The AC24 Challenge - Stage 4 - Lord "of Lords"

AC is now under two weeks away and it's time to sprinkle the finishing touches on this project.

So far, the previous three phases have had mixed results. The first one was an absolute success, while the last two were... meh, at best. So before moving on, let's do a quick recap and see where my account stands, what went well and what turned out to be impossible to achieve in the time available.

✅ Lineup & Synergy - Great success, with more to come. NK + his Weapon will be added in December.

✅ Weapons & Advisers - Great success... on paper. Despite some decent upgrades, there are still a few things I want to finish before the end of the year, most importantly Daena and Sararer's weapons from packs and Ruins.

✅ Dragons & Dragon Skills - Partial success. I got Darkfyre to level 80, while Shadowmoon is stuck at level 75 waiting for R2W in December. At least I unlocked all the missing skill slots for Shadowmoon and already have the Blessings needed for the level upgrades.

So now it's time for the 4th phase: "Lord", aka Gear & Badges.

I don't expect many upgrades to come from here, especially since I've kind of ignored this part of my account for quite some time... And it shows.😅

But let's jump right into the action and see what I can do. I've been preparing some gear upgrades for a while now. I'm currently using only two Red pieces of gear, and for this challenge I wanted to at least finish upgrading my three accessories.

Was that optimistic? A few months ago, when I started this journey, I didn't think so.

Do I think it was optimistic now that the journey is almost over? Yes. It clearly was! 😂

With only a few days before AC starts, I'm realistically able to upgrade one. That's right... Only ONE accessory!

The good news is that I'm only missing a little bit of Dust, and a few days later, after hitting a few more RL6s I manage to get enough for another piece.

Realistically, this will have to do.

The third accessory, which would allow me to upgrade the Lofty Crown accesory, is still a long way away. But, as seems to be the recurring theme of this entire project, it'll probably get done before the end of the year.

I'll just add it to the already long list of overdue upgrades that have been pushed to December for one reason or another.😒

Regardless, even two upgraded pieces give me a bit more Spearman Attack, and I have to admit my PvP preset is looking a lot more serious now, lol.

Before I check this off mentally, I ask around to see if progress on Red gear really is excruciatingly slow or if it's just me being behind.

Good news. I'm not crazy. Apparently this really is painfully slow progress. I just started late, which is why I'm feeling so far behind now.

No biggie. All in due time.

Okay, jokes aside, I wasn't expecting any miracles from the gear and they didn't happen either. So let's move on to the second part: Badges.

Here I'm a bit more optimistic, so let's see if they can live up to the hype I have in my head right now.

Looking at where I was when I started this challenge, the situation was a bit sad, and I knew the timeline wouldn't allow for huge upgrades. If I remember correctly, I said I'd be happy if I could get to "half red badges" before AC.

Full disclosure: I've been following this part of the challenge from time to time and carefully planning my badge upgrades.

Exhibit A: my Troop Attack badge upgrades below, lol. How's that for some nice math!

But the main blocker I discovered somewhere around the middle of this process came in the form of Red Dust.

When I started, I thought I'd be short on the actual badges. But, as my stronger friends kept warning me, Ancient Dust is the real issue here.

Maybe that's why they pick Dust in Day of Trade and then decide to drive their own caravans inside their own alliances? Because Dust!😜

Anyway, had the AC schedule not been pushed forward, I would have had one more DoT before AC and could have squeezed in another upgrade. But I work with what I have.

With my current stockpile, I'm able to get five out of the six planned badge upgrades: 2x Attack, 2x Health and only 1x War, despite originally having planning for two.

The second War badge will go Red after KvK this weekend and DoT next Monday. So technically... during AC.

And looking at the before and after pictures... I'm barely able to see a difference. Myeah. I knew this was probably going to be disappointing, but words can't quite express the emptiness I'm feeling right now when looking at this round of upgrades.

So I'm not even going to bother running more Strongholds under these circumstances. I've failed to make progress with much bigger upgrades before, and with these marginal improvements I'm only setting myself up for another disappointment run.

But before I call it a day, it's time to resort to desperate measures. I didn't want to do this just yet, but I'm left with no choice. The big guns are coming out. This was originally supposed to be part of the final phase, but I'm getting desperate, so here it goes.

Ace coming out of the sleeve... I'm going to review... my Tavern.

This thing has been neglected for months. I'm honestly a little scared to even open it.

But when I do, the first thing I notice is the new filtering system. I remember they added this some time ago, but apparently I'm only seeing it now. Cute stuff.

And while my top "friends" in the "pub" aren't that low, let's not forget where I'm starting. I'm sitting at almost 10k CR and 5k Army Size.

The Tavern itself wasn't too bad to look at. The Friendship Calculator website, however... That's a whole different story.

Good thing I have my profile saved... probably from two years ago... So overall, rather useless.😂😅

I spend quite a bit of time updating it with my current commanders and their stats before I can decide where to start throwing my gifts. I'm banking a lot of hope on this plan, so I want to make sure I get the best possible return from my saved items.

First things first: I'll upgrade everything the calculator tells me gives the best return per gift, then I'll move on to maxing out my best overall commanders.

Since I already have several commanders around level 60 and there are no more diminishing returns between 60 and 80, that part should be fairly straightforward.

Now, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't already planning some Tavern upgrades as well. I knew this day would come, so I prepared a little.

First of all, say hello to some extra Army Size and Combat Rate from Cersei, courtesy of the Recruitment Pass.

I'm still going for Baelish in there for my lineup, but since it's a fresh month, I decided to invest 10 Medals and unlock some Tavern buffs.

In second place comes Brienne. I got her a while back from the Corolla event but never activated her because she's not really useful to me outside of the Tavern buffs.

Unlike Cersei, she only brings some CR to the table, though, so this one is a little more "meh".

Moving on, there have been a few commanders I've been grinding quality upgrades for so I could further improve them in the Tavern:

https://youtu.be/BfDFrExjsxI

Now I finally have all the prerequisites to start working through the most useful upgrades.

I start with the commanders giving me the best return per gift, and once they reach their limit, I fully upgrade the most important ones to level 80.

You know... So I can have the nice numbers like the cool kids. And I already have a few options lined up.

Unfortunately, some of them overlap in preferred gifts, but I'm confident I can get at least one commander per gift type to max level.

A few moments later, and after a few math problems later, I'm finally able to land on the new version of my in game bar.

I kind of wanted to max Jaime as well, but Patelo decided to hog all the weapons I had available.

So now it's time to look at the end results. This is where things actually matter.

Not just my drinking buddies in the bar. Aaaand... I have to admit I'm a little surprised by what I'm seeing.

Or should I say... What I'm failing to see. Did these numbers even move?😱

For all the thousands of gifts I had saved up, I was expecting a significant jump. Something around 12k CR and over 6k Army Size.

I have to pull up the previous screenshot just to see if there was any progress at all.😭

And I'm honestly in disbelief when I compare the previous values with the new ones.

Long story short, rounding the numbers in my favor, I'm "only" up around 1k CR and ~800 Army Size.

I had high expectations for this improvement, but I had high expectations from this entire project... so...

But... this was supposed to be my secret weapon.

Instead, I ended up disappointed just like King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when he realizes: "Six thousand spears? Less than half of what I'd hoped for."

I was literally expecting double the numbers i got, just like Théoden.😂

But if I move from raw numbers to percentage increase... the situation looks a little better.

Around 10% more CR and 15% more Army Size. There. I fixed it! It was all worth it now, lol.😶

How am I supposed to defeat the massive armies of Mordor under the siege of Minas Tirith with these numbers?

I empathize with Théoden's situation, and my response is, with grim determination: "No, we cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless."

So... I'm ready to call stage 4 done. Secret weapon on the table. It's time to meet the Stronghold forces once more and see what we can actually do today.

And while the reports are clearly better, the undeniable wave of "Defeat" washes over my screen yet again.

If you ask me, killing over half the enemy troops should count as a win. But in this case, 783k kills out of 1.5 million simply wasn't enough.

I'm so pissed right now! After three separate waves of upgrades, I still can't get past Stronghold level 403?

This is just embarrassing for me and my account. I'm almost at the point of dropping my bubble, taking some HoFs and a level 60 Lord, getting Fervor up and hitting them again purely out of spite...😡But I'm not that impulsive, am I?

Nah, it's fine. They will fall. Sooner or later. Their time will come.

With only one more batch of upgrades to complete before AC starts, things are still on track, at least from a checkpoint perspective.

From a power spike perspective, though... After the initial hype, I really thought I was going to go a long way.

Turns out a long walk has been walked, but the destination is still further away than I imagined.

Let's see how much progress I can get done in my last episode next week. That's also when I'll take the final snapshot of my account, fully prepped for AC, with Agile, Sept Buffs, Fervor and everything else fired up.

One final push. One final chance to make this old account Rally Lead worthy.