Advisory: This is not meant to be a complete walkthrough rather it’s meant to help active players learn a few tricks to help them further succeed in game. I will not go into details about things that are already explained in game or in Mososh’s FAQ. I’ve tried to keep opinionated decisions out of this guide. Rather than give you my opinion of what you should do, I’m trying to give you the facts and let you choose for yourself.
1.) Allies. Allies are one of the most important parts of this game to determine raid damage. They give you the most power in game versus raid bosses. It’s easy to get allies, just send messages to everyone you battle and see in boss raids. Make sure each of your allies (all 150) has a weapon ready for them to use from your inventory, the game will automatically equip your allies with any weapons in your inventory. The FIRST weapons to buy are simple War Hammers. Keep buying them until you have enough for all of your allies to have one. Having 2 Shadow Master Blades and 0 allies means you’ll be doing a lot less damage than someone with any 2 weapons in hand and 50 allies with all War Hammers as well. Once you’ve maxed out with 150 normal allies and War Hammers, then upgrade the War Hammers to Kragspire Bolters. Once you reach Book 2 upgrade your Kragspire Bolters to the Blades of Agony(BOA). Then in Book 3 upgrade to Slisk Warclubs.
Also after reaching 150 Normal Allies, consider purchasing the 3 Allies from the Markets for 10 Platinum. You can purchase a maximum of 999 Platinum allies, as your number of Platinum allies increases your damage in raids will increase non-linearly, maxing at upto ~ 35X a maximum normal player without any platinum allies. Raid Damage is ONLY dependent on your weapons in hand + (Normal Allies and the MAX damage of their weapon) + (Platinum Allies and the MAX damage of their weapons). No other stats are counted, any +raid bonus from your weapons only counts from your personal equipment. (edited by Nankho)
2.) Raid Bosses. The level of the raid boss you can summon depends on your level, as stated in game. The amount of energy you can spent on a berserk in energy raids seems to be based on the maximum amount of energy you have maxing at 30 energy. I recommend taking a look at Shared Raids → Details → Bosses→ Details in order to see what loot that specific boss drops in raids. If the loot isn’t better than the equipment you have, then you may want to consider joining another raid instead.
The number of loot items, quality and probablity of good items are all determined by the amount of damage that you do to the boss. These numbers change as you progress in level mapped to your current tier:
Tier 1 : Apprentice (levels 1-30)
Tier 2: Adventurer (levels 31-50)
Tier 3: Master (51-80)
Tier 4: Legend (81+)
To see your current requirements, during a raid look at the "Loot Helper" link, listed under the list of attackers. The Bonus Levels are determined by % damage done to total boss health. The levels are 1 - 7, mapped to 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 10% and 15% respectively. Also there are a few other bonuses that improve loot quality which are being the Raid Master, being the Raid Slayer and activating scrolls
That being said, and loot drops are VERY random and even achieving all of the bonuses does not guarantee good loot or Platinum(meaning you never know what you’ll get).
Raid Bosses also drop craft items(craftys), which allow you to create special items. The craft recipes and craft item stats are located at Profile > View Detailed Profile > Crafting. (edited by Nankho)
3.) PVP Battles vs. Raids Bosses Should you use all of your stamina on PVP battles or attacking stamina raid bosses? Well, the answer to that question depends mainly on what you’re trying to accomplish.
PVP accomplishes 3 things, it has good experience gains, it can give you Fame and you can earn Steaks of Glory. You can get Streaks of Glory by killing other players consecutively without dying. Why would you want to do this? For bragging rights of course! More importantly, PVP battles will generally return more experience per stamina point spent than a stamina raid will. Winning a PVP Battle will reward you anywhere from 1 to 3 experience points and a small amount of gold while losing a PVP Battle will net you 0-1 experience. This means that you can gain experience points while spending NO energy or stamina when other players attack you! This makes arenas a little more enticing since other players are bound to attack you. If you’re looking for a quicker way to level, PVP Battles might be just what you’re looking for.
Note: When fighting a PVP Battle you can fight the same player up to 9 times a day. This means if you find someone who is easy to kill, simply battle them once and when the battle screen displays with the “Watch” button in the middle you can click the players name on the right and click the “Battle” button again to continue attacking them. Clicking the battle button rapidly will allow you to fight multiple battles instantly, saving you a little time.
In addition to battles, there is the Challenge system which costs signifigant Stamina to participate in. Under the Heroes Menu, you will see the "Challenge" tab where you can activate your account to participate the the weekly Challenge tournament. The top 10 players each week can earn rewards as follows:
1st = 10 Plat and 5 Fame
2nd = 8 Plat and 4 Fame
3rd = 6 Plat and 3 Fame
4th = 4 Plat and 2 Fame
5th = 2 Plat and 1 Fame
6th to 10th = 1 Plat and 1 Fame
The cost to participate is 5 Stamina per challenge, -3 points for losing a challenge, -2 points for declining a challenge. If you win a challenge you are also awarded with the highest potential XP ratio gains in the game, 5 stamina can net 8 - 12xp or 1.6x - 2.4x XP gained per point of Stamina spent. (edited by Nankho)
Boss Raids will normally grant you 1 experience per point of energy or stamina spent attacking the boss. This has a CHANCE (not always) to be doubled to 2 experience points per attack if someone has used a Scroll of Proficiency on the raid boss. While the experience you get fighting a raid boss is generally less than what you would get from a PVP Battle there are 2 major benefits to attacking a boss. First , raid bosses give a MUCH better gold per attack return than PVP Battles do. Secondly, you have a chance to win platinum, rare items, and/or crafting items as raid loot at the end of the raid. So, if you’re saving up to equip your allies with the best weapons, you may want to spend more time attacking bosses to save up more gold for these items.
4.) Questing! (by Nankho)
Is basically advancing the storyline of CoH, which is organized into a linear sequence of Books and Chapters. Currently there are 3 Books, each book can be completed multiple times allowing you to get the rewards more than once. Everyone needs to complete the storyline at least one time so that your character will enable all of the features and content of the game.
Questing is also the fastest way to gain XP, so many people alternate between questing and raiding to keep their character progression balanced.
Unlike Raiding, Questing performance is determined by your personal stats and your equipment. There are activities in Questing that require checks to each of the main character stats (Strength/weapon - Fighting, Speed - Dodging, Knowledge - Talking, Fortitude - Camping). The actual amount of "damage" that you do, is shown during the quest. The best stat spread for Questing is similiar to PVP, but with a heavier weighting towards Strength vs a PVP build. This is if you want to see higher damage per activity, and are unlikely to reset into a pure PvP build later. It might be different if you are looking at an XP/hour, since the more total attacks you do will increase your XP gain. From this point of view, pure energy is better but you will be a sitting duck in PVP.
Note: Upon completion of ANY Book, always begin the NEXT book before restarting/(advancing quest level) of the just completed book. If you restart any Book before beginning the next you will be forced to finish the whole book again, to go to the next book. And the cost to redo a book, is MUCH greater than moving on to the next book. So always move forward before looking back.
5.) Arenas Coming soon!
6.) Stat Points (by Nankho)
Stat points are points assigned to your character on the completion of a level. You are granted 3 stat points per level which you can assign to any of the 6 attributes of your character (Strength, Speed, Knowledge, Fortitude, Energy, Stamina). The First 4 attributes will only increase if you spend points into them, while the last 2 will increase as you level.
Strength, Speed, Knowledge, and Fortitude are used to improve performance in both Questing and PVP. Energy is used as fuel for Energy Raids and Questing. Stamina is used as fuel for Stamina Raids, PVP, and Challenges.
In PVP your stats Strength, Speed, Knowledge, and Fortitude are now partially visible to all other players as colored icons. The colors have the following meaning:
Blue (0 - 25pts), Green (26 - 75pts), Yellow (76 - 150pts), Orange (151 - 250pts) and Red (251+pts)
These stats are then used to create your "PVP stats" which you can see under your Profile Menu. The PVP stats are then directly rolled against your opponents, to determine who wins. The most important stat in PVP is probably Speed, as it affects your PVP stats in more ways than the other stats. But all of the stats are important for success in Battling/Challenges.
Energy is basically fuel that you use to perform activities. It regenerates at the rate of 1 point every 3 minutes IRL. Energy is most important for Questing/Raids. The amount of energy you get per level slowly increases to a cap of +10 energy per level.
Stamina is also fuel to perform different activities. It also regenerates at the rate of 1 point every 3 minutes IRL. Stamina is most important for Stamina Raids/Battling/Challenges. The amount of stamina you get per level is always +1.
7.) Book II Coming Soon!
More things coming in the near future when I have time to add them:
1. Book II raid equipment and Axe of Kraagstad loot.
2. Book I Chapter 1 healing trick.
3. Energy gear leveling trick.
4. Secret Gem / Plat Exchange Shop.
Please feel free to post comments and additions to this Walkthrough! I will be editing it in the future to add more valuable information to our player community.