Pro Tips for Merchant Empire Domination (and Winning Alliance Brawl) in Kingshot

[0:00]Hey friends, I am super excited that the new Merchant Empire event has finally hit my server after a couple weeks of waiting. It's also coincided with the first appearance of the brand new Alliance Brawl event, and these two events seem to be significantly intertwined. Since server 21 is late to the party, I'll not be explaining all the ins and outs of this event. It's pretty straightforward and there were plenty of other videos out there which cover this. Instead, I'm going to dive right into it and share a bunch of tips and tricks to help you and your alliance make the most out of your Merchant Empire rewards, and use it as a strategic lever to compete better in the Alliance Brawl. So be sure to share this video with your alliance. Let's dive right in with tip number one. This is a little bit about hacking player psychology, but you can reduce the risk of your caravans getting raided if you are smart about the times that you send them. For example, many players are active right at the server refresh and running through all of their daily tasks. It's a super busy time and quite frankly, I've even seen my hourly views on this channel plummet very briefly. Many of these players will immediately use their four raid attempts to pillage the caravans that are out there. This is especially so because you now get points for Alliance Brawl from rating caravans, and many players will want to immediately open those chests by doing those selected activities. So this means it's smart to avoid launching your own caravans right at the server reset time. Additionally, right before server reset time is also potentially dangerous for two reasons. One, players may be holding their raid attempts to right before the server reset in an attempt to shock the enemy alliance with points in Alliance Brawl right before the competition day closes out. So this could also be a dangerous time. Secondly, the caravans take time to complete their ride, possibly three hours or longer. And if you launch too close to the server reset time, then your caravans may still be active when everyone starts rating again. Instead, I would recommend launching your caravans only after there has been some cool down time after the server refresh. I know it's only a sample size of two, but I waited until a few hours after server refresh at 0 UTC to launch these two gold caravans. And neither one was raided during their journeys due to the odd hours in Europe and the US. As more people watch this video or catch on to the timing aspect, then maybe the safest time starts to shift a bit. So just be intentional about it and experiment with what works for you and that's practical for the times that you actually play in real life. Tip number two is to understand the value priority of items being shipped in the caravan. This is important both for your selection of caravans to raid, and because if you get a caravan that has these high value items, that should be the one out of four caravans per day where you use an alliance assist, since it's more valuable and will be under greater threat of rating. The items you should be on the lookout for, again, both for rating and sending your own caravans, include the following: Artisan's Vision, because it's so rare and becomes a huge bottleneck for upgrading Governor Gear into the late blue and purple levels. Seriously, free-to-play players will frequently find themselves sitting on enough satin and gilded threads to upgrade every item, but not enough artisan visions to even upgrade a single piece of gear. Charm Guides and charm designs are also a top priority because Governor charms provide health and lethality, which is more valuable than the attack and defense of Governor Gear. The only reason I include Artisan's Visions for Governor Gear is because it's more scarce to come by than sources of charm guides and charm designs. Finally, it might also be worth considering True Gold. I wouldn't put it as highly as the other items I just mentioned, but it can be helpful late game. If you aren't really a spender, then you'll likely be in my position with a couple of weeks of speed up saved that you can't use, because you can't build anything else in your town due to a lack of true gold. You have many sources where you can get true gold though, so I wouldn't over index on this one. Just know it's a nice sweetener if you see it. Forgehammers are also good if you see them, but not as good as the other items. And if you're following my Bear Hunt guide linked below in the description, then you should have no problem getting a consistent source of these anyway. General speedups are also helpful, but remember that you can get the three-hour versions of them from the purple items your caravan carries. You don't necessarily need to have the orange eight-hour ones bump out other key items to get general speedups from this event. And also be sure to note that these items don't all require you to have an SSR caravan in order for them to spawn. For example, here's a blue caravan that has an Artisan's Vision in it. So pay attention to what spawns in the caravan and don't just refresh until you get an orange one. And while we're on the topic of refreshing caravans, tip number three is to pay attention to the refresh probabilities. Not all refreshes are created equal. As we can see from this information panel, the more refreshes you have done, the greater the chance you will get of an orange SSR caravan. These escalating probabilities mean you should almost never give up on the third or fourth refresh if you still have caravan vouchers, since these later refreshes are when you get the best probability for rewards. The only exception to this might be if you get one of those blue caravans with the Artisan's Vision on it and you still have another caravan to launch where you're going to use those vouchers. Also, don't forget that you can refresh again after your sixth attempt for another guaranteed SSR caravan. While a bit of an edge case, this may be something you would want to spend a voucher on if that orange caravan you just got has less compelling rewards and not any of the priority ones we just discussed in tip number two. Tip number four is another tip relating to target selection. This time about the caravans themselves. If you get this event during Alliance Brawl participation, then you will notice that some caravans have an alliance tag labeled on them. These are caravans from the enemy alliance that you are competing with in Alliance Brawl. Like you, they too are competing for Alliance Brawl points and their caravans will help them score more points on you. So you have an opportunity to steal their points when you see their caravans and add it to your score instead. If your entire alliance is coordinated in doing this, it can make a big difference in winning the day. Additionally, you might find enemy caravans after you have exhausted your raid attempts for the day. If this happens, you can actually share the caravan in your alliance chat for another member to attack. You could also try sharing it in your server's world chat if it has a particularly juicy cargo that anyone might be interested in, especially if they are far ahead in Alliance Brawl that day for their alliance. And finally, if you have a farm account that is strong enough to attack the target, then you can even consider sharing the caravan location with your farm account and spend that account's raid attempts helping your main alliance score more points. You could also share one of your farm account's caravans with your main account if it spawned with amazing rewards and your main account needs the item drops more than Alliance Brawl points. Either way, just be creative in how you can play with the target selection to get the best rewards for you and be most disruptive to the enemy alliance. But what if you don't see any weak enough enemy caravan targets on the Merchant Caravan event page to raid? Tip number five answers that question by helping you find alternative caravans from your enemy alliance. Typically, the game will only show you one caravan from an enemy alliance. However, you can actually find more of them if you know where to look. Instead of going to the enemy alliance's kingdom looking to randomly see caravans, you can share the location of the one in the event page window with yourself in personal chat. Then when you go to view the enemy caravan, simply zoom out and you can see the route it's taking to visit various outposts in the enemy's kingdom. You will also likely encounter multiple other caravans near these outposts, a good portion of which will be by the same alliance. You can then click on them and see what they are carrying and if they would make good targets for either you or others you want to share it with like we talked about in tip number four. With some diligence and by combining all of these tips together, you should be able to maximize the individual rewards you get from the Merchant Empire event, as well as maximize the points that your alliance earns over the enemy alliance in Alliance Brawl. It's still early days in this event, so feel free to share other tips you've figured out in the comments below. Be sure to like and subscribe if you found this video helpful and also be sure to check out the rest of my King Shot tips, tricks and hacks playlist. Also, do me a favor and go easy on my caravans if you run into them out there, okay? Thanks again for watching and happy gaming out there.