Last month we announced the next chapter in Game of Thrones: Conquest- Battlegrounds. This is an all-new experience built from the ground up, drawing from the feedback from our community. In it, you’ll relive iconic moments in the Game of Thrones storyline, enjoy a new way to team up with your alliance, and walk out with exclusive loot!
This month we’re excited to walk you through more details of our first major milestone and technical Beta –
Technical Betas will begin in the next month so keep reading to learn more about what’s in store for this major new feature!
An Epic Expedition North
“The Night’s Watch will ride in force against the wildlings, the White Walkers and whatever else is out there.”
―Lord Commander Jeor Mormont
Something is very wrong north of the wall… Wilding villages found empty and abandoned, fearsome creatures, once only the stuff of legend and tall tales, discovered roaming the wilderness.
The Night’s Watch calls on you to amass a force and join them on The Great Ranging – an expedition like none before. Travel through the icy gates of the Wall and face whatever chilling adversaries await in this unfamiliar and unforgiving territory.
New For The Great Ranging
The Great Ranging is a PvE focused Battleground, with new creatures and exclusive rewards you can only get from this mode. See how far you can get in each 30-minute excursion!
New to this mode will be a completely redesigned combat map as well as several other new visual elements and epic new music.
You will no longer be represented by a Keep on the map, but a Battalion of soldiers that will adjust according to your level and banner colors (and yes, your soldiers do animate.)
We have several new creatures to fight and an entirely new creature type- Unyielding. These enemies will not go down easily and you’ll need help from your team if you want to defeat one for good.
For even more farming fun, we’ll be unlocking 30-second Rally timers for this mode, plus adding new 500% Rally Join Speed Research to unlock. That research will be available even outside Battlegrounds, so look out for that soon under the Military I research tree!
We could make a whole post on these creatures and The Great Hunt-specific elements alone… and we will! Keep an eye on this space in a couple of weeks for our September dev update.
Battlegrounds Basics
The following will be true of all planned battlegrounds:
- Battlegrounds are instanced experiences– You will be teleported to a new map to take part.
- These emphasize allegiance-based combat, and you will need to rely on your team in order to take down targets and accomplish goals.
- Use Chronicles of Conflict to join a Battleground.
Instanced experiences – Explore new maps
When joining a Battleground, all of your active marches will be recalled and your keep will be moved to a new map that can only be accessed by your allegiance.
A Stand-In will take the place of your keep while in a Battleground. The Stand-In cannot be attacked, scouted, or reinforced. Upon exiting the Battleground you will be returned to your kingdom, replacing the Stand-In, and be granted a short peace shield.
The Stand-In will expire 15 minutes after completion of the Battleground, relinquishing control of that territory. Players that log in after this time will be randomly teleported to a new location on their kingdom.
Ownership of any Seats of Power will be maintained, but you will be unable to actively defend them, so plan accordingly!
Allegiance-based Combat – Rely on your Team
High-ranking members of an allegiance, typically T1 or T2, can initialize a Battleground. Your allegiance must have at least 20 members to initialize a Battleground, however, there is no limit on who can join. One could try on their own, but getting your team to jump in (all the way up to the max of 156 allegiance members) would certainly help.
The allegiance will be entered into a short queue while the Battleground is prepared. An allegiance may initialize a Battleground once every 24 hours.
Once the Battleground is ready, allegiance members will be notified and the allegiance will be locked. Allegiance structure cannot be modified in any way, until the end of the Battleground. Anyone within your allegiance with a constructed Iron Gate may join at this point.
New Consumable Item – Earn through daily gameplay
Battlegrounds will take a new item in order to initialize- Chronicles of Conflict. These tomes will detail the bloody history of Westeros and the battles you face with each Battleground.
It was important to us to make these very accessible, so Chronicles of Conflict will be earned through your usual Daily Quest completion. If you do not have the required entry cost, Gold can substitute.
The Iron Gate
Battlegrounds introduces a new building to the northern border of your city, the Iron Gate. From there you can launch or join Battlegrounds with your allegiance.
The Iron Gate will visually open and close within your city to indicate whether a Battlegrounds instance is currently initialized or not.
Once you or your allegiance has queued for a Battleground, you will also see a new icon in the upper left of your keep, near the events panel, to indicate the time remaining. You can tap this, or go through the Iron Gate to access more information about the Battleground.
The ability to construct the Iron Gate unlocks at Keep level 8. We felt this was an achievable level that would allow new players a chance to learn the basic systems of the game before throwing something new at them. The gap between a level 8 player and a level 35 is wide, however, all members should be able to make significant contributions to your allegiance’s success.
Players should see construction begin on the Iron Gate within their city in early September!
We want to know what you think!
As we discussed more in last month’s update, this feature is the culmination of a lot of ideas and is very much designed with the community involved. Last month our Battleground Project Owner even joined our community Discord to hang out with players and hear your thoughts.
So what are you waiting for? Head over to the #battlegrounds channel and let us know what you think of the new info we’ve shared today.
The first Technical Betas for the Great Ranging will begin after our September game update finishes rolling out.
We’ll meet you next month at the Iron Gate!
Updated 9/27/21: Since the release of this post, we have published an additional Battlegrounds Update on the Technical Beta of the Great Ranging. Check out all the new info here.