The experience of managing your own army inspired by Feudal Japan is what you get when you play Idle Warriors: Three Kingdoms. The game is absolutely sophisticated in that there are plenty of things that you can do in the game. From idle gameplay to a long campaign, and even to thrilling PvP gameplay, this game does not disappoint in keeping you occupied. Aside from that, the game also offers a myriad of generals to recruit into your army and you can arrange them in many ways depending on your strategy. 

The game’s abundance and diversity of features can become overwhelming for a beginner, especially for those who are new to the idle RPG genre. But worry not as this guide will help you become familiar with the game’s mechanics.

Generals of Idle Warriors

Generals are the heroes in Idle Warriors: Three Kingdoms. These characters are the ones who are going to do the actual fighting against enemies and your job is to manage them. This includes assigning generals to strategic battle positions and giving them the necessary upgrades to make them stronger, and concurrently make the entire team stronger.

There are three essential things that must be considered regarding generals:

1. Quality

• As of writing, there are about a hundred unlockable generals in the game. Not all generals are made equal however as the base strength of each general is indicated by the number of stars that they have on them. The number of stars determines the color of the frame where the general’s icon is displayed, and this color indicates the quality of the general. A general can have one of six qualities:
  • Red (6 stars or more)
  • Orange (5 stars)
  • Purple (4 stars)
  • Blue (3 stars)
  • Green (2 stars)
  • White (1 Star)
• Red-quality generals are the strongest ones that you can have in the game, but they are also the hardest ones to recruit. 

 2. Faction

• If you are a veteran in the idle RPG genre, then you may already have an idea what the Factions feature of the game is. Idle Warriors: Three Kingdoms boasts a myriad of generals but these generals are also segregated into five factions. Each faction is represented with a Chinese character but you can easily recognize them by their color. These factions and their respective colors are:
  • Wei (Red)
  • Shu (Green)
  • Wu (Blue)
  • Light (Yellow)
  • Dark (Purple)
• What is special about these factions is that there exist relationships between them. Generals of one faction can deal more damage to another faction but they can also receive more damage from another different faction.

• Factions as well as the relationships among them are very important to consider when selecting which generals to deploy to combat. If you know that the enemy team is predominantly composed of Shu-faction generals, then it is strategic to deploy Wei-faction generals to your own team to maximize combat efficiency.

3. Lineup

• Considering the quality and faction of a general, now you must think about where to place them in the battlefield.

• Unlike most idle RPGs, Idle Warriors: Three Kingdoms features Formations which are essentially preset arrangements of slots where you can assign generals into. Each formation allows you to deploy up to five generals. When you reach Level 90, you unlock a bonus slot for a Reinforcement General. There are currently six formations in the game:

• Conoid

• Answer

• Arrow

• Winged

• Bagua

• Cross

• You do not unlock all formations at the start of the game. You start with Conoid and must level up to unlock the rest.
• Another interesting thing is that you can gain bonus buffs to the entire team whenever you have a certain number of generals with the same faction. 

Idling and Conquests

For a large majority of your playtime in Idle Warriors: Three Kingdoms, you will either play in autoplay mode or engage in Conquests.

In autoplay mode, your generals will continuously fight waves of enemies and obtain essential resources like EXP, General EXP, Coins, Intelligence, and General Star Stone. These resources can be used to strengthen your generals and also increase your level. Autoplay mode works even while you are offline so realistically, all you need to do is just collect the harvested resources. But you must diligently log in to the game to collect autoplay rewards as there is a limit to how many resources can be stored.

Play IDLE Warriors:Three Kingdoms on PC

Play IDLE Warriors:Three Kingdoms on PC

Conquest mode is where you experience challenges in the game as in this mode, you will apply all of the three essential parts of a general to actually fight enemies and progress through the game. 

Before starting an enemy encounter, you must select up to five generals for battle. The collective power of your generals is measured by a metric called ‘Power’ and is found on the bottom right of the screen.

The actual gameplay does not require you to control your generals as the game will do everything for you. The game utilizes a turn-based combat system wherein each team has its own window of opportunity to attack the enemy team. The turns of both your team and the enemy team are called around. 

The team that manages to completely wipe out the other team wins and is generously rewarded.

During the battle, a powerful attack from an item called an Artifact can be activated. The Artifact can only be activated when its meter is full and this meter fills up as your team keeps attacking enemies. The Artifact is one of many tools in the game that can help make your team stronger and you can know more about upgrading your team’s generals in this separate guide.