Land of Empires: Immortal Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Strengthen Your Army and Defeat the Demons

The hordes of the living dead came crashing down. Wave after wave we fought, but where we were limited, they were endless. Eventually, darkness came, and it seemed that it was poised to blanket the land forever more.

Until now.

Land of Empires: Immortal is an empire building game like Evony: The King’s Return or West Game with a slight touch of hero collector battles (such as those found in Magnum Quest). Players are tasked with not only surviving, but thriving in the ruins of a great civilization, but also rising up and exerting control over the world.

This is easier said than done. There’s a lot of things to cover, from reconstruction and sector liberation to resource management and army development. This beginner’s guide will hopefully clarify some of the more complex points of empire-building, and maybe by the end, you’ll have a clearer idea of what options are available to you and what steps you can take to make your empire stronger.

So let’s get started with this Land of Empires: Immortal beginner’s guide, as we show you how to strengthen your army, reclaim lost lands and defeat your enemies during your journey!

Maximize Your Shield

Like most games of its genre, Land of Empires features massive, open-world PVP. Lesser empires will crumble to dust, forgotten as they’ve failed the test of time – and as a new player, you’re a prime target for stronger veterans!

However, there are two things you need to consider before worrying about being attacked. First off, you need to upgrade your city via the Soul Revival ceremony before you can explore, attack, and be attacked (probably) – this happens at around City Hall level 4. Secondly, not only do you start with a default beginner’s shield (which I believe lasts around 6 days) but you’ll also have access to one 8 hour shield upon unlocking the world map. Use your first week to set up your infrastructure and, if possible, gain access to new shields so that you’ll be ready for when your bubble cracks.

As Land of Empires is a PVP-heavy game, always be sure to have your shields up if you don’t want to get hit. While raid rules may differ from server to server, it’s always best to err on the side of caution.

Empire Infrastructure

Infrastructure is foundation of any empire, both literallly and figuratively. Without buildings to centralize your government, to hold your store of resources, or to house and train warriors, how can you expect to claim any piece of land for yourself?

Claiming New Blocks

Unlike most other game of the same genre, Land of Empires doesn’t start you with a gigantic, empty space to build on. Instead, you’ll need to liberate blocks of the ruined city to expand your reach.

It’s much easier to think of unclaimed ruins in terms of grids and blocks. Each block can only be reclaimed once you’ve completely cleared it out of monsters and fixed the walls in the area – hey, people need to be able to sleep at night.

By clearing out new blocks, you’ll be able to expand your settlement. More importantly, you’ll gain access to new, powerful buildings by repairing ruined structures in liberated blocks.

Building New Buildings

Once you’ve gotten enough free space, you can start putting up your own buildings. To do so, tap the hammer icon on the lower left of the screen.

Buildings are divided by type. There are economic buildings – buildings that passively generate resources for you to harvest with a single tap. There are also civic buildings, which usually deal with the welfare of your people with structures like houses, safe houses, and hospitals. Finally, there’s the decorative buildings tab, where you can build roads, streetlights, and other aesthetically pleasing doodads.

Finally, there are unique, important buildings that you can’t build copies of. These include your city hall, academy, barracks, Hall of Heroes, watch tower, and others. These buildings aren’t selected from the menu; rather, you’ll have to find their ruins in the city and reconstruct them.

Fine Touches

If you deplore the base building placement (I know I do), you’ll be happy to know that you can move buildings by tap holding on them. The controls for this are a little finicky as there’s no confirmation button and the building will instantly plop down where you release it, but you’ll get used to it after a little practice.

Do note that once you undergo Soul Revival, your city will automatically be rearranged. Don’t stress too much about the initial far placement of the buildings you reclaim from blocks.

Resources and Resource Generation

Every empire needs raw materials. Forced labor and monster invasions or not, your people can’t make something from nothing. To get anything done in Land of Empires, you’ll need to spend some of the game’s resources, namely food, wood, stone, and ore.

There are multiple ways to earn resources. First off, you can recycle rubble from your initial city block, as well as from any reclaimed blocks. To do this, just tap on the rubble on the city screen, then tap the shovel icon. This will not only give you some resources, but also free up space for construction.

Building Upgrades

As you put up new structures, keep in mind that they can almost always be upgraded. Upgraded buildings increase their performance on all fronts – improving the amount of power they give you, or increasing their resource output, for example. Other buildings, like the academy, require a certain level before higher-level technologies are unlocked.

Keep in mind that for this type of game, the first few upgrade levels are free, more often than not. That’s exactly the case here in Land of Empires, so as soon as you plop down a new resource generator, smash that free upgrade button until you’re forced to pony up cash.

Prosperity in a Nutshell

While there are only so many buildings you can build for resources, there’s a lot of other ways your empire can prosper.

Better Living through Science

The academy is the heart of your empire’s research, and it’s here that your greatest minds come together to discuss new and better ways to do virtually everything.

There are three research trees in Land of Empires, namely Development, War, and Economy. Each of these provides new passive bonuses in a respective field – civics and construction for Development, combat for War, and economic output and speed for Economy. As a rule of thumb, you’ll always want to be researching something as later on, research can take days. It’s best to cultivate the habit while you’re still new.

Leader Talents

You, as a leader, also have a hand in the development of your city. By tapping on your profile picture in the upper right and selecting talents, you can spend some of your hard-earned skill points on additional passive bonuses for your empire. Take note that you have two talent trees to pick from. This is easily missed as they’re both on the left side of the screen. Leader talents are divided into either the War or Economy trees.

While you can level up your leader through the course of just playing the game, it’s far faster and more effective to use Lord Exp badges to jump levels.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

As nice as it would be to simply settle down and build a city, you can’t – at least not while there are hordes of ravenous dead and hostile lords who are looking to assimilate your empire into their own. If you want peace, prepare for war!

Combat Scenarios

In general, there are three PVE combat scenarios you can find yourself in in Land of Empires. These are field battles, dungeons, and stealth missions. Each of these combat scenarios is highlighted by a red arrow and an icon showing what kind of encounter that battle is going to be.

Field battles are the largest kind of battle in Land of Empires. This is where you’ll deploy heroes to serve as generals, as well as assign units to take to the field.

In a field battle, you can assign up to three heroes as generals, and each one of them will be commanding units of their own type. You can also choose to forgo assigning a general to any of your three divisions, but this also means you won’t get any bonuses nor a strong unit to lead the charge.

Battle plays out automatically, with infantry marching forward, cavalry rushing in and out, and archers pelting foes from the back line. Combat ends once one side has run out of units – you can see how many fighting men are left standing on the left and right sides of the screen.

Dungeons are smaller areas that only your heroes can explore. During dungeons, your heroes will venture forth, clearing waves of enemies until they either complete the dungeon or suffer a full party wipe.

Stealth missions are denoted by an eye icon. These quests just barely qualify as combat – the only thing that really allows it a place here is that it doesn’t fit anywhere else. These are more akin to stealth puzzles where you need to complete objectives without alerting your enemies.

During stealth missions, you’ll need to move carefully to avoid being seen. Guards often patrol in set routes or stay at static locations, denying you access and restricting your movement. If they spot you, they’ll become alerted after a very short amount of time, which will cause the mission to fail!

To help you in your task, you can assassinate guards as long as you’re adjacent to them but out of their line of sight. You can also toggle cones of vision for the guards, to help you with your movement. Finally, you can make use of the environment, such as using tall grass to hide in or staying behind obstacles that guards can’t see behind.

Do note that assassinating the guards is not the objective – as long as you can reach your goal, the mission will count as complete. These are the laziest guards ever.

Unit Types

There are three different unit types in Land of Empires. These three are infantry, archers, and cavalry. Infantry beats cavalry, archers beat infantry, and cavalry beats archers.

Infantry are your foot soldiers, and these units are depicted by a red shield banner. These brave fighters are slow, but well-armored. Because of their tight formations, they’re good against cavalry, but suffer from ranged attacks.

Cavalry represent your mounted forces and fly a blue horse banner. They are swift and deadly, and excel at wreaking havoc in the enemy’s ranged ranks. However, they don’t fare well against tightly-packed infantry lines.

Archers take to the field and provide powerful ranged support to their allies, and they rally under the green bow banner. Their marksmanship and mastery of their bows allow them to pelt enemies from far away, and are especially effective against jam-packed infantry, but render them ineffective against fast-moving cavalry.

Hero Training

Heroes are your greatest assets on the battlefield. Whether it’s leading your troops in combat, or exploring dark dungeons and forgotten tombs on their own, heroes can make a huge difference. Heroes aren’t almighty though – you will need to carefully cultivate and strengthen your heroes so they’ll continue to shine as your empire grows.

There are several ways to strengthen your heroes. The first and easiest way is to raise their levels by cramming experience into them. Each new level gives a hero a slight boost in stats; however, this is capped by the level of your Hall of Heroes. While the game will warn you if a hero can no longer grow from levels due to an unupgraded hall, it’s good practice to always upgrade the Hall of Heroes whenever you can.

Heroes can also wield equipment that you find in your journey. Each piece of equipment doesn’t just affect the hero it’s on, but also has an effect on soldiers that that hero commands.

Finally, a hero’s stats can be raised by increasing their star rank. This is done by consuming hero shards of that hero, as well as badges of that hero’s rarity. There are three tiers of rarity – blue commons, purple uncommons, and orange rares. These also correspond to how hard it is to find shards and badges of that color, so if you’re looking to increase the rank of a legendary hero, buckle up.

Upgrading a hero’s star rank not only gives them better stats, but it also unlocks different skills for them to use in dungeon expeditions. These new skills might just be the edge you need to defeat particularly difficult enemy formations, so always be sure to rank up your heroes whenever you can. 

Heroes for Hire

Land of Empire isn’t a hero collector game, so don’t expect fireworks and fanfare when you get a new hero. The process of getting new heroes is admittedly a bit more tedious, but also more reliable.

First off, you don’t “get” a hero. What you get a shards of a hero – jigsaw puzzle pieces that give you that hero, once you have enough of them. You can find quite a lot of hero shards via normal play, particularly via the Road of Heroes dungeon that you can access by tapping the Hall of Heroes.

By playing the game normally, you’ll gain access to El Cid, Nubia, and Oscar, who are reliable enough to clear the first couple floors of the Road of Heroes by themselves. By doing so, they’ll not only find shards for themselves (so they can clear better) but also bring back some Fate Stones, which are needed to recruit more heroes.

With these stones in hand, make your way back to the Hall of Heroes, then tap the Recruit Hero button. In this screen, you’ll find two different methods of recruitment – epic (better odds) and advanced (lower odds but more available). Do take note that you also get some free rolls per day (one epic, three advanced) so be sure to roll those dice whenever you log in.

To redeem a hero, you’ll need 10 of that hero’s shards. Once you have those, you can tap the Hero button at the lower right side of the screen, then unlock heroes from there.

Remember that this is a gacha system. More often than not, you’ll walk away with resource bundles and speed-ups.

The Overworld

Once you’ve gotten far enough in the city reclamation phase, the overworld will open up to you, and it’s here that most of the action happens in Land of Empires.

Resource Nodes

Resource nodes are a great way to augment your empire’s farms, lumber mills, and mines. By deploying armies to resource nodes, you can gather resources and bring them back to your capital for a large boost. Be wary though – these nodes are neutral territory, and you might find yourself under attack by another player who wants those resources!

Roaming Monsters and Bosses

The overworld also contains wandering monsters, beasties, and brigands that you can pick fights with. While you can opt out of fighting them, I suggest you kick them over anyway as they can drop hero experience books and resource bundles.

Bosses are even more powerful enemies, and will often require entire armies to defeat them. They’re well worth the herculean effort to take them down as they drop hero shards, Gems, and better resource bundles. Bosses should ideally be taken down via an alliance rally, so try and join a good alliance if you want in on these brawls.

Expeditions

You can send your heroes on expeditions in the ruins of the holy city.

By digging throug the rubble and clearing out ancient evils nesting among the shadows, your heroes can take home riches and equipment to further your quest. However, expeditions require expedition points to function.

To help your heroes stay alive longer, you can make use of legacies, powerful buffs that apply throughout an expedition. These legacies can spell the difference between victory and defeat, so be sure to touch those floating crystals whenever you see them.

Other Players

The overworld is also where player interactions are usually carried out – in the form of skirmishes and battles. On the overworld, you’ll be able to scout (gather intel on) and attack other player-owned cities. You’ll also be able to see some troop movement, and even teleport around the map with the appropriate items.

It’s proper etiquette in these types of games to check your server’s policy on attacking. In my experience, most games of this kind usually have preset non-aggression hours, where any offensive action by another player is promptly punished by the ruling alliance. If in doubt – ask away.

Find An Alliance

If you’re a long-time player of mobile strategy games, you’ll probably already have joined an alliance by this point. Alliances are player guilds, and joining a good, steady alliance provides you not only with additional protection (other people will be less likely to pick fights as that can start an alliance war) but also additional economic benefits, such as rallies, raids, and the technology tree.

 Alliance Quests

As long as you’re in an alliance, you contribute towards daily alliance quests. These represent large goals that would be tooth-pullingly hard, if not downright impossible for one player to complete on their own. The best part about these quests is that they’re all stuff you’d normally be doing – such as gathering resources and doing intel quests.

Whenever these quests are completed, all alliance members can pop in and get a reward. These quests give out resources, but more importantly, they give your alliance experience and pay you in points that can be spent at the alliance shop.

Alliance Wars

It can be tricky to take down those massive monsters or other players on the map by yourself. By rallying your allies in an alliance war, you can vastly increase your chance of victory – and everyone who participates in a successful rally gets a piece of the pie, as well as more alliance experience and points.

Alliance Technology

The alliance technology tree is where you and your allies can put your heads together and think. By donating to a research project, each alliance member adds progress to that skill, and once the bar is filled up, research can commence – and upon completion, all alliance members receive that bonus. However, do note that only a clan’s leader and high-ranking members can actually initiate research.

Donating to alliance technology is also one of the easiest ways to earn contribution (and brownie points) for your alliance – all it takes is some of the game’s 4 base resources.

Alliance Gifts

Alliance gifts are freebies that are distributed to everyone in alliance when something big happens. While that “something big” is usually taking down a boss, you can also get bonus gifts if people in your alliance shell out real money for anything in game. While you don’t have to participate in rallies to redeem rewards, do try to pitch in and help whenever you can, yeah?

Alliance Territory

Until your alliance can build a headquarters and claim a piece of the world map, you’ll remain small fry in Land of Empires. Once placed, a headquarters exerts control over an area, marking it as belonging to an alliance and warning other players to back off. In addition to this, flags can be planted to annex more sectors of the map, as well as to take control of resource nodes, which will automatically produce resources for the alliance controlling them.

As you may have guessed, only the alliance leader and high-ranking officers can order construction.

Domination

Occasionally, landmarks like the EVIL depths will spawn on the world map. While they may look intimidating, great riches await alliances who can successfully conquer these fortresses and establish territory around them.

Be sure to coordinate well with your alliance if ever you decide to tackle these challenges!

Alliance Aid

Perhaps the most mundane but most used feature of an alliance is alliance aid. Any time you embark on a project, such as building or upgrading structures, training new units, healing your wounded, or training units, you’ll have the option to request your allies for aid. Every time an alliance member helps you with that project, its timer gets boosted by a small amount. Likewise, you can also assist allies with their own projects. And no, this doesn’t actually cost you anything and nets you alliance points. Win-win!

You can view which projects your allies are requesting help with by going to the alliance menu. However, in most cases, just tapping the handshake button on the right side of the screen will suffice – that just sends aid to everyone who’s asking for it.

The Alliance Shop

Last but not least is the alliance shop where you can spend those alliance points you’ve been getting from helping your allies. You have been helping your allies, right?

The alliance shop stocks a lot of good stuff that’s hard to get a hold of. In addition to getting speed ups, hero shards, buffs, teleporters, and much more, you can also browse the shop’s weekly section, where you can get items like shields and scouting prevention.

Free Stuff, Where Art Thou?

To build a strong empire, you’ll need to leverage every advantage you have – and one of those advantages is getting free stuff.

New Player Login

What better way to entice new players to stay in a game than a cartload of free stuff for the first seven days?

The initial seven day rewards can be accessed by tapping the 7 Day Trials button at the top of the screen. In this menu, you’ll find a list of things to do, as well as the prizes for doing so. Not only does this give you a good amount of resources, but also serves as a great way to introduce the game’s various activities to you.

On top of the per-quest prizes, you’ll also earn bonus prizes by filling up the meter at the top of the screen. This will give you Mochizuki Chiyo shards which you can redeem for a new hero, as well as Valkyrie shards to make Valkyrie permanent (if your VIP level is at least 5). Finally, if you can fill the bar up all the way, you can also get a neat Valkyrie skin to deck out your new hero.

If you’re too lazy to do this, you also get new player rewards just for showing up. A screen will pop up whenever you log in, and you’ll just need to tap on the correct day to get your rewards. If you close this screen by accident, you can access it again by tapping the Welcome Ceremony button, near the 7 Day Trials button.

Daily Quests

Daily quests are virtually everywhere now, and in Land of Empires, completing your dailies not only nets you bundles of resources, but also gives you Gems. If you manage to completely fill the activity bar in a day, you also get 1 Epic Fate Stone for a chance at recruiting new, legendary heroes!

While the daily quests themselves are self-explanatory, you should be aware of the activity bar on top of the daily quest menu. As you fill it up, more chests will become available for you to claim – but you’ll have to manually tap on wiggling chests to open them and redeem your rewards.

You can also access the side quest menu from this panel. While these aren’t daily tasks, you’ll often find something to redeem here as this is essentially the achievements reward menu for Land of Empires.

Account Binding

If you’re in for the long haul, I highly suggest you bind your account as soon as possible. Not only will this keep your account safe, but it’ll also give you 200 Gems to spend on whatever you want.

One Stone at a Time

Land of Empires is a huge game, and it’s easy to get lost in its many complexities, nuances, and systems. You will mistakes, but you will also learn, and you will rise up stronger every time you’re beaten down.

With that, our Land of Empires beginner’s guide comes to an end, and I hope you picked up something to help you steer your empire towards a better future. If I missed anything, or if you have comments or suggestions of your own, make yourself heard in the comment area below!