Game of War, free to play? Well, technically yes, but this article is for a big majority of players that really can’t spend daily or even weekly. Maybe once a month at best or maybe less.
There’s fun to be had at almost any budget. Let’s look at some of the ways you can stretch that budget. Get the biggest bang for your buck and a lot of entertainment value regardless of your budget by following some of the tips and suggestions that follow.
Before We Begin with the Tips
One thing that I often hear is players using the term “investment “ when they think about what they spend. Please don’t let yourself feel that way. This is entertainment, no different than dinner and a movie, for example. You pay to see a movie that you can’t take with you and pay for dinner in a restaurant or maybe takeout. You bought a few hours of entertainment. You did not invest in the theatre or restaurant. This should be considered much the same. The difference, in my opinion, is that you get days or weeks of entertainment for approximately the same as a nice dinner and movie.
Invest Your Time Wisely
Probably the biggest thing you’ll need to invest is your time. When we aren’t spending a lot we need to log on more frequently to take advantage of a few things.
Doing events several times a day will gain not only prizes that will be very helpful but also to gain platinum. Platinum is a big need especially for purchasing resources for training troops and research.
Prep Your Empire For Troop Training
Choose a tier of troops to train and set your farms, ore, wood, and silver buildings to produce exactly what you need for that tier. Log on every 4 hours give or take. Equip the appropriate hero and gear for that tier and train consistently with what your empire will produce for free. You can purchase additional resources with platinum when needed or, most especially, to take advantage of when there are training events. I’ve listed the heroes best to use for each of the most common tiers trained to get the most from your production.
- T7-T12 troops: Predemi/ 550 hero in the newest Demi training gear you have
- T6 troops: The Sapphire hero works best here and again in the best demigod training gear you have
- T5 Troops: Use the Valkyrie hero with demigod training gear and a helm from the conquer set that gives additional boosts especially for training T5 troops.
You must be sure to skill the hero trees with the pertinent skills for troop training.
Join A Good Team, Be A Good Teammate
Another equally important thing you will need to do is join a good alliance so you can get help from bigger players. An active alliance with a variety of level players is invaluable. You will need teammates to hit the help button to reduce time on building and research. The tips and advice from more experienced players can go a long way. Players with bigger budgets are more able to help with gifts from pack purchases, gifting resources, or others when needed.
More activity in an alliance will make getting certain events easier and more attainable. More completed events mean more prizes and platinum earned.
Be an active and helpful teammate. Assist with finding targets, fill rallies when able, and be fun and positive in alliance chats. Being a good teammate will make your friends more inclined to want to help you. 
Pack Purchases
If you are just starting and building up, there’s one pack, in particular, you’ll want to get. Yes, it’s one of the full-priced packs as of the time of this article. The hero special pack offered at the bottom of the pack selection should be one of the first packs you buy if you are wanting to build above stronghold 1245-1255. The cost reductions, most especially for construction, are invaluable and will save you a lot of speed ups and money.
When you do feel you can spend some on your account there are a few things to keep in mind. If you’re on a very small budget, you’ll want to watch for and take advantage of $20 USD BOGO packs and catch up packs.
Be diligent with looking through all of the contents in offered packs you are considering purchasing. You’ll want to be sure that you need a fair bit of what’s in them to make the purchase worth your while. This rule of thumb stands true to any in-game purchases of course.
It has been suggested to avoid the $50 and $79 packs labeled “Catch-Up”. They are usually filled with older items that a $99 USD pack would include as well as newly released features. So logically if you want to spend that much, you’re probably further ahead to get a newer pack. Always check the contents before buying.
Don’t get caught up in feeling like you need every new feature released immediately. Most releases can wait until you are in a position to buy. Save the full pack purchases for the most important and impactful new features such as VIP, hero levels, and other items not typically available in events or gifts.
Research Smart
As you build your empire be mindful of research areas that won’t necessarily be of advantage or useful for you. Skip expensive research, for example, the Savvy Research trees except for the Salient tree. The Salient Savvy tree has many beneficial stats for all accounts.
If it’s possible, bypass research that is for wonder battles, rally stats, etc. Focus on things like Defense, Attack, Empire Defending Attack, march size if you’re going to be filling rallies, Empire Defense, and of course Economic and other combat areas.
Be very cautious about using the Multiple Instant Research button. Using this feature definitely can accomplish a lot quickly however it may not do the most important research you need or want. It can cost you a fortune in resources and speedups you weren’t anticipating. It may take a little longer to do one at a time but you will be better able to control what research gets done and when. Here’s a great article focusing on research.
Troop And Trap Training Basics
Let’s talk now a little bit about training troops, mythic, and traps. Where to start, how much to build? Look at it this way. If you don’t have enough to massively train and need to put your best foot forward you’ll want to train the best you can.
Train T6 or higher troops for your base (meat wall). Sure the lower tiers gain power and seem cheaper, but they die quicker and in more mass amounts. Yes, higher tier troops cost more to build, however, they will cover you far better than lower tiers will.
As mentioned above, set yourself up with the correct production of resources and it will help. Also, again as mentioned above, you can purchase needed resources with platinum you’ve accumulated in completing events.
As far as traps are concerned you’ll want to be careful with how many of these you train. You will need just enough to help buffer an attack and protect troops behind them. With the addition of Trap Destroyers a few months ago, an attacker will wipe out all traps in one attack if they feel you have enough to make it worthwhile. A general rule of thumb is to have approximately 500 million or so of the same tier as your lowest troop tier. Every account is different so you will need to test and find what works best for you.
For more specifics on troop training check out this helpful Defense quick guide and Defending against T12
Time To Gear Up
Ok, let’s discuss gear for a while. When looking to improve your hero’s gear, you should typically always improve your weapon first and max it before using available materials elsewhere.
The second piece to consider would be to upgrade helm as it has the 2nd most stats. Next, the feet and armor have relatively the same amount of boosts, so do those next.
Finally, it’s important to know that 3 max improved accessories have less power than a single one of the other maxed gear pieces, so if you are boosting accessories and the others are not done, then you are not being effective. Do these pieces last.
- I recommend you improve your quality for Defense gear and Attack gear before others like March size gear.
- If you are able to max improve the new Vengeful Gear, it adds march size along with the other needed and more important stats.
- If you don’t have this gear yet, you’ll want to save your Improve Quality materials for Defense and Attack gear first. Do not use them on March size gear until others are fully leveled up. Wait until you have extra available materials to use on March size gear.
- If you want to increase march size until you have the better gear, you can add the Royal Palace in the fifth banner spot and use march boosts to increase march size.
Let’s Head To The Alchemy Lab
Craft potions to add to your empire stats and help protect your troops and save money. A great way to stretch your best potion vials and ingredients is to use them separately. What I mean by that is getting 2 great potions instead of one super potion and 28 days of potion time versus 14 days. Here’s how you can do that.
Use your best ingredients with a second-best vial and your best vial with your second best ingredients.
I would also say, use the black market to buy the best vials and complete other events to accumulate the ingredients. With a variety of accumulated ingredients, you can mix and match for a bunch of good potions instead of one amazing potion.
For a great method and guide on crafting a potion check out our Potions 101 guide on the site.
Construction Zone
Upgrading the right buildings and special buildings that are most useful, will not only make your account stronger but will also save you money.
Focus on the special buildings that give the stats and upgrades most relevant to your play style. For example, you wouldn’t want to upgrade buildings that give wonder stats if you are a filler or trap. Use the materials for things like Black Market and the archeological hall for defense and Empire Defense and Attack.
As for your regular buildings, if blueprints are limited you can skip upgrading Barracks, Wall, Forge, and Altar buildings if your goal is to get your Stronghold level higher. You can go back to leveling these buildings after you’ve achieved the Stronghold you want.
Raid Boss events often give blueprints as prizes as well. That’s an event that you’ll want to save some monster hero energy for. That leads me to another suggestion.
Kill The Monsters!
Hitting monsters is a great way to gain some materials and loyalty. Keep in mind that several different Monster Kill events will pay out a lot better prizes than the Kosenjobi monsters though.
If your hero energy is limited you will want to save it and use it for events like Raid Boss that pay different and more relevant things like T7 resources, gems, and blueprints. Drake events and the special monsters often released after different events like the Ant King will also pay out the more relevant and bigger quantities of resources.
Using your 550 heroes in the best monster gear you have or craft, can help give more hits where possible and the energy can be gifted or purchased with gold. Certain events like Raid Boss will list specific heroes to use for this event. That’s where you’ll want to use a little bit more of your Hero Energy.
Use single hits on monsters where an event can be won by hits and kills are not necessary. These can be done with very little hero energy and you’ll still be able to complete an event.
Coordinate Your Growth With Events
Another way to stretch that pack is to watch and do upgrades that you can coordinate with specific events such as hero upgrades, Training events, VIP, and building upgrade events. Doing just enough of each upgrade to complete an event then stopping and waiting for that event to refresh will help add more prizes to your inventory.
In Conclusion
By following these basic guidelines you can have great entertainment value for far less cost than you might think. There’s a lot of information in this article so you will want to refer back often.
- Check out our website for many other great and helpful tips on building your empire effectively as well.
- Get to know the players in your alliance and ask lots of questions.
- Test your limits now and again to assess what areas you need to improve on.
- Learn to read your reports. There’s a lot of information in these reports that will help you as you grow.
- Check out this Account Tune-Up article on keeping your account as updated as you can on a regular basis and don’t miss a thing.
Big shout out to Odie340 and 1GFB for their invaluable help and insight in getting all the details just right!
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