Loadout 2 – Dragon and Gold development + Honor

This article series is made for those who has leveled up lord level enough to take advantage of strong hybrid talent builds. I have done a wide range of talent builds for lower level Lords in the section “Basic talent builds“.

In this series we go over how to setup and take advantage of the 3 available predefined talent loadouts and switch between them. The three articles shall go over:

1. Default loadout for 90% of playtime. Research boost, rss gathering, EXP grinding and honor farming.
2. Dragon & Minting loadout. Used only when beginning a dragon/mint.
3. IB/SVS loadout (PvP).

Read more about these three here.

For the purpose of this article, we shall go over the second utility loadout I run. This talent setup is balanced between development tech boost and military with a focus on dragon and mint development, making it the perfect utility talent setup.

I have this setup on only when my dragon finishes upgrading and my mint is done cooking gold. Because you need the dragon talent and the mint talent for these tasts – and because the dragon leveling requires a ton of gold – you should ALWAYS time your Mint cooks to match up with your dragon finishing an upgrade. Remember to take into account if you are going to speed up your dragon upgrade timer.

The talents

1. Untill we are done with all our buildings to level 50, we run building speed. When we are finished we move over to rss yield.

2. Untill we are done leveling our second and third march, we run double exp.

3. Always run gold production. We need a ton to level all dragons to 50 and immortals to boost level 25.

4. Divine walker. 3x free gnome hits or long range speeded castle hits per day is awesome. If you are unable to do spider reliably, you can opt for double gnome greens.

5. Dragon trainer. You should boost dragon speed in this loadout – since that is the entire point!

6. Safe and Sound untill you have maxed second and third march Immortal levels. 6x no troop losses on level 50 gnomes a day is awesome.

7. Training speed

8. Economics Expert. You are timing out your dragon and mint cooks, meaning you will be beginning a new cook and a new dragon upgrade now. Economics Expert is an invaluable talent to your gold production.

That is it for Development. Now we move into the Military tree to secure our honor talent, which we need to keep up in honor and nobility ranking.

1. Crit versus dodge. You almost always want to run crit. (A) Because almost all army compositions have a combined critvalue beyond its dodge. Meaning you simply get more stat. (B) Because you will be using your talents to attack enemies and have no interest in battles going into overtime (time-out losses). (C) Because anyone VIP 14-15 always want to be running the passive “Chase” which needs crits.

2. Physical versus Magic attack. Next up you need to pick based on your army composition. Since I am usually using my talent when I hit enemies with my lightning team which is mainly physical damage, I run Knife Through Butter (phys). If you are relying on e.g. Merlin to deal the damage in your water or wield double mage fire (Baldwin + Wu) you want to use Rage (magic).

3. AP conservation versus March speed. You always want march speed. Even raiding gnomes, life it too short to save 4 AP when you hit a gnome.

4. Attack versus defend. You want to run defensive Body of Steel as you are unable to reach Might of Longbows further down the talent tree.

5. Relocation speed versus reduced troop losses. Per default you want to be running Survival Methods for the reduction in troop losses. Only in an IB scenario is relocation speed important.

6. Berserking versus healing versus honor

(6.1.) This is an important one that requires some foresight on your part. If you are fightning in a closely matched battle, Last Stand is a VERY powerful talent adding streight up 8% more damage to your army. This means you can beat opponent even at a significant power disadvantage! However, it comes at a properity cost you must be wary of. It is my go to talent in heavy PvP situations (SvS or Norheim). Last Stand is also a must have, if you are ratting.

(6.2.) Aid is a decent defensive talent if you are taking a lot of hits as the target of rallies or just the center of enemy frenzy. If you are low on healing speedups, this talent can save you a lot of trouble. I never run this per default, but see its value.

(6.3.) Rank Advancement is an amazing talent! If you overpower your opponent you want to run this talent to maximize your honor gain and climb that Nobility Ranking. It is a must-have when you farm honor, e.g. using alts.

That is it for the dragon and minting loadout. Because it looks so much like the default loadout, you are able to stay in this talent setup for a while after swapping into it. You just need to get back to your default by the time you begin a new tech research.

Published: 29-04-2022