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

Tavern provides some of the best bonuses in this game. Unlock your commanders, find them what they need, and increase your friendship with them. Your best friends in this game will help you grow faster and to fight better.

Overview

You can find the tavern building on the right side of the sept of seven and next to the shelter in your city view.This building unlocks after you have at least 13 commanders. You can unlock more commanders by doing Weirwood stages, Cross-server events or by purchasing them from the shop.  The building has 2 tabs, one that shows “Bonus Overview” and one named “Friendship”.

Bonuses

The Tavern provides 5 different types of bonuses:

1) City Building (Aptitude)

This is an active bonus which provides a ‘Speed up’ reserve that can be used for any speed up* (Building, Research, Troop training, Healing, Rebuilding war and Fortifications). Every 4 hours you will be able to claim the special speed up by using this skill. The speed ups show on any speed ups page and can be used at any time:

*It is not possible to use this to speed up Valyrian Steel Weapon production.

Since this speed up is so versatile the Aptitude bonus is highly valued. Players who still have a lot of research to do can use them to finish them faster. Others might use it to train a lot of troops to reach that illusive last Nobility rank. Those players that enjoy fighting with each other might choose to use it to heal their troops so they can stay in the fight longer. For each point in Aptitude, you get 5 minutes’ speedups. The speedups will be available to claim every 4 hours, up to 3 times . After 12 hours (3 times 4 hours) the Tavern will stop producing speed ups until you at least claim 1 time.

2) Economy Expansion (Finance)

This active bonus will provide gold dragons every 4 hours. Gold dragons are very important for research and T4 troops. The same as with Aptitude after 12 hours the bonus will halt and you need to claim in order for the bonus to start producing again. For each point in Finance, you can earn 100 gold dragons every 4 hours.

3) Troop Recruitment (Command)

This active bonus will provide free troops every 4 hours. The troops are from the highest unlocked tier and will choose the type at random. For example, if you have T3 troops unlocked and no T4 troops unlocked, the rewards will be T3 troops. As soon as you unlock a T4 troop type from research this bonus will start providing those as a reward. With each 10 points in Command, you can earn 1 troop for free every 4 hours. Same as with the bonuses above you will need to claim these troops at least every 12 hours, otherwise it will halt the bonus until you claim at least 1 time.

4) Battle Bonus (Combat Rate)

One of the most important Tavern bonuses is called ‘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. This is a passive bonus and thus will always be applied.

Because of this, we can say, Combat rate is a buffer for the player who has a higher combat rate, and a de-buffer (reduction buff) for the player who has a lower combat rate. You can see players' combat rates on top of the battle reports under each player's name and next to their avatar.

5) Army Size Bonus (Leadership)

The fifth and last Tavern bonus that is also a passive bonus like combat rate, is called Leadership. With this skill, you can increase your army size. The more Army size you have, the more troops you can send out of your castle with each deployment. This bonus is very important for attacking other players. It’s also very important for players who wish to hide their army from an enemy attack.

Leadership also increases the rally size which is essential for rally leaders.

For each point in leadership, you get 30 army size and 100 rally size.

Friendship

To increase the bonuses in your Tavern, you need to increase your friendship level with your commanders. On the second tab in the Tavern building you can see a list of all your unlocked commanders. Each commander is specialized in some of the 5 Attributes (Aptitude, Finance, Command, Combat, Leadership). In addition, some commanders have better quality for certain attributes (have more stars for them). You can see a full list of tavern specializations of all commanders in the screenshot below;

To increase commander friendship, you need to provide them with ‘Gifts’. You can find these items in “friendship chests” that can be found in different events such as alliance and elite trials.There are 6 types of friendship gifts:

Arms

[Gold Hilt Sword, Crossbow, Handaxe]

Books

[“The Edge of the world, “Questions”, Truth]

Desserts

[Lemon Cake, Applecake, Sweet Biscuit]

Drinks

[Arbor Gold, Smokeberry Wine, Ale]

Food

[Lamprey Pie, Snake Stew, Lamb Chops]

Jewelry

[Emerald Necklace, Golden Ring, Silk]

Blue quality gifts add 10 friendship points, purple quality gifts add 50 friendship points and the gold gold quality gifts will add 200 friendship points. In addition, commanders will get double the amount of friendship points if you give them their preferred gifts. So always try to give commanders their preferred gifts unless you already have all of the commanders in that category at maximum friendship.

Friendship Tiers and Leveling up Optimum

Commander of a certain quality level can’t go higher than a certain level in friendship. You can see the maximum friendship level for different quality of commanders:

By leveling up a commander for one level, you get an increase in attribute stats based on the quality of that commander with those attributes. For example, if you increase your friendship with Chris by one level, you will gain 3 points in Aptitude and 1 point in Command. It doesn’t matter if you’re increasing his friendship from level 1 to level 2 or from level 59 to 60. The increase will always be the same.

Since it gets more and more expensive to increase friendship levels at higher levels, it’s a good idea to increase the friendship levels of all your commanders at the same time instead of focusing on a few first.

For example, it takes 3000 friendship points to increase Jaime Lannister's friendship from level 56 to 57. Even though he has 5 stars in combat, it's more beneficial to upgrade Mengo who only has 3 stars in combat, from level 51 to 52 first as he will only require 1240 friendship points for that level up. (1240/3 = 413 points for each star < 3000/5 = 600 points for each star)

Awakening

Commanders that are awakened to 2 stars will have 1 extra star in every attribute they were previously specialized in.

For example, by awakening Seg to 2 stars, he will have 6 stars in Combat and 5 stars in Leadership instead of his original 5 stars in combat and 4 stars in leadership.

This increase in stars will affect your previous friendship levels too. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re increasing the friendship of a commander first and then awakening them or if you’re first awakening them and then increasing their friendship level. Both will result in the same friendship stats.