If you are a beginner for Tiger Knight: Empire War, you probably have realized that grinding to unlock all the soldiers and content in the game is going to take a really long time. In this guide I’m going to give you some tips on how to level up and get really fast EXP.
The Basics
Because maps and battles are randomized, you don’t get much choice in terms of grinding and farming EXP and Copper. So here are your two choices:
- Epic War: After you reach general level 5 you will unlock the PVE Epic War mode. It gives more consistent EXP, but you will also gain less EXP overall. On top of this, Epic War takes longer to complete the mission. As a result, I normally get anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 EXP per game. If I manage to get S rank I might be able to push up to 2,000 EXP. But if you are a beginner, you won’t have the equipment to properly get that amount of kills. Take a look at how much EXP I get using the VIP service from doing a single match of Epic War, scoring rank B.
- Command Mode: This mode is a whole lot harder because if you die your reward will be piss poor. However, if you win and do well, the rewards are bigger and the games normally go by faster. I recommend you stick with this mode for the first several tier levels. I’ll explain why.
In Command mode you will gain EXP based on your performance — If you get a lot of kills, take over bases, help allies, kill enemy generals, and manage to stay alive until the end, you will get more EXP that adds together. The first thing you want to do to get the MAX amount of EXP, is enable the “Play Vs AI” button on the main screen.
Playing against other players is a lot harder because their skill level varies and your teammates might hog up all the kills, but the AI bots are pretty weak and you can kill several of them with ease. If I kill a few generals and take over at least one base, I can normally score about 2,000 EXP per game.
If you activate the VIP service, you can bump that up to about 2,500 EXP. Also, if you get the “Soldier Seals” They will increase your Soldier EXP rates and you can bump the total up even higher to about 2,700 EXP per game.
You can get free VIP cards from the GMs when Maintenance goes over time (they send you a private message with an attached item, this happens often), as well as a few from events as rewards. I believe that the first few tutorial missions for beginners also gives you a couple of them for free as well.
As for the soldier EXP Seals, you can get them in similar ways, but you can also earn them from the PVE Epic War missions as a reward. Activate both the Seals and the VIP cards together for the fastest and the biggest EXP gains.
To give you an example, take a look at my below battle cards after doing four consecutive battles back to back fighting against bots in Command Mode, and look at how much EXP and Copper I earn for both my general and my soldiers. In the below pictures I ONLY had the VIP service activated, I did not have the soldier EXP Seals.
My character is level 20 and I was using Tier 4 troops, so if you are just starting out you can expect to level up pretty fast using the above mentioned methods because you won’t need as much EXP per level. As you can see, I also earned quite a bit of copper from those four battles, bringing me in close to 30,000 copper in four battles.
Battle Tactics
For beginners, I recommend you start off with either Shu or Wei troops to get a good weapon. I personally prefer Wei’s pike’s and spears and I train them up to about tier 3 or 4, then switch to my prefered army. For the above examples, I was using Tier 4 Wu infantry.
DO NOT START WITH WU ARCHERS! A lot of players find archery cool (including me), but their melee weapons are not very good, and the bow does very little damage, has low accuracy and is difficult to use. As a result, attempting to use the starting gear to level up fast will be very difficult. You can read my Archery Guide for more details.
Once I start the battle I head straight to the closest base and try to take it over. If you are successful, you will get a small EXP boost for the capture, but your troops Moral will also skyrocket, giving you the Moral combat boost.
Press F9 to activate it and your soldiers will be supercharged for a short time, giving you a great advantage in combat. Proceed to kill as many generals and adjutants as you can and you will gain more EXP. 4-6 enemy general/adjutant kills will net you about 2,000+ EXP. You can spot the bots because they have names like “LeahEdwards”, and they normally don’t put up much of a fight, so the battles will be pretty easy and will end quickly.
Cons
You can only use the Play Vs AI feature for Tier 4 and lower (UPDATE: The new upate now allows you to play VS AI with Intermediate troops). Once you rank T5 (Tier 5) you will be forced to play against other players and the option will vanish from the main menu. Of course the option will return when you start training new lower troops. So this is a fast and easy way to get all three factions up to Tier 4. Another problem is that you will still face a few human players in your Play Vs AI matches because there is no way to deactivate them, so when that happens you will have to put up a good fight to pull off a victory.
My advice is to first isolate the AI players and kill them, then work your way around to fighting the human players after they are weakened from battle. If you start with the human players first, there is a high chance you will come across an elite player with a lot of skill and he could kill you before you have a chance to get EXP.
Pay to win! 😀
Last but not least, if you don’t mind paying out real world money you can buy more gold coins. Train your Tier 4 soldiers up using the above mentioned method and buy all of their upgrades to make them “Elite soldiers”, this gives them a small health and damage boost with better armor, but it also allows them to continue to store EXP and share it with other troops.
At the top right corner of the screen on the main menu, there is a button that says “Exchange”, you can use it to turn your Elite Soldier EXP into Prestige, but it will cost you Gold to do so. Prestige is the same as EXP, but it is like a premium currency to cheat and force level up your characters. EXP is the free version of Prestige. Now of course you can earn Prestige for free from fighting and winning battles, but you earn it VERY slow.
If you scroll up to the very top of the article and look at the first picture, you will see that I currently have about 14,000 prestige, that essentially means that I have 14,000 EXP to level up ANY of my troops without having to train them in battle.
The top picture shows Rank 4 Wu archers that I haven’t started training yet, so if I wanted to, I could use that 14,000 Prestige to quickly upgrade and force level them to Tier 5, or save it up and use that EXP to force level my Tier 5 troops up to Tier 6.
Doing it that way can be pretty expensive, but if you don’t mind paying out money you can use the Play Vs AI mode to train up Tier 1 — 4 Elite soldiers and store a massive amount of EXP, then convert that EXP into prestige to rank up your T5+ soldiers in record time.
Have more advice to give players? Have a few questions of your own? Comment below!
