Building and farming NPC's
Please do not build any NPC's other than level 5 or 10's near any of your cities. You will want maybe one or two LVL 5 NPC's within 5 miles of your city. The rest of the NPC's surrounding you should be LVL 10's, withing up to five or more miles. I often begin building my LVL 10 NPC's before I am even capable of farming LVL 5's. You will want to get them built as quickly as possible, so that the flats near you do not fill up full of landscape clutter (noob cities, low leel npc's, hostiles, etc. You will also want your LVL 10's as near your city as possible, so that you can farm them more quickly later in the game when time and food are both more critical. Planning ahead for your LVL 10 field is one of the most important things you can do.
Lv10 farming is the bread and butter of end game troop feeding. Without this, you will not be able to sustain an army worth a damn. You want at minimum 10-12 lv10's per city to farm, the number of these that you have equates to the size of the army you can feed. (E says there is no such thing as too many LVL 10's per city.) To attack a lv10 you will need a hero with at minimum 138 atk, tho having 160+ atk is recommended, even with this you will take significant losses (up to 10-15k archers per lv10) until you reach around 200atk. You also want your mil trad, iron working, medicine, compass and archery to be lv10, hbr lv10 is also preferred but is not a requirement. Going in with under leveled tech will result in MASSIVE losses, some ppl have lost as much as 70k archers in 1 hit b/c they had techs that were lv9. Do not make this mistake, be patient, your time will come.
The rainbow setup you use to tackle your lv10's is important, there are many variations that work, finding the one that works for you is your goal once you have the hero to start. Your rainbow should consist of 90-92k archers, 2k transports and a rainbow of ground troops. The reason you rainbow for a lv10 is so that you do not lose archers to traps, and at the beginning it helps with the impact of 400k warriors hitting your archers. But once your hero's atk reaches the 200 mark you will begin killing all 400k warriors in 1 atk round, you will know when you have reached this point b/c your battles should start lasting only 11 rounds. Any battle that lasts under 14 rounds is a decent hit.
If it seems that we are focused mostly on LVL 10's, there is a good reason for that. One thing that most new players regret not doing in the game is building enough LVL 10's. Keep in mind that flats fill quickly, and you will soon outgrow your LVL 5's. Of course, you will still want to build and farm LVL 5's. We just recommend that you place them much further out from your cities, and mainly focus on building and prepping for farming the 10's. LVL 5's are great for grabbing some free, no loss food and resource; but you cannot sustain a large army or level up a good attack hero strictly with LVL 5 NPC unless you want to farm as a full time job.
Farmers Vs Warriors Myth debunked
I often hear people scoff at "farming" players. Anyone who does this and thinks farming is beneath them is a moron who has no clue how to become a major player in this game. True, the object of the game is not farming, it is attacking. However, based on the fact that this game will be won by the person who can build and maintain the largest standing armies, only those who build and agressively farm large LVL 10 fields will ever become major players to be reckoned with. The "warrior" players may start off strong, but in the long run they will not be able to generate as much food and res, or replenish troops as quickly as active LVL 10 farmers. We would like for people in our alliance to consider themselves "Militant farmers". Yes, we have a very heavy farming focus; but we also tend towards the hostile side, and will quickly and gladly smash you to pieces with an army much larger than most players can produce or sustain. For proof that this tactic does work, look up player Fluffyganjmod on serv 103. Anyone else wanna scoff at farmers now?
About NPC item drops
Lv5 and Lv10 both can drop the following: Mich Scripts, Hero Hunting, Amulets, Holy Water, and Speakers. Mich Scripts and Amulets being the rarest drops. Take note that it is possible, tho extremely rare for the a lv10 to drop multiple treasure on the same hit. It would seem that on the newer servers lv10's no longer give medal drops. Both lv5 and lv10's are a great way to get xp for your heros regardless, you should be farming both as often as your production allows you to, as the more of these you can hit, the bigger the army you can feed. I've said it before, but it is worth saying again. The size of your army decides your own survivability, as does the lvl of your heros. You are not farming npc for the treasure, but for the food and hero XP primarily, everything else is an added bonus.
To learn more about NPC farming in general, please check out the following link:
Lv10 farming is the bread and butter of end game troop feeding. Without this, you will not be able to sustain an army worth a damn. You want at minimum 10-12 lv10's per city to farm, the number of these that you have equates to the size of the army you can feed. (E says there is no such thing as too many LVL 10's per city.) To attack a lv10 you will need a hero with at minimum 138 atk, tho having 160+ atk is recommended, even with this you will take significant losses (up to 10-15k archers per lv10) until you reach around 200atk. You also want your mil trad, iron working, medicine, compass and archery to be lv10, hbr lv10 is also preferred but is not a requirement. Going in with under leveled tech will result in MASSIVE losses, some ppl have lost as much as 70k archers in 1 hit b/c they had techs that were lv9. Do not make this mistake, be patient, your time will come.
The rainbow setup you use to tackle your lv10's is important, there are many variations that work, finding the one that works for you is your goal once you have the hero to start. Your rainbow should consist of 90-92k archers, 2k transports and a rainbow of ground troops. The reason you rainbow for a lv10 is so that you do not lose archers to traps, and at the beginning it helps with the impact of 400k warriors hitting your archers. But once your hero's atk reaches the 200 mark you will begin killing all 400k warriors in 1 atk round, you will know when you have reached this point b/c your battles should start lasting only 11 rounds. Any battle that lasts under 14 rounds is a decent hit.
If it seems that we are focused mostly on LVL 10's, there is a good reason for that. One thing that most new players regret not doing in the game is building enough LVL 10's. Keep in mind that flats fill quickly, and you will soon outgrow your LVL 5's. Of course, you will still want to build and farm LVL 5's. We just recommend that you place them much further out from your cities, and mainly focus on building and prepping for farming the 10's. LVL 5's are great for grabbing some free, no loss food and resource; but you cannot sustain a large army or level up a good attack hero strictly with LVL 5 NPC unless you want to farm as a full time job.
Farmers Vs Warriors Myth debunked
I often hear people scoff at "farming" players. Anyone who does this and thinks farming is beneath them is a moron who has no clue how to become a major player in this game. True, the object of the game is not farming, it is attacking. However, based on the fact that this game will be won by the person who can build and maintain the largest standing armies, only those who build and agressively farm large LVL 10 fields will ever become major players to be reckoned with. The "warrior" players may start off strong, but in the long run they will not be able to generate as much food and res, or replenish troops as quickly as active LVL 10 farmers. We would like for people in our alliance to consider themselves "Militant farmers". Yes, we have a very heavy farming focus; but we also tend towards the hostile side, and will quickly and gladly smash you to pieces with an army much larger than most players can produce or sustain. For proof that this tactic does work, look up player Fluffyganjmod on serv 103. Anyone else wanna scoff at farmers now?
About NPC item drops
Lv5 and Lv10 both can drop the following: Mich Scripts, Hero Hunting, Amulets, Holy Water, and Speakers. Mich Scripts and Amulets being the rarest drops. Take note that it is possible, tho extremely rare for the a lv10 to drop multiple treasure on the same hit. It would seem that on the newer servers lv10's no longer give medal drops. Both lv5 and lv10's are a great way to get xp for your heros regardless, you should be farming both as often as your production allows you to, as the more of these you can hit, the bigger the army you can feed. I've said it before, but it is worth saying again. The size of your army decides your own survivability, as does the lvl of your heros. You are not farming npc for the treasure, but for the food and hero XP primarily, everything else is an added bonus.
To learn more about NPC farming in general, please check out the following link: