In just a few words, Tiger Knight is fairly similar to an old game called Bladestorm. Or, you could imagine the game is a love-child between Mount and Blade, and Dynasty Warriors. Either way, it's fantastic.

You're a General of a squad of soldiers. You may bring an Adjutant with your squad, and they're essentially a second in command. They give your troops different formations based on which Adjutant you're using. For instance, an archer Adjutant will use formations that help ranged damage, scouting, or movement speed. Likewise, an infantry Adjutant will use formations that help with melee defence, attack, or movement speed.

To get a decent sense of how the game plays, go ahead and complete the tutorials and attempt all training challenges at least once.

This is a huge question I see answered, or I answer at least 10+ times a day.

Your starting choice literally effects your starting equipment, and that's it. You have the exact same access to all troops, upgrades, Adjutants, challenges, quests, training, and Legions as every other player.

That being said, the starting equipment is very basic, and you'll upgrade it from the Tier 1 you start with to Tier 2 within you first few games. No big deal at all.

First, let me explain the currencies. There are four main currencies, and then I suppose you could say a fourth one that is slightly hidden, but it's important to know about would be Troop Exp.

• Coppers - This is basically your silver or gold from most other games. It's used to buy practically everything. Troops (once unlocked), Weapons, Armor, Bandages, Adjutants, Resupplying your troops after battle (Remember? Some of them died and lost their equipment.) and probably a whole bunch of other needs you'll have that I'm forgetting about.
  
  
• Gold - This is the premium currency. You can buy VIP playtime with this. VIP adds a flat 30% increase to all currencies you gain at the end of a match (troop exp, general exp, coppers, etc). It can also be used to buy a decent amount of the marketplace items, or it can be converted. Coverting gold into coppers is done at the click of a button, or you can convert troop exp into prestige.
  
  
• Prestige - Used for buying adjutants, along with coppers. Alternatively, you can spend prestige just as you would troop exp, but there's not requirement to have even used, or bought the troop. What I mean by this is, basically, once you've gotten everything that you need from a low tier troop, any exp they gain is essentially a waste. Convert their exp into prestige with gold, however, and you can now spend it on a higher tier troop, as if that troop gained the exp themselves.
  
  
• Exploits - Exploits is basically the game's "PvP currency". What I mean by this, is you can only aquire this on a regular basis through "Duel" mode. You do get 100 exploits a day, if you're logged in for the time limit. To collect those, click on the Events button at the top of the main page. Now, what can you spend exploits on? Well, when you click on the upgrades button at the top, there's an exploit tab at the top of it. You can spend your exploits here, for what is essentially "PvP gear" ... They're rather useful items as well, which will make your character quite powerful if you do Duels quite often.
  
  
• Troop Exp - When you click the button at the top that says upgrades, you can select a troop. Looking at the left side, you can see their total exp. This exp is used to unlock upgrades for that troop, including items that can be purchased with coppers for the troop, or bought for your character to use. Secondly, once you've bought the required upgrades, at the end of the upgrade path, you can unlock the next tier of troop, using the exp you gained from this troop.

As a note, if you unlock a weapon or piece of armor for a troop, but do not buy it for yourself, it will now be available inside the market for you to buy at a later date. So, now we know what the currencies are, what they're used for, and how to buy upgrades for troops, as well as equipment for the troops and your character to use. Awesome.

I will explain a little bit about the troop lines, and what makes them special compared to the other troop lines and what each troop line focuses on.

The Wei Spearman troops are very sturdy troops indeed. They have rather strong armor, and superior health pools while still doing decent damage per strike. Their drawbacks are semi-slow mobility and until higher tiers, they have low morale.

After getting to the later tiers, you can unlock the Shock Calvalry, which branches from the spearmen line. This type of calvalry is exceptionally strong against archers, does a fair bit of damage while still retaining decent armor and decent health pools. There are two huge weaknesses to these calvalry, however.

• Pikes and other spears is the first weakness, as they shred horses, leaving the rider tumbling into the enemy soldiers.
  
• The second weakness is the horse they're riding. While the horse is extremely useful, it is prone to getting stuck the rider stuck in bad situations (Hitting a wall/tree, getting surrounded by enemy infantry, etc). If the calvalry isn't able to escape and regain momentum, they are essentially a sitting duck, just waiting to be killed by the nearest sword or pike.

The Shu Shield-Infantry are as durable as they come. Not exactly from their health pools and their armor, but from their amazing shields. Even in the later tiers, these troops will impress you as friend or foe with how long they last through battles. Let's not forget that they are axe weilders, which are short range, but have high damage per strike. Their weaknesses are how slow they are, semi-low health pool, and at most tiers they have the really small attack range due to their axe. To partially make up for that, later tiers do gain a few throwing weapons.

The Shu also gain access to Ranged Calvalry that use crossbows to pelt foes from afar while staying relatively safe on horseback. They have excellent speed due to the horse, but not much else. Their armor is extremely weak, meaning you must always keep them on the move to avoid death, as well as balancing how close you need to be to the enemy for them to attack. Because they are using crossbows, instead of bows, they have a smaller attack range, and especially while moving, they have poor accuracy.

The Wu Infantry are just that. They are your standard infantry that in the early tiers use one-handed blades and two-handed blunt weapons and end up becoming superior bladesmen in the final few tiers. Let's be completely honest here - These guys hit like trucks, swinging around smaller trucks. Although the unit cards don't mention it often, they have low health pools and probably are the least well armored infantry.

All in all, these guys have:

• Insane dps, especially when using the proper adjutants.
  
• Excellent Movement Speed
  
• Great attack range due to the two-handed weapons they favour
  
• Fairly low health pool
  
• Weak armor compared to other infantry types

Wu also has access to Bowmen as well. These are very standard archers, as they're weak to calvalry and melee. Later tiers have much stronger melee weapons, which do help in a pinch, but they cannot take on the same tier infantry toe-to-toe. As for their bows, they have an excellent range, moderate damage with a quick rate of fire. Archers do in fact have a limited supply of ammunition, so be mindful.

Honestly, there is no wrong answer here. You need to think about which role you'd like to fill within the game mode(s) you play the most often.

• If you play mostly duels, you'll probably focus on playing troops that can unlock higher quality gear for the weapons and armor types you like to wear during PvP.
  
• If you like to focus on a high dps style of play, then you'll probably go for heavy infantry and never look back.
  
• Or, say you're interested in being a supportive ranged General with a tanky frontline sheildwall. You'll want to level up archers to be able to buy a decent quality bow, and then focus on your frontline spearman or infantry.

Basically, play the game as you would like to, there's not exactly anything that "doesn't work" with proper application and skill.

To keep things simple, an adjutant is basically your 2nd in command. They each come with their own set of formations that you can issue to the troops, as well as higher tier adjutants having special skills that can be used by your troops in conjunction with the troops' own skills. Neat, huh?

Each adjutant has their own "focus" of unit type, and higher tier adjutants have multiple focuses. To get a basic understanding of what each adjutant is geared for, read the bonuses that are applied to the troops when they're in the formations by hovering over the formation in the adjutant's description. (See below)


As you can see in the above picture, this adjutant is focused more on higher damage output from both ranged and melee units, while slightly reducing your unit's melee defence. Each adjutant has their own strengths and weaknesses, just like the troops they command. It would be wise to make sure that you are using an adjutant that improves the performance of your troops, rather than hinder them.

As a note, if you use different adjutants quite often (because you're switching between multiple troop types) I have a little-known tip for you. Shown below is a button you can click to assign a specific adjutant. When you select a troop that has an adjutant assigned to them through this method, they will always be selected as the active adjutant automatically. This makes micro-managing your troops slightly easier if you play with friends or a legion and you're switching troop types often to compliment your allies.


(Green) Button to assign adjutant
(Blue) Pop-up window where you can select which adjutant you'd like be assigned
(Red) Adjutant's icon shown, informing you which one is currently assigned to that troop

This is the first game mode you're introduced to. This mode pits 5 Generals and their troops against an opposing team of 5 Generals and their troops. On the map are 3 points of interest that have to be discovered for you to know which of the 3 buffs they will provide.

• There is a recruitment station, which over time produces troops for a general to come and claim.
  
• Another of the points on the map will be a resupply station. What this station does, when you activate the buff is repairs all of your troops' shields, refills their arrows/javelins and does the same for your General's equipment.
  
• The last buff is that of healing. It gives you and all of your troops a healing over time buff that can definitely change the swing of battle.

In essence, this is your typical Team Deathmatch game mode. No longer, do you have troops or adjutants. This is only Generals, on a rather large map, with a 20 minute time limit. The aim is to get 80 kills for your team, or be the team with the highest kill count at the end of 20 minutes. This is the only game made that provides Exploits, one of the currencies I mentioned earlier.

This is your PvE game mode, and trust me, it's not exactly easy (Except for the easy difficulty, of course). This game mode has 3 difficulties, and as you progress through them, you get to experience more and more of the siege.

This mode starts off with your 5 Generals facing off 1v1 style against 5 enemy AI Generals. When you kill an enemy General in your 1v1, you earn 50 bonus prestige, as well as providing 25 bonus prestige for your allies. If all 5 of you win your duels, you each net 150 free bonus prestige just for completing the map.

After the duels, the siege begins. To not spoil the higher difficulties, I'll only explain what happens on easy mode. There are 2 paths, left and right.

• Right side is to fight their way to the broken castle wall, scale their way up and fight their way to the archers raining death down upon left side, and to silence the catapults that are doing the same. This may not sound like it's needed, but it really does take a huge amount of pressure off of left side once it's completely cleared.
  
• Left side must lead and protect a siege ladder as it travels to the castle walls. Once it is deployed, you climb the ladder, fight your way to the drawbridge's controls and open it to allow the full force of your army to enter the castle, ending the mission.

• When you're in the "Combat Tactics" phase (When you pick your starting location and can place a flag down) you can click and drag that map to see the rest of the map before you load in. It's also worth mentioning that you can zoom in and out, too.
  
  
• General Exp vs Troop Exp - Your kills give you exp, troop kills gives your troops the exp.
  
  
• Hitting Q does a special attack. This is different for every weapon, and also depends on if you're using a shield or not. Have fun and try them all out.
  
  
• Charging - You can double tap W to initiate a charge. Some weapons are held forward and do damage without needing to click, such as long spears, but for all weapons, you can click and you'll do a "special attack" to end your charge.
  
  
• A note on the tip above, spears couch like a lance and can double hit with click attack, if properly timed. Takes a good bit of practice.
  
  
• F1 orders your soldiers to guard the area you're standing in.
  
• F2 orders your soldiers to follow you, if you've had them charge, or guard an area.
  
• F3 sends the order to charge to the enemy marshal, or to dispatch units (adjutant ability)
  
• F4 Switches your soldier's current formation. Always remember to use these when needed.
  
• F5-F8 are your soldier's abilities. These usually have a decent cooldown, so use them wisely.
  
• Number Keys 5-8 are item hotkeys. Don't forget to place items on them in the "Storage" tab. Hitting the key in combat will use the item. (For bandages, don't tap the button, or it will waste it. You must continue to hold down the hotkey to heal yourself over time).
  
  
• Rushing into the enemy is not always helping your team. This isn't a game where you can always expect to 1v2 or 1v3 the enemy and come out on top due to skill. Sure, it helps, but there are so many other variables to a battle other than "Run into enemy troops and click spam". Be mindful of what your team is doing, their positions and if you are unsure what to do or where to go, communicate with the team and strategize.
  
  
• Formations matter. I cannot stress this enough. Your formations matter just as much as the troops you're using. If you are using archers with a formation that improves melee defence, you're hindering your soldiers so much that it's not even funny. Using Spearmen with a movement speed increasing formation to get them into position and then switching formations to a defensive or offensive stance is a major boon. Please don't forget to always set a formation when the match starts. If no formation is helping your troops, you should DEFINITELY look into a new adjutant, as they are all different.
  
  
• Flanking! Don't forget that flanking is completely viable, and is extremely powerful when done correctly. For instance, if 2 of your allies and their soldiers are fighting to enemy squads, if you charge in from the front, sure you'll help, but if you flank to a side or behind them, you'll split the enemies' focus. This in turn makes them die quicker, and with fewer allied casualties. Done incorrectly though, and you can place your squad between the already present enemies and get sandwiched in from enemy reinforcements. Always try to stay aware of enemy positions, as they matter just as much as your allies' position.

I hope you enjoyed the guide and found it useful. Don't forget to rate the guide - I'd like to share our knowledge with as many people as possible. Thank you for reading, and let me know if there is anything else I could help with.