Youzu has grown into an established provider of quality online games and while most of their releases fall within the RPG genre, they also venture into action, strategy, and card games. With Saint Seiya Awakening: Knights of the Zodiac and Light of Thel: Glory of Cepheus leading their 16-strong app portfolio, Youzu has captivated the hearts of millions of players worldwide and has maintained largely positive average review ratings for all of its apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
GOT: Winter is Coming M is Youzu’s latest offering for both Android and iOS platforms. As an official licensed game of the hit TV series, it can be expected that fans of the franchise will definitely revel seeing and playing as and against popular Games of Thrones characters. GOT: Winter is Coming M does not entirely bank on the fame of the game’s title alone as the game’s graphics, gameplay, and plethora of features and content should more than suffice to wow avid base-building strategy game enthusiasts.
GOT: Winter is Coming M takes place in a highly competitive multiplayer environment and while you can still play and enjoy it on your own, progression and survival requires teaming yourself up with other players.
There are certainly a lot of game mechanics and features that you need to familiarize yourself with as you dive into the world of GOT: Winter is Coming M. The initial session, which serves as a quick and simple tutorial, along with the user-friendly interface, makes it easy enough for even total newbies to grasp the basic concepts. There are a lot of seemingly complex sub-menus that may overwhelm players on the get-go, but following through where the tutorial leaves you can be a simple enough feat that any player can take on.
If you have stumbled upon a seemingly insurmountable challenge then check out our GOT: Winter is Coming M beginner’s guide, as it comes with loads of tips, cheats and strategies to help you dominate the Seven Kingdoms.
1. Let The Quests Serve As Your Guide
What makes the transition between the tutorial and your initial experience as a full time lord of your kingdom in GOT: Winter is Coming M a relatively easy one is actually because of the quest line that you can see at the upper left corner of the screen. There are actually a series of main and side quests to accomplish and the completion of each one comes with its own set of rewards. As the main quests offer the better rewards and also contribute more to your progress, these quests should be your top priority.
Beyond the instant resource gains you obtain from completing each quest, the experience that comes with it is valuable as you would want your level to shoot up as fast as possible. Given that some features are locked behind minimum level requirements and that the structure levels along with a lot of game aspects relative to power are tied up into your level as well, one important reason to push forward with quests is the experience you get out of every activity you engage in.
At some points in your city’s growth and development, you will naturally be faced with waiting times on construction, research, and training. In such cases, there are speed ups you can consume or simply move on to other tasks. When you tap on the Quest icon at the top left side of the screen, you may only see one main quest that you need to accomplish before moving on to the next one.
On the other hand, there are a wide variety of side quests you can accomplish for extra rewards. In some cases, it can happen that you have accomplished the succeeding main quest prior to the current one. Whenever that happens, the next quest will appear completed and all you need to do is tap on it to claim the rewards to see the next one.
2. Always Multitask
Managing your very own kingdom, especially with a wide variety of structures to construct and upgrade, as well as various commanders and troops to train can be a lot of hard work. In your quest for power and domination, however, a fast enough and steady progression calls for an efficient management of all the resources at your disposal.
As your kingdom continues to grow, more and more production machines need to function with little to no break as much as possible. While it does entail some effort that may initially seem overwhelming, the game’s design of the interface makes it a lot easier.
Below the quest icon at the left side of your screen, productivity is basically categorized into 4 groups: construction, training, occupation, and rallies. While the first two are typically your focus for the most part, it is important to keep tabs on the latter ones as well. Maximum efficiency may dictate continuous efforts on all sides but some are still rather delimiting especially on the early part of your kingdom’s development.
Construction in most base-building strategy games typically involves actually building structures and continuously upgrading them. In GOT: Winter is Coming M, however, this group also includes research, which is divided into research within the Maester’s Tower and the Military Council. The former relates to the productivity of the structures within your kingdom while the latter involves boosting your army’s strength and efficiency.
Considering the dual availability of queues for actual construction, it is best to strategize with one dedicated for longer completion times while sparing the second one for smaller structures that can finish upgrades in a few minutes.
As the buildings responsible for training different types of troops increase in level, stronger units become available and the number of units that can be trained at a time also increases. Note that while training more and stronger units take longer to complete, the level and number of military tents you constructed within your kingdom can increase training count and speed of training. For the most part, training of troops across all types should be done so for efficiency’s sake, taking note of training completion times is important.
GOT: Winter is Coming M holds a separate activity tab for your city or village occupations. While it may indicate that you have not occupied a village yet and that you seem able to, note that this feature is either best for when you are much stronger or at least be able to do so with your guildmates. Even the lowest villages in the map exhibits tremendous power that will be difficult to win against on your own. So before you make an attempt, take note of possible battle outcomes before charging in.
The last activity to keep an eye on relates to your troops, which is composed of up to 4 commanders, depending on your nobility grade, and various troops you train within the structures. As each of these groups can be deployed for a variety of tasks outside of your kingdom, it will be necessary to have each of them be as active as possible to help with earning more resources or extinguishing rebels.
3. Join A House And Stay Active
Guilds, clans, alliances, factions, or “Houses” in the case of GOT: Winter is Coming M is an integral part of the game much like the other player groups are in other base-building strategy games. While being a member of one can bring tremendous boosts to your growth in MMORPGs or other genres with the feature, survival simply is not possible without aligning yourself with other players through these systems.
Given that GOT: Winter is Coming M, like any other game within the genre, exhibits a highly competitive environment, survival relates more to all other players serving as threats than NPCs around your kingdom.
You will be able to join up a house in GOT: Winter is Coming M early on and one would even be presented to you without any effort at all. Later on, you can freely shift to another one if your current house lacks the level of activity or coordination that matches your preferences. In any case, not only does belonging to a house boost your chances of surviving the land, but having like-minded people to work with confers certain tangible benefits you can regularly enjoy.
For starters, one of the most noticeable advantages that come with your house membership is the construction speed boost that can be obtained by helping allies. Whenever you start constructing or upgrading an establishment, do research and so, a help request is sent to all other members of your house and if they aid you, the countdown timer will be reduced. In return, be sure to aid fellow house members when you see the help request icon pop up at the right side of your screen, just beside the claimable chest icon.
Whenever a fellow house member sends out an army for an expedition and claim victory, all other house members, including yourself, earns some rewards. These are decent amounts of resources you can obtain for free even if the house gift level is at its base level. The more active your house is, the more experience points it earns, as can be seen at the lower left side of the House Gift Window. Levelling it up will be beneficial to everyone, so be sure to actively contribute to develop you house.
There are various details you should look into within the house feature of GOT: Winter is Coming M. Perhaps one of the information you should prioritize is the location of the house stronghold as your allies will typically relocate close to it to strengthen each member’s offensive and defensive strength. For every house member’s sake, be sure to garrison some troops within the stronghold as soon as you can.
It can be a challenge to organize your troops early on but on top of leaving some commanders and troops within your kingdom and setting up another for expeditions, part of your responsibility as a house member is to provide support to the house itself, and that means sparing some manpower to your cause as well.
4. Keep Your Commanders At Peak Performance
GOT: Winter is Coming M is far from complete without an array of the popular characters from the series that fans would want on their side of the conflicts. While the tutorial provides for some free commanders to join you early on, you will keep coming back to the Observatorium to summon more.
There are 3 gacha machines within the Observatorium. Although the Holy Propechy Banner exhibits the best drops, Holy Astrolabe Fragments are hard to come by. For the most part, the Astrological Prophecy and Skill Study will be the ones you frequently summon from, on top of the 3 free attempts you have for each one daily. There are no mentions whatsoever of guaranteed hero or skill pulls from either but based on experience, always going for 10x pulls has been generous enough for us.
You can access and empower your collection of commanders via its appropriate icon at the bottom of the screen. The commanders are categorized mainly by their rarity grade as indicated by the color of the portraits. Rarity will determine the initial stats and passive skills and will naturally be sought after because of the initial advantage.
Some upgrade methods, however, make it difficult for higher grade commanders to progress and you will commonly experience having the lower-grade ones experience power boosts ahead of them.
The most basic empowerment method for commanders is the upgrade, which is done by tapping on the “+” button at the right side of their page. This is basically levelling them up and comes with a cap based on your nobility but will have a maximum of 30. Levelling commanders up consume food items that you will abundantly obtain from quest completions and various other sources.
In this sense, you will have more than enough for your current needs early on and will only need to start saving past level 10 of each commander given you have unlocked a lot of them.
As we mentioned earlier, lower grade commanders will initially raise more power than higher rarity ones and this is because of the advancement option. Each commander you acquire starts at 0 stars and you can advance them to the next star grade using extra commander shards.
As lower grade commanders are more easily acquired, chances are that you will earn more of their shards faster. Although each star grade requires more shards than the previous grade, you will easily earn 10 commander shards for some of them and advance the commanders in your roster.
Each commander comes with a skill unique to them. After advancing a star grade, you can basically customize each commander by lodging a skill on them. Each skill can also be levelled up using skill EXP stones. Be sure to take note of what each upgrade will do before expending upgrade materials for them. Except for the starting skill that is inherent to each commander, all other skills that you can equip form them can easily be unequipped and replaced.
Each hero can also be equipped with 4 different gears that you can easily craft and upgrade. The materials needed to craft and upgrade gears can be obtained from rebel camps. Note that different commanders require different types of gears so if you are missing some crafting items, be sure to check which type of rebels you can obtain them from.
5. Put The Right People In The Right Places
Each Commander comes with 2 or 3 passive skills that can benefit you not just in combat. You can tap on the passive skills at the upper right side of the commander’s page to check what each one does. You will also be notified if certain structures within your kingdom do not have commanders to oversee production or research and so on. To boost the performance of your various structures, be sure to deploy commanders on each one of them.
Randomly deploying commanders to each building or even subscribing to the auto feature may not suffice. It is important to consider the passive boosts that each commander has relative to the building they are assigned to. As you unlock more commanders to join your growing army, make it a habit to check their passive skills and deploy them to the appropriate buildings as soon as you can.
Note that commanders deployed in the buildings do not count against the designated leaders of your troops assigned ton expeditions outside your kingdom.
Relative to this, there is a separate set of commanders you need to deploy on your wall defenses. You will assign someone to oversee production, but those set as defenders count against the deployable commanders outside of the kingdom.
Like troops, you can also assign units to these commanders to help defend the wall and protect against potential invaders. If you still have your Truce or Peace Shield Active for quite some time, you may not need to worry about defending the wall as much.
Each commander in the game offers a passive boost to a specific type of unit and while you will initially mix in various units along with a commander, it is best to set it up so that all units will benefit from the commander’s buff. Unit types also follow the “rock-paper-scissors” in providing an advantage for units going against specific units.
Infantry has an advantage over Spearmen, Spearmen has an advantage over Cavalry, and Cavalry has an advantage against Infantry. Archers have no advantage or disadvantage against any other unit types. Unit types enjoying the advantage deal 50% more damage and will also receive 25% less damage from the disadvantaged unit types.
There is also a bond feature in GOT: Winter is Coming M that makes some commanders more compatible with other commanders. As you view each one at the Commander window, be sure to check the bond icons underneath their model. The ones that are highlighted are available within your roster so whenever you form teams or setup troops, be sure to consider lumping together commanders who have bonds as they provide extra buffs during expeditions in the world map.
6. Consistently Deploy Troops Outside Your Kingdom
One of the productivity measures we did not delve into earlier in this guide revolves around troops you send out for expeditions. Note that while you will only begin your conquest with a set of troops, progressing further through your castle’s level will unlock more deployable troops while reaching a higher level of nobility increases the number of commanders you can assign to each set of troops.
Chances are that you will be able to deploy more groups outside the city but will take a lot of time and effort to fill up your troop capacity to the fullest. Always remember to update your troop configuration whenever you acquire stronger commanders or train more soldiers. You can freely edit each group or set of troops via the “Assemble” icon at the lower side of your screen.
By looking at the world map, which you can quickly do by tapping on its icon on lower left side of the screen within your kingdom, you will notice a whole lot of other sites on top of your kingdom and other players’ kingdoms. You can freely explore the map by tapping and holding on the screen but for starters, be sure to utilize the search button for certain structures and items you may need to explore or battle through as part of the quests.
Chances are that as you keep progressing your kingdom as far as construction, upgrades, training, and research are concerned, is that you may forget about the outside world and its exploitable resources you can gather. Every expedition will cost endurance, but this will replenish over time and you will have a lot more than what is needed by some quests.
Although troops may get injured as you engage in battle, they can quickly recover from hospitals, so at the cost of mere endurance, you can obtain more resources than what your kingdom can produce and also obtain materials to equip your commanders and make them stronger.
Rebel camps will be the main target of expeditions especially relative to quests. Note that rebels also have different levels that signify their military power. Higher level rebel camps offer better rewards but the disparity of strength between levels can be surprising. In any case, you can identify the possible outcome of the skirmish as you choose which troops to send forth.
A note prior to actual deployment can be seen at the bottom of the troop page if you are on equal footing, will likely claim victory, or will likely fail. Be sure to pay attention to it before actually deploying your troops and also consider checking the troop configurations as you may still have extra idle units waiting to join your team.
Exile Fortresses are a lot tougher to engage compared to bandit camps but can earn you higher grade crafting materials as well as commander shards. It can be expected for any single player to have difficulty challenging these fortresses on their own and, as such, you should only attempt to rally against one with the help of fellow house members. You can set the duration of waiting time to give everyone else some time to prepare.
There are also numerous gathering sites scattered across the map for you to earn more resources from. While your kingdom continues to provide your needs for grains, wood, stone, or iron, at some point you will need more resources than what your kingdom can provide. It is best to start gathering expeditions early on and ensure that you have more than enough supply of each resource.
Keep in mind that resources are not exclusively important for your personal use as you can also send aid to fellow house members through sending provisions. Likewise, once you have unlocked the merchant ship, you can engage in trades that will earn you profits by exchanging current resources for other types as well as bartering them for other valuable items.
7. Accomplish Daily Activity Objectives
GOT: Winter is Coming M provides for tons of immediate rewards you can earn from practically every bit of activity you engage in. On top of the main and side quests, more rewards are still in store for you via the other quests. To see daily objectives you can accomplish in addition to the usual quests, you can click on the “More Quests” option above the list of main and side quests. Once you click on it, three sets of quest can be seen on the window, with the first one outlining main and side quests.
The next set lists daily activity objectives that involve all the usual set of activities you should engage in as you play the game. It should be noted that while you are expected to stay as active as possible whenever you are online and managing your kingdom, aligning your activities to these daily missions should serve you better.
On top of the instant rewards to claim from accomplishing each feat, activity points you earn are also used to redeem additional rewards from the top of the screen.
The third group of quests are house quests that you can only partake in if you align yourself with a house. These quests work more like idle quests where you deploy an available commander to take on the task. There are various valuable rewards to earn from these quests and may also include commander shards. You only get 3 of these quests daily and takes very little effort to initiate so be sure to take these quests on as soon as you log in for the day.
8. Take Advantage Of Time-Limited Events
Beyond quests and daily activity objectives, GOT: Winter is Coming M provides even more incentives through the various events that take place in the game. Like quests, though, the amount of rewards you can claim are dependent on how active you are. For the most part, the objectives set within these events also revolve around the general activities you should spend time on and progress in as you follow your path towards dominance.
To check on the availability of events as well as your progress in the each objective provided, simply click on the banners at the top right corner of the screen.
One convenient aspect of the events in GOT: Winter is Coming M is the availability of an event calendar showcased at the first tab of the activity center. As there are numerous events taking place consecutively, especially at the time of this writing, be sure to check on each available tab.
While there are notification icons on events where a reward is ready for you to claim, it is best to browse through each one and let it serve as a guide for you to know which aspects of the game to focus on. With time constraints relative to the completion of its objectives, you can expect each reward to be tremendously helpful to you.
9. Prepare Well Before Taking The Offensive
All the constructions, building upgrades, training of units, and researches you conduct continuously to develop your kingdom in GOT: Winter is Coming M boils down to getting ready for war. It is essentially a continuous process as you should assume that everyone around you becomes stronger as time passes. Before you initiate an attack or even dare to scout another player’s camp, there are some extra steps to take as being extra careful is important in every base-building strategy game.
We mentioned earlier that the “Truce” effect or peace shield that protects your kingdom from attacks last for 48 hours after you start playing or if you reach castle level 7, whichever comes first. If you scout or attack an enemy camp, however, your cowl of protection will also dissipate, leaving your city vulnerable to attacks. With this in mind, what you have to consider is retaliation from the lord you attacked or his or her fellow house members.
You should keep in mind that it is possible for an enemy base to have a lower level than yours but still possess more defensive capabilities. As such, it is best to make it a habit of scouting before launching an actual attack to see more details about your targeted enemy camp.
This will show you more details such as the resources available to plunder as well as the military power of the garrisoned troops. With the “rock-paper-scissors” method of conferring advantages to specific unit types, you can make adjustments to your army before sending them in for the kill.
If a house stronghold has finished construction or close to completion, you will notice fellow house members surrounding the stronghold. That, in itself, is a clear sign of when it is a good idea to use your teleportation scrolls to relocate to where your allies are. You may have a couple of items that can restore your Truce protection but if you are up for engaging in battles against other players, then you will have to let your guard down as well and rely on your house allies for both offensive and defensive support.
Given as well that you will not be around 24/7, your house allies can serve as next door neighbors to look after your home whenever you are away as enemies attempt to launch an attack against you.
We touched on the wall defense early on but it is important to reiterate the importance of setting up a garrison to protect your kingdom. At this point, it is best to deploy commanders at your wall as well as troops that are as strong as your assault expedition team. Note as well that you need to protect your resources from chances of it being plundered in case you lose to an attack. As such, ensure that your warehouse is at a high enough level to be able to store most, if not all, your resources.
You can certainly spend as much time tending to your kingdom in GOT: Winter is Coming M and while progress can be attained idly as some waiting times take several hours to complete, your overall progression in the game can be heavily influenced by how much time you spend on it. For one, there are chest rewards at the bottom right of the screen that you can collect from time to time.
Another advantage for people who spend more time online is the collection of resources from the farmland, quarry, lumberyard, and the mine. If you really are raring to become one of the most dominant commanders in the seven kingdoms, then be ready for a lot of active gameplay.
GOT: Winter is Coming M certainly has a lot more content in store that we have yet to delve into but for now, this is where our GOT: Winter is Coming M beginner’s guide ends. We certainly hope that you picked up on the numerous tips and strategies we shared and that you enjoyed reading every bit of it.
If you have done some explorations of your own and dug up some other tips or secrets in the game we have not yet uncovered, we would appreciate hearing about them from you. Do share your own tips and tricks as well as your views about the game in our comment section!