Specialty Guide
6/19/2022 – Added “Advanced Journey” to “How to get a Runestone” section.
5/27/2022 – Added section “Increasing Power by Specialty”.
4/7/2022 – Added availability of each Runestone. / Update on required costs and period of time.
Primarily a basic guide for players below General level 25.
- What is a specialty?
- Basic Specifications
- The 4th specialty is for heavily paid players
- What kind of person can make 4 specialties gold?
- Runestones are extremely valuable. You should focus on one general first.
- The cost of turning 4 specialties into gold
- The time period required to maximize 4 specialties “Without Paying”
- How to get a Runestone
- How to get a lucky stone
- How to get Gems
- Increasing Power by Specialty
What is a specialty?
A buff or debuff that only the rarest generals (purple and gold) have.
Gold generals have four, purple generals have three.
Specialties are unlocked at general level 25, but have a default value of zero, so you will need to use runestones and gems to increase your learning level.
Each general has a different specialty. You can see which generals have which specialties from their portraits in the tavern.
Basic Specifications
- Each of the four specialties requires a different type of runestone. From left to right on the screen, the following are required.
- Specialty 1 – Leadership Runestone
- Specialty 2 – Military Runestone
- Specialty 3 – Glory Runestone
- Specialty 4 – Immortal Runestone (Specialty 4 is not available to purple generals)
- There are five learning levels for each specialty.
- Level 1 – Green (Veteran)
- Level 2 – Blue (Master)
- Level 3 – Purple (Expert)
- Level 4 – Orange (Grandmaster)
- Level 5 – Gold (Genius)
- As you increase your learning level, the buffs for that specialty will increase little by little.
- The content and values of the specialty that can be seen in the portraits in the tavern are those when the learning level is raised to the maximum.
- When paying runestones and gems to increase EXP, you may get double EXP if you use lucky stones at the same time. (Depends on your luck)
- The chance of getting double EXP increases depending on the number of lucky stones you use (5% for 1 stone, 90% for 10 stones).
- Not only historic generals, but also non-historic generals have specialty. (Reference: What is Historic General)
The 4th specialty is for heavily paid players
The 4th specialty, the rightmost one that the golden general has, is often much more powerful in buffing and debuffing than the three specialties before it.
However, this 4th specialty can only be unlocked if the previous 3 specialties are all gold (genius), so you can’t increase your learning level until then.
This takes a lot of effort, time, or money, so unless you are a heavy paid player, it is best not to rely on the 4th specialty. (For an unpaid player, I think it takes a couple of years.)
I recommend that you keep this in mind when you are seriously considering which general to train.
What kind of person can make 4 specialties gold?
As an example, here is a model case of how far someone could raise their specialty within a year of starting the game.
Model case by budget
- $10,000+ per year (k35, 1.5B)
- 4 golds (1 general), 3 oranges (2 generals)
- Less than $5,000 per year (k33, 320M)
- 3 oranges (2 generals)
- $500 per year (k30, 140M)
- 3 purples (1 general)
Runestones are extremely valuable. You should focus on one general first.
To maximize specialty, you’ll need a huge number of runestones. (See below for the specific number.)
You need to carefully decide which general you want to use them on.
Unless you are a heavily charged player, it is recommended that you focus your runestones on one general only.
(Runestones themselves can be obtained without paying for them, but if you want to get a lot of them in a hurry, you need to get a lot of high scores on the battlefield. This means that you will end up having to charge quite a bit of money to grow quickly.)
The cost of turning 4 specialties into gold
Overview
- Runestones – 50,800 pcs (12,700 pcs x 4 specialties)
- Gems – 1,015,920 gems (253,980 gems x 4 specialties)
Note – It is possible to reduce the cost a bit more by using lucky stones. Above are maximum values.
Details
The following are required per specialty.
- Green (Veteran)
- 200 Runestones, 4,000 Gems
- Blue (Master)
- 500 Runestones, 10,000 Gems
- Purple (Expert)
- 1,000 Runestones, 19,980 Gems
- Orange (Grandmaster)
- 3,000 Runestones, 60,000 Gems
- Gold (Genius)
- 8,000 Runestones, 160,000 gems
The above is not a cumulative total, but the cost required to raise from one previous level.
Reference – Amount of Money
If you were to maximize the 4 specialties by paying ONLY, you would need about $6,350.
The number of runestones available depends on the pack, but for example, the $99.99 pack sold in March 2022 has 1,000 runestone chests.
Also, as mentioned, 50,800 runestones are needed to max out the 4 specialties. (12,700 x 4 specialties)
However, which runestone comes out of the runestone chest is random, and leadership runestones are easy to get and immortal runestones are hard to get.
It takes 12,700 immortal runestones to maximize the specialty 4, which requires opening about 127,000 runestone chests. (See below for details.)
If you buy all of the above packages with a double coupon and get 127,000 runestone chests, then
127,000 ÷ (1,000 x 2) x $100 = $6,350
$6,350 would be required.
Note that if you buy a runestone pack at “Shopping Spree” with a double coupon, you can get 800 runestone chests for $9.99, so you would need to spend
127,000 ÷ (400 x 2) x $10 = $1,588
It would cost approximately $1,600.
But since these packs can only be purchased twice a week, it would take about 19 months.
Reference – Rate of availability of each Runestone
The approximate availability of which Runestones will be found in the Runestone Chest is as follows.
- Specialty 1 – Leadership Runestone
- Around 34%
- Specialty 2 – Military Runestone
- Around 32%
- Specialty 3 – Glory Runestone
- Around 24%
- Specialty 4 – Immortal Runestone
- Around 10%
Example of opening chests
The time period required to maximize 4 specialties “Without Paying”
If we were to make 4 specialties into gold without paying, how long would it take?
If you are around k32 and can get a high score every time in the Battles of Constantinople and Gaugamela, you can get about 200-300 chests per game.
Assuming two fights a week and about 500 chests, that’s 2000 chests in a month.
As noted above, approximately 127,000 runestone chests are needed.
127,000 ÷ 2,000 = approximately 63 months
It can be shortened a bit more by using other methods such as selling generals (see below).
But it is best to think that 3-5 years will be needed.
How to get a Runestone
Event: Advanced Journey
Payment required.
You can get 1,000 chests for $4.99. (as of 6/19/2022)
Must pay to unlock “Precious Treasure” and complete all 50 levels within the 10-day event period.
- Level 10: 100 chests
- Level 20: 150 chests
- Level 30: 200 chests
- Level 40: 250 chests
- Level 50: 300 chests
Payment can be either $4.99 or $1,999.
Purchase packages
Event Package
- Examples (number varies by event) at Nov. 2021
- $4.99 – 100 chests
- $9.99 – 200 chests
- $19.99 – 350 chests
- $49.99 – 700 chests
- $99.99 – 1,300 chests
- total – 2,650 chests
related: Event Package 1-5 All Contents (total: $185)
Shopping Spree
- Day1 & 2: Round 3 package $9.99 – 400 chests
- (at Nov. 2021)
Battlefield
- At the Battle of Constantinople (BoC) and the Battle of Gaugamela (BoG), you can get more depending on your score, wins or losses, and whether or not it is during the All-Star Event.
- e.g. 20-300 chests for the Battle of Constantinople
Daily Activity
- If you achieve 145 score, you will receive 5 runestone chests.
Black Market
- 2,500 Gems – 10 chests (Confirmed at market level 25)
Selling Generals
The number of chests you get depends on the rarity of the general and the state of his training.
- Example
- Green General
- Lv1 / 0 stars / cultivate 0 -> 0 chests
- Purple Historic General
- Lv1 / 0 stars / cultivate 0 -> 10 chests
- Lv30 / 0 stars / cultivate 0 -> 12 chests
- Gold Historic General
- Lv1 / 0 stars / cultivate 0 -> 24 chests
- Lv30 / 0 stars / cultivate 0 -> 32 chests
- Lv30 / 5 stars / cultivate 0 -> 66 chests
- Lv30 / 5 Stars / cultivate 300 -> 111 chests
- Lv30 / 5 Stars / cultivate 500 -> 170 chests
- Green General
Server War / Battlefield
- Defeating an enemy player if both sides’ troop power loss is more than 30M. (see image below)
How to get a lucky stone
Server War / Battlefield
- Defeating an enemy player if both sides’ troop power loss is more than 35M.
How to get Gems
See the following article.
Increasing Power by Specialty
Raising a specialty increases a general’s power.x1 x3 x4 Green 750 2,250 – Blue 2,650 7,950 – Purple 6,450 19,350 – Orange 17,650 52,950 – Gold 47,450 142,350 189,800
Related: How to increase the General’s Power (and the Danger)
Related
General’s Star Level & Common Misconceptions (Enhance Guide)
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19 Comments
Which General by role (Mounted, Ranged, Ground, Wall, Boss Hunter) do you think is the best to start unlocking specialties? I do not coin
Do specialties in duty generals increase attack % of the city? For instance, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, what does his second specialty do? Thank you!
Please see below
Duty Officer Guide
Thanks for the clarification, means I can just mess around there because my time (max 4 months) and spending (max 20 bucks) is limited
Do I have to level the 1st specialty to gold before the second one unlocks?
No. The first three specialties are unlocked from the beginning.
Your suggestion for which general and which specialty to start with forca free to play player.. K25..I have Elektra.. and the good Mount generals..some decent sub n duty gens.. in terms of Gold Historic..but I think only Elektra is a decent PVP one I have
What is cultivate 300? 300 for all attributes?
No. It means if all 4 attributes are cultivated to +300.
Reference General Cultivate Guide
My black market at lv27 often lists 10 runestones for 2500 gems. Is this a good deal or a bad value? I am trying to complete the market trades for the Dawn of Civilization and King’s Path, and this often comes out.
When dismissing a general you’ve already invested rune stones in, do you get all the runestones back or just a percentage??
Doesn’t matter how many rune stones you’ve spent on the general. You won’t get that back. You get up to 24 rune stones chests and some gold depending on your type of general. Also, don’t forget to remove your equipment before selling generals.
(At least that’s how it was in the past)
So we need 12,700 rune stones to make one specialty gold.
I didn’t pay for it, but I thought it might be more efficient if I dared to spread them out instead of concentrating on one.
This means giving up on reaching genius and raising the specialty of several generals to blue or purple.
In the case of PvP, I think the general should basically concentrate on one person.
In SVS, I got a lucky stone when I won by losing 7.8M and my opponent lost 23.3M.
I suggest recruiting a general at the tavern and selling him/her right away. In this case, a 1M general will get 1 runestone, while a 10M general will only get 3. Some purple generals would also be more efficient. For players who don’t make t14 and have extra money, I figure it’s a good way to boost their specialties a bit!
That shall cost a huge amount of gold because when you sell a general, the gold received is only half of the amount you pay when purchasing.
The expected answer comes in a whole article. Thank you so so much.
Thank you too.