[Player Guide] Awakening (Updated 8/20/2021)

Without Commanders nothing is doable in Westeros. They provide buffs and bonuses that are very important for fights and growing. They help you against rebel leaders, in training ground or Weirwood. They are the best for events such as Siege of Winterfell. With the new awakening system, players can appreciate their commanders at a new level. In this guide, I will review different aspects of this update (Awakening 2) and will discuss awakening in general.

Overview

You can improve commanders by awakening them after you have them as green quality. Commanders can be awakened to 1 to 4 stars with awakening (green commanders can become 1 star, Blue commanders 2 stars, purple commanders 3 stars, and gold commanders 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 shops 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.

Commanders Hector, Tyrion, Sabrina, Darius, and Simon can't use general tokens for awakening and you have to obtain their commander-specific awakening tokens directly.

Here is a table showing the cost of medals and tokens you need for each commander quality level and to increase each of their stars:

In other words, you need 330 normal medals to make commander gold quality and 600 awakening tokens to make them 4 stars and this can be done simultaneously.

Normal Medals vs Awakening Tokens

All awakening tokens (that can be used to increase the star level of a commander) have a shield icon next to them when normal commander medals don’t have it. Also, note that you can turn normal 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.

Normal medals can convert to awakening general tokens with different ratios. For elite commanders, every 8 normal medals will turn into 1 awakening token. For Epic commanders every 3 normal medals will turn into 1 awakening token. And finally, the Legendary commanders have a 1:1 ratio for converting normal medals to awakening tokens.

Here is a list of all elite, epic, and legendary commanders:

The Special commanders that are listed above can't use the general awakening tokens to be awakened unlike the rest and you have to use their own commander-specific awakening tokens to awaken them. You can also only turn their extra commander medals to the commander-specific awakening tokens, not general awakening tokens.

You can turn higher-tier general awakening tokens into lower-tier commander-specific tokens as well. To do this open your Commanders page, go to inventory, and in the "awakening" tab clicks on convert for the general awakening tokens you want to use. This way you will be able to use epic tokens to awaken elite commanders.

Seg is the only paid commander that you can awaken with Elite tokens.

Note: If you previously awakened commanders in old version, all your used "Books of wisdom" items and used "Awakening tokens" were returned to you. Commander awakening tokens came back as general tokens. You need to convert general tokens to commander specific tokens before being able to use them in Awakening 2.

Book of Wisdom

To awaken a commander, you will need books of wisdom. Before Leveling up each commander to the next star level you will need to unlock all the passive bonuses in order with books of wisdom. These passive bonuses will generally add buffs and bonuses similar to the way commander specialization will add to them.

You can spend the green books of wisdom as soon as your commander reaches green quality (before the first star). In the same manner, you can use the blue book of wisdom after the Blue quality and first-star level, the purple book of wisdom after the purple quality and second-star level, and the gold book of wisdom after the commander reaches gold quality and third-star level. You can only 4 star a commander after you have all their passive skills unlocked.

You can obtain the book of wisdom from rebel camps and by selling spoils chests in merchant shop, or from the VIP shop. You can also purchase these books directly with 250 diamonds each if you click on the + icon next to the book count on the awakening page.

Each commander has a lot of passive skills that you can unlock during the awakening process at different star levels. This is the list of all available skills for Chris:

Star levels and Upgrade effect

Commanders will benefit from each star level differently.

A) Active Skill

The first effect to notice that even starts from the first-star level is an increase in damage of commander’s active skills. Commander has 1 active skill that will allow them to deal damage to enemy troops in set time intervals. The damage of this skill is normally 200% of the damage of the troops that are following commanders on the battlefield (his column).

 In addition to that, after certain star levels, the interval in which commanders will use their active skill will reduce, overall making commanders' active skill more relevant and important in battles.

B) Commanders Max Level

After each star level commander maximum level will increase by 5. Before level 60 commander levels can’t pass the lord level (which is maxed at 60). So commanders will not be able to pass level 60 but with the awakening system, after each star level, they can go 5 levels higher. This means commanders can be at level 65 with green quality and first-star level, level 70 with blue quality and second-star level, level 75 with purple quality and third-star level, and level 80 with gold quality and 4 stars.

Commanders' attributes increase as they level up. Commanders' attributes help them greatly in commander-specific battlegrounds such as Training ground, Weirwood, Expeditions against rebel leaders, or events such as alliance or epic trials. You can read more about the commander’s attributes in this guide.

In addition, by increasing the commander's max level to 80, commanders will be able to reach new maturity levels of IX (9) and X (10) that will allow you to equip new items on them to increase their attributes even further. This will also increase the deployed army of commanders to 21k troops at the last maturity level.

C) Tavern Quality

Commanders that are awakened to 2 stars will have 1 extra star in every stat 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. You can read more about tavern and friendship in this guide.

In addition, for every awakening star, the max friendship level in the tavern increases by 5. For example, a 2-star commander can have a friendship level of 70. Each level of friendship after level 60, costs 5000 friendship experience and stays steady instead of the casual exponential increase that it had in previous levels. 

D) Specializations Boost

Commanders that are awakened to 3 stars will have all their passive specializations bonuses multiplied in 1.6. This means if previously commander was adding 30% to the certain stat, now they will add 48% instead. This in combination with all the passive skills that you can unlock with books of wisdom will make commanders' specializations way more efficient.

E) Ultimate Awakening Skill

At 4 stars, the commander will unlock their ultimate skill. These special skills are generally very powerful and effective on the battlefield. For example, Theon’s ultimate skill can increase your total attack by 10% for each 3m troops you bring to a battle which can make him great for defense when you can have more than 15m troops in your city against the enemy.

Here is a list of all the ultimate skills of the currently awakened commanders: (Updated 8/20/2021)

It’s recommended to focus on awakening commanders you like their ultimate skills and can be useful for you based on your preferences and specializations. For example, for players who like to play as a rally tank (with 15m defense troops with the Iron defense research) Theon is a must to awaken and use on the wall. Also, some commander's skills have more synergy with each other. For example, some Commanders like Leila can boost other commanders' awakening skills as well. For instance, Leila can boost Cersei's, Annie's, or Haley's awakening as with Leila the commanders might use their active skill more (to damage enemy troops) so awakening skills which will trigger with the use of the active skills (such as Cersei, Annie and Haley's skills) will also trigger more often. Legendary commanders like Jon Snow and Cersei have very powerful and game-changing awakening skills.

Some commanders are deadlier against certain commanders because of their skills as well. For example, Hector can counter Salma's skill and benefit from the early attack of enemy commanders while Baelish is, in general, a counter to the commander damage base build-ups.

Here is a complete guide about awakening ultimate skills synergy and counters.

When to Awaken?

You can start working on awakening as soon as you reach the needed qualities. I highly recommend working on 2-star commanders for a tavern bonus as an awakening to 2 stars is easier. Awakening is a great way to boost combat rate and leadership in the tavern. You need to keep in mind that a 3-star purple commander can in theory be more effective than gold not awakened commander.

Also, awakening materials can be found in different parts of the game. Especially elite commander’s tokens are available in different events in-game and can be obtained from Weirwood as well.

It’s also beneficial for new players or players who are very focused on growing to go after commanders like Soren or Raymond first whose awakening will help them a lot more than rest.

It’s also very important to mention that not all commanders are yet available for awakening. You can see more details about the commanders that are about to get awakened on the game's Facebook page.

Related:

1. [NEWS] Awaken Your Commanders and Unleash the Skills! >> https://forum.gtarcade.com/topic/1490

2. [NEWS] Awakening System 2.0: Start Fresh and Plan Your Awakening of Commanders! 

>> https://forum.gtarcade.com/topic/2876

3. [Announcement] Details and Overview of Awakening System Effects, Bonuses, and Materials >> https://forum.gtarcade.com/topic/3087

4.[Quick Navigation] All Info You Need Is Here>>https://forum.gtarcade.com/topic/2460