A Complete Noob's Starter Tips & Advice for "Game of Thrones: Conquest"

Are you feeling like you can barely make it until April, when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones will air? Me, too, which is exactly why I downloaded WB's RTS game called Game of Thrones: Conquest. In it, you're given a chance to join an alliance and create your own great House, all while you manage your own keep, army, maesters, and dragon. Yes, you get your own dragon! (As long as you're patient, you won't need to spend money on in-game purchases, so take note that it does take a while to get your dragon to hatch.)

If you are already playing but feel like a complete noob, or you're interested in playing after seeing ads for the game, read on and know that you aren't alone. (It took me a long time to figure out that I could feed the dragon wood from my resources as opposed to waiting for the free daily feed. Yes, I felt very mentally encumbered indeed. Also, that rhyme there was complete coincidence. Sorry.)

There is a lot to look at in this game, so I'm going to break it down for you quickly before moving on. At the top left corner of your screen, you'll see your resources count. (These are used for advancing your kingdom and training troops.) The leftmost is your available food, then you have wood, stone (level 10 keep), iron (level 15 keep), and gold. Keep in mind that these may not be all the resources you have at your disposal, because you will be rewarded with certain amounts of them for completing tasks or hunting creatures. You'll be able to find additional resources in your inventory, which you can open by hitting the chest at the lower left part of the screen. From there, you can select a resource and specify how much you would like to add to your count at the top left of the screen. You can also attack other players for their resources, but there are rules, which we'll get to in a minute.

Underneath your resource count is your avatar, which you can click on to open your profile details. The number 17 on my avatar indicates my house prestige level. You also are awarded with house prestige points when you win battles or complete certain tasks. To the right of my avatar is my banner that I customized when I started the game. You're allowed to pick from different sigils and backgrounds. Next to the banner, you'll see your army count. You can make this number higher by training more troops, growing your dragon, or having your maesters do research; it gets lower if you lose battles and your men get wounded or killed (but you can always heal your wounded men, which adds them back to the count). The tiny gears button next to the army number is the settings. You can go here to manage your screen/music options or toggle the profanity filter for the chat.

Expanding the buttons on the right side of the screen shows you what your builders, maesters, and troops are doing. The Tyrion icon at the bottom left will show a notification when you have a reward for completing a task. The black kingdom chat bar is near the bottom, and clicking it will expand the chat and have tabs you can toggle for talking only to your allegiance or your bannermen/liege and other bannermen.

The buttons at the very bottom are for the map, another map showing seats of power, your inventory, rewards points, battle/attack/gathering reports, and your allegiance info, respectively. I know it seems like a lot to remember, but the game tutorial will guide you through most of it. The rest, you'll be able to pick up on your own if you're patient and active enough.

While your dragon remains un-hatched, you can feed wood to the fire underneath it for growth points. Do this often enough, and the egg will hatch and you'll see something similar to the screenshot above. At this point, you will have the option to feed your dragon livestock - the better the quality, the more growth points you'll get. At first, it was difficult for me to come by common or fine livestock, so I made do with poor and still got talent points. The further your dragon progresses, the harder it is to grow with poor-quality livestock. Talent points allow you to train your dragon in skills such as infantry/cavalry/ranged attack and defense of your own castle. This way, when PvP events come up or you don't have the gold to spend on a peace shield, your dragon can help take out attackers. (Protip: Keep your resources in each category under 1 mil. Don't open resource boxes if you have more than that unless you're willing to share with people who hit you. Many people heed the "no attacking under 1 mil" rule, but I have heard of people with less than that being zeroed and all their troops killed, so it is good to have a strong dragon who is trained in defense. It is a war game, after all.)

You don't have to go in order of the skills presented when you are training your dragon, and as he or she grows, it is good to be choosy about which talents you want your dragon to have. The talent points will become more difficult to get; it will require more lower-quality feeds if you don't have the exquisite (purple) feeds or above.

Fun fact - your dragon will change colors if you change your banner colors. I have changed my profile since I took the above screenshots. When I changed my banner to purple and black, my dragon went from gray to almost black, with purple showing on his wings. It's really cool! Try it out if you have a banner change in your inventory.

The importance of joining an allegiance is shown during the tutorial when you first start playing the game, but you'll do well to take your time to learn about the existing allegiances - which ones are at war, which ones are allies, which ones hold the most seats of power and offer chances for you to hold one too. In my case, seats of power are not as important as the overall vibe and how fun it is to be in the allegiance. Some allegiances have a lot of rules and strictly enforce participation, while others are more laid back. See what works best for you, but know that loyal players are most liked in the game. If you are known for hopping from allegiance to allegiance, it may make people suspicious (just as they would be in the TV show!). Don't be Petyr Baelish... unless you really enjoy that aspect of his character, then it's all good.

Joining an allegiance can give your keep added protection and helps with getting to know other players. If you are new to the game, they can also teach you a lot. Some of the allegiances have Discord servers with pages of rules and tips you can go through at your leisure. People from all over the world play, and there is an in-game translator (although I have seen mixed reviews about how well it works). If someone attacks you unfairly, you can let your allegiance know that too and make plans for getting revenge or ask someone to send reinforcements to your keep.

As with any free game, in-app purchases are not necessary, but usually appeal to those of us who have trouble finding the patience to progress organically. When you first start GoT: Conquest, it is really easy to get along without spending money (or was for me) because you're given so many freebies to advance your kingdom. Initially, you'll get a lot of rewards from Tyrion for adding new buildings and upgrading them. The higher the levels of your buildings, the more resources they require to upgrade, but this still doesn't get tricky until everything is level 12 or above. So no, you absolutely don't need to spend money to get somewhere.

If you either run out of patience or get to higher levels where it is harder to grow, you can spend money to get gold, peace shields, dragon lore, and various other things for growing your kingdom. Some packs are as low as 99 cents, but they are at all price levels. I would advise giving yourself a spending limit and sticking to that. Sometimes when WB updates the game, they will include free things and that is how I once got 100,000 gold for absolutely free.

Hang in there, keep playing, take breaks when you get frustrated, but don't give up. This is how you get really strong! Patience and persistence. Life is this way too, isn't it?