Game of Thrones: Ascent Tutorial – A Beginner’s Guide
Game of Thrones: Ascent covers quite well the detail and richness of George R. R. Martin’s famous novels. It is rich in text and detail, which people who read the meanwhile six books might appreciate. The others can easily skip it. In this tutorial I want to help you getting started and also overcoming the limitations you’ll face by not paying gold for this game.
The Beginning
Before doing anything I have to send out a warning. Don’t spend gold! It’s the premium currency in the Game of Thrones: Ascent. You can get it again for free, but only slowly. So think twice on what to spend it. I’ll cover this later in this tutorial.
Charactergeneration is straight forward. Here it has no influence on the later game. At the beginning the game will guide you very close. You don’t even have a choice. So better just get through it. It will grant you some silver and ressources. During this you also chose your background and swear fealty to one of the highborn houses. The latest one having a significant influence on the game. Still you can just go with your favourite one. You should already decide whether you want to focus on fighting, trading or intrigue. This is your major decision in this game.
The first own steps
After following the blinking yellow arrow for while you are finally free to do what you want. The things you need to buy all cost silver so take care of this first. You’ll get it from your quests as long as you have adventurers to take them and from the counting house.
Sellswords
So have a look at the keep if there are any sellswords worth buying. Just go for the common ones now. Best the ones with one point in your focus field – fight, trade or intrigue. Since it’s only one point it is not such a big deal. You can send the sellsword to an adventure or click through the text and let him quest for you. The first grants you some silver and a ressource and him quite some experience. The last does basically the same, occupies him longer and let’s you progress in the story. It also can give you good items. Some storyquests can become quite tough and some cannot be repeated when you lose, so I’d always send the best sellsword to the quest, the rest on an adventure. Especially for the ones, where you can get good items. Those quests are done faster the stronger your sellsword is. Since you might have timepressure this can become a big thing. Always chose the action with the highest probability of winning. Usually it’s the one you focussed on earlier. For adventures it always is. Two things you have to be aware: You can’t send more sellswords than you have command points. Those you see right on the main screen above them. So best buy slowly as many of them as you have command points. And sellswords can also die, if they get five wounds. Since they recover from wounds within one hour it’s quite unlikely to happen, but if necessary, just give them a rest.
Economy
Chosing the cheap sellswords will leave you with some silver left. This can be used to construct and upgrade buildings. Crafting is comparable cheap and is not necessary at the moment. First to spend your silver on is the counting house. Why? It produces more silver. Especially for the first upgrades you get your silver back pretty fast.
Have a look at the village center. You spend ressources on upgrades, so you have to make sure to have enough. In the beginning this is usually the case. To avoid problems later just always build the ressource which you have the least of. You later also have to upgrade this building to be able to produce every ressource.
Further buildings
Crafting is not so strong in Game of Thrones: Ascent. Building upgrades are. They can directly give bonuses to all your sellswords at once. So look which of the early buildings grants the bonus of your focus fields when upgrading. For fighting it’s the Smithy, for trade the market and for intrigue the Embassy. If you don’t have the building, then build it. Whenever you have money left, upgrade this building. Your sellswords will become stronger, master more quests and better adventures and so level faster.
Items
Up to now we haven’t talked about the character. Now he get’s his part. For the items you get, think first of your character. He should always get the best items. This usually means the ones with the highest bonus of whatever of fight, trade or intrigue you want to focus on. You can also use items which give a percentage bonus or a bonus on all three fields if they are only slightly worse. All bonuses from your character affect again all sellswords.
Your character can also skill talents. for most of them I didn’t see much effect. Look for the ones, which bring bonus to the action you use for adventuring.
Gold
In Game of Thrones: Ascent gold is earned slowly but continously. You can also buy it of course, but I wouldn’t suggest to. When being careful at spending it, the gold you get automatically is quite sufficient. The game has quite some annoying features, which can be avoided by spending gold and this is what you should spend it to. So there are three important things I’d go for. I unlocked them in this order. And note that ones you unlock one of them, you don’t need to pay gold for further upgrades of this talent:
- Novice Adventurers: Soon you’ll get a double digit amount of sellswords. Sending them on adventures becomes quite a work. This talent allows you to form parties of them and send them all at ones.
- Brewhouse (Village Center): Unlocking those upgrades allows you to create up to six ressources automatically after each other. This again saves you a lot of clicking and gives up to five additional ressources for when starting just before going opffline for a while.
- Money Chests (Counting House): Bringing least comfort of the three but still a lot of value is this upgrade. It’s quite expensive, so best do it last. It allows you to further upgrade the counting house, increasing income and storage. This will be one step to financial independence in this game.
How to get gold? Some you got and some you’ll get automatically. To get more the only way is to log in every day for one week. Really try to do so until you got all those upgrades listed above. If you know you can’t go online at certain days you can also plan this. You’ll always fall back to day one, if you haven’t been online the previous day.
How to continue
You now should have set up a decent account with stable income, good sellswords and no big problems in proceeding through the adventures. At the other parts of the game like friends, alliances you should have a look. Also what of the items you can craft bring a benefit to you. The sam for the buildings. Which ones are necessary for crafting and which ones bring the bonuses you need? Soon you’ll have a lot of silver. I always waited for 24.000 silver to have then a look for the sellswords. I bought the ones, which didn’t cost gold and brought 30 points of in my case fighting. exchange the cheap ones, equip and level the new ones. The old ones will be useless, I only didn’t find a way to kick them out.
Have fun and enjoy the game!
Winter is coming.