June 1, 2023

Best Zhuge Liang Builds (Talents, Skill Order, Pairing & Equipment) In Rise of Kingdoms

Are you planning to or already running Zhuge Liang in Rise of Kingdoms in one of your marches and want to see how you should invest the talent points, what equipment works best and what other commanders you should pair with? Well, then you’re in the right place, below you will find answer to each one of those questions and this will help you make your Zhuge Liang perfrom as strong as possible in all situations.

Current Ranking – is Zhuge Liang S-Tier, A-Tier, or D-Tier?!

Zhuge Liang

Here is a quick overview of the rankings of Zhuge Liang for the different game modes. Please refer to the full tier list linked below to see the ranking of all commanders in Rise of Kingdoms and full evaluation and priority..

Open Field:

S+

Rally:

Canyon:

Defense:

Full Tier List

Important! Don’t miss out on free Gems, Keys, Boosters and Speedups and frequently check my list of active gift codes for Rise of Kingdoms here.

Skill Order

Skill 1

Skill 2

Skill 3

Skill 4

Expertise

Skill Order Finetuning

Below you will find the best order to unlock and level up skills by how useful they are so you don’t have to level the skills up one by one and spend a lot of extra sculptures on it. This will let you use this commander earlier and also saves you important Universal Sculptures in the long run!

Your sweetspot of skills to make this commander useful is: 5511 and this is the recommended way to get there:

➟

AllClash

Pro

You can save a lot of sculptures and resources by smartly upgrading your commanders in Rise of Kingdoms. Unlock the perfect skill upgrade order by becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Simply log in here with your Patreon account and unlock all content and remove all ads on the website.

Not sure how it works and what you get? Check out guide for Aethelflaed here that will is completely unlocked to show you how the skill order works. Preview here.

Best Troops

With the way his skills buff and, if you use him as the primary commander, his talent tree makes sense, there is no other reasonable way than running him with a full archer march.

Best Commander Pairing for Zhuge Liang

Boudica (Prime)

Henry

Yi-Seong Gye (YSG)

Nebuchadnezzar

Cyrus the Great

Boudica (Prime) is a perfect pair with Zhuge Liang as the secondary commander and this pair is even able to beat the top cavalry pairs with Nevsky and Joan Prime effortlessly. If you#re able to use this combo you will not regret it. Henry is an alright pair overall where you can use Zhuge Liang as the primary commander and they do well together. Not overpowered or dominationg, but they work. Yi-Seong Gye (YSG) is a pair many people do use simply due to the fact that these are the commanders available for many and it can work okay-ish but it lacks in march speed and as wel all know open field combat is about being quick and this combo can do battles well but the march speed will be a pain to deal with and create a lot of unneccessary unfortunate situations for you. Nebuchadnezzar is also a combination that you can use if you plan on running your Zhuge Liang one a secondary or third archery march, but even with the defense Nebu provides, you will still be quite a glass cannon here. Cyrus the Great as secondary commander along Zhuge is also a nice open field setup with all skills relevant and as they share the same talent trees they work well together. Again, you will have some trouble moments as there’s literally no defense except Zhuge’s extra health but the march speed here helps to get out of tricky situations.

Find out more about the most useful commander pairings here.

Best Equipment Forge Order

In terms of equipment, here’s what I recommend to use as the route for Zhuge Liang. I have tailored this priority order that you can follow step-by-step to prevent forging and running equipment that is not useful or only provides a very small improvement. Follow the equipment path step-by-step and you will have the best and most economical gear:

Chain Mail is super cheap to craft and gives some attack so it's the best first gear item to craft and equip

Sturdy Boots will give some defense and gathering speed which is not too exciting but they are also cheap to craft and give at least a few stats and should be your second gear item to equip

Helm of the Phoenix is the first green item to craft and equip and although the stats overall are not too impressive, at this early stage they still help and are a solid progress

Leather Gloves gives some health which is always good (and I mentioned numerous times that health is the strongest stat in the game) so you can't go wrong now with this as your next gear item, espcially considering the low crafting costs

Ranger Trousers is also not too exciting but the only green piece that gives any stats to archers so take it

Blessed Blade is the last open gear slot to equip and the reason why I recommend this last is that archers normally don't have a huge problem with attack and this item provides attack), they normally struglge more with durability in combats so this will make you deal more damage which is fine but doesn't help with any defensive stats at all - for that reason I recommend this gear item last here

Commanders Heavy Armor is the next gear piece and you should skip the green one here for sure as it is even worst for archer stats than the white gear piece you're having, so get the blue directly and save yourself some crafting resources and the health increase you get here is quite massive

Staff of the Lost should be the next gear to replace the green one, for the simple reason that you can now get defense instead of attack which makes your march a lot more durable and reliable

Greaves of the Exile is like the weapon the next logical step as it is now available and you should have the resources to craft it

Flame Treads now finally replace the white boots. There was simply nothing good available so far that made sense so you have rather saved resources by jumping from white to epic directly and with massive 5.5% health it's a great gear item that set you up well here

AllClash

Pro

Save tons of Gold and Blueprints by following my recommended item order and don't waste your time and resources on items that are not worth it. You can unlock the full path by supporting AllClash on Patreon..

AllClash Pro LockedYou need to be a AllClash Pro supporter to be able to see this content

How to unlock

And for the artifacts I have tested the different ones here so you can see which ones perform the best (of course I only tested/list the ones that make sense):

Ring of Doom

Horn of Fury

Ring of Doom

Horn of Fury

Concealed Dagger

Moras Web

Pendant of Eternal Night

Silent Trial

Ancient Strategem

Ring of Doom is perfect to increase all damage dealt by a percentage so it affects pretty much any damage output and works well with him.Horn of Fury works perfect with all abilities and and let you cycle through his active skill quicker and quicker with the talent builds you can see below.

Best Builds For Zhuge Liang

Below you will find the talent tree builds for Zhuge Liang that make sense when running as the primary commander in any march in Rise of Kingdoms. Please also refer to the description below each talent tree as I explain a general route on how you should spend your talents there + some additional background for each talent build that I very likely will appreciate.

For open field this is the talent build that I recommend to run with Zhuge Liang with focus on the Skill Tre to maximize the rage generation through several talents that do that to cycle through his active skill and ramp up the damage output as much as possible.Start with unlocking Rejuvenate and then make your way to unlock Feral Nature as quickly as possible to have as much extra rage as possible with him. From here you can then make your way into the Archer Tree for Venemous Sting that will deal a lot more damage. Zhuge already has a ton of skill damage and cycling quicker and getting the extra buff on that is a huge improvement.Leftover points now can be invested into Full Quiver and Razor Sharp and you will outdamage pretty much every other commander available in the game.

If you plan to rally with Zhuge Liang, I recommend using a slightly different talent setup as shown in the image. The difference is that you want to improve the overall damage output with Razor Sharp and leaving Feral Nature in the skill tree on the table for that is overall worth it.I know this is not the average-player use-case so only use this talent build if you’re leading the rally with Zhuge.

Conclusion

I hope this guide for building Zhuge Liang helped you investing without wasting much time and resources. If you liked it or you further questions (or maybe also annnotations that you believe should be added here in this guide), please don’t hesitate to post them below in the commen section. Thanks for reading and have a great day and see you out in the kingdoms.