Last week we implemented a new system whereby unaffiliated players can take part in Territory Wars by joining one of four Legions. As previously mentioned, these legions are NPC-administered rather than run by players and their aim is to bring together all the fiefs of their respective regions under one banner, hence the name “Imperial Restorationists”. Of course, the player-run houses and alliances (collectively now known as “Free Houses”) have no intention of halting their own territory-owning ambitions, and so we now have a new dynamic in the eternal bi-weekly battle for domination.



Previously we ran through the process of joining a Legion and how each is made up of a number of cohorts. In this follow-up guide, we look a bit deeper into their structures and the rewards for staying loyal to the imperial cause.

You have a duty to complete seven days of service when you join a Legion, after which you can leave to join another (or a Free House). However, you can only join the Legion of another region after the “Crossing Frontiers” campaign has been activated (which is already the case for Season II). Note that Acclaim points earned are specific to a Legion. If you leave, you will only be able to reclaim them only when you rejoin.   



Legions see themselves as the rightful owners of all the lands of their region, having controlled them since before player-run Houses were unleashed. Therefore, if you take part in battles that result in the return of a fief that was previously under your Legion’s control, you will receive a reward similar to those enjoyed by Free House members, plus some Acclaim points (which we’ll get to shortly).

The process of taking part in Territory Wars is practically identical for members of Cohorts and Legions as it is for those of Houses and Alliances. Where player groups make war with a cost to their Prestige, the AI will randomly-select one War Target for each Cohort. You can check these on the map by pressing M - yours will be highlighted with a special icon.



If you wish to receive a new War Target, go to the Campaign screen (press F5, then select the Campaign tab) and click the circular arrow. Alternatively, if you have Quest Tracking enabled, War Targets are displayed via a second tab to the right of the main screen. Note that you can only request a new War Target twice a week for free before you are charged an amount of Silver.,  `



As the member of a Legion - and by taking part in Territory Wars -  every week you will have the opportunity to increase your standing within your Cohort. The more Acclaim you have accrued from successfully securing War Targets, the higher your rank will be, starting as Soldier, and rising to become Veteran, Officer, Marshal, Seneschal and Commander. Be aware however that each Cohort can only have a limited number of higher ranks (1x Commander, for example), which are assigned in direct relation to the player with the highest total of Acclaim points. As a highly-ranking player you may find yourself demoted if you don’t maintain your participation.

Whatever rank you attain and however long you stay a member of your chosen Legion, we hope you enjoy the opportunities the new system allows. Perhaps your experience as a defender of your chosen region will inspire you to form or become part of a house or alliance, so you can fight for even greater riches and rewards, and create a legacy that’s more your own!

How fast can you take out a Rebel Camp? That’s the question being asked by Conqueror’s Blade players Shou and IceEagle, who between them are running an event they’re calling Rebel Camp Speedrun. Starting today and up until February 21st, everyone is invited to enter!

The idea is actually very simple: Get a trio of warlords together, assemble your army from the available troops, complete an easy Rebel Camp as quickly as you can and then send the organisers evidence of your accomplishment. If you are among the fastest teams, you could win Sovereigns, Premium Account time and Silver.

Prizes:

• 1st Place: 30-days Premium + 525 Sov + 10x Battle Hero & Unit XP Card
• 2nd Place:  30-days Premium + 10x Battle Unit XP Card
• 3rd Place: 525 Sovereigns + 7-days Premium
• 4th Place: 525 Sovereigns + 10k Silver + 10x Battle Unit XP Card
• 5th Place: 7-days Premium + 10k Silver

Rules:

• Maximum of 3 players per team
• Any number of the following units can be fielded: Tenant Farmers, Demesne Pikemen, Village Watchman, Serfs, Woodcutters, Sword Militia, Spear Militia, Demesne Javelineers, Javelin Militia, Levy Bowmen, Archer Militia, Rattan Pikeman.
• Only ONE of the following units can be fielded PER TEAM: Demesne Spearman, Demesne Archers, Ironcap Arquebusiers.
• Teams will be DISQUALIFIED if members deploy Artillery or use any units NOT listed above!
• To be considered, each team leader must submit screenshots of each team member’s post-battle screens (including Player Stats, Unit Stats, Team Stats and Unit graph). Send all entries to: http://mailto:cb.ccpe@gmail.combefore Friday 21 February 2020.
• If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach out to the organisers on Discord (Shu#8959 or IceEagle#3245).

Note: this event is not being administered by MY.GAMES and we cannot provide support should any non-gameplay issues arise.

Good luck, play fair and please be courteous to your hosts to ensure more Speedrun events in the future!

This time of year is always a celebration of colour, so as part of the Winter Light Festival that’s getting underway in-game, we are giving you the opportunity to acquire new editions of our most recent hero attires. You will need to have the originals in order to be able to access the updated hue - which requires a Season II Battle Pass - but you don’t need to have reached a high Nobility Tier to start your progress towards unlocking them - only to complete the challenges to receive them!

NOTE: You may safely ignore a tooltip display error that says you cannot progress past tier 200. This will be corrected in a subsequent update.

  

Ortoq's Red Hero Attire (pictured above) is your reward for completing the necessary challenge after you have unlocked the Tier-1 Battle Pass Reward Ortoq Guard's Attire.



The Tier-50 Battle Pass Reward Noyan's Battle Attire is paired with Noyan’s Bearskin Attire (above) - should you be able to finish the challenge that’s set.



Reach Tier 100 and as well as Shaman's Ceremonial Attire, by finishing the required challenge you will also receive, as above, the Winter’s Prophet Attire.

You will be issued other challenges, for which you will receive steppe-style banners to equip your units with. Then, once you have completed all the Winter Light Festival attire challenges, you will be able to display a unique title: Winter’s Fury.

Note that the attire challenges will remain open beyond the duration of the Winter Light Festival - for at least as long as all Season II challenges are active. 

Good luck!

Once every year, warlords from across the land unite to celebrate the Winter Light Festival, a joyous occasion where new beginnings are welcomed with fireworks, festive costumes, and… war! Starting today, enjoy a plethora of fun festivities in Conqueror’s Blade including decorated, snow-covered capital cities and open world areas, daily rewards, festive attire, and a new PvE campaign!

DAILY LOGIN EVENT: JANUARY 23 – FEBRUARY 11

Play Conqueror’s Blade throughout the Winter Light Festival to receive up to 20 daily rewards, including a festive Helm, Winter Light Lucky Bags and Envelopes filled with loot, and fireworks! Don’t worry if you miss any days, just log in during the event to catch up with any gifts you’ve missed.

You’ll also receive three Festival Tokens every day you log in. These special tokens are said to bring luck and prosperity for the coming year, and you can spend them on lots of items, including a Red Lion Helm for your warlord (available for 7 days once equipped)!



NEW PvE CAMPAIGN: STORMING THE GREAT WALL

The Great Wall is a wondrous structure which, together with the seemingly endless mountain range it’s entrenched in, forms a barrier to repel invasions from the north. Its mighty fortifications may be difficult to crack, and the army that defends it may be legion, but your triumph is vital if you want to advance on the Conqueror’s City!

The Storming the Great Wall campaign will be available until February 11. You can earn Festival Tokens from your first three battles on the Great Wall every day, though rewards will be slightly reduced in subsequent battles.

NEW PvP MAP: WUQING PLAINS

Vanquish your foes on a frosty new battlefield during the Winter Light Festival! Many critical battles have been fought on the Wuqing Plains across the centuries — who knows what tales of brazen heroics and valiant deaths the ancient ruins conceal?



FREE BATTLE PvP MAPS: FESTIVE DECORATIONS AND SNOWY HAZARDS

A cold front has swept across Free Battle maps, bringing frigid snow and treacherous conditions to a new selection of battlefields during the Winter Light Festival (replacing Ghost Town, Augolia, and Grassland Assault). Make fights fizzle by finding and destroying festival decorations to set off fireworks, and fire artillery weapons to behold a spectacular display of colour and light!

Your warlord and units may find it harder to move in the cold and snow when they become ‘Freezing’. Find a brazier to thaw the chill and make your heroes and units ‘Warm’, a status which grants cold resistance and a jaunty boost to movement and attack speeds!

The Free Battle schedule during the Winter Light Festival is as follows during the event, with Winter Light Festival variants of the following PvP maps available on the following days (for server times and availability, please check the Event Schedule):

• Wednesday:White Elk Fort (Siege)
• Friday:Sun City (Siege)
• Sunday:Dasuo Fort (Siege) and Wuqing Plains (Siege)

NEW FESTIVAL ATTIRE AND FIREWORKS

Head to the in-game Store to purchase new festive attire and a marvelous range of Winter Light Festival fireworks!

• Warrior Mouse Hero Attire:Sometimes the smallest creatures are capable of the bravest acts. Stand proud, and remember that size doesn’t matter!
• Lion Warrior Unit and Horse Attire:Imbue your units and their mounts with the raw power and pride of the king of the jungle.
• Lucky Mouse Horse Attire: May your mount’s luck on the battlefield never run out.
• Winter Light Festival Fireworks:Get some Winter Light Fireworks, including the Thunderstar cannon and Dancing Dragon launcher, to bring some toasty warmth and brilliant light to battle proceedings!

IMPORTANT: Attire for Heroes, Horses, Units, banners and weapons in Conqueror’s Blade is purely cosmetic, and does not grant additional bonuses or advantages during gameplay. It just looks really, really cool.

Celebrate the Winter Light Festival in Conqueror’s Blade from now until February 11!

Please be aware that from 7:00 CET on Thursday 23 January (10pm PDT, 1/22), the Conqueror’s Blade servers will be inaccessible. The downtime is expected to last for 5 hours. 

• Winter Light Festival begins - please see patch notes.

Please stay tuned to our Discord channel in case of any immediate server updates.

Until now, if you’ve been unable to fully commit yourself to the demands of being in a house or alliance, or just prefer to play Conqueror's Blade at your own pace and in your own time, you may have felt disadvantaged at not being able to fully take part in Territory Wars. With the imminent introduction of NPC-controlled houses and alliances - part of the new Imperial Restorationist system - we’re hoping to get as many players as possible enjoying the cut and thrust of the game’s sovereignty battles.

As with player groups (player houses will henceforth be known as Free Houses), there are NPC-controlled houses - known as Cohorts, and NPC-controlled Alliances - known as Legions. It’s useful to think of the latter as a form of militia, in that they call on all unaligned players to defend the region’s territory in the event of an attack from within. Here’s what you need to know:



There are four Imperial Restorationist Legions, one for each region (Ostarian Legion, Ungverijan Legion, Maoyang Legion and Liangyun Legion), which you can join by pressing N and selecting the Legion tab. Note: If you wish to join a Legion, you cannot be already a member of a house or alliance.



Each Legion contains 6 Cohorts (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc). As a new recruit, you will be placed in one of the Cohorts. You can transfer to another Cohort for a fee of 300 Sovereigns. Also, once joined, you cannot leave a Legion until you have been a member for 7 days - CHOOSE WISELY!



Via the My Cohort tab you can view all the other warlords in your Cohort and how much Acclaim they have earnt from Territory Wars. If you click the right-hand icon you can see all battles the Legion is planning for.

The Diplomacy tab allows you to search for any NPC or player-controlled group by name and check its info. If a House or Alliance holds territory that your Legion is sworn to unite, you can select it as a potential target.



Legions are fully devoted to uniting their region rather than conquering others, which means Legions are forever neutral to one another, while hostile to all player-created houses seeking or holding fiefs in the region. However, as hostile as they are to territory-holding houses, all territories held by Legions are kept neutral, meaning that travel and resources (and open-world combat engagements) are open to all players operating in the vicinity.

The above images are taken from a pre-release version of the update and cannot be considered final.

One of the keystone features of Conqueror’s Blade is Territory Wars; the ability to capture land and benefit from its ownership - at least until someone else takes it back. With the introduction of Season II and Campaigns, our plan is to take Territory Wars to the next level - to have houses and alliances not just bickering over their borders, but to try to build a legacy - to march into the most hostile lands in the game and claim the ultimate prize!

Accessed from the Seasonal panel (F5), Campaigns are simply a series of stages that houses and alliances can work through to earn rewards. To complete stage one, “The Baron’s War”, you and your associates simply have to take a village, a town and a fort, for which you’ll each receive Bronze, Artillery Chests and Treatises. The next stage of the campaign requires you to take part in and win cross-region PvE battles, while in Stage 3, you must push into the Borderlands, seizing various objectives. To complete the final stages of the campaign, you and your allies will have to march on and eventually secure the once-mythical Conqueror’s City, a prize that many others will be chasing and that the Borderlands will not give up easily!

With Campaigns offering new avenues for conquest that combine Seasonal progression and Territory Wars, now’s a great time to join a house or alliance if you’d not already considered it doing so. You can defend your homeland later - the Borderlands needs warlords now!

As part of the Wrath of the Nomads update we introduced a feature that allows you to reclaim Honour points, allowing you to unlock units and buffs from other parts of the Unit Tree. You may think, for example, that the route to unlocking Iron Reapers via Palace Guards was the wrong one, and that you’d like to try Imperial Pike Guards instead - well, now you can! Here’s how:



First, you need a stack of Honour Reset Tokens, each able to reclaim 100 Honour points. You can acquire them from the main in-game Store (press C) for 5 Sovereigns each. Alternatively, check the Seasonal Store (F5), where they should be available for a comparable number of seasonal reward tokens. (At the time of writing, during Season II, they cost 5 Fangs each).



Next, press U and select the Unit Tree, where you will see the familiar flowchart of unit cards and nodes. To reclaim the Honour points from a node you’ve previously unlocked, simply mouse over it and click (right or left works). If it’s not between two unlocked nodes and you have enough tokens (1 per 100 Honour points), you will be given the option to reset it.



Before you do “Reset Note”, be aware that you do not lose any previously assigned Honour points in the process of reclaiming them. As an example, Provincial Army Training costs 900 Honour points to unlock. You will get all the Honour back for the price of 9 Honour Reset Tokens if you later wish to reassign those 900 points elsewhere.



Note also that you cannot reclaim Honour points that have already been used to unlock units, only the nodes between units. However, if you reset a node that’s a prerequisite for a unit you’ve unlocked, you will not be able to deploy that unit until the node is unlocked again. Following on from the above example, if you have a unit of Ironcap Swordsmen in your army, if you reset the Provincial Army Training node, you will get back 900 Honour points, but the unit will then be shaded out in your Barracks. If you later assign 900 Honour to unlock the prerequisite node, the unit will be ready for duty with the same XP and Veterancy it had before!

As important as it is to explore the open-world in Conqueror’s Blade, one of the problems of doing so - until the release of Season II - was that you were unable to participate in matchmaking battles. There was a very good reason for this, but it did restrict the number of players available for matchmaking when the ideal has always been to have as many as possible queueing to fight.

The good news is that we’ve now implemented a way for those in the open-world to enjoy all the fun of matchmaking battles without having to temporarily remove them from the open-world. It’s a very simple solution, which just requires you to set-up a camp - which you can select from the relevant icon at the bottom of the screen, or by pressing J to initiate matchmaking as you would in a town.

While you’re at camp (including while waiting for or taking part in a matchmaking battle), you cannot move, be pursued or initiate pursuit of another player in the open-world. To later continue in the open-world, you simply “Strike Camp”, although you need to have concluded or exited a battle and not be in the countdown timer for a new one.

As an aside, you cannot set up camp during Territory Wars and any camps that are active at the start of such events will be deactivated. If you want to enjoy matchmaking battles during bi-weekly conquest sessions, simply make for the nearest settlement.

As well as being uniquely situated, the fortress city of Allenburg - recently introduced via the Wrath of the Nomads update - is unique in its defences. Attackers will effectively have to conduct two sieges to win, in between which a desperate counter-attacking battle for the streets will have to be fought.

HISTORY

Legend has it that a powerful sorcerer, travelling in disguise (as wizards often do), was so taken with Allenburg’s lively taverns and brewhouses that he vowed that the city should stand for a thousand years. To ensure it survived the ages, he’s said to have cast a spell that changed the land around the city to better protect it from invaders. It is why, some believe, Allenburg is so snug within the bow of its nearby river, and why it can count on such impassable terrain to prevent it from being attacked on all sides. It is also why the high tower overlooking the lower city is known as the Wizard’s Perch, and why some believe that the nameless conjurer resides there, forever keeping watch. Of course, it’s all nonsense, but the administrative authorities are happy to embrace any superstition that might aid in the city’s defence, especially when it is so often threatened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bTPMj1RUvI

PLAN OF ATTACK

• There is a wealth of attacking options, but Allenburg is a large map with a lot of ground to cover and so time can quickly slip away if you let it. Focus your efforts to breach the outer wall in one or two places and be prepared to move quickly when you do.
  
• You only need to secure one of Point A or B in order to be able to capture Point C, which you should try and complete as soon as possible to keep the defenders on the back foot. If you try and take A and B both, before C, you will give the defenders the initiative. Instead, secure the first two capture points after you’ve taken C - the extra time you’ll receive could make all the difference as you prepare your final assault on the inner walls.
  
• If you allow the defenders too much time to regroup, taking Capture Point D will almost be a mini-siege in itself. Try to establish and maintain a path to the final capture zone while the defenders are engaged elsewhere (still defending C perhaps), ideally by leaving a gate open that you can storm through when the area becomes unlocked.

DEFENSIVE MEASURES

• Despite being a large map, the initial front line along the outer wall is conveniently compact, meaning that defending it is far from a lost cause. You could buy your side a lot of time for when the attack does eventually breakthrough by defending it in numbers.
  
• Once the outer wall is breached, fall back quickly to pre-arranged defensive positions. Defending Capture Point C should be the team’s priority (a highly mobile counter-attacking force might be handy for that), but be wary of attempts by the attackers to get a foothold in and around Point D while your attention is elsewhere. The high walls will be your last redoubt and you want them to be watertight when Point C is taken.
  
• As with the loss of the outer wall, you need to be organised when you’re down to the final capture point. As well the ability to quickly reinforce your troops, the battlements offer a stout defence and should be used to their fullest. Treat the final encounter like it’s a full-on siege and hold the line ‘til the bitter end!