PVP Guide - Invading

Nothing quite like crushing an enemy with the full might of your army.

Basics

For every player in your army, you get to use 1 soldier for your invasion army. For every soldier, you also get to use 1 weapon, 1 magic, and 1 piece of equipment (any item that’s not a weapon or magic). For every 5 soldiers, you also get to use a general. Your strongest soldiers/weapons/equipment/magic/generals are automatically used. The soldiers you can bring maxes out at 501 (Mephistopheles, Chase, Crom, and Artanis increase this). While increasing your army past this won’t help with invasions, you should still try to get as many army members as possible to help with your monster CTA’s. There’s a common notion that the strength of players in your army help your invasion strength but this is not true at all. Whether it’s a lv20 or a lv2000, all they do for invasion strength is free up another slot for your soldiers/weapons/equipment/magic.

The actual formula for determining whether your invasion succeeds is:
Army size*(attack + 0.7*defense) + (total attack of soldiers/weapons/equipment/spells/generals) + (0.7*total defense of soldiers/weapons/equipment/spells/generals) + % luck

*When defending, the formula is the exact same except of course defense is switched with attack.

So, to be good at invasions you have to
1. Increase your army to 501 as quickly as possible
2. Increase your attack/defense stats
3. Earn lots of strong soldiers, weapons, equipment, and magic


What to Get

For Soldiers, Weapons, Equipment, and Magic, I’m going to provide a Wikia link to fairly complete lists of everything available in the game. Below that link, I’m going to list the best item you can easily get for each category. You should use this item as a benchmark when determining whether or not a different item is any good. Getting 500 of each of these “benchmark items” will make you very powerful, but it’s not strictly necessary. Very few players are willing to put in the time to get that many of them, and they will be slowly replaced by better items as you progress anyway. I’ve also included things that are both stronger than the benchmark and required at some point in the future.

In general, you get better equipment as you fight bigger monsters but you get more loot for fighting weaker monsters. With this in mind, you should fight strong monsters to obtain a set of great dueling equipment and weaker monsters (but not too weak!) to build up your invasion arsenal.

SOLDIERS
Soldiers Wikia Link

Phoenix (20/16) - 5 million gold from town, since it’s relatively easy to obtain an army full of Phoenixes, this soldier is often considered the bare minimum for a good army- just know that over a (very long) period of time your Phoenixes will become redundant as you get better soldiers to replace them

*Seraphim Angel (24/21) - 2.225 billion gold (+222.5 million increment) from town, while expensive you will eventually need 6 of these soldiers to complete quests so feel free to buy them

*Platinum Knight (23/27) - 4 billion gold (+400 million increment) from town, while very expensive you will eventually need 52 of these soldiers to complete the 18th quest area so feel free to buy them, earlier areas have lower requirements

WEAPONS
Blacksmith Wikia Link (weapons are mixed in with equipment)

Terra’s Blade (10/9) - alchemy from Mystery Relic gift, essentially free and therefore the bare minimum of what to expect for your army,

*Obsidian Sword (11/12) - 2 billion gold (+200 million increment) from town, you will eventually need 82 of these to complete the 18th quest area and earlier areas have lower requirements so feel free to stock up

EQUIPMENT
Blacksmith Wikia Link (equipment has been mixed in with weapons)

Shield of Sano (8/11) - alchemy from Mystery Shield gift, essentially free and therefore the bare minimum of what to expect for your army

MAGIC
Magic Wikia Link

Shadow Blast (5/1) - Mystery Shadow gift, essentially free and therefore the bare minimum of what to expect for your army

Royal Seal (5/5) - 7 million gold (+700k increment) from town after 50,000 battle points, while not the best spell, it’s not terribly expensive at first and can be a terrific way to boost your strength

Atlantean Forcefield (10/17) - combine Atlantean Gauntlet, Atlantean Spear, Atlantean Armor, and Atlantean Shield, a very handy way to get rid of a lot of weak eqipment


Strategy

1. While it’s easy to get carried away with soldiers, weapons, etc., your attack and defense do play a rather large role in invasions. Assuming you have an army of 500, every 1 SP towards attack gives you +500 attack for your invasions and +350 defense when defending (vice versa for 1 SP in defense). Better armies will give you big edge over many opponents but a powerleveler will still have a very rough time against a pvp-focused player.

2. You definitely have an edge against smaller armies, but remember that the limit is 501. Army sizes past that will not affect invasion strength so if you have a 550 army, it’s ok to attack a 1,500 army

3. With a full army, the 5000 invasion achievement is fairly easy to get by attacking people with a 300 or smaller army. This gives you a good amount of SP/FP and with it done you can easily turn your focus to dueling.

4. Between duels and invasions, you shouldn’t lean too heavily on one or the other. If you are weak in one area, any battle points you earn in your strong suit can be easily lost in your weaker area.

5. Invasions have one very excellent use that not many people think about. The generals Aurora, Corvintheus, Jahanna, and Aurelius are very formidable in duels but their ability is tied to current health and they are slightly less effective for invasions. If you encounter an opponent using one of these generals in guild war or who you want to duel, you can try to invade them first to soften them up before attacking directly in a duel.