Art of Conquest Ultimate Guide: 17 Tips, Cheats & Tricks to Dominate Your Competition

Art of Conquest is one of the newer strategy games to arrive for iOS and Android devices, and if you’re not a fan of easily mastering battle mechanics to defeat AI-controlled enemies, this game is probably for you. It is, like many games in the RPG genre these days, an MMORPG, and the main selling point of the game, quite obviously, would be the real-time battles against human players, may they be your friends, or random players from around the world. You can summon dozens of mythical heroes, build your army from a choice of five races, and command hundreds of troops as everything plays out in front of you, once again, in real-time. And just as you can expect from an MMO title, there’s a lot of base management involved here, as well as raiding of (human-controlled) enemy bases.

That’s pretty much it for the game’s overview, and that should give you a basic idea of what to look forward to. But what about actually succeeding in this game and vanquishing the enemy better than most other players can? We hope to cover as much ground as possible, as we now bring you a complete Art of Conquest ultimate guide and talk you through every important aspect of this new MMORPG title. And when we say every important aspect, we mean it.

1. Which Hero Should You Start With?

When playing Art of Conquest for the first time, you will be asked to choose from one of three “stock” heroes — Avalon, Avril, or Rufio. As you may surmise, each of these three starters have their specific strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important that you choose the right one, even if the other two may likely become available to unlock at a later point in the game. It will all depend on your desired play style, but let us first introduce you to the stock heroes so you know what to expect.

Avalon is dubbed as the “Last Hope of Silverwing,” and his abilities are designed to support archers. He has a “Focus Fire” skill that works well against bosses, but more importantly, he has the “Natural Leader” ability, which lets you place extra units on the battlefield; this is always helpful for the newbies out there! Likewise, Avalon could increase the Supply Cap (aka your troop capacity) for Bronze, Silver, and Gold units alike. The Capture Resources ability is also good for newbies, as it allows you to regain bonus resources after a battle. As Power and Stamina may be scarce early on, this could be helpful if you’re a newcomer. All in all, he’s a support hero, but a rather useful one across the board.

Avril, aka the “Ice Mage,” specializes in DPS (damage per second) and crowd control. If you’re up against an enemy with higher power, she’s just the hero you want as your starter. But there’s a catch to choosing Avril as your starter, as her abilities would take up a lot of Mana. As for her best abilities, Blizzard works by freezing enemy troops, while Ice Wall could prevent enemies from crossing over to your side of the battlefield, as it divides the field into two. Use Avril if the opposing player has a considerably stronger army than yours.

Lastly, Rufio is billed as the “Golden Stallion,” and if you’ve got him completely leveled up, he could do up to three times more damage than normal. He’s an AOE (Area of Effect) type of hero, with skills such as Chopping Blade that help him fit this billing. Use this skill in relation to your Heroic Leap and you can deal out a ton of AOE damage to enemy troops with weak defensive stats. Abilities like Resilience establish him as a tank-type character (albeit one who does substantially more damage than the average tank), and with that in mind, Heroic Leap can be used once the enemy back line is safely within your range. That’s going to cost a lot of Ability Points, but if you’re confident in your skills early on, there’s no stopping you using him as your initial hero.

2. When To Use Each Of The Starters

Basically, you can consider Avalon to be an all-rounder who can be dispatched at any stage of the game, even boss fights. (Especially during boss fights, might we add!) As we told you Avril is best as a crowd-control hero, you can polish off some tough enemy armies early on when using her. Rufio, on the other hand, is best as an end-game hero, because of his DPS and tank abilities.

3. Pay Attention To The Tutorial Segment

Obviously, you won’t be starting everything cold, with no assistance whatsoever from the game; there is a tutorial segment in Art of Conquest. But to give you an idea of how things work, there are six kingdoms in the game, each with their borders, and these borders will move around throughout the course of the game. Cities will be taken over after battles, but you won’t see all that happening from the get-go, as you’ll only start out with a small portion of the map visible to you.

As for the tutorial, you will be given a few super-easy battles, where the game will guide you along and spoon-feed you everything you need to do. That’s in order for you to learn how the fighting mechanic works in here. Even if these tutorial battles are gimmes, you’ll still want to go through things strategically, and make use of the units you can allow to have beaten by the game’s AI. You will soon have the ability to build your own stronghold, where you can store your resources and train new troops.

4. Collecting Resources

It’s easy to find Gold, Mana, and Wood anywhere on the map, and you can collect any of these resources at any time, not to mention generate it through your castle. These are your basic resources, and are generally used to upgrade your buildings and learn more advanced tech. There are also some more advanced, rare resources, namely Blood Diamonds, Crystal, and Mithril. These cannot be produced in your Castle, but you can collect them nonetheless by looking at your map. You can also gain more of these rare resources by raiding other players’ castles, or by opening chests. Pick up rare resources the moment you see them appear on your map, and make sure you’re leveling up your warehouse; there’s always a chance your resources will be plundered by your opponents, and upgrading the warehouse allows you to protect more resources.

5. Other Tips For Rare Resources

When trying to earn rare resources, you may have to be patient, as it could take a while for you to search the map for such good stuff. But aside from plundering and opening chests, you can also intercept resource shipments. Lastly, you can also wait until the shop items refresh, and buy some rare items with your in-game currency. Be aware, though, that you’re in competition with many, many other players from around the world, and with that in mind, rare resources could sell out quickly once sold in the shop.

6. How To Upgrade Abilities Smartly

When it comes to upgrading your heroes’ abilities, there are certain things to remember. You’ve got Ability Points to spend, and you should first spend them toward the default ability. Next, move on to the support ability, then the control ability. If you have an ability that’s more for DPS purposes, you can set that aside as last in your priority list. Do not spend all your points on the active ability, because as you should likely know from playing RPGs, it’s usually the passive ones that matter more at the end of the day. Smart distribution of Ability Points is necessary if you want to get the most out of each of your heroes.

7. Remember The Elements (And Much More Than The Elements)

There is an elemental mechanic of sorts at work in Art of Conquest. To put it in simpler terms, units may be strong against another type of unit, but weak against a third type. Archers beat Spearmen, Spearmen beat Cavalry, Cavalry beats Infantry, Infantry beats Archers — sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But there’s more to that when talking about having an advantage in terms of units.

There are some units that have only a few soldiers with high DPS for each of them, and even units that have only one AOE-specific soldier in the ranks. Likewise, there are units that have a lot of soldiers, and it’s these units that are typically strong against DPS-centric units. DPS-centric units, on the other hand, are strong against AOE units, while AOE units beat the strength of numbers, simply because of what AOE stands for, which is Area of Effect.

There’s even more to keep in mind, though! You also have to remember to use low-level units up front, as these squishy units can easily be healed in the hospital; it’s always the front-liners who get killed or injured sooner than the others. And make sure that you’re collecting resources at all times, and to explore the map so you can gather more of these resources; the map, we should also add, widens its scope as you level up, as more of it becomes available to you.

8. Stick To One Type Of Tech

Let’s now move on to the type of units you can add to your army — as we mentioned in Art of Conquest’s overview, there are several options for you to choose from when building your army. But really, your best option would usually be to focus on one type of technology alone when it comes to your units. It comes down to that RPG mechanic where sticking to something tried and true is usually the best call. We would suggest human archers, Lich mages, and Dwarves for your tanks and riflemen — it all depends on your chosen race.

As a bonus tip, changing races won’t have any bearing on building levels, but you will lose all progress on unit technology. Make sure you’re decided when choosing races in this game, because it’s going to be very costly to change once you’re at a later point and presumably quite accomplished.

9. All About Honor

Art of Conquest allows you to upgrade your racial ability, and there’s only one resource that would do the trick in this area — Honor. You can also use it to build new buildings specific to your chosen race, and use it to change race. (Remember what we warned you about in the earlier tip, though!) Likewise, Honor can help you recruit new units to the fold. But apart from the warning in the above tip, remember that the cost of changing race will progressively go higher in line with your castle’s level, which is another reason to stick to the same race, and choose wisely.

How can you get more Honor? More often than not, you can get Honor by intercepting enemy resource shipments, and killing those AI-controlled wild creatures. You can also have your troops defend the city walls of your allies, which can also help you add to this form of currency.

10. When Should You Move Your Capital?

You have the option to move your capital from its original place to a new territory, and the benefits of doing this would include greatly increasing your resource income. Early on in the game, however, you won’t have much defense through your city walls, and that’s going to make you fair game for enemy raids, especially since you also won’t have much of a garrison to speak of. That means you should wait until your city walls are at a certain level before moving to a new location — we usually suggest waiting until they’re at level 4 or higher. It pays to wait anyway, as your headquarters can’t be attacked as long as it’s still in the kingdom’s capital.

When the time finally comes for you to move your capital, you should also be leveling up your warehouse, and as we explained earlier, this allows you to protect more of your resources. And as a bonus tip, there’s also a protection feature, where your HQ can be placed under a protective bell, preventing enemies from raiding and looting your resources for a solid eight hours. If you guessed it’s best to use this feature before heading to bed for the night, then you most certainly would be right.

11. Be Careful When Robbing Someone Else’s Resource Shipments

We mentioned it in passing above, but Art of Conquest does allow you to steal, or intercept resource shipments. This can be very risky, as there’s a good chance both sides in the battle will take a lot of damage. As such, be very, very careful before intercepting shipments, and be sure that you’re decided on doing this!

Conversely, you should prepare yourself as well for those times when the enemy may choose to intercept YOUR shipments. Whenever you’re heading to lumber mills and other resource points to gather stuff, there’s a chance that the enemy may want to intercept your transport wagons, and that would mean having some troops guarding your resources to ensure that they get back to your castle untouched.

12. This Is An MMO Game, So Make Use Of The Social Features

We probably do not need to go into detail with this tip, but we’ll do so in any case. Art of Conquest is an MMORPG with a deep social element, and that would require you to fully utilize the social features. That would mean working together with everyone in your kingdom, and forming strategic alliances that can help you take down other players in other cities. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if your castle is under attack, and if somebody else needs your assistance, then return the favor and step up to the task. Remember that you’re all part of a common Kingdom, and if you get more resources and work together as a team, you can only become stronger.

13. You Can Also Borrow Troops From Other Players In Your Kingdom

Aside from the teamwork aspect of being in the same kingdom/guild, you can also reap the same benefits you can expect to gain from such features in other RPGs. For example, you can borrow troops, who will become immediately available for you to use in battle. But these troops may be called back to their home castle at any time; make the most of them while you have them on loan, as you will never know when they’ll be getting called back!

14. When Can PvP Battles Take Place In Real-Time?

You may be wondering about this aspect of Art of Conquest — when exactly can you expect to engage a human opponent in PvP battle? It’s oftentimes as simple as running into someone else from another kingdom; you’ll then be given the choice of whether to fight them or not. As movement speed slows down during PvP battles, you’ve got the luxury of time to micro-manage your actions and make sure you’re doing the right things at the right time. PvP battles may also take place if an opposing player tries to steal your resources while at a resource point.

15. Don’t Have Too Many Low-Level Units At Any Time

Low-level units may be the ones you feed to the enemy by having them in the frontline, but you also wouldn’t want to have too many of them at any given time in the game. Again, they’re the best to sacrifice to enemy troops, but you can also heal them in the hospital without having to wait for too long. This is especially important in the early parts of the game, when you won’t have too many units, and not too much Gold, Wood, or Mana either; you can’t afford to lose too many troops in the battlefield! Always make sure you’re gathering resources from lumber mills, mines, and other resource points, and while there’s a cool down time, be aware of that cool down time so you can collect once again with little to no wasted time.

16. Arrange Your Troops Based On Their Range

When assembling your troops for battle, we did mention how important it is to have enough front liners as fodder for “sacrifice.” But you should also try to keep them around for as long as possible; DPS-centric troops do a lot of damage per second (obviously), but tend to be weak on defense or costly. Keep each unit’s range in mind when arranging your troops, as that could allow you to maximize your DPS. For a basic example, this would mean NOT placing the infantry at the back or the archers up front — that simply doesn’t make sense. And, as a bonus tip (this guide is sure rich in them), use your heroes’ abilities wisely, and not at random or in a “spamming” fashion. As the saying goes, there’s got to be a method to the madness!

17. How Does Rushing Units Work?

It is possible to rush the production of units, so as to give you a quick fix and boost your army’s numbers without having to wait for too long. Units that can be produced in under 20 seconds can be rushed without having to pay a cent of in-game currency; simply click on a unit, then click on Rush so that production is completed right away. But if you’re trying to mass-rush 12 units right away, it’s going to cost you; keep this in mind if you’re trying to rush multiple units at the same time!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our detailed guide for Art of Conquest. If you have anything to add, feel free to drop us a line in the comment section below!