Gathering is one of the key aspects in Rise of Kingdoms and I have a feeling that many players out there leave a lot of potential on the table and waste a lot of time using the wrong technique to gather.
For that reason I decided to write a full guide on the topics that matters (not listing like every little piece of advice like “You should get to VIP6” or “Use this nation”). No, I wanted to write a guide for you that will help you get the most out of gathering without useless tips.
Sounds good?
Okay… you’re still reading 🙂
In this guide you will find some general game-related things that will have an impact on gathering and later I have some specific things that you should mind when you actually gather.
General Gathering Background
Here I have some general tips that I found in different gathering guides that I want to point out, just a brief note for you – you don’t have to change the way you play the game 😉
Nation
There are many guides out there that will tell you what nation will get you more wood gathering speed or whatever – but I think Rise of Kingdoms is not all about gathering and this percentage faster gathering on one resource is not worth choosing your nation.
You already have chosen a nation and you should not change it just because any other nation will gather some resource faster (if you’re not sure if you have chosen the right nation check out here which ones work best) but don’t make this a choice by such a small benefit.
Farm Accounts
No doubt, farm accounts will help a lot with your gathering and resource income – but they are also additional work. So, if you think you already spend enough time with Rise of Kingdoms, you should not start a farm account for the sake of gathering.
If you do feel you want to do this, I have written here a full guide explaining you step by step how to set up a farm account and also how to exchange resources between your farm account and your main account.
VIP Level
Of course, VIP Level 6 has great benefits for gathering but you should not spend Gems on your VIP Level, simply work consistently on it and you will get it. There’s not one single reason to rush this with Gems.
Specific Gathering Tips
So, with that out of the way let’s walk through the normal gathering process and I have some things that I want to point out that I bet some of you do differently and you might waste some potential by doing this.
Picking The Right Nodes
I know that a lot of people simply chase after the highest level resource nodes or randomly pick the closest ones – but I want to tell you that you need to be very smart about selecting the resource nodes as this can dramatically impact how much you will gather in the long run.
Let’s go through some points here.
Resource Nodes Within Alliance Flags
The first step should always be to see what resource nodes are within your alliance territory – if you do gather them, you will not only get 25% faster gathering, you will also put 5% of what you gather (without losing it) into your alliance storage.
Resource Node Level & Travel Distance
I know everyone is going after those Level 6 resource nodes but you should always keep in mind that the only thing that those Level 6 have compared to a Level 4 or Level 5 resource node is more resource you can get. You won’t gather faster or gather more.
Your profit from gathering is always how much you can keep a gathering army gathering compared to the downtime, which is traveling and time you’re offline and they wait idle in your city.
So, if you’re gathering actively – and I mean by this that you are online and have an eye on your gathering army and can send them out right away once they come back – you should always prioritize the closest resource node to gather more in the same time.
If you send your gathering army out before you go to bed or work and you know you’ll not be able to check in in the next hours, however, it makes perfectly sense to send them to the highest-level resource node so you get the most resources within that time when you’re offline.
TL;DR: When you’re online, pick the closest resource node – when you’re about to go offline for 1 hour or more, take the highest-level resource node 🙂
Gathering Commander – Builds – Army
So, now it’s time to take a look at your gathering setups and there are also some things that I want to point out here.
Troop Type
You should always send Siege Units to gather because they can load a lot more and with the right talent tree build on your gathering commander, this will be a lot more than that.
So, always keep on training siege units, even if you don’t plan to hit other cities. They will be the backbone of your gathering armies.
Another thing is that you should always send out enough troops so you can gather all the resources within that resource node to keep the travel-gather-ratio (mentioned above) as small as possible. You want to get the most out of your travel time by gathering everything there is, right?
Optimal Commander
If you select to send out an army to gather, the game will always give you the commander with the highest general gathering bonus. So, let’s say you have a commander like Joan of Arc with a general gathering bonus but also Constance with a bonus on gathering wood, Rise of Kingdoms will always pick Joan of Arc as recommended commander.
But, if you now gather wood, you want to send Constance to gather the wood and then you can use Joan of Arc to gather any other resource with her bonus.
Commander Build
You should use a commander with the gathering tree to gather for the simple reason that there are multiple talents that will improve your gathering speed as well as the amount you gather.
No matter what gathering commander we’re talking about, the gathering tree should always look like this:
If you don’t have your gathering commander leveled up enough to get Superior Tools, follow this order:
- Get Gathering Mastery for the resource you plan to use this commander on first
- Get the other Gathering Mastery talents
- Get The More The Better for 6% more resources once completed gathering
- Get Superior Tools for more gathering speed
- Get Modified Axle so your siege units can load a lot more resources when gathering
This is the route you should take.
You can also check out my builds for every commander here.
Booster
I can only tell you to always check the Mysterious Merchant, guys. You will often find that 8 hour Gathering Token there that will give you a 50% boost on gathering and often enough you can even get it for resources, like 90k wood in this case.
Just do some math here – you can gather a 250,000 resource node in 45 minutes and if you do have multiple gathering armies out there this even multiplies. Now think about you can get that in 25 minutes but you can do that for 8 hours! You will get multiple times of what this costs you so always check the Mysterious Merchant and if you see these tokens there, get them. You can also use them later if you want to.
Keep in mind! When you use the booster you increase your gathering speed, not your march speed! So, with the above tips about selecting resource nodes you should also double-check for the closer nodes when this booster is active.
Consistency
Also a very good thing will be to develop a routine how you gather, something like:
- Send out gathering armies when you are online
- Set yourself an alarm when they come back so you can send them out again (so you don’t need to hang around online just waiting for them to return)
- Send out armies before work/bed to the highest-level resource nodes
This will help you to automatically get the most gathering done without thinking much about it.
Have fun 🙂
