How do fief quests work

Fief quests are one of the best sources of honour, house progression and crafting materials. They live inside fiefs: open the map, click a fief, then Overview, then Fief Quest, or just talk to the Brigadier in the city.

The principle is simple: bring a specific resource or trophy, in the amount the quest asks for, to that fief. On completion you get the rewards shown in the right-hand panel, plus the extra rewards under Other Rewards if your house owns the location.

Rewards

A fief quest can give you:

• Honour, for unlocking units and unit upgrades.
• House experience, which levels your house so it can capture cities and forts.
• Reputation points, used to build advanced camps.
• Unit kit chests, which save you silver on repairing your troops' weapons.
• Construction materials, used to raise a fief's level (more on that below).

Limits

• Fief quests reset on Sunday evening and stay active for one week.
• You can complete no more than 20 quests per week. To check your count, open a fief, go to Fief Quests, and look at the bottom left.
• Each quest in a fief has a total completion limit shared by everyone. In Hebao, for example, the granite quest might sit at 140 out of 400. Once the total is reached, nobody can complete it anymore.
• The same quest can only be done once per day, so at most 7 times a week in the same fief.

Because of this it pays to plan your week. Aiming for around 3 quests a day lets you focus only on the best quests across your fiefs.

Quest levels

Fief quests have levels: the more stars a quest has, the better its rewards. A fief's own level decides the quests it offers. Jiedi at level 1 only gives 1 to 2 star quests, while a higher-level fief like Hebao offers up to 5 stars.

Only the baron can upgrade a fief the house owns, and only once the fief has built up a set amount of construction materials (shown on the fief itself). Hebao, for example, needs 300,000 construction materials to level up. Those come from fief quests completed by house members in house-owned fiefs, plus the tributes your house receives every Sunday morning for the fiefs it holds. Higher-level fiefs produce more tribute, so upgrading your fiefs quickly matters for both rewards and house progression.

Types of fief

Not every fief is the same, and the type shapes the quests and rewards it offers:

• Village: small and unwalled, with fief quests and basic crafting. Cheapest to level, so the usual pick for building.
• Town: walled and worth far more prestige, starts at a higher level with instant access to tier 4 and 5 quests, but costs much more to maintain.
• Fort: a defensible chokepoint that can block movement through a region, though it rarely has resource nodes.
• Gate: only basic crafting and no resources, but each is worth a lot of end-of-season triumphs and can be needed to enter the Conqueror's City fight.
• Capital City: the region hub with every NPC and service, the most lucrative and the hardest to hold.
• Trade Colony: a safe town that cannot be attacked, with a trading post and a smuggler selling high-level unit kits.

Quest rewards scale with a fief's level, more than doubling at the top, so higher-level fiefs are the ones to prioritize. A common building tip: take a fief to level 4 to start earning the bonus rewards on turn-ins, then stockpile enough materials to jump straight to level 7 in one go, which skips the heavy upkeep drain at levels 5 and 6.

Resource respawn

The rarity of resources on the map changes day to day. A copper mine near your city might be grey on Monday (one type of copper) and purple on Tuesday (a different type). This matters a lot when a quest asks for a specific resource, so check the map before you set out to gather.

Who can harvest where

How many times you can harvest a node depends on your relationship with the house that owns it:

• 3 if it is in your own house's territory.
• 2 if it is in an alliance member's territory.
• 1 if the territory allows harvesting but is not in your alliance.
• 0 if the territory forbids harvesting.

Requisitions are the exception: a requisition order lets you harvest regardless of your relationship with the owner. You get requisition orders by logging in daily (certain days, especially Sunday, give one), from vault rooms (most often after a bandit camp, sometimes after other activities like sieges), from the Vae Victis and 5 Battles daily quests, and from abandoned wagons, dilapidated huts and similar spots.

Getting the resources

Split what a quest needs into two types:

• Trophies, mostly from rebel camps in large amounts, and in smaller amounts from nearby bandits, the auction house, or the odd abandoned house or wagon.
• Standard resources, gathered directly from production sites.

Take the Hebao Cedar Wood Supply quest, which wants 34,000 cedar wood. First hover the quest to see if you already have enough in stock. If not, check the resource's rarity (purple here) and find a matching purple sawmill. Go there with units, harvest, then return to the quest fief to turn it in, watching for players who might attack you on the way. Bring one combat unit for defence just in case, and harvest on Line 2 or 3 rather than Line 1, where you are far less likely to run into other players. To switch lines, click Line at the top right and pick another.

Harvest optimization

Your productivity index depends on your army composition: the higher the ratio, the more you gather (handy for lowering taxes or spending fewer requisition orders). The default best setup is 5 level 7 serf units with the harvesting veterancy (bottom line), or 4 serfs plus 1 combat unit such as cavalry if you expect trouble on the way.

Also check the technologies under U, which boost harvesting a lot. They unlock with harvesting experience, gained every time you gather at a production site.

Three last tips: always carry rations in your wagon, since running out makes you harvest 50% less; you can buy resources straight from the auction house instead of farming them; and quests of the same level do not always give identical rewards, so compare before you commit.