Helpful resources

From the KnD forum, slightly edited.




Things I Wish I Knew When I Was A Noob
http://www.funzio.com/forum/showthread.php?56040-Things-I-Wish-I-Knew-When-I-Was-A-Noob-by-Radlonghammer



EARLY STAGE GOLD PRODUCTION (Important at L1-30)
Leveling quickly in K&D takes time and gold. Let's talk gold:

Many of us look back on the 75 gold from a Level 2 Fountain as laughable. Still, that 75 gold builds VERY quickly, and at early levels, provides the gold needed for the investments appropriate for the early stages of the game. The key here is volume, build as many of them as your gold and space allow. 8 L2 Fountains will collectively produce 600 gold every few minutes. As long as you're checking in on the game every few minutes, this is a great way to rack up gold early.

The flip side to this is that fountains stink at developing your gold stash when you're AWAY from the game. At the early levels, L1 guard towers are the way to go. Guard towers build gold more slowly than fountains, but they don't stop collecting until after 12 hours. If you're going to bed for the night, sell off those fountains and build guard towers in their place. When you're going to be checking the game every several minutes (just got off work or out of school and have some game playing time, etc), sell the towers and replace them with fountains. This will momentarily seem to set you back on gold, but you'll gain much more in the long run.

The moment you're racking up gold faster than you spend it is the time to start considering Taverns. Taverns build gold nearly as fast as fountains, and max out nearly as high as towers. A L1 tower takes 4 hours to build 1900 gold, and keeps you from having to take the time to tear down fountains to build towers, and is a great compromise in the early levels.

From here, it's time to start building training fields, and unlocking the more expensive castle expansions. Do this as early as you can without sacrificing your ability to craft and enhance your armors. If you have 80,000 gold, for example, you should probably go ahead and drop 50,000 on a training field, and leave 30,000 for armor-related expenses. That Training field will repay you more quickly than you think.

The importance of building the early stage (inexpensive) castle expansions can not be understated. Do this AS SOON as you can afford to. Don't wait to have a big pile of gold saved up, and NEVER leave an expansion slot empty if you can afford to fill it.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (Important at all levels)

Any time you're going to be away from the game for a chunk of hours (going to bed, headed to work, etc...) it's critical to quick leveling that you make sure the game is WORKING FOR YOU when you're away from it.

Here are some things you should always do before you put the game down for a significant chunk of time:

1) Use up ALL of your hit points: Whether you're farming materials, or trying to unlock the next stage, take this time to do some battling. If you die in the middle of a battle, just let the monsters heal (don't spend gems to continue) by simply X-ing out of the battle. When you come back to the game, the battle will still be active, and all of your knights will have healed, even if they were dead when you began the stage! This is a great way to clear tough bosses, gain experience points, and help the speed at which you level.

2) Put the construction crew to work: This is the time to get expansions and building with long crafting times going. You won't be tempted to spend gems on the speed-up process, and when you come back, your expansion or building will be ready, and you'll be a happy, quickly-leveling Knight

3) ABC Baby. Always be Crafting: Some armors take a long time to craft. Get these going before your head hits the pillow.

4) Put your Energy to good use: Use up any Arena Energy (for Arena Events) and any Epic Boss energy if appropriate. If you have at least 8 Epic energy, and can kill the boss with 3 of your knights and two friends, don't let that energy go to waste. Use it up so you can hit it again in the morning when you wake up to maxed Epic energy again!

5) Get the most out of your friends: You can hire 10 friends per day. If you've used less than 10, and your friend hiring abilities will reset while you're going to be away from the game, try to go ahead and use up any you have left. Once you've hired the first friend for the day, the other nine become a "use it or lose it" proposition for the next 24 hours. Try not to "lose it" too often. This is important to leveling quickly.

THE MIRACLE OF RESURRECTION (Important at all levels.)

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR LEVEL BAR!!! One of the cool little feature of K&D is the fact that leveling up restores all of your hit points to maximum level, even when you're in the middle of a stage! If you're not exploiting this, you're not leveling as fast as you could be.

You should always take note of how much experience clearing a level brings. For example, let's say you just cleared Cold Rock Crags at the Valor stage, and noticed that doing so rewarded you with about 1/8 of an inch of experience on the Level bar, But took almost everything you had in terms of hit points to do so, and didn't level you up in the process. If you have 3/16 of an inch to hit the next level, the right play might be farming lower level stages until you KNOW FOR SURE, that you will level in the second to final stage of Cold Rock Crags. That way, you've ensured that you will level, and retained the maximum possible amount of Hit Points for other endeavors.

ALWAYS make the most of this feature. It is a KEY STRATEGIC COMPONENT in leveling quickly! It is also as important when farming the Ceberus at The Haunted Citadel (for Infernal Lord Armor) and the Dark Prince at The Kingdom of Darkness (for Dark Prince's Armor) at the later stages of the game!

REAL KNIGHTS GO ON QUESTS

Keep up with your quests. Not only do they teach you the fundamentals of the game, but they also come with rewards. The small amount of gold (maybe 200) and the small amount of experience (maybe 80) rewarded by a quest seems insignificant at the early levels. Most quests, however, have multiple levels. Completion of one typically unlocks another, with higher, more productive rewards.

The experience and gold from quests are important to rapid leveling, but quests also reward other cool stuff, like gems! And, sometimes the best thing that comes out of a quest is THE NEXT QUEST. Quests are almost never a waste of time!

KNOW THY ELEMENTS (Important at all levels)

All armors in K&D are based upon the five elements; Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Spirit. Each element has an opposing element against which it is strong, and gets a corresponding stat bonus. Commit these element advantages to memory AS SOON AS YOU CAN, and equip armors accordingly. If you have trouble committing these advantages to memory, try thinking about it like this:

It takes a darned long time for the waves to erode the shore, so: Earth beats Water!
You deal with a fire by drowning it, so: Water beats Fire!
The strongest man among us becomes weak when he is burned out, so: Fire beats Spirit!
With enough dedication, a properly motivated man can move the Earth, so: Spirit beats Earth!
The rain always falls in the direction that the wind blows it, so: Air beats Water!

MARCHING ORDERS / BRINGING UP THE REAR (Important at all levels)

When starting to play, your main knight is always placed, by default, in the starting position for any fight. This might be correct, but it also might not. Your main Knight will always have the best stats. Sometimes this will mean it's best to put him in your weakest armor, thereby equalizing all 3 Knights, and sometimes it will mean putting him in your BEST armor, and last in line, where you need the hardest hits against the stage boss.

Obviously, this relates to the above point about matching the strongest elements against each other. Simply put, PAY ATTENTION. Bring the maximum damage where it will have the maximum benefit. You'll get the most experience out of the hit points you have to spend, and will level faster!

Further, if you can expend all of your allies hit points, while retaining a few for your main knight, your main knight will be good to go again once all of your allies are at max power. This will cut down significantly on the time before you can face a tough stage again!

STATS TRUMPS STARS (Important at all levels)

This one has been covered many times in these forums, but it's so wildly important that I'm going to try to explain it in my own way. Every last one of us has made the mistake, early in the game, of wasting time and gold crafting and enhancing armors that aren't worth it in the long run, or are inappropriate for those early-mid level stages of the game, and the lesson we learned cost us the ability to level as quickly as possible. If you can avoid this mistake, you'll level faster than we did.

Never spend resources on leveling an armor before taking the time to understand what that armor will eventually be capable of. Consult the following spreadsheet for a comprehensive list of all armor stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiQKRFnZ9_jpdEFtUUVnd2dQM1ZIX2IxT1RNZVlvalE#gid=7

Using this resource will prevent you from overestimating an armor the first time you see it. Just because something is new to you, and seems cool to have gained, doesn't mean it's not trash. We all wasted our time on an Embersteel or a Monk's Vestments, etc. Don't repeat our mistakes!

DON'T BE A CHASER (Important Levels 1-70)

There's a time to chase the best armors in the game, but doing so too early will stunt your leveling ability by causing you to inefficiently spend your resources. Get the "Big Four" L50 dual element armors as quickly as you can, but don't be in a hurry to get the L70s and level them quite yet. That time will come, but it comes later than you might think.

THE PLUS MATTERS (Important at all levels)

Don't spend any time/money leveling a non plus version of an armor beyond what it takes to unlock the plus version. Doing so is a waste of time, gold, and craftable elements. Once you have your mono element armors (Stonescale, Seafoam, DragonFlame, Mystic, and Wing Warriors) to level 10, STOP enhancing them, craft the + version, and level the + version instead. This will momentarily set you back in armor strength, but it's an important investment that will pay off later.

Do the same with your "Big Four" L50 armors. Don't level a non-plus version of this armor beyond the L15 it takes to unlock the + version. Craft the plus as soon as you can, and level it instead. That one step back takes you 3 steps forward.

THE BIG FOUR MID-GAME ARMORS YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT (Important L20-70):

Get these L50 dual-element armors to plus version AS SOON AS YOU CAN, and dedicate your resources to maxing them out to level 50. They will serve you, and your ability to quickly level, for a VERY long time:

Atlantean Avenger Plus (Air/Water)
Crius Armor Pus (Earth/Air)
Hydra Hunters Mail Plus (Fire/Water)
Living Flame Armor (Fire/Spirit)

FIRST FUSIONS (Important L15-30):

All of the above armors can be reliably fused through the combination of easily crafted tier 1(basic) or tier 2 (mono element L30) armors. Your first efforts at fusion should probably be the following:

Atlantean Avenger = Slot 1: Basic Air Slot 2:Basic Water*

Living Flame Armor = Slot 1: Basic Fire Slot 2: Basic Spirit*

Hydra Hunters Mail = Slot 1: Basic Fire Slot 2: Basic Water.*

Crius Armor = Slot 1: Wing Warrior, Slot 2: Stonescale Plate Mail

* It should be noted that these basic armor fusions seem to have a higher failure rate than the Tier 2 Mono combos. If you happen to have, for example, Seafoam Armor (for slot one) and a Wing Warrior Armor (for slot two), this combo will more reliably create Atlantean Avenger than the fusion of the Basics. Same goes for Living Flame and Hydra out of Tier 2 monos. The spreadsheet linked above contains all this info in great detail.

By fusing these armors before you're even able to craft them through elements allows you to level them to L15 BEFORE you can craft them. Consequently, the moment you have the materials to craft them, you're crafting the plus version! This is HUGE, and will save you tons of time in leveling further!

BEATING THE EPIC BOSS

To gain enough material to craft the armor that the Epic boss drops is easy, cracking the boss at L15 will do it. To gain enough material to craft the plus version is MUCH tougher, you have to achieve approximately Boss Level 43!

There has been a great deal of discussion on this board suggesting that if you can't beat the Epic Boss enough times to gain the plus version of the boss armor, that fighting the boss at all is a waste of time. I'm not sure I agree.

It's easy to think of the Boss Armor as the only reward for fighting the boss, but I want to suggest that there are other factors that make taking a stab or three at the boss well worth the time.

Consider the current Epic Boss as I write this, "Dragon of the Deep." Now, suppose you are in the Level 55-75 range that would allow you, depending on your friends list, to kill up to approximately the Level 35 Boss. This is frustratingly close to, and frustratingly far away from the 43 kills necessary to score the plus level Boss Armor, but DO NOT lose sight of what you DID gain along the way.

In this weeks case, you gained 18 Wing Warrior Armors (9000 gold value and 9 hours time value), 13 Snakeskin Armors (39,000 gold value and 26 hours time value), 3 silver keys, 4 gold keys, 4 gems, and some pretty meaningful piles of gold and experience.

In other words, at the levels where you can NOT beat the Boss 43 times, the rewards for trying and missing are still tasty enough to make it worth trying. DO NOT get so caught up in the desire for instant gratification that you screw yourself out of this goodness!




Fan Developed Resources
http://www.funzio.com/forum/showthread.php?69081-Fan-Developed-Resources


Armor Data

A Calculator for leveling your armors

Epic Boss Battle Calculator by

Knights and Dragons Wiki


Another good resource for new players or for those wanting to increase their depth of knowledge of the game started by 600RR
FAQ Breakdown - Frequently Asked Questions by the beginners

A great resource for learning how to beat the Epic Boss also started by Radlonghammer
Rad's Guide to Beating the Epic Boss

Post-war Thoughts and Revisions

THOUGHTS

The one-day war event is over and, in my opinion, we did not do very well.

Here is the breakdown of how everyone did.

Name	War points
Sol Invictus	6,446
Yuval	3,265
Valor	3,215
Crispy	2,654
Manfred	2,200
Kottontech	2,123
Luiscas	1,891
Max	1,795
Jacqui	1,837
Oz	1,085
Travis	1,078
AmazingAmazon	888
Merlinn	730
Sili	641

Anyone not on this list failed to get even 500 points. Some people failed to get even one point.

There are 14 people on this list, which means 13 of us didn't help out very much. Half of the guild might as well not exist, judging from these statistics.

We can do a lot better, is my point. The whole reason we're doing this guild thing is for guild wars. There is no other point to being in a guild. So what explains the lack of participation?

The next war should be a little easier for people to participate in because I expect it to be longer than 24 hours, so if we can't make an improvement on ranking above #738 then we're going to have to consider making some big changes.

I completely understand that people have lives outside of this stupid, little game on your phone or tablet...but you should be able to find five minutes to show up and score some points once in awhile.

REVISIONS

We need to refine our strategy. Here is what I propose:

- The Guardian.

When the war starts we identify what element that the Guardian uses. Those who have armors strong against that element should attack it. It may also be worth considering a Power Attack against the Guardian to get it out of the way right off the bat.

- Your armor.

The armor you wear in the Arena is the armor you wear in guild war battles. You may want to put some thought into what armors you're wearing and what order your knights are in. Maybe you want to put a different armor on your main knight. In tough battles, I think it is smart to put your strongest knight second, that way your first knight can build up the Special Attack.

In this last war, I would switch out my regular armors in order to put on armor that was generally weaker, but stronger against the opposing Guardian. Then I'd switch back to my regular armors to fight enemy players. Something to think about.

- Your stats.

You want to use your best armor configuration for battles, but if you don't have a total offense/defense of, say, 1,500 then you will probably want to stick to attacking the gate. 200+ points per battle is better than zero points per battle.

-War alerts.

A few of us have now used the LINE messenger application. I strongly urge everyone to get this app. The reason for this is to alert members when it is time to fight a war. We don't need to use this to talk to each other because in-game chat is good enough for that, but it would be really useful to be able to send out notifications to rally members to contribute to a war. Our biggest problem is getting enough people to fight in any given battle. If we can get 12-15 people to fight, we will be winning a lot of battles.

Get LINE messenger.

-Your level.

One of the best ways to make individual contributions to the guild is to make yourself better by gaining levels. If you're under level 100, how many levels you gain over any period of time is one indication of how active you are, and we want active people in this guild. Improving yourself improves the guild.

If my records are correct, Jacqui kicked some ass these past few days by moving up more than anyone else, 13 levels from 54 to 67. How is this even possible? I think I messed something up. If not...wow. Great work, Jacqui.

Max, Sili, Oz and myself (Sol) all gained six levels over the past week.
Yuval moved up five levels. Amazing Amazon moved up 4. Nightmare, Manfred, Luiscas, Valor and Travis all went up three levels.

Crispy, DeckelDieb, Gavrok, InciSion, Elton, Monarca, Vincent, Kottontech and Nathan all gained only 1 or 2 levels this past week, if they gained any at all. Those of you who didn't gain any levels, and you're under 100, see if you can pick up a few levels this week. I know everyone has lives to live, but it'd be nice to see an overall trend of improvement.

I want feedback and input on this. I'm a fuckin' nobody. I am not a General or a strategist. I have no idea what I'm doing. Help me out by offering your ideas.

Important Things To Know About Guild Wars

Guild recruitment and enlistment will be frozen while the event is active.

Guild Leadership Effect

All Guild members in leadership roles will now receive an ATK and DEF boost called a "Guild Leadership Effect"! This boost is added everywhere in the game (fighting normal monsters, Epic Bosses, other knights in PVP, etc).

Guild Battles 
Battles between guilds must be initiated and can be done so by tapping the "Declare War" button. Once an opposing guild is found, a Guild Battle will officially begin and last 60 minutes.

Both guilds in a Guild Battle will earn War Points based on their performance. The winning guild earns a War Points bonus, and all earned War Points are applied directly to your guild's ranking. Collect the most War Points to earn massive rewards for your entire guild!

During a Guild Battle, each guild member can earn War Points by defeating rival knights, and attacking the opposing guild's Guardian and Castle Gate. You can even earn additional points for defeating guild leaders and tougher opponents!

Guild Battles are fought in a 3-on-3 format and use War Energy to initiate the fight. However, unlike in the Tournament Arena, you'll have the option of selecting 2 types of attacks:

Attack – Costs a normal amount of War Energy (25) with no bonuses to ATK and DEF.
Power Attack – Costs a full bar of War Energy (100) with a huge ATK and DEF bonus.
War Energy replenishes at a rate of 1 per minute and can also be refilled by consuming a War Energy pack.

Battle Frenzy 
Battle Frenzy is a bonus effect that increases the amount of War Points gained for a period of time. Battle Frenzy may be triggered automatically during a single Guild Battle when the Battle gets close.

Guild Sentinels
All opposing guild members are "protected" by the Guild Sentinel until the Guild Sentinel is defeated by any guild member. This means that all other knights are unavailable to fight until the Guild Sentinel is defeated. Guild members can still attack the Guardian or Castle Gate if the Guild Sentinel has not been defeated.

Guild Sentinels gets a 50% DEF boost while protecting their guild's members.

Guild Guardians
Guild Guardians act as an extra layer of defense! While a Guardian is alive, the opposing guild earns less War Points. Higher level Guardians protect your guild better, with higher health AND greater War Point protection.

Attacking Guild Guardians yield War Points even if you don't defeat it, and defeating a Guardian gives extra rewards to the member that has inflicted the most damage in defeating it.

Castle Gate
If members are having a hard time defeating rival knights, they can always attack the opposing guild's Castle Gate. It is always available to attack, but doesn't give out as many points as winning against rival knights.

End of Guild War Event
About 60 minutes before the Guild War event ends, guilds will not be permitted to Declare War.

Accumulated War Points, from both Guild Battle Skirmishes and wins, will determine your Guild's ranking in the Guild War Event. Fight hard for better rewards, because all members of your guild get all of the rewards shown!

Verum Dracones's guild war rules and strategy

     RULES

No one* is allowed to declare war unilaterally. 
It is important to ensure that we have a decent number of players available to fight in any given war if we are to have any chance at winning. When one person declares a war under their own initiative and without the support of other players, it is a recipe for defeat. It creates chaos. We need an organized effort.

*The possible exception to this might be a scenario in which the war event is almost over and the guild is very close to elevating to the next Ribbon level. One person would be permitted to declare war in order to make a last push, for the good of the guild, in order to attain a higher level of rewards. There may also be other possible scenarios, but this is just one. Generally, however, declaring war needs group approval.  

In order to declare war, at least three (3) members must consent to the declaration of war. 
This is a rule we established towards the end of the last guild war event, before we reorganized the guild by cutting inactive/ineffective players and recruiting active players. As stated above, it is important that multiple people are available to fight in a war if we are to succeed. To this end, we require that at least three people are ready and willing to fight in any war. It is my personal opinion that this number ought to rise, seeing as how we have more, active members. We can have a discussion on this.

     STRATEGY

In the beginning, each player has a full bar of energy used for war actions that will facilitate four attacks (or one power attack) against the opposing guild. At first, only the Guardian and the Sentinel can be attacked. Once defeated, the Castle Gate and other guild members can be attacked. Defeating the Guardian and the Sentinel yields more points when guild members are defeated.

When it comes to Guardians, I believe thought must be put into attacking. We must look at what level the Guardian is and how much life it has. If the Guardian has a lot of life (more than 30k, for instance) then it might be better to ignore the Guardian and focus on taking down the Sentinel. In the case of a weaker Guardian, it can be taken down.

I'm going to make a proposal.

We have 12 members over level 67, and 11 members under level 67. Our >67 members are generally the heavy hitters of our guild. In a 1-on-1 fight, these are the people who are most likely to win. Their energy is best spent racking up points by beating enemy players.

As for the 11 players who are <67, I think their energy is best spent attacking the Sentinel, Guardian or the Gate. But obviously, sometimes these players might be better off attacking enemy players as well...this will have to be a case-by-case decision made by each player. If you're one of the <67 players, and you're fighting enemy players...but you're losing fights, then stop wasting your energy by fighting players. Do what you can by attacking the Gate or the Guardian.

So this is what I think should happen.

-We declare a war.
-The lowest-level players that are active at the time spend their energy attacking the Guardian, if the Guardian is weak enough to bother attacking, or attacking the Sentinel. Maybe the higher-level players can spend one bar of energy doing this, but it is more important for them to save energy.
-Once the Sentinel is defeated, high-level players focus on attacking enemy players.
-It is also obviously useful to kill the Guardian, but this should be a game-time decision. If the Guardian is worth taking down then, by all means, take it down.