The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age Walkthrough

The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age is a sim game developed by Kabam. Earn your place in Middle-earth and fight the armies of the Third Age. Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Game Introduction – The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started

The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age is free to play, and can be played by clicking the “Play Now!” option at the top of this page.
When you start The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age, you are asked to choose a faction: Elves, Dwarves or Orcs. When you have chosen your faction, an ally will lead you through a tutorial to explain the basics of The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age.

Two starting strategies to choose from

After finishing the tutorial, you will be on your own to make decisions on what to do next. As a new player, you will have a certain time of ‘new player protection’. This means that if you don’t attack other players/regions, you can not be attacked either.
This gives you one of two possible strategies to start your game with: use that protection to first build your forces and go into battle well-prepared, or just go out there right away. I will shortly give some tips for both strategies.
In both scenario’s, the first thing you want to do is build 3 of all of your resource buildings. 3 lumber mills, 3 gold mines, 3 farms and 3 quarries.

Preparation Strategy

Plan how long you want to take to prepare. Want to take the full time you have protection, or for instance just one day?
First, spend the first part of this time only upgrading your resource buildings. Upgrade them evenly, so for instance, first upgrade the farm to level 2, then the lumber mill, then the gold mine, then the quarry, and then upgrade the farm to level 3 and so forth. Don’t build or upgrade anything else.

With about 8 hours (play hours, everyone needs sleep J ) to go until your decided deadline, start by building three homes, and while keep repeating the circle of upgrading your resource buildings when possible, upgrade your homes until at least level 3. Do the same for your first three troops available in troop training: upgrade them to level 3.
When your troops have been upgraded to level 3, start training your troops. Also start upgrading the other buildings in your city to match the level of your resource buildings. Most importantly, make sure you have defensive buildings, and make sure they have leveled up.

Strategy to get playing ASAP

So you want to just start playing this game right away? Hardcore! It will make it a bit more challenging, but you can just enjoy all of it right away. Here is the best strategy to at least come somewhat prepared.

First, upgrade all your resource buildings to level 2, the build two homes. Upgrade your resource buildings to level 3, and start upgrading your troops to level 2. Upgrade your defensive buildings to level 2, and now, having played little over an hour, you should be all ready to make a name for yourself in the Third Age.

Resources, a fine balance

Resources in The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age exist in a fine balance with each other. They are used for everything, from constructing buildings, to training armies. It is important to balance the resource production; make sure that you have roughly the same hourly production for wood, stone and gold. If you don’t, you will find yourself playing catch-up later, probably at a very inopportune moment.

The one resource you have to treat differently is food. Food is not used only when you want to build or upgrade new things. Food is used constantly by your troops, and if your food production lags behind, you will find yourself without food before you know it. Always make sure you produce more food than your city consumes, preferably a lot more.
Make sure that when you build or upgrade homes, you check if your food production is still sufficient.

Expand your territory

If you go into your region map, you will soon notice you are not alone in the world. There are different plots of land everywhere. Not only are there other camps and cities, but also ‘wild plots’, such as forests, mountains and plains.

These plots of lands are called wilds, and conquering and controlling them will enhance your resource production. Conquer a level 1 forest, and your wood production will increase by 5%. Conquer a level 4 wild plains and your food product will increase by 20%.

There is a limited amount of ‘wilds’ you can control, depending on the level of your keep. Upgrade your keep to control more wilds, or abandon low-level wilds that are no longer useful.

Heroes and armies

Taking on the armies of the Third Age is something you don’t have to do on your own. Heroes are your army’s generals, and each one has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Once you’ve trained your troops, you can assign them to the army of one of your heroes, but don’t forget to leave some troops to defend your city.

TIP: make sure that you come back to your game on the next day after you start playing. Doing so will give you Bilbo Baggins as a hero, for free!

Battle tips

When choosing where to position your army, place them closest to just one enemy army. If you place them in between enemy armies, you risk being overrun.

If you have multiple heroes, use them! After deploying your first army, you can deploy armies of other heroes as well. When you do this, make sure you also have them take on one army. This way, as illustrated below, you will more easily defeat the first army, and when your heroes’ armies combine, they will be a force to be reckoned with for any enemy armies left.

Optimize your armies by assigning troops to a hero that caters to their strengths. For instance, if you have a type of troops that are very fast, assign them to Bilbo Baggins, whose most outstanding skill is also speed.

Congratulations!

You have completed the quick start guide for The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age by Kabam. Be sure to check back often for game updates, Staff and user reviews, user tips, forum comments, and much more here at Gamezebo.