New Players Guide to Conqueror's Blade

 

I originally was introduced to Conqueror's Blade in 2018 during the European X Test after the developers found me streaming a similar game and wanted to ask my opinion about the title they were working on. From the first moment I entered Conqueror's Blade I knew this was "My Game". I have loved Siege Warfare since my first MMORPG in Dark Age of Camelot. I had traveled through Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and even Black Desert Online but nothing gave me that rush that DAOC provided. That is until Conqueror's Blade.

I decided to bring my community  Gaiscioch to the game along with our helpful nature and positive attitudes. We spent the first 4 seasons teaching players the basics before finally deciding to give the big war a go and start finding a place in the world for us. As we grew, sieges, and saw more of the gameplay systems I started taking notes that I felt would be helpful. I setout to create two major guides. The first for new players (this one) and the second for House Leaders discussing Fief Ownership from top to bottom. With these two guides and the rest of the content you'll find on ConquerorsBladeHub.com I hope that I can help you find the same passion for Conqueror's Blade that I did. There is simply no other game available today that is similar to Conqueror's Blade and that makes it a very unique find.

Table of Contents

  1. Rock, Paper, Scissors Warfare
  2. DONT RUSH to level 100!
  3. Fief Quests are the Key to Honour Gains
  4. Understanding How Fiefs Work
  5. Bronze and How to Earn It
  6. Your Warband and How to Train Units
  7. Build a Serf Army for Better Gathering
  8. Don't miss special events
  9. Repair Often and Reforge at the Artificer's Forge
  10. Foghladha's Jack-of-all-Trades Build
  11. Gathering Gold Dust, Powdered Silver, and Other Hero Crafting Materials
  12. Building your Wardrobe
  13. Avoid High Taxes, Use Requisition Tokens
  14. Complete your Mastery Commander Battles
  15. Successfully Complete Deploy & Defend
  16. Easy Way to Solo Peacekeeping
  17. What to do with Treasures?
  18. Expand Your Storage with Silver
  19. Buying Keys on Item Market
  20. Identify People by their Chat
  21. Understanding Battle Scoring

1. Built on Rock, Paper, Scissors Warfare

Conqueror's Blade is a massive rock-paper-scissors battle. A weapon will have strengths vs. certain other weapons and it will have weaknesses to others. The key is to find the players wielding the weapon that you're strongest against while avoiding weapons that are designed to kill you. 

The same is true for units. Every unit is strong vs. their optimal enemy yet weak against their strongest opponent. For example, Onna-Musha are strong against Berserkers but they are weak against Symmachean Stalwarts. Berserkers are great against most melee units but are weak against Imperial Pike Guards' Advance ability. Every unit has a strength and a weakness. This is one of the reasons I love this game. Every time you or your unit is defeated make sure to pay attention to what killed them. This will help you identify what units you should target or stay away from.


2. DONT RUSH to level 100!

To start you off, Conqueror's Blade places you in a low-tier division that is filled with other people under level 100. If it can't find enough people under level 100 to pair you with it fills the rest with stupid bots that make you feel like a God and make completing unit challenges a breeze.

Once you level past 100 you will be thrown into the deep end of the shark-infested pool. It is absolutely CRITICAL that you have the tools necessary to defend yourself once you clear the level 100 threshold.

In this time it is critical that you do not use Hero XP Cards to speed your hero's leveling up. In my time as a Conqueror's Blade content creator and house leader, I have seen that most players will leave the game between levels 100 and 150. Those that make it past 150 typically stick around. Here are some quick points to help you prepare for the war ahead.

My advice to you is to use this time to unlock seasonal challenges. You can access seasonal challenges by pressing F5, then clicking on "Season Challenges", then in the top right click the switch seasons icon and select the season you wish to unlock. Once you have it selected click the "Start Seasonal Challenge" button at the bottom to set the season as your active season. Next, complete the seasonal challenges to unlock the desired units. This will be vastly easier pre-100 than after 100 so stay focused on getting those units unlocked. 

Unit Plan for the first 100 Levels

Here is a list of my personal recommendations for seasonal units to work towards pre-100. Please note your house leaders may wish you to focus on specific units to fit their needs:

  1. Outriders (Season 9)
  2. Sons of Fenrir (Season 7)
  3. Onna-musha (Season 16)
  4. Berserkers (Season 7)
  5. Crescent Monks (Season 15)
  6. Myrmillones (Season 13)
  7.  Symmachean Stalwarts (Season 5)
  8. Condottieri Guards (Season 3)
  9. Fortebraccio Pikement (Season 3)
  10. Armiger Lancers (Season 6)
  11. Camel Lancers (Season 15)
  12. Yanyuedao Cavalry (Season 16)
  13. Liao's Rangers (Season 6)
  14. Shield Maidens (Season 7)
  15. Modao Battalion (Season 8)
  16. Falconetti Gunners (Season 3)
  17. Siphonarioi (Season 5)

Additional Units to Consider:

  1. Shenji Grenadiers (Season 9 or via Unit Tree)
  2. Pavise Crossbowmen (Season 3 or via Unit Tree)
  3. Namkhan Archers (Season 2)

While you're unlocking challenges, focus on leveling up each of these units from the unit tree to max level.

  1. Pike Militia (Veterancy: Middle)
  2. Incendiary Archers (Veterancy: Top)
  3. Spear Sergeants (Veterancy: Bottom)
  4. Men-at-Arms (Veterancy: Full Top + 3 Bottom + Rest Middle)
  5. Shenji Grenadiers (Veterancy: Top = Better Guns, Bottom = Better Bombs)
  6. Imperial Spear Guards (Veterancy: Bottom)
  7. Imperial Pike Guards (Veterancy Top)
  8. Cataphract Lancers (Veterancy: Top)
  9. Winged Hussars (Veterancy: Bottom)
  10. Imperial Archers (Veterancy: Top)
  11. Imperial Arquebusiers (Veterancy: Bottom)

While leveling units try to use 1 unit you're leveling up at a time. Do not bring other units that are soaking exp with you. Instead, use other units you've already reached max level with or your weekly Auxiliary Units. This will ensure 100% of the Unit XP earned will flow towards the unit you're leveling up. You want to focus your Unit XP on these units and these units only before level 100. Do not waste time leveling units you won't need to survive post-level 100. The units above will be crucial to your survival and success on the long road ahead.


3. Fief Quests are the Key to Honour Gains

Fief Quests were revamped in season 10 changing the rewards and how they function. Stars no longer matter. What matters is the type of Fief Quest and the Goal you're trying to achieve. While they used to be exclusively beneficial to the house that owns the fief, now they have been revised to help you and your house regardless of who owns them.

  • In Service To The Realm - These quests offer your House and the Fief itself rewards in the form of House XP and Resources. Typically when upgrading fiefs, these are essential for progressing the fief to the next level or meeting upkeep requirements.
  • Make a Donation - These quests are focused on Player Advancement. Rewards will include Hero XP, Honour, and the occasional Gift along with a tiny amount of resources.
  • Development and Profits - These quests convert one thing into another thing and often are seen as a wasted or troll fief quest. I advise you to avoid these.

As fiefs level up they will also provide bonuses to the rewards the fief gives. The higher level of a fief the more rewards it bestows. In addition, the higher level a fief is the more weekly organic payout the owning house receives and it also allows you to craft better siege and unit kits. 

When trying to gain honour stick to the Make a Donation quests on the highest-level fiefs you can find. That will give you the most reward for your investment. Be sure to read our guide to building honour for additional reading on the topic.


4. Understanding How Fiefs Work

The first part of being involved in Territory Wars or helping your house sustain land is understanding how Fiefs operate. All fiefs have a prosperity rating. This prosperity determines what percentage of the payout goes to the House that owns the property at the end of the week. The higher the prosperity, the more profitable the fief becomes. A property that is level 1 with 0 prosperity will be the most inefficient property in regard to income.

Key Factors

  • If a Fief does not generate the upkeep required by players completing Fief quests it will reduce by 50% every week.
  • Once a fief reaches 0 prosperity it will downgrade.
  • Each time a Fief changes hands it will be reduced by 30%.
  • If the fief is defended but the X point was taken the fief will reduce by 15%.
  • By fulfilling the upkeep requirement it will go up 30%.
  • You can also increase the Prosperity by Upgrading a Fief. Each time you upgrade it improves by 30%.
  • If a Fief downgrades you will lose a big chunk of resources and have to build it back up.

Protecting and upgrading your Fief is the way you generate the highest payouts for your members. It also allows your Fief to have better quests and more prestige for your house leader to assign titles for. For more on this topic view our Fief Ownership guide.


5. Bronze and How to Earn It

This is one of the misconceptions this game has. I hear a lot of people talk about how they have no bronze. Many have quit the game altogether because of it without knowing my secret.

When started playing Conqueror's Blade (It's easier now but in season 1 it was a bit of a grind) and worked for several months to finally unlock the Monastic Knights, I purchased all the kits using Bronze. The price tag was 58,400 Bronze which is no small chunk of change for a newer player. Even with that expense I still found myself sitting on a 3 million bronze surplus. How?

The key to building bronze is not letting your troops die. Battles like Deploy & Defend, Mastery Commander, Expeditions, Peacekeeping, Training Camps (AI), and Free Battles all feature ways to minimize kit loss. Instead of having to farm supplies for new kits or spend all your bronze repairing soldiers, you'll be stockpiling it in droves. Siege, Field Battles, Raider Camps, and sometimes Bandit Raids can be money drains because of the high probability of losing troops.

In addition, do not squander your opportunity to earn Triumphs. Each week on Tuesdays and Saturdays at 6PM PT / 9PM ET houses go to war. During these wars participating will earn you Triumphs. In addition depending on how your house has titles set up you might earn a Title in your house which will award an additional Triumph payout. The average participation will bring in 5-15 Triumphs depending on your performance. These Triumphs can then be used in the Imperial Store by pressing O then clicking on Activities, then Imperial Store. On the last page, you will find a Bronze chest for 1 Triumph. If you earn 10 Triumphs per war you could be looking at 50,000 Bronze income.  

Another great way to earn income is by Fief Questing. Almost all fief quests give you some kind of treasure chest to open and all of those give you Bronze and something else. Make sure to do all 20 of your fief quests each week and watch the income come piling in.

Lastly, when in Sieges or Field Battles avoid heavy setbacks by rotating your troops when they are half-dead. Don't let them drop below half and you will minimize the kit loss. If your unit is completely wiped you will have 1-3 kits to replace which usually negates any profits you made. 


6. Your Warband and How to Train Units

I recommend all newcomers focus on unlocking Incendiary Archers and Spear Sergeants first. Then focus on leveling them to Max level. Once you have them max level you can use them to push exp to your other units. 

All units you bring into battle will split the unit exp you earn. The units you use in battle will split 82% and the units that don't enter the battle will split 18%. Any max level units you bring into battle will accumulate Shared Experience which can be designated to any unit in your Barracks. Be sure not to accrue more than 1 million or it will start converting to an insulting amount of bronze.

Make sure to always bring the troop you’re leveling into battle. You can swap them out immediately when the match begins and they will still get full credit. This is exceptionally helpful when leveling tier 5 units. You can bring them in and swap them out before they take any damage preventing expensive kit losses.


7. Build a Serf Army for Better Gathering

I recommend everyone recruits, 5 serfs, as soon as they can. Always bring the lowest level serf into battle with you until all 5 reach level 7. Make sure to take the bottom path. You will use these 5 serfs to gather 4x the amount of resources you normally would in the open field. The Labor score and bonus to resource gathering are what make this unit optimal for gathering. You can learn more about building a gathering force in our Resource Gathering Units Guide


8. Don't miss special events

Throughout various seasons the Great Wall map and the Rattan-themed Into the Breach and Sea Raider's maps make their appearance. Each of these is a great source of bronze, unit XP, and honour. Make sure to do them daily if you can and you will see some pretty massive gains.


9. Repair Often and Reforge at the Artificer's Forge

I can not stress this enough. Every time you come out of battle, repair. The difference between current durability and total durability determines how much durability loss you will suffer on each repair. If you repair when the numbers are close to each other you risk losing durability less than you do if you wait till it warns you to repair. 

When your weapon or armor gets low, you will need to visit the Artificer's Forge to renew them. This gives you 2 outcomes that you can choose. 1 you keep the item you have with its durability restored or it has an RNG of becoming better or worse. Sometimes the weapon can even upgrade to a new color. If the stats are not great, take the version you had previously on the left. There is no risk involved. You either get what you have or walk away with something better. 


10. Foghladha's Jack-of-all-Trades Build

Every new player I come across I recommend one simple build that helps them get their feet firmly planted. 

  • 45 Strength
  • 35 Agility
  • 30 Toughness
  • 30 Armor

This is the setup I use that allows me to effectively play every weapon without respecing. New players often come into the game with the idea that one weapon is for them, only to learn that they enjoy another. 

I started with a longbow and then went to dual blades, spear, short sword, and longsword before I finally gave poleaxe a try. The Poleaxe, by far, is my favorite but I would have never expected that out of the gate. I recommend everyone learn Longsword for its fundraising potential. Being able to heal your troops in the field makes life so much easier in bandit raids, expeditions and training battles. 

The key is that you provide yourself with the option of trying more than one weapon. Being the game is rock-paper-scissors based you might want to change your weapon if you have to defeat your weapon’s nemesis. You can do this during battle by visiting the heal station. Be warned you can only swap to weapons acceptable by your armor class. No heavy armored dual blades here.

You do have one free respec every week available for you to experiment with so feel free to play with your build and see what works for you.


11. How to Gather Gold Dust, Powdered Silver, and Other Hero Crafting Materials

This is one question I am asked daily and it is easily solved with a quick trip to your Horse Seller. Simply purchase green saddles for 500 bronze and salvage them at the Smith to have a 20% chance to get some Powdered Silver. Purchase the blue saddles for 2000 bronze to get a 20% chance to receive some Gold Dust. In addition, you will receive several other materials every time you salvage. 

Another way is to spend bronze at the Apothecary each week to acquire your regular allotment of supplies. You can purchase a limited number once per week. I recommend doing this even when you don't need them. 

You can also earn Powdered Silver and Gold Dust from the seasonal store though I suggest using the above as your primary source of those materials.


12. Equip Every Weapon and Armor Before You Salvage It

This is a trick I didn't learn until I was around level 450. The stencils are not automatically saved in your "Wardrobe" like they are in other games when you salvage. To add them to the available stencils found at the Artisan, you will need to equip the item first. This adds it to your collection and can later be applied to any matching piece of armor or weapon. This allows you to customize your style any way you like.


13. Avoid High Taxes, Use Requisition Tokens

This is the biggest annoyance and oversight most houses place on users. They stick their taxes at 200%+ and expect people to come to farm their supplies because they need to. They sit back and wait for the profits to pour in. Yet houses like ours charge a 20% tax and find our coffers fuller than theirs. Why is this? Because Requisition Tokens allow you to avoid the Taxes and deny the fief of any capital gains. They get nothing and you get to mine the node at a low cost. So these houses that are price gouging think they are winning the economic game but really they're crippling their own gains with high taxes. 

Nobody is dumb enough to spend 3,000 bronze on one hit of a Rough Cotton Field node that costs 500 bronze and 1 requisition token. They simply avoid the taxes, farm the supplies and the fief gets squat. You can even use requisition tokens to farm nodes that have collection prohibited. 

Earn requisition tokens by doing your 1, 3, and 5 battles daily. These can even be done in Training Yard (AI) battles that have a fast completion and pretty good gains for bronze, honour, and skill points while keeping troop loss to a minimum.


14. Complete your Mastery Commander Battles

With unit mastery entering the scene in Season 16, it became very important to gain Scrolls of Mastery. You can do this by completing the Mastery Commander mode, purchasing them from the Honour Store, in various rewards, or obtaining them from various limited-time quests. I made a quick demonstration to show you how to easily complete these battles.

As you run them you'll find your own magic way to complete them quickest. With this battle mode, performance doesn't matter. You can kill 5 things and get the same reward as if you killed 100. So unless you're practicing, there's no reason to kill everything. 

You will accrue one battle credit per day with a limit of 4 battles. So if you do them once a week you'll only be able to complete 4 battles. If you do them daily or at least every 4 days you'll be able to complete 7 per week.


15. Successfully Complete Deploy & Defend

This Daily Tower Defense mode is the primary way to score Wisdoms that can be used in the Doctrinal Alchemy System. You will be able to receive rewards once per day. At first, it can be quite challenging as you're learning the flow of battle. I have a simple method that guarantees victory.

Below I have listed the target units you should aim for. The location markers are listed in order of importance so start at the front and work to the end as you place units. If you do not have any of these units interact with a flag and request a new set of units until you get one of the units mentioned. There is a limited number of resets each phase so if you get one of the units, place it, don't try for another unit in the list. The Blue Markers should only be used in Phase Two as Hounds of Fenrir will wipe out any unit you place on those markers in Phase One.

Unit Selection:

Phase 1 Target Units:

Phase 2: Target Units:

PRO-TIP: Fire is your friend. If you're failing, add more FIRE!

Here's a video walkthrough:


16. How to Solo Peacekeeping the Easy Way?

There is a definitive way to always come out on top while Peacekeeping by yourself. It doesn't involve throwing your troops against an endless sea of invaders. It doesn't require Maxed out fully doctrined gold units. It simply involves one of three units and a good horse. 

What is Peacekeeping?

Peacekeeping was introduced in Season 15: Eternal as a replacement for the original wandering rebel mechanic. The new battle consists of Two Resupply points, A defensive formation of units with markers above them, and an endless wave of assaulting enemies whose sole purpose in life is to capture your resupply point. If the enemy forces capture either of your resupply points you lose.

What do you need?

  • Imperial Archers - These are my favorite pick because occasionally you will encounter an Imperial Spear Guard variant and these are the only archers that can pierce shields. They have excellent range and high DPS and usually get the job done without needing to resupply.
  • Vassal Longbowmen - An alternate to the Imperial Archers that take a little longer but still can finish the job. These can be left on the second Resupply Point as long as the Respawning AI Friendly units don't drag the Enemy AI onto that point. They fire much slower than the Imperial Archers but can still get the job done.
  • Incendiary Archers - These are the most overlooked Blue Archer in the game. Their ability to light things ablaze is crucial in this encounter as many times you will face Berserkers, Tseregs or Fortebraccio Pikemen all of which are highly flammable. For this encounter, if you don't have either of the above these will do. You will need to have them resupply which can be problematic when doing this solo.

How can you win?

This is the simple part.

  1. The first thing you want to do is bring in a unit you don't want to use first. You can do this by pressing U in the open field and clicking on the Unit. This will move it to the first unit slot and be the unit you start the battle with.  The reason we do this is because all of the archers listed above are slow and time is of the essence. 
  2. On your horse sprint to the second Resupply Point and trade the unit you entered with for your choice archer unit.
  3. Then move to the 10:00 position around the units with the Arrows above them. Plan your archers close enough that you can hit the entire group of soldiers. Then just let them fire on the pile of targets.
  4. Next, on horseback sprint back to the invading party that will have a Shortsword and Shield AI Hero. Wait for them to murder the friendly AI and then bait the Hero away from the pack. Don't sprint too far or he will leash back to his original path. Drag him back to the far side of the units with arrows above them and keep rounding them up as more heroes spawn. You sometimes will have 3 heroes chasing you. I advise running circles around them to keep them tight. It is important that you kite the units away from the main group of units that your archers are firing on. 

Once your archers kill all the arrow targets the battle will end successfully. To illustrate how this is done I recorded a short video example for you. Here's a video walkthrough:


17. What to do with these strange Exotics?

This is something I didn't learn until after I crossed the level 550 mark. I never even thought to look. If you go to your home city, open your inventory (I), click the Supplies tab (3rd icon on the left), click Supply Dump, and then on the drop-down on the left side select "Exotics". Many of these supplies will be used for siege and kit crafting later in the game, however, there are Epic (Purple) Exotics that when moused over you will see a "Selling Price". These items are not used in any recipe.

There are a few things you can do with these.

  1. Donate them to the Quartermaster (1,000 Points)
    The primary thing most people are using these for is donating them to the Quartermaster to earn Fame quickly. These give 1,000 points of donation credit which can be quite a significant boost to someone's weekly fame growth.
  2. List them on the Trading Post (10,000 Silver)
    Since the addition of the Quartermasters, players have been using these to speed their seasonal donation credit to the max. These typically will sell mid to late season for the maximum price (10,000 Silver). 
  3. Sell them to the Apothecary (1,000 Silver)
    They can be sold by placing them in your wagon and traveling over to your local Apothecary for 1,000 Silver each. By the time I reached level 550 I was sitting on quite a few of them which turned into a nice little nest egg of silver. If you're just starting out and desperately need silver, this is a great way to get some fast.


18. Expand Your Storage with Silver

Entering the game in season 3 and 4, storage expansions became one of the best-kept secrets of the Conqueror's Blade underground. There are two types of storage expansions in the game:
 
Personal Storage Expansion - Use this to expand your Personal Storage by adding 8 additional spaces up to a maximum of 144 slots.

Purchased at:
  • Smuggler for 200,000 Silver
  • Item Market under Items, Rewards typically less than 200,000 Silver

Logistics Charter - This item improves your storage efficiencies at your Supply Dump increasing its storage volume by 500,000 and may increase your Supply Dump Capacity up to 8,000,000 in total.

Purchased at:

  • Smuggler for 150,000 Silver
  • Item Market under Items, Rewards typically less than 150,000 Silver

These two features you'll want to work toward expanding to their maximum capacity as you earn excess silver.


19. Use Silver to Buy Keys on Item Market

I didn't realize that keys were such a cheap commodity on the trading post until late in the game. Typically the only way to get keys is by completing weekly challenges while being a Premium Account or by getting very lucky collecting Derelict Huts outdoors. There's an easy and rewarding way to get these. Simply pop open your Trading Post window and navigate to the Item Market then Rewards. You will find key prices between 1,000 and 3,000 per key. Every Secret Vault you open will contain between 2,000 and 4,000 silver and I tend to find spending less than 3,000 per key will yield you a silver gain. You will have quite the return on investment here and I highly recommend buying your keys from the Trading Post as a way to earn silver fast.


20. Identify People by their Chat

Ever wonder who someone is. There is no easy /who command in Conqueror's Blade but there is one little function most people only find by accident. If you hold shift and click on a person's name in the chat window it will print their name, level, house, and alliance. This is a great way to identify people via chat messages.


21. Understanding Scoring

This is by far one of the most common frustrations I see. After a match, you might have killed 10 people and a hundred troops but you did not get MVP. This typically sends people into a flurry wondering why oh why did they not perform well enough to warrant the coveted MVP role. This is because the equation that decides this does not just take Hero Kills, Unit Kills, and Participation into its scoring. It also includes the number of times you died, the amount of damage you absorbed, the amount of damage your units absorbed, and the amount of damage you and your units put out. While you might be good at sniping heroes to steal the glory and earn the medals the total war score is based on how much damage you put out to your foes as well as how much time you spent both fighting on and clearing the objective. For those that want to dive into these numbers, you can click on a name in the post-battle recap to view detailed statistics. You can then compare your stats with theirs and see why they earned that MVP award.


Closing Notes

If you ever have any questions about Conqueror's Blade be sure to swing by the Official Discord or if you'd like a little one-on-one coaching, come find me over in the Gaiscioch Discord and I'll be happy to give you some pointers. This game doesn't have the best tutorial, but it makes up for it in the community. There are a lot of really great content creators out there and communities available to help you learn the ropes. Trust me, the game seems scary and a bit intimidating at first, but once you figure out the ins and outs it all goes a lot smoother.

Written By: Foghladha of Gaiscioch | Last Update: March 27th, 2024 at 10:21PM PDT