While I rarely play browser games I’ll admit my fun in them is approaching it from a budget or f2p player point of view. There are a lot of p2w (pay to win) or “p2p” (pay to play) games out there that you never are going get any kind of footing as a budget player. Let alone someone not spending anything at all.

My plans overall in Game Of Thrones Winter Is Coming (GoT) were to spend $20-25 in the first month. Followed up by another $10 in the second and that might just be all. Granted I’m sure months later there will be something new or amazing deal to get a couple more bucks out of me. However, once your established and found the right conditions you are now set up for the long haul. Even more so once you hit head on that massive time sink of months to finish anything. While the big guys are spending a lot to get that last 1% and those ineffective players or free ones are months behind. You are still gaining and maintaining a decent lead.

I’ve been able to maintain being in the top 20 to 30 players by power and about 10 above that in the number one alliance on the server I am on. To be fair this server does lack some bigger spenders that can be found on others. I still, however, would maintain quite the ranking lead over the thousands of others playing. Let alone many who have outspent me by tenfold.

Finding A Good kingdom (Server)

This is going to be the biggest key to any players successes regardless of spending amount. The former kingdom I played on to learn the game as a f2p was riddle with big ego rage spending whales. They wanted to see nothing but the kingdom burn and everything for themselves. They also endlessly fought with each other. Making matters worse they ended up having most of the kingdom hate their guts as well but not ever enough to work together. It was always bent the knee and then they cut off your head regardless. So a no win-win for the average player.

GoT has one of the most devastating game mechanics I have ever seen in a browser game. At level 10 castle if your lord gets captured you no longer have any of your talent tree unless you are able to get it back. Even crazier at level 17 castle they can be executed. That kills them and you lose all of your experience and the gear they had on them. If you end up on a kingdom where they are just executing higher level players left and right they are crippling themselves. Once they are open for kingdom vs kingdom wars there not a lot of players left to even mount an attack expect the number one alliance.

It is also very hard to grow if every day all the alliances are getting their hives burned (the players of that alliance grouping in one area to work with each other). Lots of resources lost and a hard lesson learned when people lose army due to not having enough hospitals to hold them all. Mostly due to no one teaching them any better since the smart players left to find a better place to play.

Instead, you want to be on a kingdom that has organization and the top alliances are working with each other. Thankfully at least once a week right now GoT is opening up a new kingdom so you do have always another chance to find one that works for you. They also understand the real consequence of using lord execution and how that should only be reserved for people that won't see the kingdom burn and will never be a team player.

This is all important as you want a kingdom that has a chance at doing well in Kingdom vs Kingdom. Diamond mines spawn on your kingdom afterword depending on how well you did. This gives you a massive advantage and really lets your kingdom progress cheap. Higher level buildings take forever to finish unless your boosting and start requiring special items that require diamonds to buy.

Finding The Right Alliance

Many have this notion you need to be on the new server within the first hour it opens to join the top alliances. They then join those top alliance run by people who have no idea and the next day they find out they are not even in the top ten anymore.

When I joined my new server I was 15 hours late to the party. As soon as I unlocked the ability to join an alliance I went right for number one after checking out what else there was. By then they had established they were going be number one with their organization. They had an alliance-wide plan and prior successes. They were not asking for anything crazy and performed active players over some whale that could not follow the plan. The only thing crazy is they still had open enrollment where anyone could join. They were kicking people left and right who failed a very clever test. Thankfully I passed without even knowing about it and they have kept me around ever since.

What you want to avoid are an alliance that requires 12 hours or longer online every day or other crazy nonsense. Real life should always come first. Those kinds of alliance fall quite hard and tend to not be around after the first sieges when those players realize they are not getting King’s Landings. They went all or nothing and sadly many will just go join the next new server and do it all over again with the same result.

You want a place that accepts all kinds of spenders and is just fun. You could be spending the next months to years playing with these people. Also, Tier 4 troops cost a lot of resources it takes an alliance to feed a couple of people boosting them out. So everyone ends up finding their place in an alliance to worth together to be great.

The smarter big spenders also hold off on spending for a little while. They want to make sure the kingdom they are on is going be decent. Along with the fact when they start buying packs everyone in that alliance gets gift boxes. I’ve gotten thousands of diamonds and days’ worth of boosters from these gift boxes. This is another way I can remain just a budget player and be doing so well. This really allows an entire alliance to be lifted up.

After having played on a server prior I also understood how to get into any alliance I wanted in first couple days as a budget player. They just need to know you are an active team player who is going to spend a little and you’re willing to move to their hive asap. Bingo the magic words to get into that number one alliance day one. Now can you stay there is the question? Make sure you talk in chat, join the Discord and they know who you are. Even if I was not in the top 20 I’d be kept around because I’ve proven to be a team player. I’m not some random guy who never spoken in chat.

Those gift boxes from a higher alliances end up going a long way for the budget player. You will also be doing some spending to help along. You will also end up helping out by killing rebel leaders which is a great and quick way to help farm for more keys to level up the alliances “luck” on boxes. So really there is no reason to not be in a top alliance. Maybe you won’t be in the number one but active players who follow direction are always needed out there.

Learn Before Spending And Think Before Buying

This is the biggest mistake I’ve seen most of the medium to whale spenders make and it really applies to any game out there far beyond just Game Of Thrones Winter Is Coming. They spend to learn instead of learning before they spend. The first account I even created was a pure no spending one where I learned about the game. After that, I started over on a new kingdom and was able to set myself up decently on a budget.

GoT has a lot of whales targeted spending and if you’re not willing to shell out $5,500 to max it out you could be tossing $100 or far more down the drain and not even get what you wanted. This comes in play with the buyable commanders as seen in the screenshot above. Take someone like Jon Snow at the max quality he is giving the army he is active in 25% defense, attack, and health. It’s $100 to buy 6 metals. The game likes to offer a $20 coupon and so people will buy one for $80.

For unlocking a command it’s 10 metals so they did not even get him with only 6. You then need 20, 50, 100, and 150 to increase quality. Those 25% buffs are at the max quality and you get a very small percent at the lowest quality. This means you need to buy all 55 packs at $100 each to get 330 Jon Snow metals. He is also not the only commander like that in cost.

So where should you spend the little bit of money you plan to instead? The monthly card is $10 and it gives you rewards every day for 30 days. You get 13 hours of boosts, 400 diamonds, and some resources. This ensures you will always have boosters to take advantage of events at the lower levels. There will be a point where you need days’ worth just to finish off a building and it becomes less effective.

After that, the best bang for the buck is those castle builder upgrade packs you get at certain castle upgrade milestones such as level 17. I personally only bought the $5 one but there was also a $10 and $1. They come with a lot of boosters.

Since you already recharged they give you Melisandre for free the first time you buy. For another $5 you can buy a pack to increase her quality once. You can also buy Kevin for $5 and many spenders will. Just keep in mind for those bought commoners only way to get metals is from buying more. If you are going to buy further packs make sure you can even get the upgrade you want. For instance, the second pack for Kevin is $20 and you only get 15 of the 20 metals you need to increase his quality so you need to buy another pack just to get that increase.

A big thing that will hold back your progress is also your lord’s level. Due to this, some will spend all their Diamonds to get to level 9 VIP right away for a 50% lord experience boost. While I did up to level 8 early on I held off and used those diamonds elsewhere before going back to get it. You still got a nice boost to experience while not being out of diamonds and taking advantage of situations they could be used in far better. More on that below.

When it comes to spending unless you are going be a whale keep an eye out for the budget-friendly stuff. Always double check you could even benefit and don’t impulses buy. Those deals tend to last a day and guess what a few days later they are back. With one expectation being the castle upgrade packs those only last a couple of days for a one time buy.

Compounding Your Efforts

Once you have found that kingdom, a nice alliance, and have spent a couple of bucks it’s time to maximize what you’re getting. For a while, I only ever boosted if I was going to get something extra for doing so. The game has an endless amount of events going on from an hour-long Elite, daily events, and even weeklong ones.

I would log in and check to see if there was anything worth going after. Since you tend to boost around completing chapter quests in the early parts of the game for all that lord experience you tend to focus on building and research. While also having your talent points spent on reducing those timers.

An example of this would be an Elite 1 hour event with a tier 3 reward of 500 diamonds and 38 hours’ worth of boosters. I would also get another 4 hours for the lower tiers and maybe the normal event would require the same thing like building so that be another 10 hours on top of that. For a grand total of 52 hours’ worth of extra boosters and a bunch of other rewards. Compare that to someone just boosting to boost and did so not during that event and got nothing extra. You now are now 2 days ahead of that other player. Just make sure to do the math that you have enough boosters and time to allow alliance members to press help. If you just speed rush with zero alliance help to reduce your timers that reward more than likely won’t make up for the time you would have saved otherwise.

There are also events that reward you for just using boosters that day with diamonds. One such event is called best efforts and requires a total of 2880 minutes of booster spent. Pair getting that with just doing the Elite event you would pick up an extra 300 diamond and 1 hour worth of boosts.

I held off on boosting troops unless they where needed and went for tier 3. In the early days when you don’t have enough talent points to have troop training and the building/research side of the trees unlocked. I would just talent reset and use my saved up boosters for 500 diamonds. I had over 5 days’ worth of boosters before the first siege and spent the night before smashing out events for extra stuff and gaining a bigger army of Tier 3 troops than most. Most of the server we ended up fighting only had tier 1 and maybe tier 2 troops. They stood no chance.

You also have the first time kills such as on Rebel groups for using your endurance that rewards boosters. On top of that, you want to be farming the highest level since your troops don’t die on them and you can get better rewards. So always use up any resource bars in the game like this one.

Then there are the training grounds that rewards the highest players with diamonds every 3 hours along with weekly reward. On a fresh kingdom, it is 100% worth spending for that first refresh of 5 times at 250 diamonds and depending on how active the kingdom is maybe even 400 one to get a grand total of 15 attempts instead of just 5 per day. Most don’t do this and so you can get a week ahead of everyone else with far weaker commanders. Being just within the top 100 gets you 1k extra diamonds per day.

There are also times when using diamonds instead of booster scrolls to boost makes more sense. If you are leveling up a castle and it’s going to take 30 hours to finish. Unless you have one of those single-use 24-hour boosters to use instead. It makes more sense to just spend diamonds. You need to work out the cost per hour. At that level, it should be around 61 diamonds per hour. Compare that to another thing that could cost you 90 diamonds per hour and that is quite the deal. Sometimes you can buy a pack for diamonds (not the black diamonds) and it’s far worse of a deal then what you could just spend them raw.

There are a bunch of other events and ways to earn booster, diamonds, and compound your efforts to earn more. You should always look for a way to get more or get ahead of others if it's more rewarding to do so and makes up for the cost. Just make sure you are taking advantage of alliance helps and not somehow shorting yourself in the processes.

Final Thoughts

Many of the stuff I’ve talked about here could even be applied to a free to play player. Outside of not getting the extra goodies of the monthly card which really help take you over the edge in compounding your efforts. A lot of other stuff you just want to make the game enjoyable unless you got a giant bank account and just want to burn everything in sight. Which more power to you if you do.

There was a little overlap from my review I did a couple of weeks back. This, however, is far more detail and focused around getting ahead instead of just looking at the basics of the game. I may consider doing more content for this game if there enough interest in it. kingdom wars are however almost two months out and would require me to keep playing daily to keep up.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Game Of Thrones Winter Is Coming game.

For anyone who does not have a friend invite (it gives you 500 diamonds and other goodies for level 10 and under castles) feel free to use mine https://got.gtarcade.com/en?refer=IoAAGN9kJuBpp4IC or friendship code IoAAGN9kJuBpp4IC if you are already signed up to the game.I do get a small in-game reward chest if you happen to spend money on the game. You still get the free diamonds if you don’t so it’s a nice bonus regardless for you. There is no further compensation beyond that on my end.