no matter which commander is your lord. Against that, the skills with cavalry mark on them like “Dominator’s Howl” and “Warrior’s Shield” of Arya are called “Military passives” and are only active in battles in which the commander is present. Some commanders have more economic passives and some have more Military passives. It's always better if you use the commanders with Military passive in fights.

The military passive buffs apply for the duration of battle as long as the commander is a participant. The active skill, however, is only effective as long as the commander is active in battle and has troops following him/her. For example, for “Act of Mercy” to activates, Arya must be in battle and you need to have infantry troops (As Arya is an infantry commander and Infantry troops can follow her). In addition, only 4 commanders of the same type can lead to battle. For example, if you use 5 Infantry commanders, the one you included last will sit out of battle and won’t use their active skill. For all commanders, the active skill is the same and it will deal damage based on the troops that are following the commanders.

It’s also worthy to mention that, the commanders that are deployed at your wall will be included in the battle when the enemy attacks your castle so it’s important if you set your commanders on the wall properly. For more information about this check my Formations and Countering guide here that has a section about commanders on the wall. Please note that your lord will always be one of the commanders on the wall unless if they are not present in the city.

The second set of Specializations are available to see in “Strategic Skills”. Not all commanders have these skills yet. Just like normal army skills, each commander has one active strategy skill and some passive strategy skills. These strategy skills are only usable during real-time strategy events like Siege of Winterfell. The next image shows these skills for the commander “Chris”.

The passive buffs apply to the deployment commander are included in and the commander will use the active skill when it’s their turn and they have enough rage to do so. For more information about Siege of Winterfell check my guide about it.

Finally, all commanders have a set of Skills that you can see in the “Skills” tab. For example, these are Melisandre skills:

These skills are useful for the commander exclusive battlegrounds where only commanders can participate. This battleground is available in Weirwood, Weirwood memories, Training ground, Alliance trials, Elite Trials, and in Expeditions against rebel leaders. In this battleground, commanders will directly fight other commanders and no troops are involved.

The first skill is the active skill and will be used by commanders when they have their might recovered. Commanders recover might in exclusive commander specific battlefield as they are engaged in combat. The other skills are passive and add effect when their specified conditions are met. If a skill doesn’t have any conditions, it will affect it from the start and till the end.

Attributes

When it comes to commander vs commander fights in commander exclusive battleground, they will use their special skills instead of their specializations and their attributes instead of troops.

Each commander has 4 main attributes that you can see on the commander page under their name. For example, these are the numbers for Gorell:

- Rating is an overall estimate of commander strength

- Attack is commander damage rate to enemy commanders

- Health is commander total health and shows how much they can get damaged before they die and are removed from battle

- Defense reduces the received damage

A good tank has higher health and defense. In some cases, Support or damage dealer commanders with good defense or health can also stay in the frontline against enemies.

There are more attributes. If you click on the “!” mark next to the commander name you can see a list for the rest of the attributes.

Commander attributes are all determined based on 3 basic attributes.

- Prowess is directly correlated with the commander attack that I explained above.

- Command is directly correlated with commander health and defense.

- Strategy will improve the effectiveness of the skill of commanders.

When you level up your commander you gain prowess, command, and strategy which will increase other attributes as a result too.

A lower quality commander has lower growth in these basic attributes with each level (the growth number next to basic attributes). But it doesn’t matter if you first level up your commander and then increase your commander quality or if you increase your commander quality first and then level them up as the growth effect for increasing quality affects all previous levels of commanders as well. In other words, these two scenarios will give you exactly similar commanders:

- First, you increase your commander to level 60 and then you increase its quality to gold

- First, you increase your commander quality to gold and then you make it level 60

And attributes will be identical after both scenarios.

There are other attributes that I will explain here:

- Skill effects: will increase skills effect (Skills, not specializations; Specializations only depend on commander quality)

- Initial Might: Commanders will use their active skill when they have enough might and they recover it as the battle progress. This attribute shows their initial might when the battle starts.

- Transition Might/HP Recovery: This is for Weirwood stages, as you transition between different stages, commanders will recover might and HP (Hitpoints). HP is the commander's health. When HP is zeroed they will be out of battle.

- Combat Might Recovery: Commanders recover Might when they are engaged with the enemy.

- Defense Penetration: This attribute allows your commander attack to bypass enemy commander defense.

- Critical: Determines the chance for critical attacks. Critical attacks deal more damage to enemy commanders.

- Accuracy: It’s a bonus for the commander to hit the target during an attack and miss fewer attacks.

- Attack/Heal Bonus: Additional bonuses to your damage when attacking enemy commanders or to recovered health when you’re healed.

- Control Resilience: To reduce the effect of enemy stun, paralyze, and silence effect.

For the most part, you don’t need to worry about these attributes. You just need to know each commander’s strengths and weaknesses and to use them correctly and in a good formation to be more effective. In the later part of this guide (part 2), I will give a deep review of all commanders.

Awakening

You can improve commanders by awakening them starting when they are at the green quality. Commanders can be awakened to 1 to 4 stars with awakening. Green commanders can become 1 star, Blue commanders can become 2 stars, purple commanders can become 3 stars, and gold commanders can become 4 stars.

To awaken a commander, you need to use awakening tokens and books of wisdom. There are both commander specific awakening tokens and general tokens that can be used for increasing the stars of commanders. Commander specific awakening tokens can be obtained in different in-game events and game shop when you can get general tokens by turning your extra normal commander tokens to awakening tokens after you have them at the gold quality. General tokens are available for purchase in the VIP shop.

Please pay attention that all awakening tokens have a shield icon next to them when normal commander medals don’t have it. Also, note that you can turn normal commander medals into awakening tokens when you can’t turn awakening tokens into normal medals. In the image below the right one is Chris's awakening token and the left one is Chris's normal medal. (medals are used for upgrading commander quality level)

Here is a table showing how many awakening tokens are required for each star level:

So a total of 600 awakening tokens are required for each commander to make them 4 stars.

After you use awakening tokens to increase the commander star, you need to use wisdom books to learn the skills before being able to spend more awakening tokens to unlock the next star. Wisdom books can be earned from rebel camps or the VIP shop.

Awakening is too powerful. Your commanders can earn 1 extra star in the tavern and 1.6 times extra specialization (economic and military) in addition to the direct passive buffs (like troop attack, defense, and health bonus) you earn by upgrading commanders. In addition, commanders have one special skill at the end of the route when they are 4 stars that are for most commanders very powerful.

Please note that only a few commanders can be awakened at this time. You can read more about awakening in my guide about awakening here.

Lord

You can choose one of your commanders as your lord. This commander will show up on your profile page. In addition, the following restrictions are applied to lords:

- You only have access to your military talent buffs if your lord is involved in the battle.

- You only have access to your lord's equipment and badge bonus if your lord is involved in the battle.

- Your lord will always take one space on your wall and will participate in your castle defense if they are available in the city.

However, all economic buffs from talents and equipment will apply even if your lord is not in your city as long as they're not captured or executed (is sheltered or is marching).

If you have a major defeat and your army gets annihilated in a battle your lord is involved in, the enemy will capture your lord. That is only if your castle is higher than level 10 and the enemy has a dungeon.

If your castle is higher than level 17, they can decide to execute your lord after a certain time is passed. Executing lords will activate the hall of faces for the total attack, total defense, total health, and marching speed bonus. Keeping lords in the dungeon will also grant a total attack bonus.

If your lord is captured or is executed, you won't have access to any lord bonuses as it was mentioned. You can revive your lord by waiting or by using the "Summon of the father" item that is available in the alliance shop (can be purchased with alliance coins). Also if you wish to kill your lord in an enemy dungeon before they can execute them, you can use the "Tears of Lys" item. After using "Tears of Lys", your lord will die in 1 hour so you can revive them with "Summon of the Father" afterward and have your lord back faster.

In addition to all we discussed above, commanders also add significant buffs and bonuses in Tavern but since it’s a huge topic on its own, I covered it on a seprate guide here. From this point of guide, I will give a full review of all commanders so you know their strengths and weaknesses. You can read this review for all commanders in part 2 of the guide which is here (for infantry and cavalry commanders) and here for Spear and Bowmen commanders.