Art of Conquest Hero Ability and Equipment Guide

by Takkelete

Intro

Saw a user ask for something like this in another thread. There seems to be a real lack of good information about this game and it’s mechanics online so I thought I’d take a stab at creating a decent, albeit brief coverage here. It’s going to take me a while to write all of this out so I will be updating it every couple of hours as I have time today. If you would like to contribute a section (especially for Denji, Rose, or the new Wrixus) in the comments feel free to. I am only 600K might so understand that this represents a somewhat narrow perspective on the game and am very open to criticisms/improvements to the post. My focus on writing this is to focus on optimized builds and useful tricks/mechanics knowledge as opposed to a comprehensive dive on heros and their abilities.

General Tips

Do not transmute the items Underworld Chronicles (Purple Trinket), Drill Hammer (Purple Weapon, +10 supply), Commander’s Brigandine (Orange, Elana’s MR +1 armor) and Aylan’s Crown (Orange, head piece) until you have quite a few of them as they are crucial to command stacking.

You should devote one of your equipment presets to a command stacked set. As the game goes on this will become increasingly important. But to briefly introduce the concept, one can switch to this set train troops and then switch back (for instance I am currently at 107/87 gold supply).

Command Stat- From what I can practically test command stat on heros that give troop stats (Avalon, virion etc.) seems to increase abilities at a rate of .1% per command. This means that leveling these abilities does not increase the command scaling element. For example, a lvl 6 Ardent Aura with 100 command on Avalon will yield 29% more health to humanoid units (19% from ability 10% from command).

Rufio

Acquired from – Free

Importance – Human (Low), Dwarf (Low), Lich (Low), Rakan (Low)

Crucial Equipment – None

Skill Preference – Chopping Blade, Resilience (Some), Heroic Leap, Destructive One (Single Point), Blade Dance, Strong Physique (skip)

Notes – The fact that Rufio has no damage mitigation and that his seemingly main abilities (blade dance and heroic leap) position him poorly making his kit very mismatched. Resist the urge to heroic leap onto their backline, even if you take out one group, giving all nearby units a morale boost will do you too much damage.

Avril

Acquired From – Free

Importance – Human (Medium), Dwarf (Medium), Lich (Low), Rakan (Medium)

Crucial Equipment – Ancient Crystal (Orange Trinket +1 Rapid Cast), Unicorn Mace (Staff, Allows Tag ability)

Skill Preference (Early) – Blizzard (Max), Gifted Mage (Some), Ice Wall, Glacial Shard, Rapid Cast (Single Point), Ice Nova (skip)

Skill Preference (Late) – Rapid Cast (Max), Glacial Shard (Some), Ice Wall (Single Point), Ice Nova, Gifted Mage (Skip)

Notes – Avril is a hero that falls off greatly as you progress through the game. Frost damage mechanics is the primary reason for this. The line “enemies who suffer a certain amount of frozen damage will become frozen” is rather uninformative. Each unit has it’s own threshold. As you progress further into the game, it is impossible to deliver enough frozen damage to freeze units (although a blue dragon does help with this somewhat). That plus Elana’s magic resistance make it difficult for her to be useful past castle level 30 as a damage dealer. However, she has one interesting interaction between Unicorn Mace and her ultimate that gives her some redeeming value late game. Since her ult allows abilities to come off cooldown near instantly, you can use Tag immediately proceedng another ability with minimal to no impact on your cooldowns, greatly increasing the utility of Tag. Taking down troublesome Jacques or a Massive unit like a dragon thats causing trouble for your backline are some ideal uses for this ability.

Upon reading Watipah’s experience with Avril in the late game, it seems it is possible to scale Avril’s magic damage into the late game. If you like the hero you can continue investing magic/ability points in her and I would recommend pairing a frost dragon to maximize her utility.

Avalon

Acquired From – Free

Importance – Human (Crucial), Dwarf (High), Lich (Medium), Rakan (Crucial)

Crucial Equipment – Golden Goblet (If Rakan, Dwarf or Human, Purple Trinket, +1 Ardent Aura), Imperial Banner (if Human, Purple Banner)

Skill Preference (Human) – Ardent Aura (Max), Archer Mastery, War Horn, Summon Archers (Some), Natural Leader (Single Point), Arrow Volley (None)

Skill Preference (Rakan/Dwarf) – War Horn (Max), Ardent Aura (Some), Natural Leader, Archer Mastery (Single Point), Arrow Volley, Summon Archers (None)

Skill Preference (Lich) – Natural Leader, War Horn, Summon Archers (Some), Archer Mastery, Ardent Aura (Single Point), Arrow Volley (None)

Notes – There is a lot to say about Avalon. He is probably in a God tier with Jacques in terms of how useful he is. Unless you are extremely confident you are going Lich, sinking ability, command, and some stamina points into Avalon is extremely safe. I have placed a point into archer mastery/ardent aura regardless of race (Due to the fact that his command will likely be around 100 and thus any borrowed archers you get will gain at least 12% damage from a level 1 archer mastery).

On War Horn: Although this may seem like a relatively useless ability, it is the single most important ability for clearing the void. It scales VERY heavily (6%/12%/20%/30%/45%/60%/80%). Placed correctly this ability can empower up to 6 unit groups and another hero (this is a small range aura, units more or less have to be adjacent or directly diagnal from Avalon). This ability is best when emmpowering crossbowmen/blasters in void. It is worth putting some stamina into Avalon as sometimes it may be necessary to position him towards the front to correctly utilize warhorn and you dont want the enemy killing him gaining morale.

Virion

Acquired From – Free

Importance – Human (Crucial), Dwarf (Medium), Lich (Low), Rakan (Medium)

Crucial Equipment – Orange Trinket with +1 Swordsmen Mastery (if human)

Skill Preference (Human) – Swordsmen Mastery (Max), Crusader Shield, Crusader Resurrection (Some), Light’s Safeguard (Single Point), Summon Swordsmen, Lionheart Blade (None)

Skill Preference (Dwarf/Rakan) – Crusader Shield, Light’s Safeguard, Lionheart Blade (Some), Swordsmen Mastery (Single Point), Summon Swordsmen, Crusader Resurrection (None)

Skill Preference (Lich) – Light’s Safeguard, Lionheart Blade (Some), Swordsmen Mastery (Single Point), Rest None

Notes – Since three of his abilities directly deal with Swordsmen, he is at his most useful when playing Human. If your units get morale boost, his crusader shield is pretty useful. Outside of that, with a fairly large amount of points in Safeguard and Lionheart’s Blade he makes an acceptable tank. Summon swordsmen is a fairly useless ability as you probably won’t be stacking a huge amount of command on him (and if you are because your human you have better places to spend your ability points) and when you use the ability it summons melee units that should be on the front line very far behind Virion.

Grimms

Acquired From – Free

Importance – Humans, Rakan, Lich (Medium), Dwarf (Crucial)

Crucial Equipment – Orange Siege Banner (+1 Siege Mastery), Ended Magazine (Blue, + 1 Ammo Wagon if Dwarf)

Skill Preference (Non – Dwarf) – Siege Mastery (Max), Ammo Wagon (Some), All other skills (None)

Skill Preference (Dwarf) – Ammo Wagon (Max), Tank Mastery, Reload (Some), Siege Mastery (Single Point), Suppression Fire, Smoke Grenade (None)

Notes – A pretty straight forward hero. If dwarf you need the ammo abilities otherwise he is best fitted to amplifying your siege equipment. A fairly ideal choice to put gearwheel gavel on (Divine siege boosting weapon). I do not believe suppresive fire scales well enough to invest might into this hero. Late game, I believe gold mechs/blasters outscale using tanks; however, midgame where gold capacity is significantly limited I find tanks (and thus Grimms tank mastery to be a vital part of dwarf strategy)

Gazul

Acquired From – Free

Importance – All (High)

Crucial Equipment- Wailing Ornament (Orange Trinket +1 Soulless Scourge), Galactic Scepter (Divine Staff for Command, if Lich Undead), Golden Signet (Divine trinket for Command, if Lich Undead)

Skill Preference (Lich Undead) – Immortal Strength (Max), Skeleton Mastery, Resurrect (Some), Skeleton Sacrifice (Single Point), Soulless Scourge, Fearsome Aura (None)

Skill Preference (Rest) – Fearsome Aura (Max), Soulless Scourge (Some), Others (None)

Notes – Gazul is one of the more interesting champions that I believe has potential to become very strong in a Lich undead army. I’ll get to that in the next paragraph, but for everyone else he has two pretty good abilities. First, fearsome aura is a crucial place to spend points as it helps easily break morale reducing troops you have to deal with. Second, soulless scourge is probably the highest damage magic damage dealing ability in the game and has some good scaling.

In the last month or two they have added a secondary effect to immortal strength (a % chance for immediate resurrection) and in a recent patch have increased this % chance from 8 to 9 at level one (showing a commitment by Lilith to make this strategy viable to add some more options for Lich players). Gazul has two abilities that scale with command (skeleton mastery and immortal strength) that should allow him to get twice the efficiency for every point of command on him… however, almost none of his equipment options offer choices for large amounts of command. Furthermore he is capped at 30 for his command card investment. I strongly believe with proper investments in Gazul (for his command auras and resurrect), Wrixus (for his three lantern buff aoe buffs and later metamorph), and Vega (for a crazy strong mana barrier to protect gold archers with mana barrier) this will become the strongest siegeing army. But only if Gazul is properly equipped to maximize his command.