JKFast84's Beginner's info

1- Gear: Do not sell a single piece of GREEN or BLUE or upgraded PINK or higher gear. Every piece of colored gear, however worthless it looks, can be used to upgrade gear, even higher quality gear.

Alignment- Every non common item has an alignment. It's important to get the correct alignment on higher quality items early, like legendary and better. Some basic alignments you will probably want early game: Sword (Fire-Attack% or Earth-Attack), Armor (Water-Armor or Wood-Regen%), Ring (Fire-Attack% or Wood-Regen), Boots (Fire-Attack or Earth-Armor).

You don't have to keep buying higher qualities until you get the right one. You can "Remove" the alignment off a gear and use two GREEN to give the alignment you want so you only had to buy the higher quality once. For example, I just bought a Legendary RED Armor for my tank and it came with the alignment Earth-Health. Well that's nice, but NO! I want my armor rating boosted. So I buy some GREEN armor and I keep buying until I have at least 2 armor with alignment Water-Armor+. I now remove the Earth alignment and then use 2 Water Armors to change the alignment for my RED Legendary armor to Water. You now have a +1 Water Alignment Armor which now boosts your armor rating so your champion takes less damage.

You now have quite a few extra Armor in your inventory. What should we do with those? We upgrade that brand new armor. We use 2 GREEN armor to increase our RED armor to +2. But I still have a lot more +1 Armor, what do we do with those? Well if we have at least 6 more Armors left, we make a couple of +2 Armors. Now we use those +2 Armor to upgrade our RED +2 armor to +3. Repeat as you can.

2- Tactics: There are many tactics to help with hard maps. I'll bring up a few.

Archer Defense- The enemy is too strong and you need to weaken them. Build defenders and archers. If you're troops are too strong, the enemy won't attack, they will retreat. If your troops are weak, they will march forward, then attack. How do we use this to our advantage. Pull your defenders back so only your archers on the tile. The enemy will march forward because your archers are easy to kill. Now it's your turn. Ranged attack the army and kill as many as you can, but move your defenders back up on your archers. Your troops are now too strong so the enemy will retreat. Repeat until you're strong enough to over take. You will know you're stronger because they won't advance on your archers when your archers are by yourself.

**** Side Note: Gold Mine assault is not perfect. It does work most of the time, but it is NOT 100%. I don't want to give a percent effective because I think it's tied to situations meaning if it doesn't work, it's not going to work and you must do something else. If it does work, it is going to work and keep at it.*****

Gold Mines are used to take Capitals?- This one is hilarious. So you're trying to take a Capital but they are producing troops faster than you can kill them. This happens on some maps that are very hard. Well the computer REALLY REALLY likes to attack gold mines. Get two tiles away from their capital with mixed troops. Walk every troop right next to their capital building in two different spots. In spot 1 place your heavy hitters and either a Fort or a Wall. In spot 2 send your heavy defenders and build a Gold Mine. The computer can't resist but to take the Gold Mine. They will send as many troops as they have to out of the Capital to take the tile with the Gold Mine. They will take the Gold Mine. They will send every last troop it takes to take out that tile. It should be more units than you sent to protect the Gold Mine. Now your main troops should be able to take the capital. The computer will almost always prioritize Gold Mines over anything else.

Gold Mines again?- So this is an edit. I was experimenting with Gold Mines and while playing a 10 star mastery map (which I beat) I discovered another way to use Gold Mines. It operates under the same principle. This time when I build my army I have very few defensive units. They are all attack. I need this because 10 star mastery is hard for someone new like me. Well I can't get them to get close to my army so I can attack with my 30/10 att/def unit. If I walk towards them, they kill my low def "10" units and my army is gone. Well I have it figured out. Gold Mines again! So since my army is HEAVY att and LOW def, I get within 2 tiles of their army that I can smash if I'm attacking, but I would lose if they attack. Well I force them to move on me. I send 1 defensive unit to claim the land between us and I build........ you guessed it, a GOLD MINE! Now they send their army to take that tile and where are they now? They are sitting next to my army, but I get to attack, they don't. Now I destroy their army. Without these methods, I could not have beaten the 10 star mastery map.

Capital Destruction- The enemy is just too hard. They produce troops too fast and you're surrounded. You see a path that avoids any tile that connects to their troops and reaches behind their Capital. Avoid their troops and send your main force behind their capital. Do not let them come within 1 tile of you, you will steer their troops and we don't want that. We want their troops away from their capital. Now the enemy has 4 troops defending his capital and 30 troops out in the field. Your troops smash his capital and he can no longer reinforce his troops. It's a slow or a quick death, but it's a death regardless.

This Map is impossible- The enemy kills you just way too fast. No matter what you do, you can't defend your capital. Abandon it. Take your weakest unit and keep it in the capital. Manauever the rest of your troops to sneak attack a capital from behind. You now have a better spot. Build a Blacksmith and a couple Mines. Hopefully this spot is safe from the pincer you were in originally.

General Strategy for Map mastery stars you have no business doing- I want to add one more thing about Gold Mines. If you're using Dirmerd or Grildey as your main, you have more power than you originally thought. It's all in the Gold Mines and the fact that they are magnets. If you're staring at LONG line of multiple smaller troops towards the enemies capital, generally you move your army forward and they push back into previous troops gathering their strength. You can prevent that. Often my Tank has enough armor to take absolutely no damage vs any grouping of troops and I encounter problems only when they get pushed back. Let's not do that. Send 1 weak troop forward, build a Gold Mine and the small group that would have ran away now comes towards you. Kill them with your tank, take no damage. Continue forward and repeat. This is the best way I've found to prevent the enemy from grouping their small groups together into a larger force. I hope this helps all of you on the more difficult maps/masteries. This obviously takes twice as many turns to reach the capital, but since you get there with a fraction of the army to face, it's worth it. Note, you do not need a tank. I simply mention the tank because it's how I take no damage. You can easily do it with any champion or none at all.

3- Mastery Stars and dailies: The weekly can be hard, but we want those mastery stars and the exp that comes with them. You can buy old maps. If you supported the dev and unlocked Campaign 6/7, you should have 50+ to buy them. Some are free (do those, they are easiest), some cost 1 (those are also easy). You only get 1/2 exp and gems, but that's more than enough to level up that champion you just got who is amazing and you just need some levels on him.

4- Further Upgrading: Try to use the highest quality gear you can to equip to main champions. Use GREEN and BLUE to upgrade your gear. Don't use PINK or RED gear to upgrade your +1. The exception would be if you were using a +4 PINK Piece, but now you upgraded to RED and you want to upgrade your RED +4 to RED +5. It's okay to use the outdated PINK +4. I refer to the fact that you occasionally receive Epic and higher gear as a reward. If you're tempted to use the Epic or higher +1 gear to upgrade your Legendary or higher, sell it and buy 1 or 2 GREEN to use instead. It will save money.