Unlocking Tier 4 Troops

The majority of queries related to Game of War: Fire Age are about the prestigious Tier 4 soldiers, a favorite among gamers… The most frequent question I get asked is: Can they be acquired without spending real money?

Unlocking Tier 4 Troops

The short answer is yes, in theory it is possible, but it is extremely difficult. In reality if you ever want to send out an army of War Elephants or Immortals be prepared to spend a significant amount of real money.

MISCONCEPTIONS

Part of the problem is that if you click on your barracks and select any of the Tier 4 troops you will notice that the only requirement appears to be a level 20 Barracks. This leads to the incorrect conclusion by many players that all you need to do is get your Stronghold and Barracks to level 20 and then crack on with researching Tier 4 troops…if only it was that simple.

You see, whilst you can train Tier 4 troops in a level 20 Barracks, you actually need a level 21 Academy to unlock them and this is where it starts getting expensive…

LEVEL 21 ACADEMY

A level 21 Academy is without a doubt the hardest building to upgrade in Game of War: Fire Age. Let’s look at the immediate requirements to just get your Academy from 20 to 21 (excluding resources):-

Stronghold 21, Hospital 21, Watchtower 21, Market Place 21, Hall of War 21, Altar 21.

To get these buildings to level 21 will require: Barracks 21, Embassy 21, Prison 21.

…..and these buildings require:-Quarry 21, Gymnos 21.

…..and the Gymnos requires:-

Villa 21.

…..and the Villa requires:-Logging Camp 21, Farm 21.

So pretty much most of your buildings need to be 21 to upgrade your Academy!

MASTER’S HAMMER

Let’s assume for a minute that you can gather all the required resources for these upgrades, without spending any real money (no mean feat by itself!). You will still need to buy a Master’s Hammer to upgrade some of these buildings from 20 to 21.

The Master’s Hammer can only be purchased from the item store and costs 2,000 gold. In addition the Master’s Hammer is used up for each upgrade i.e. you need one for each building.

From the above list the following require a Master’s Hammer:- Stronghold, Watchtower, Market Place, Hall of War, Altar, Embassy, Prison and Gymnos. So that’s 8 Hammers which is a total cost of 16,000 gold.

Now for the bad part…

SACRIFICIAL DAGGERS, IRON SHACKLES AND BOOKS OF WAR

If you have already upgraded your Hall of War and Prison a few levels, you will recall that each upgrade requires a certain number of Books of War or Iron Shackles. The Altar works much the same way, but requires Sacrificial Daggers to upgrade. These can only be obtained from the in game item store, chests and certain quests.

Whilst you certainly can acquire some through the later two options, it would take years to obtain enough items to upgrade all the way to 21 without purchasing any.

You see the required number of these items increases exponentially at higher levels. For instance upgrading any of these buildings from 20 to 21 requires 4,500 Daggers, 4,500 Shackles or 4,500 Books of War!

The total cost to go from level 1 to 21 for each of these three buildings is 20,048 of their respective items. I’m going to assume you can at least find 48 of each type from chests and quests, leaving 20,000 of each item to purchase from the item store.

The cheapest option is to buy them in stacks of 1,000 which costs a whopping 10,000 gold a stack! Running through the maths you will need to buy 20 stacks of 1,000 for each of the buildings, costing 200,000 gold a building. A massive 600,000 gold to upgrade all three!

SO WHAT DOES THIS COST IN REAL MONEY

Including the cost of the Master’s Hammer’s and the above mentioned items you need to purchase 616,000 gold. For the most part it will take years for your average player to obtain this much gold from in game events and chests.

So how much would it cost to buy? Well ignoring in game offers, 20,000 gold can be purchased for $100 i.e. $1 buys you 200 gold.

Therefore 616,000 gold will cost you $3,080 to purchase. What if you waited long enough to only buy your gold during in game offers? Well these typically only give you 30% extra gold with the balance of the offer being made up of other items. It would still cost around $2,300 to purchase everything you need.

Please note this does not even include the vast amount of time and resources needed to get all of these buildings to level 21.

SUMMING UP

Sadly in its current form Tier 4 troops are reserved only for the hardcore players willing to spend a lot of real money. They are simply out of reach for your typical casual player.

However, Tier 3 troops are still effective in the end game of Game of War: Fire Age. So don’t be too upset if you never have your Immortal Army, you will still be able to partake in end game battles and be useful to the top alliances.

Check out our updated T4 Guide as of 16 February 2015 here