Knights of Cathena: Entity Strategy Guide
What are the best tactics for the next-level Web3 strategy game Knights of Cathena? To get you prepared for Entity’s upcoming launchpad project, we’ve created a special guide to help you figure out a winning strategy for your own personal army and playing style. Let’s go!
Prepare for victory
Welcome to the realm of Altea! Knights of Cathena is like a modern version of chess where you can earn on-chain rewards like tokens and NFTs just for playing.
Similar to chess, it’s crucial to have some clever strategies for KoC if you want to achieve glory. But unlike chess, this game allows you to customize your formation, acquire new items, upgrade your troops, and more!
This article will cover three key strategic areas:
- How to win and advance
- How to optimize your formation
- How to improve your troops
So sharpen your blades, fire up some magic, and report to the battlefield!
Learn the basics
To win a match in Knights of Cathena, you need to kill the opposing team’s commander or defeat all of their units before they defeat yours.
Although the concept is simple, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to winning in KoC. The game is primarily player-vs-player (PVP), which means you will face different opponents with different formations, different styles, and different weaknesses to exploit.
As a commander, you must manage your traversal points at the bottom of the screen for each turn. Once you have used all of these points, you must let your opponent take a turn before moving again. Attacking or healing does not use any traversal points, but can only be performed once per turn.
There is also a timer for each turn, so make sure you are focused and ready to go!
Ok, what about the different troop types?
- Knights (Tank): Highest defense of any unit with a solid melee attack. However, their short attack range and low mobility makes them best suited as a ‘tank’ that absorbs damage on the front lines.
- Archers (Damage): Highly mobile with a ranged attack. But watch out — their light armor makes them quite susceptible to damage from opponents.
- Mages (Damage): Powerful area of effect (AoE) attack that is more precise than archers’ arrows. Be careful not to hurt your own troops, though! And, don’t forget that mages are less mobile than archers.
- Clerics (Healer): Can heal your troops and also deal some short-range damage to enemies. Remember that while clerics can both heal and attack, they can only perform one of these actions per turn.
Pro tip: some classes are also stronger and weaker against other unit types:
- Archers are strong against mages
- Mages are strong against knights
- Knights are strong against archers
Plus, each formation has a Commander that you must protect at all times.
This is important, since even if you only have a few troops left, you can still win a match by killing the opponents commander. Fortune favors the bold!
So, what are the best ways to arrange your troops for victory?
Set yourself up for success
Let’s talk formations!
While every chess game starts with the same pieces in the same positions, KoC gives you more freedom to set yourself up based on your preferred playing style.
You can place your units at the front for a more aggressive opening formation, or near the back if you want to wait for your enemies to come to you. Want to divide and conquer? Then spread your troops out to confuse your foes. Or, cluster them together for power in numbers, since you can attack with multiple units per turn if they are all positioned within range.
While it’s important to know how each unit works, you don’t actually need to use every type of troop in your formation. It’s all about experimenting with different arrangements and tactics to figure out what works best for you!
For example, maybe you want to focus on archers due to their mobility and long range. Using archers to quickly move into range, harass your opponents with some attacks, and then move back to safety before ending your turn is currently quite a popular maneuver.
Or with mages, you can unleash some major area damage against your enemies. Keep in mind that if your attack reaches three units, the one furthest away will receive the most damage. If you only attack one unit, that one will always receive maximum damage. Mages die easily and are less mobile than archers, so try your best to keep them at maximum range away from enemies.
Regardless of if you focus more on mages or archers for dealing damage, knights are very important for protecting your team. Due to their high defense, it makes sense to place them in strategic positions on your front line to protect your more vulnerable troops.
Whether you use clerics as a key part of your strategy is up to you. They are strong at healing — especially if they are very close to their healing target. If your cleric has a strong attack, they can also heal more. You can also deploy a cleric with low AP and keep them behind your lines. Or, try a more aggressive strategy without any healers at all if you feel brave!
But wait a second, how do you know if each of your units is strong or not?
Let’s take a look at Knights of Cathena’s NFT items and the strategies around them.
Upgrade, equip, win
Every time you play a match, you earn some coins that can be used to upgrade your team. By using the coins on the marketplace or to buy chests, you can receive NFT items that help you increase your might.
Keep in mind, however, that you can only equip a certain amount of powerful items at one time. This mechanic is called AP and increases as you make progress in the game and gain ranks.
So, players need another level of strategy to determine how best to spread their AP out across their troops.
Since your total available AP is limited, we recommend experimenting with different distributions. This mechanic helps balance the game by requiring additional strategy even if you have very strong items.
Maybe you want all of your troops to have some solid items equipped, or maybe you want to focus on making just a few of your units extra powerful.
Want a super strong tank to take damage and lead the fight? Then try to equip a knight with very powerful items and allocate your AP that way. Want to snipe your opponents from long range? Then consider equipping your archers with especially strong equipment instead.
This also leads to different strategies around upgrading items. If you know you want to focus on a certain type of unit, you can sell items for other troops and buy a different kind of equipment in the marketplace. The choice is yours!
To upgrade them, you can merge multiple items of the same level together. For example, three level 1 green items can be merged to create one level 2 green item.
Items come in 4 different rarities:
- Uncommon (Green)
- Rare (Blue)
- Epic (Purple)
- Legendary (Orange)
Regardless of the level of your item, the amount of AP required remains the same based on their rarity.
Additionally, each item has a quality rating. This means that every item of the same rarity and level does not have the same exact strength. So when you are merging items, the quality of the new item depends on the quality of the items that you merged together.
One more thing to keep in mind: balance between different ranks! If you have a higher major rank (Peasant, Squire, Knight, Lord, King/Grandmaster), your items will be downgraded to match your opponent’s rank. So if you are a Knight playing against a Squire, your items will be reduced slightly in power to create a more balanced matchup.
Sound complicated? If you have experience with video games, you will quickly get the hang of it.
One of the beautiful things about Knights of Cathena is that the best strategy totally depends on your playing style and each situation. And, keep in mind that the balance between units and items will also evolve as the game continues to develop.
So have fun, experiment, and start earning rewards today!
Launchpad page is live
To join the battle, head over to Knights of Cathena’s website now!
Do you have an excellent strategy, or want to learn from others?
Then make sure to join Entity on Twitter and Telegram, and KoC on Twitter, Telegram, and Discord. There is also a community-made Knights of Cathena strategy website called Mortals of Cathena if you want even more insights.
And before KYC for the Knights of Cathena launch opens on August 9, make sure to check out the official Launchpad Page on Entity for more info about the project, the $CGO tokenomics, and more!
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